Still leaning against a tree, his palm twitching as he unconsciously repeated the horn hand sign, Eden asked, "What happens once the Rogues are revealed?"
Drakon shook his head, replying, "It's not so simple. Although most players who reach the Brethren Court know about their identity, they can't just accuse one of the Pirate Lords of being the leader behind the Rogues. Even if you try to tell them, not only will they not believe you, but they might even kill you. There needs to be proof, and so there's a whole investigation at Shipwreck Cove."
"And this will be affected by today's events?"
Drakon nodded this time, "It is a complex affair, and always takes several players to complete. However, they can also throw stones at each other and interfere with their investigation, as everyone is aware of the existing evidence. Most of the time, it is a fight between the Players behind the Rogues and those behind the pirates. The pirates try to expose the Rogues and annihilate them, while the Rogues try to hide themselves and take over the court. But sometimes, some Players manage to bring Royal Navies in. That's when things are the most chaotic, as everyone tries to kill each other."
Eden, despite himself, let out a small smile as he imagined the scene, saying, "So we have a strong faction behind the Pirates, another behind the Rogues and the Spanish, and Shadows behind the French."
Drakon chuckled breathlessly, "That we know of. Earlier, you said something about Player numbers… You were right about one thing, and that is not all Players appeared on Munro Island. It is one of the most important locations, as Barbossa is essential to the current events, but it's not the only one. And then you brought Morgan as well."
"What about Morgan?"
Drakon rolled his eyes at Eden, exasperated, "I'm not a living encyclopedia. This is only my second mission world. But as far as I know, Morgan has never been so involved in any other iteration. By the way, would you be interested in trading information on whatever you did to trigger him?"
Eden chortled, touching his stump as he said, "I'll think about it. So, you're saying Shipwreck Cove is going to be chaotic. What then? Anything we could use to our advantage?"
Drakon suddenly looked awkward as he hesitated for a few seconds, before eventually spitting out, "No offense, but there's no way we are teaming up in Shipwreck Cove."
Eden raised an eyebrow, which served to show both his curiosity and threat, so Drakon quickly followed up with, "How do you think I got all this info? I'm part of a Tier 5 Guild, the Hero's Alliance. I was unlucky enough to get stranded in Munro, but I know that I have several other guildmates in this world. According to the plan, we will meet in Shipwreck Cove, and they definitely won't agree to you joining us. Hell, they will probably try to kill you for your bounty."
Eden was not too bothered by this, as he did not put so much importance on Shipwreck Cove in the first place. Still, he asked, "Can't you put in a word for me?"
Since the start of the conversation, Drakon had seemingly been forthright, so Eden decided to give in to himself, giving Drakon an illusion of control by appearing needy. It was more of an unconscious gesture, though, something Eden used to do before Dreamland.
Unaware of what was going on in Eden's head, Drakon replied apologetically, "Sorry, but Shipwreck Cove is not our battlefield. As you guessed, Dreamland sends far more than a dozen Players at a time to a world, but they are not all at the same level. The location we are sent to, as well as our main mission, is determined based on past achievements and attributes. Munro Island is one of the best locations because it is for beginners, but it can carry you to the very top of the mission world.
"But it's not the only way to get to Shipwreck Cove, and if you do get there, you will mostly see peak Tier 0 Players, or even some Tier I."
Eden frowned at the repeated mention of Tiers, but first recapitulated, "So the following steps of the Rogues quest-line will pit high-level Players from several large guilds, and would require several high-level Players with knowledge of the plot to even have a chance to compete?"
Drakon nodded slowly, his body tensing as he feared Eden would attack him. Eden ignored his reaction, frowning. He already had a hunch Shipwreck Cove was going to bring things to the next step, but by the look of things, it would be pointless for him to even show up there. If anything, he would be setting himself up for other people to manipulate him.
Fortunately, that was not so important to Eden. Not only did he already have the Skull and the connection it had formed, but even without that, he could simply wreak havoc wherever and increase his fame. It certainly would not be as efficient as Shipwreck Cove and the chaos ongoing there, but Eden was sure he could cook something up in six days.
Besides, it was not like he could not affect the situation at Shipwreck Cove in any way. Eden was already used to playing around bigger 'players' than him from his time on Earth, and even in Dreamland, he had been going against foes much superior to himself over and over again.
He could also presumably throw a wrench in everyone's plans by going there, as that would inevitably bring Morgan into the mix, which would undoubtedly undo whatever other Players had planned, if Drakon's words were to be trusted.
Deciding to leave himself some time to think about the next step, Eden asked, "You keep mentioning Tiers. I've gathered they are some kind of ranking?"
Drakon tilted his head, surprised at the question as he asked, "You never heard about it? Even independent Players usually hear about it before their first mission."
