Chapter 1287 – A Successful Upgrade = Scammed (?)

Jake naturally had high expectations for his upgraded Alchemist’s Purification skill. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have put so much effort into upgrading it and making it work with his Lesser Primeval Energy.

However, that didn’t mean he wasn’t taken aback when he saw that the skill had jumped straight from inferior to mythical rarity. Not too long ago, he had raved about the massive jump to his Alchemical Flame after he absorbed his Supreme Arcane Soulflame, but now he had already surpassed that feat. Not by much, mind you, as the jump between lower rarity wasn’t that big compared to the higher ones, but still. This was an incredible improvement.

He had, based on the fact that he kept being able to create legendary rarity items, fully expected to see himself upgrade it to legendary rarity. That seemed to make the most sense, and he also took into account that he’d just evolved to B-grade. Upgrading skills in B-grade was harder than in C-grade by a good margin, and even his current skills were now considered relatively weaker within their grades, despite not receiving any actual downgrades in rarity.

So, for his new Alchemist’s Purification to jump straight up to mythical rarity felt extreme. Jake didn’t question it too much, though, but instead viewed it as an explanation of just how potent this Lesser Primeval Energy actually was. Just this one instance of Jake applying it in a relatively simple manner made the skill potent enough to warrant reaching mythical rarity.

Lesser Primeval Energy Manipulation was a unique profession skill, so Jake could only really guess what rarity the skill would roughly correspond to if it wasn’t. His initial guess was that it was somewhere between mythical and sacred rarity, leaning more towards the latter, but now he doubted that was even the case.

Either way, it was clear that the only reason Jake had managed to so easily upgrade it to mythical rarity was solely due to just how overpowered this Lesser Primeval Energy was. It definitely also played a role that Jake was, well, Jake. He had an innate ability to control this energy that he suspected was unrivalled, and, as the rarity of his manipulation skill suggested, unique. Without both of those factors, there was no way Jake could have succeeded so soon.

Which also begged the question… if Lesser Primeval Energy was that potent, just how fucking overpowered was Primeval Origin Energy? And just how damn awesome was Jake for being able to access and use it?

Questions that Jake doubted he would get the answer to anytime soon. Okay, he knew the answer to how awesome he was already, but not about just how good these Bloodline-related energies were. He also didn’t really have the time or energy to think about it, as, for now, he still had to fully digest the fact that he’d succeeded and now sat with a very different flower than what he’d started with. It still looked like a regular Red Lavender on the surface, but upon deeper inspecting, it was evident it wasn’t.

The entire flower felt dead, even though it looked the same. The stalk and nearly all the flowers felt entirely devoid of the usual energy, now holding only an iota of what was usually there, barely enough to keep the flowers from falling apart. Even then, it would still wilt and turn to dust if not for stable arcane energy holding it all together, allowing these small fragments of concepts and energies to still do their job of maintaining the Red Lavender’s identity as a Red Lavender.

However, one part of the flower was substantially different from the rest. A single small flower, no, just the center of that flower, emanated powerful energy that far surpassed the entire herb before. Using Identify on his new creation, Jake was pretty relieved with the result.

[Lesser Primeval Red Lavender (Legendary)] – A Red Lavender that has undergone purification using Lesser Primeval Energy. The life affinity mana stored in the small flowers has been substantially purified and amplified, with the rest of the lavender nearly wholly bereft of energy. Relatively stable, though it still shows signs of instability. Formerly known as the main ingredient of health potions, though now its viability for that usage has become questionable.

Not getting any information from his use of Identify indicated that Jake lacked sufficient understanding of what he was looking at. Now that it showed him at least something resembling a proper description was massive progress and proof of his increased comprehension of this newgained energy.

He also felt that it was a lot more stable than even his Iron Flakes, so that was awesome, seeing as flowers were naturally more unstable than metals, meaning he had done a far better job with this Red Lavender than anything prior. Unsurprisingly, given that this was the attempt in which the system acknowledged his efforts and granted the upgrade.

Now, as for the question of what he could use this Lesser Primeval Red Lavender for, the answer was… fuck-all. There was no reality where he could actually craft anything using it, as the energy remained far too potent, and even if Jake managed to create a whole set of ingredients purified using Lesser Primeval Energy, he had absolutely no confidence.

The altered ingredient was incredibly potent compared to any regular alchemical ingredient Jake had ever worked with, and it was still a lot more volatile than regular high-rarity materials. What’s more, while Jake had successfully manipulated the energy within one Red Lavender, if he actually wanted to craft anything using it, that wouldn’t be enough.

His purification had condensed and reduced the total quantity to an incredibly minute level. This meant that if Jake wanted to have enough ingredients to craft an actual potion, he would have to use hundreds of Lesser Primeval Red Lavenders at once. And Red Lavender was just one part, and he would also need the same amount, if not a higher quantity, of altered grass.

Trying to fuse the energy of hundreds of legendary items at once was already a tall order, and that was without considering the volatile nature of what he created.

All of this is to say that despite Jake feeling pretty damn good about his successful upgrade of Alchemist’s Purification, he fully realized that, as things currently stood, he had no way of actually using his Lesser Primeval Energy for anything. The ingredients he could purify were way beyond his ability to use for anything, and he even doubted he could use his new skill on too powerful ingredients yet. Not without a lot of practice anyway, as while the system’s assistance when he used Alchemist’s Purification was significant, it didn’t guarantee success. There was a reason it said ”attempt to” in the description.

Speaking of the actual skill description, there really wasn’t much to say, was there? Despite being a mythical rarity skill, his new Primeval Alchemist’s Purification was a pretty simple skill that did exactly what it said on the tin. It even did this in the exact way he’d planned for it to, making all aspects of it wholly unsurprising. The only somewhat surprising things were the first flavor text and the fact that his new skill came with an in-built warning that he was dealing with some serious concepts that were inherently volatile.

Overall, Jake was happy with the upgrade he’d gotten, though admittedly, he had gotten a bit ahead of himself by working on this just after evolving rather than waiting till he grew into his B-grade power. He could create super-powerful ingredients now, yes, but he had no way to actually combine them; Jake was capable, and he would be able to in the future.

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He hadn’t exactly wasted his time either, even if his goal was just to grow stronger, because with his newly upgraded skill, he’d even gotten a bit of experience. Actually, he’d gotten a lot more experience than he thought he would.

’DING!’ Profession: [Primeval Alchemist of Malefic Origins] has reached level 360 – Stat points allocated, +125 Free Points

…

’DING!’ Profession: [Primeval Alchemist of Malefic Origins] has reached level 362 – Stat points allocated, +125 Free Points

’DING!’ Race: [Human (B)] has reached level 355 – Stat points allocated, +135 Free Points

’DING!’ Race: [Human (B)] has reached level 356 – Stat points allocated, +135 Free Points

Three levels perhaps didn’t seem like a lot, but this was B-grade. B-grade levels tended to take a lot longer than C-grade ones, something Jake really hadn’t felt so far with how he’d progressed in his profession. He’d started getting a windfall of levels due to Spirit of Man the very minute he evolved, and right after that, he’d spent roughly one and a half years getting another three levels by upgrading a skill from inferior to mythical.