The Era of Gods

He was pondering whether this hero occupation template would be better suited for magic-based professions, melee professions, or a combination of both.

If it were a melee warrior profession, should it lean more towards strength or agility? Should it be designed for small-scale combat, or to thrive in chaotic battlegrounds? Should it focus on heavy offense in battle or survival on the battlefield?

If it were a magic profession, should the emphasis be on damage dealing or crowd control? And for damage, should it prioritize single-target burst or wide-area AOE, or perhaps summoning?

One cannot have both fish and bear’s paws; being all-around also means mediocrity. There must be a unique point, a strongest aspect.

Additionally, he had to consider whether this hero profession would be compatible with other races.

While the intended user was the core race, the Supreme Naga, whether to make it compatible with other races, like letting Earth Dwarves also meet the criteria, needed consideration.

Thinking of this, Lin Xiao suddenly remembered something.

His gaze landed on the Earth Dwarves who were busy within the Earth attached divine domain, then he glanced at the thousand units of Creation Energy just converted from a hundred units of Crystal Wall Origin, and looked up at the nascent flesh giant tree at the center of the newly constructed giant city that had not yet grown.

Well, this guy is no longer called the flesh giant tree; Lin Xiao has named it the Creation Ancient Tree.

This entity had devoured a large number of Nightmare Creatures, including four Rank 10 Nightmare Behemoths, as well as a piece of Evil God Flesh. During the final battle when he had a fallout with the will of the Nightmare World, he had a premonition that things might go south, so with a no-loss mentality, he collected a small piece of flesh from that Evil God of his own.

All these powerful creatures’ genes were stored away, available for use at any time, much like the World Tree from ancient myths, which could bear flesh fruits from which painstakingly crafted life forms could emerge.

Of course, this Creator’s Tree was still immature and couldn’t bear fruit yet, but he didn’t need it to be fruitful now. He just wanted to access its gene pool, extract some suitable genes, and fuse them with the Earth Dwarves to create a new species.

Currently, the Earth Dwarves were just a simple combination of two powerful Dwarf genes. Now that he had sufficient resources at his disposal, it was time for a proper adjustment.

He spent nearly a day in the gene pool of the Creation Ancient Tree before he picked out a few suitable species genes and took out the Dwarf Species Card to begin modifications.

The modification process didn’t take much effort; he had done it many times before, and his understanding of the Creation Law had already exceeded ten percent. With the help of the Creation Rubik’s Cube, this was a piece of cake. He quickly produced a new Dwarf that matched his vision.

To be precise, the new species had little relation to Dwarves. He only extracted from the Earth Dwarves their smithing talent; all other talents, whether from Black Iron Dwarves or Golden Dwarves, were discarded. In their place were the talents from some creatures of the Nightmare World and two Nightmare creatures.

The talent from the creatures of the Nightmare World was hard to describe, but certainly stronger than that of the Dwarves, whether in terms of smithing or combat. Along with the genetic traits of two Nightmare creatures, the combination of the four, fused into one and enhanced with Creation Energy, created a very powerful, newly-formed High-Grade Species that had never been seen before.

Lin Xiao opened the new species panel, with its attributes clearly displayed before him.

Race: Unknown.

Category: Sub-human Species.

Level: High-Grade Species.

Profession: None.

Talent: Smithing Spirit, Nameless Talent.

Skills: None.

Specialties: None.

Constitution: 10 points.

Strength: 10 points.

Agility: 6 points.

Mind: 3 points.

Assessment: A previously unseen sub-human race with an exceptional talent for smithing.

Lin Xiao tentatively named the new race the Red Furnace Clan, as they possessed a humanoid form with reddened skin like a heated furnace. Adults averaged about two and a half meters in height and were very robust, giving the appearance of immense strength.

The faces of the Red Furnace Clan were extremely similar to that of humans, but they had four arms. Two were normal human arms, with palms that could easily enclose a basketball, and the other pair of arms grew from their back, acting as two flexible tentacles, with forked tendrils at the tips like fingers, capable of deftly grasping any tool.

As a High-Grade Species, the Red Furnace Clan possess a Level 4 strength upon adulthood and have a basic lifespan of one hundred and twenty years.

Upon advancing to Fifth Level, their lifespan increases to one hundred and fifty years.

Should they reach Rank 6, the racial limit for the Red Furnace Clan, they will have an entire two hundred years of lifespan.

The Red Furnace Clan possess two talents. One is the Dwarf’s smithing talent which, after enhancement with Creation Energy, became the Smithing Spirit—an even stronger smithing talent than that of the Dwarves.

The other, a Nameless Talent, is unique to the Red Furnace Clan, with the following effect:

Nameless Talent: The Crimson Furnace Clan is immune to fire damage, significantly increased resistance to other types of energy, immune to bleeding, poisoning, diseases curses, and other negative effects, and can continuously draw fire energy to heal injuries and restore stamina in the presence of flames.