Eden said nothing, so Drakon explained briefly, "Then yes, they are a ranking. For characters, such as Players and NPCs, and Guilds. The level of a Guild is usually determined by its strongest Player. Tiers go from 0 to V."
If V was the highest, then that meant Drakon's Guild was one of the strongest.
"Attributes don't go up infinitely, and instead increase exponentially, receiving major boosts at certain milestones. Attributes between 1 and 19 are Tier 0, and once one of your attributes reaches 20, you enter Tier I. Not only do you receive a boost on your already present attributes, but each additional attribute point also brings a greater increase in power."
This was interesting to know, especially since Eden's Intelligence was at 19. Did that make him a peak Tier 0 Player then?
Of course, Eden was pretty sure he had not brought his attribute to its utmost efficiency. A 19 in Strength would most certainly be much more noticeable on his power than on his Intelligence. This was because Eden knew how to use his Strength, having used his physical stats for his whole life, while he was just a beginner at magic.
But as he mastered his spells, he was sure that even if his attributes did not grow, he would still grow in power.
Still, there was one point that remained unexplained, so Eden asked, "Does this evolution in Tiers only take place when your pure attribute reaches 20?"
The Necronomicon's Copy offered Eden +3 to his Intelligence, so he had already technically had more than 20 Intelligence more than once.
As expected, Drakon nodded, confirming his suspicion. Then, that meant he only had to gain one more point in Intelligence before reaching Tier I.
Eden was not sure how to feel about that, as while it would supposedly represent a power boost, that would also mean higher-level missions, leaving him less time to master his spells as they would certainly become irrelevant.
Pushing himself off the tree, Eden asked the cautious Drakon, "What's the next step?"
Drakon took a step back, replying, "We should be able to catch a passing ship. It takes varying amounts of time based on which island you land on, but these parts are very active, so it should be by tomorrow at most. Although if you keep shooting fireballs in the sky, we might have a ship see us faster."
Eden nodded and, without another word, walked back into the slowly fading necrotic miasma. Drakon made a silent sigh of relief seeing this, and returned to the three pirates as a Strengthened Fireball was shot into the sky.
Having already planned to keep training, Eden was only incentivized by what he had learned.
As he did, though, a stray thought of his went to Guardian, whom he had lost in the battle. Guardian was powerful, even managing to stall the deadly Morgan for a precious few seconds despite having gone through a couple of hours of harrowing battle already. At his peak, Eden was sure Guardian could have fought with Morgan for several minutes at least.
Losing him was thus quite the setback for Eden. And now, he wondered whether it was even worth it.
Each resurrection, as Eden had learned with Jason, would weaken the Evil Servant, and going by Guardian's first death, his attributes would be lowered by at least a further 20%.
That meant Guardian's highest attribute, Strength, would go down from 16 to 13, which was barely any better than Eden. But what made the bulk of Guardian's power was his equipment, which was now unfortunately lost.
The loss of the Hellsteel Greatsword was especially painful to Eden, as it had been a Rare piece of equipment. Of course, escaping with his life was far more important, but still.
But back to Guardian, without its equipment and its lowered attributes, Eden doubted it would be worth it to have him return. Besides, it would cost Eden 250 MP to summon him back, which he did not have.
So, Eden made up his mind to find himself a new Evil Servant.
And so, for the rest of the night, Eden weaved fire, shooting Strengthened Fireballs into the sky as he trained in the spell. His 1st Circle Spells were already mastered well enough for regular use, and making any
more progress in them also felt more difficult.
Eden seemed to have hit a sort of threshold with Dark Pool and Demon Claw, as he could feel that his body had already grown extremely familiar with the particular path mana took to use them, and Eden did not see where he could make any more progress. Ever since he had learned to remove the hand sign from the spells, he had not made any progress. Maybe he had reached peak mastery for it.
So, Eden focused solely on Strengthened Fireball, and it certainly was to a great effect as only a few hours later, still deep into the night, not only did Eden's Wisdom increase by one, reaching 18, but his mastery of Strengthened Fireball also advanced to the point of 'peak mastery', as he no longer required hand gestures to cast it.
However, he now seriously doubted he had truly reached peak mastery, as the effects of the spell had barely improved.
[Strengthened Fireball (2nd Circle): Condense a ball of fire and send it flying, making it explode at will. Explodes on impact, deals 60 (75) fire damage to every target within a two-meter radius. Cost: 180 (140) MP.]
Damage had only increased by 5, while the MP to cast had been reduced by 20. It was a decent change from the base version of the spell, but Eden could feel something was missing.
Yet, no matter how much he tried, he did indeed feel that casting Strengthened Fireball had become almost effortless. He barely needed to visualize anymore, being capable of casting it through the manipulation of his mana alone.
Of course, his raw mana manipulation was still far from ever coming close to what he could do through his Talent, but these low-level spells did not require a very precise handling either.
