Chapter 1282 – Nevermore Time!? Or Maybe Just Alchemy…

Back at his residence, Jake took some time to plan what he wanted to do now that he’d evolved to B-grade. It didn’t take him long to decide that the first thing he wanted to do was experiment to find out just what he was capable of now, hopefully increasing his understanding or maybe getting a skill upgrade or two in the process.

He also wanted to visit a few of his acquaintances in the Order, but quickly discovered that others had their own lives and weren’t just sitting around waiting for Jake to pop in. Irin was off to the Nine Hells on a diplomatic job, Meira had surprisingly gone to the Pantheon of Life, and Draskil was doing work for the Order of the Malefic Viper in the new universe, taking advantage of being a powerful native, allowing him to easily lead the charge and expand the influence of the Order.

So, yeah, that was out of the question. That’s why Jake ultimately settled on doing a bit of experimentation for now, which still left the question of whether he wanted to work on class or profession stuff first.

Naturally, if Jake wanted to grind some class levels as quickly as possible or even work on upgrading some skills while stretching his limbs and getting some combat training in before any system events began, one place in particular came to mind:

Nevermore.

However, after doing some research, Jake realized there was a good reason why he hadn’t heard about any of the newly evolved B-grades going. It wasn’t that Nevermore was a bad place to get levels; it was just that it wasn’t very efficient for a newly evolved B-grade, since the B-grade version of Nevermore differed from what Jake and everyone else had experienced in C-grade.

C-grade Nevermore was very much built around the Leaderboard competition. Challenge Dungeons, many floors with different “lessons” and whatnot, quests and points, and so many other aspects were created for the C-grade dungeoneers to experience, but in B-grade, none of that was considered necessary anymore. Instead, it had been transformed solely into a place to gain levels.

This, first of all, meant that the floors were far more expansive, making them incomparable in size to those in C-grade. No longer were floors planet-sized or even solar-system-sized, but could easily rival entire galaxies, even if most of them were still isolated on a singular physical plane, often in the form of a massive, expansive continent suspended in space.

These new massive floors would thus have far more to do on them. There would be hidden bosses, countless enemies, factions to battle or exploit, and just a plethora of things to do.

From what Jake read, C-grade Nevermore was kind of like a story-driven game with some open-world elements. Meanwhile, B-grade Nevermore was a sandbox open-world game where one could just do whatever without any clear direction. The only objective one had was to find the entrance to the next floor, which, fortunately, wasn’t very difficult, as the location tended to be openly telegraphed. No, a far bigger problem than locating the pathway to the next floor wasn’t finding it, but entering it.

Before one could go to the next floor, one had to meet certain criteria, such as killing specific things, gathering items, or whatever other objective the Wyrmgod or, evil snake god forbid, Minaga had decided on.

Well, that… or just a certain minimum level. If one reached a level threshold, all one had to do was slay the boss guarding the pathway to the next floor and then pass through, ignoring all other objectives. This was a bit of a problem.

As for why this was a problem? Short answer: time dilation rules.

Similar to in C-grade, the time dilation in Nevermore got stronger the deeper – or higher, Jake didn’t actually know if Nevermore should be considered a tower or a hole – one went. As a result, most preferred to enter Nevermore towards the middle or latter part of a grade, especially when one reached level 425, halfway through B-grade, one met the level requirement to immediately enter all floors, assuming one could beat the boss.

This was especially true due to how much the time dilation sucked on the first few floors. It was barely noticeable on the first floor and not even a two-to-one ratio, making it pretty much as efficient to just level in the outside world, especially seeing as there was still a limit to how long one could be in Nevermore as a B-grade.

These reasons combined were why Jake hadn’t heard about anyone going to Nevermore yet, despite evolving to B-grade. This isn’t to say some didn’t go, but overall, the smarter move was to wait till about halfway through the grade to reap the most benefits from the World Wonder. There were many opportunities the place offered that Jake hadn’t gone over, and he was definitely visiting Nevermore again. Just not yet.

That’s why Jake ultimately settled on doing a bit of alchemy first. After that, he could always visit a normal dungeon or open hunting ground somewhere to work on his class skills. For now, seeing as he was in the Order and knew Villy was definitely also curious to see how Jake’s evolution had affected his alchemy, he took out his cauldron.

Before anything else, Jake made sure to use the formation placed on the Altmar Cauldron of Supreme Simplicity to strengthen the item and hopefully avoid it taking any damage during what was to follow. He probably did need to upgrade his cauldron at some point, but he was already happy with what he had, so no need to rush into change.

After making sure the cauldron was as ready as it could be, Jake got to work and started out simple. Taking full advantage of his identity as the Chosen of the Malefic Viper, Jake pillaged some B-grade potion ingredients before summoning his Soulflame.

Jake had decided to start out by making a few potions to get more familiar with his increased energy control and overall power. Every action was far stronger than before, and while Jake was supremely skilled when it came to control, alchemy was such a fine art that even he took a bit to adapt.

As a result, Jake did something he hadn’t done in a very long time: failed to craft a potion.

About halfway through, the careful balance of energy was disrupted, destroying much of the herbal energy in the mixture and dooming the brew. With a sigh, Jake fully destroyed the rest of the incredibly stinky liquid before he tried again.

It ended up taking Jake six attempts in total before he had his first successful craft. Granted, Jake was pushing things to the limit during every crafting attempt, testing his own capabilities during the process, and effectively speedrunning the process of becoming more familiar with his newfound power.

Likely due to that, Jake didn’t fail his seventh crafting attempt either, and while he wasn’t perfectly flawless as he was before his evolution right away, his consistency quickly reached a level that alchemists who’d been crafting potions in B-grade for a century couldn’t rival.

Crafting potions also had the fortunate benefit of allowing Jake to stock up for any further experimentation later on. Right off the bat, without Jake making his best potions, such as Malefic Health Potions or Arcane Mana Potions, his new potions were already twice as strong as before. When he began to mix in those concepts and work on his improved potion formulas, the jump in resources restored was even higher.

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Jake would have loved to have potions this good in C-grade, but unfortunately, he wouldn’t have been able to consume them even if he wanted to. Potions were weird in that, despite not having a level requirement stated on their descriptions, there most certainly still was one. This requirement just came in the form of potions from higher grades actually being far worse than those crafted by others around one’s own level, to the point where they were pretty much useless. That’s part of the reason why Jake flooding the market with potions in peak C-grade had such a huge impact. For everyone who tried to push for a B-grade evolution by taking huge risks, they benefited extremely much from a peak-level potion like those Jake had made.