The newly born Crimson Furnace Clan possessed tremendous combat power, but in Lin Xiao’s design, they were just a race specialized in forging. Both their innate talents and form were enhanced towards forging. The fact that they were stronger in combat than the original dwarves was just an added bonus.

After carefully checking to make sure there were no issues with the new race, he issued a Divine-mandate to summon all the Earth Dwarves back to the Earth attached divine domain, then reloaded and transformed them.

After all these tasks, only 42 units of Creation Energy were consumed, not much.

The reason he didn’t make them even stronger was mainly that there weren’t many suitable genes left, plus there’s a limit to high-grade species, and he only needed a blacksmithing race, not a main battle race, so there was no need to go that far.

Besides, the gap between high-grade races and sub-legendary species capable of reaching Rank 7 was too wide, and he didn’t have that many resources available.

Perhaps in the future, after divine enthronement, when the Divine Realm expands again and there are sufficient resources at hand, he might promote this Crimson Furnace Clan to a sub-legendary or even legendary blacksmithing race.

After strengthening the Crimson Furnace Clan, the transformation of the entire race required some time, so Lin Xiao turned his attention back to the standard hero class template and needed to think about how to proceed.

However, now that the Crimson Furnace Clan was freshly created, he already had a clear idea of what choices to make for the standard hero class template.

Firstly, it must be a melee profession, if it was magic-based, it would conflict with the Wise Goblins.

It must be tailored specifically for the Supreme Naga, with no need to consider compatibility with other clans.

A melee profession must focus on survival and the battlefield; only those who can last long in the battlefield can play a greater role, just like in competitive games, only the tough ones who can stand their ground are the real bosses, not those who farm all game but get taken down in a second despite having 30,000 economy – they don’t qualify to be called bosses.

With this in mind, Lin Xiao had a clear idea of what to do.

Firstly, he needed to select several high-quality skills from the hundreds of cards as options because the capacity of hero classes is limited. Moreover, he also needed to use the Creation Rubik’s Cube to strengthen the skills. Once strengthened, the power of the skills would skyrocket and the capacity they occupied would definitely rise, so in the end, he would probably be able to load only a few skills.

Skills are more about quality than quantity; a bunch of minor skills combined can’t match the power of one high-level skill.

It took nearly half an hour to carefully select five skills as reserves, three active skills, one passive skill, and one passive talent.

It’s worth mentioning that perhaps coincidentally, the skills he chose were very similar to Slarda’s talents.

The first active skill: Sprint.

The original effect was to significantly increase one’s speed, with an increase rate of up to 50%, and it was a Four Star Epic quality skill card.

Lin Xiao selected a bunch of skills similar or identical to this one from the card pool, centered on this card, and infused ten units of Creation Energy to quickly enhance it into a super powerful skill card.

Five Star Skill Card – Phase Shift (Ancient): Increases the user’s speed by 300% for 60 seconds, can be used five times per day.

Note 1: While shifting, significantly increases the user’s evasion and has a chance to evade targeted lock-on skills and spells.

Note 2: In the shifting state, gains phase non-collision state, can ignore any slow effects and terrain, capable of walking on water.

The second active skill: Thunder Strike.

A classic warrior’s area damage skill. While its power is average, the group slow effect it applies to the enemies is what’s most important for a warrior.

By fusing different skills of the same type and integrating ten units of Creation Energy, a new, incredibly powerful area damage and control skill was created.

Five Star Skill Card – Chaos Roar (Ancient): Strikes the ground forcefully, causing massive physical and explosion damage to enemies within a 15 meters + X radius around oneself, stunning for 2 + X seconds, followed by a slow for another 5 + X seconds. After using the skill, a Chaos Field persists for 30 + X seconds at the location, usable five times per day.

Note 1: The power of the skill and its effects depend on personal strength; the stronger the individual, the greater the power and effects.

Note 2: Inside the Chaos Field, the user gains strong physical and spell resistance and powerful regenerative abilities, significantly increased to hit with attacks, allies gain half the user’s effects, and it weakens the defense and resistance of enemies.

The third passive skill: Heavy Strike.

It is a skill that significantly increases the power of the next attack to inflict heavy damage on the opponent. After fusing different skills and ten units of Creation Energy, the new skill turned out to be unexpectedly powerful.

Five Star Skill Card – Chaos Strike (Ancient): Every five normal attacks, the next strike will accumulate powerful force causing a critical hit equal to three times the maximum damage, ignoring any form of the target’s defense and evasion, and stuns the target for 1 second.

The fourth active skill: Stonify Saint.

Though it appears to be Berserk, it is not. It is a transformation skill that turns the entire individual into a stone-like being, immune to most spell effects, and significantly increasing both defense and strength.

This skill is one of the strongest among the hundred-plus cards provided by Jin Sisi. If not for the short duration and drastic reduction in speed while transformed, it would surely be considered Divine.

Through the fusion of different skills and consuming an entire…

Well, after enhancing the other three skills and talent and loading them onto the standard hero class template, there were 50 more capacity points left. He decisively used up a full 30 units of Creation Energy.