Not believing in the method of spamming spells until he mastered them, Eden retrieved the Skull in his Inventory and took out the Necronomicon instead. As he did, his eyes glazed over the alchemy notes given by Morgan.
If anything, Morgan's display of strength at the earlier battle was proof of how precious these notes were, if they could allow Eden to replicate his achievements. However, Eden guessed it was not something that could be learned in the short term, so he decided to continue focusing on his spells instead.
He took out the Skull because he did not believe in slamming his head into walls to solve problems, and while increasing his Intelligence to 20 sounded attractive, at the moment, he felt more attracted to uncovering the mystery that was his spells.
Thus, he took out the Necronomicon, as not only were his 1st Circle spells much simpler, and thus easier to master, but he also had an entire, comprehensive book on the dark arts to better understand them, while he only had a scroll for Strengthened Fireball.
Reading in the miasma, or the middle of the night for that matter, was impossible, though, so Eden stepped out of the necrotic miasma and saw that Pintel, Ragetti, and Drakon were asleep around a campfire, while Barbossa was on watch.
Seeing Eden step out of the miasma, Barbossa had a slightly guarded look, though it was tinged with some gratitude as he bowed as well as he could sitting down, greeting faux-ceremoniously, "A pleasure to see you again, Sir Monster Hunter."
Eden snorted softly, sitting by the fire as well as he said, "Things did not go very well, did they?"
Barbossa rolled his eyes, leaning back as he replied with a scoff, "If not for those last pirates, we could have gotten away with that ivory."
Eden shrugged, changing the subject, "You can go to sleep if you want, I'll keep watch. I have to study anyway."
Barbossa raised an eyebrow at the Necronomicon, before averting his gaze uncomfortably as he exclaimed, "What kind of dark artefact is that? And where did you even put that? How did it survive in the sea?"
"Magic."
Barbossa chuckled humorlessly, "I'd have given the ivory to you if I knew you could do this."
Eden smiled but said nothing. He guessed that Drakon had gotten some of the ivory in his inventory, and other Players probably had taken some as well, though it would hardly be of any use for Drakon. He could not take it out without any explanations, and doing so would probably greatly affect Barbossa's opinion of him if he hid that.
Opening the Necronomicon, Eden looked at the esoteric text, concentrating as he slowly translated it. Although he was not an expert in the language, he knew it well enough, and he had even added some notes of his own in particularly elusive parts.
Although he had already read the book several times, many words and expressions were left open to interpretation, or had multiple meanings, which made reading the book even harder. It was not done to pointlessly confuse the reader, but mostly stemmed from the language itself, which was very different from modern languages linguistically.
Black magic was a school of magic which focused on manipulating necrotic energy, manipulating life and death, and could be used both to harm or help others, though that help generally came with drawbacks or certain limitations, such as the Evil Servant spell from the Necronomicon. It could bring someone back from the dead, but they could hardly be said to still be themselves.
Up until now, Eden had mostly been focused on the different visualizations characteristic of black magic, and now he tried to search for what the next step might be. But even as he read the latter parts over and over, he could not find anything that seemed to be able to follow.
So, Eden went back to the beginning.
Visualization was, in essence, a proxy for a mage to manipulate their mana when they were not capable of doing so through their will. But then, how were different spells created?
Was circulating mana in a specific way alone capable of creating a spell?
Feeling a sense of epiphany, Eden closed his eyes and used Soul Overlord to carefully manipulate his mana. He first moved small amounts of his mana around his body, following random paths, and nothing special happened. No spell effects were created, and he could not feel any difference.
So, he started following the path that usually led to the casting of Demon Claw. He started by only following 10% of the way, and upon feeling no difference compared to earlier, continued along the path, going 25%, 50%, 90%, 95% of the way, yet nothing happened still.
Finally, Eden made a complete circle and moved his mana through that route, which would normally result in Demon Claw being cast.
Yet, nothing happened. That the spell would not be cast, Eden already expected, as he had tried before. However, what was unexpected was that there was no reaction in his body or his mana as it went through that particular route.
Everything behaved just as it would if he had circulated his mana in any other part of his body.
Soul Overlord was certainly not omnipotent, but when it came to feeling his internal body and manipulating it, Eden was capable of handling the small ember in his heart, so he doubted that much could escape him, not to mention he was experimenting with a 1st Circle spell.
So, this confirmed that the movement of mana alone was not enough to cast a spell. It needed something else, something which Eden figured had to be intent.
Visualization was not a word in Ancient Sumerian, and Eden had translated it as such because it made the most sense in that situation, and also worked in conjunction with what he had read in the Strengthened Fireball scroll, but another close translation of it would roughly be intent.
Reading the early parts of the Necronomicon again with this in mind, Eden felt like he was in the middle of an epiphany as he suddenly found new meanings, and his understanding of magic rapidly evolved.