The Era of Gods

Chapter 88: The Powerful Hybrid Profession—

A hero is generally someone who possesses immense courage and martial strength.

Or it refers to someone with heroic qualities.

Alternatively, it refers to a selfless and fearless individual who fights valiantly for the people’s interests, earning widespread admiration for their character.

In the Divine Realm, heroes are usually beings with immense courage and martial strength, and with unwavering convictions, good or bad morals notwithstanding.

Of course, having courage and martial strength alone does not make one a hero; these are merely preconditions. Whether one can become a hero is largely a matter of luck.

Aside from heroes like Lin Xiao, who are created with special treasures, normal heroes usually reach their species’ limit and then, due to certain circumstances, break through it. There is an extremely small chance they might become a hero, but there is a greater likelihood they will not, only advancing a level beyond their racial limit.

For instance, a fishman warrior whose racial limit is Level 2 might ascend to Level 3 due to some treasure, most likely becoming a Level 3 Fishman Leader. There’s a slim chance they might become a Level 3 Fishman Provoker, and only an extremely minute chance of becoming a Fishman Hero.

A hero’s base strength is related to their race; even at birth, they possess strength exceeding their racial limit. However, that is not the main point. The essence is that heroes break free from racial restraints and, provided they’re trained properly, can theoretically ascend infinitely.

For example, as long as a Fishman Hero does not die and is well-trained, they can theoretically advance to Seventh Level, Eighth Level, or even Ninth Level, becoming a legend of a hero who can easily slay dragons.

Of course, Lin Xiao wouldn’t give such a precious Divine Blood Crystal to a fishman; he already had a target in mind.

But before the fusion, he needed to craft a new profession and load it onto all of his Clan, then advance them to heroes on the profession’s foundation.

There is a considerable difference between a hero with a profession and one without. It’s like the difference between fighting on instinct and having systematic career planning; the gap becomes wider as they progress further.

Lin Xiao stretched out his right hand, and a warrior Profession Card appeared in the palm of his right hand. With a flip of his left hand, a stack of cards shimmering with varying intensities of light appeared in his left hand. These were the ten legendary or lower quality Five Star Cards awarded for slaying a demigod; he had chosen all skill cards.

He had planned this long ago, to use the Creation Rubik’s Cube’s ability to dismantle and integrate to extract and refine an array of skills, then fuse them with the Profession Card, thereby significantly strengthening the card or reshaping a new profession.

Without touching the Profession Card, he first placed the ten skill cards into the Creation Rubik’s Cube one by one, dismantling them to extract the skills and set them aside.

Then came the key part: using his privileges as the creator of the Black Scale Naga, he temporarily stripped all skills from the Black Scale Naga, including Bloodthirsty, Following Stroke, Basic Footwork, and Salted Fish Charge.

The sudden deprivation of skills caused a wave of panic amongst the Clan in the Divine Realm; many True Believers, thinking the Deity was wrathful, kneeled down and prayed in fear.

Luckily, Lin Xiao quickly issued a Divine-mandate to calm them, preventing any chaos.

As the creator of the Black Scale Naga species, Lin Xiao had the authority to grant or to strip away skills, talents, and so on from them.

Only a creator has this ability; those who did not create the species cannot do the same.

For instance, Yan Renjie cannot strip any abilities from the Lava Lizardmen as he did not create them.

Moreover, Lin Xiao’s stripping of the skills is not an enhancement of the race’s capabilities for the Black Scale Naga, but merely a regular adjustment. The enhancement of a race involves the fundamental bloodline, i.e., talents. Meaning, if he strips the Black Scale Naga of a talent or grants a new one, even if it’s a minor adjustment, it is still considered race enhancement, using one opportunity of race enhancement.

Lin Xiao already had a plan in mind for the direction of the Naga’s racial enhancement, but right now, he did not have the suitable racial talents to load.

According to his plan, the Nagas currently have some useful talents and specializations, while others are rather superfluous. When the time comes, he will replace at least half of them with a few precisely chosen powerful talents and specializations. Not too many are necessary, but they must be strong.

That is a matter for the future. The current focus is recasting skills.

He intended to integrate all the skills into the profession, including the powerful skill Salted Fish Charge, and adjust this skill, which he had been dissatisfied with for some time.

The ten skill cards included mostly basic passive skills such as Single-hand Sword Specialization, Two-handed Sword Specialization, Archery Specialization, and so on. He planned to merge all weapon skills into one.

With a thought, all the basic weapon skills in the Creation Rubiks Cube fused into a chaotically rolling mass.

Next, he directly dissolved the Bloodthirsty skill into nutrients; he felt this skill was useless and occupied a skill slot.

As for Following Stroke, he felt it was not susceptible to enhancement. Given his limited resources, he couldn’t enhance it now and would wait until later when resources were more abundant to see if that skill can be enhanced to be more substantial.

Then, Salted Fish Charge was fused with the warrior’s generic skills of Charge and Interception, drawing on the strengths of these two skills before dissolving two rare cards for nutrients to enhance it.

Afterward, the warrior’s skill ‘Leap Attack’ was fused with the generic warrior skill ‘Thunder Strike’, and the remaining skills were dismantled to provide nutrients to strengthen this skill.

With this, all skill cards had been completely dismantled.

Shao Qing, all the skills had been strengthened separately, and after fusing them all into the Profession Card, a card emitting a rich golden light hovered within the Creation Rubik’s Cube.

Eager to take out the card, Lin Xiao immediately examined its attributes.

Profession: Unnamed.

Level: Fifth Level.

Professional Bonuses: Constitution +2, Strength +2, Agility +1.

Proficiencies: Basic Melee LV2, Basic Step Method LV2, Multiple Weapon Specialty LV2.

Skills: Salted Fish Charge (modified), Thunder Strike (modified), Following Stroke.

Evaluation: A magical warrior variant profession capable of skillfully using a variety of weapons in combat.

As for the name, Lin Xiao casually coined “Versatile Warrior,” given that the multi-functional weapon specialty included specializations for common weapons such as archery, making the name highly apt.

After enhancement, the current power of the Salted Fish Charge had not changed, but the charging speed was faster, and it could now be used to charge without a target.

Previously, it was only possible to charge at a designated target, but now charging into empty space without a target is also possible, naturally allowing for the interception of targets, making its use much more flexible.

The effect of Thunder Strike remained the same as before: slamming the weapon into the ground to deal shock damage twice the user’s attack to surrounding enemies and slow them down. The stronger the user, the larger the shockwave range. Now, in addition to the original effect, one could leap up to twenty meters away and impart the effect of Thunder Strike upon landing. Similarly, the further the leap distance, the stronger the user, potentially spanning hundreds or even thousands of meters, with theoretically no limit.

Turning the golden, shimmering card over in his hands, Lin Xiao was very satisfied with its completion, and he loaded it into the Divine Realm. The conditions for loading remained the same as before; any True Believer could receive it, regardless of whether they were Naga or Fishman.

However, Fishmen had to ascend to First Level Fishman Warriors before they could load it, as un-upgraded Fishmen were too weak to sustain this profession.

Whether they were Naga or Fishman, upon loading the profession, they would immediately receive everything that the profession conferred, including the professional bonuses to attributes, proficiencies, and skills.

This meant that any First Level Fishman Warrior who loaded the Versatile Warrior would gain a series of professional bonuses and instantly possess strength comparable to a Level 2 Naga.

Most importantly, professional level and racial level were calculated separately and could be stacked.

In other words, although the Fishman race was destined to only rise to Level 2 Fishman Brave, the Versatile Warrior’s professional level could go up to Fifth Level. Hence, after a Fishman Brave reached the racial cap, they could still increase their strength by leveling up their professional level.

But because they could not elevate their race, their strength definitely could not compare to that of higher races’ professionals.

For Fishmen, a notoriously inept race within the Multi-universe, having a profession was already quite impressive—how could they dare to ask for more.

In the many crystal wall planes of the Multi-universe, Fishmen did not have professions, and even in the Main World’s player Divine Realm, few people were willing to create a Profession Card for Fishmen to load. Most players would choose a second race when their strength was sufficient and slowly replace their initial weaker race.

Lin Xiao did this because Naga and Fishmen shared the same origin; the primary bloodline used to create Naga was Fishman, which is why Fishmen could also load this profession. It wasn’t that he specifically prepared this profession for Fishmen.

“That’s just too damn real!”

He couldn’t help exclaiming about the unfairness of being a weak Fishman, yet he felt no shame in his heart.

After synthesizing the profession and loading it, Lin Xiao turned his attention to the Divine Blood Crystal. Now, he could ascend to be a Hero.

But before that, he needed to issue a divine mandate for the believers to hold a large-scale prayer ceremony.

Ascending to Hero was such a significant event that it would be wasteful not to widely publicize it to boost faith.

While the believers were preparing for the large-scale prayer ceremony, Lin Xiao was also busy; he took out the huge anchor, spanning seven or eight meters in length, and refined it well, using the Creation Rubik’s Cube to remove the impurities, leaving only pure steel and reducing its size to just under six meters, preparing it as a weapon for his future Hero.

Simultaneously, he refined the large amount of metal obtained from the Holy Place of the Snake People Demigod, casting them into four-meter-long, wrist-thick steel spears, planning to bestow them at the same time.

These were trophies from the Treasure House of the Snake Man Demi-God, whether it was Divinity or the Divine Blood Crystals refined from the Snake Man Demi-God Corpse, he could use them without restrictions.

As for the Profession Card, it was actually subject to restrictions, but quite inconveniently, he had just acquired an extra card fusion slot in the ten days of final exams, which came in handy right away.

It’s worth mentioning that, after the final exams, during the two-month vacation, the restrictions on card fusion continued to follow the rules of the first year, which allowed for one slot per month, perfectly adding up to twelve slots a year.

Only starting from the day when the second year began, there would be two slots available per month..