37%... 38%... 39%... 40%
"Wow, it really does increase!" Jack uttered with amazent. His concentration slipped and the number started to go down again.
40%... 39%... 38%
"Crap!" He quickly put his concentration back into the runestone and willed the number to go up again.
"This is so burdenso!" Jack complained as he put all his mind into willing the increase.
Peniel lifted her two hands up and gave a shrugging expression. "You need to put in work for it. No free lunch," she said.
Jack finally managed to get the number to 44%. It kept on alternating between 43% and 44%. He guessed that's the best his willpower could manage to push.
"Now I feel like one of those characters from manga stories who use their willpower to fight," Jack comnted.
"Again with the manga stories? What exactly are they?" Peniel asked.
"Never mind, it's just so sort of storytelling from the real world."
"Again with the real world? This is really getting old."
Jack didn't bother arguing with her. He had done that with her pretty often during the tutorial period. He canceled the upgrade process and store both the apprentice hamr and apprentice mobile anvil. He was not going to waste the upgrading materials with a asly 44% success rate, not when he could boost the success rate by spending a few coins to use the blacksmith workshop equipped with rare tools.
He took out all the gemstones he had gotten in the past. There were two rubies, one athyst, and one erald. All of them were common grades.
"So I can use these to upgrade the runestone?" He asked Peniel.
"Yes, but before you feed any of the gemstones to the runestone, I need you to tell
what elent you encountered during the tribulation of that runestone."
Jack glanced at the floating runestone and cringed, he would prefer not to be reminded again of that tornting mont. "I thought you know every basic knowledge? How co you don't know what elent this runestone has?" He asked back.
"Because every runestone is different. Even the ones with the sa type. You can only know about their elent once you undergo their tribulation," Peniel replied.
"It's lightning," Jack answered.
"In that case, you should use the athyst to upgrade that runestone."
"Why is that?"
"Because athyst contains the elental energy of lightning. By using the sa elent as the runestone, the elental energy absorbed by the runestone will be more. Thus, reducing the number of gemstones you need to complete the upgrade."
"I see… What about these rubies and erald?"
"The ruby contains fire elent. Erald is wind. There are three more types of gemstones. Sapphire for water, Amber for earth, and Diamond which contained no elent."
"Oh? Then Diamond is the most useless then? Since it has no elent, it doesn't provide any boost when upgrading runestone."
"On the contrary, Diamond is the best. It has no elent because it is compatible to all. So any type of runestone will get the maximum benefit when you used diamond gemstone."
"Oh? Then I assu this diamond will be the rarest type of gemstone then. How lucky of
to get it."
"Yeah, how lucky of you," Peniel responded with a smirk.
"Okay, let's give it a try," Jack said as he picked up the athyst and neared it to the floating runestone. The runestone blue light flared brighter and he heard a notification voice asking if he confird to feed the athyst to the runestone. Jack confird it and a blue light shot out from the runestone and snatched the athyst in his hand. The gemstone soon disappeared into the runestone. Another notification voice inford him that the gemstone was of a compatible elent so the number of elental energies being absorbed was doubled.
Jack made another scan on the runestone using Inspect.
Runestone of Probability (uncommon runestone)
Increase approx. 10% success chance to auxiliary jobs.
Elental energy required for upgrade: 10/100
Seeing the number, if he was to use other common gemstones, the energy would only be 5 points.
Jack rembered sothing and said to Peniel, "hey, that shop we went to before. They sell gemstones, right? If I go and buy those gemstones, I will be able to upgrade this runestone in no ti."
"You can go try if you want," Peniel said.
"Why do you sound like I will not be buying them even if I go…?"
"Heh, each of the common gemstones costs 1 gold coin. Are you still going to buy them?" She asked.
"Ugh, why are they so expensive? It costs the sa price as the runestone itself," Jack complained. "I will need 10 gold coins to upgrade this runestone even if I use matching elent."
He might be loaded with coins now, but he would still not simply spend them just like that. Not for the sake of auxiliary jobs.
"Yes, it's better if you just get them from monster loots, or mining," Peniel said. "Unless of course, if you have too much coin in your hand."
"No, thank you, I think I will just keep my coins," Jack said. He stored the remaining gemstones and unsummoned the runestone. "I'm beat, I guessed I will turn to bed early," he said.
"Are you forgetting sothing?" Peniel asked.
"Hm?" Jack had no idea what she ant.
Peniel pointed in a direction. Jack followed her pointing and saw two runestones on the floor ahead.
He was silent for a few monts before asking Peniel, "tell , if I rge with another runestone, will I have to go through tribulation again?"
"You do," Peniel answered.
Jack stared at her in silence for a long while, before finally uttering, "oh, what the hell."
He ended up spending the night going through two more tribulations to rge with those two runestones. One of them was of the fire elent. He had to go through the sensation of being burnt alive. The other was of water, where he got drowned again and again.
Despite the intense suffering he had to go through, it was really not too difficult. After all, he did not actually have to do anything. He only needed to endure through the pain. He felt it was not difficult because of the fact that the torture did not bring him any actual harm, and the knowledge that it would be over soon. When a person knew for sure that his or her sufferings did not give any permanent risk and knew for sure that those sufferings were going to end at one point in ti, it made the experience much easier to overco. Except of course for spoiled brats who could not endure even a little bit of pain.
He observed the two new floating runestones in front of him.
Runestone of Enhancent (uncommon runestone)
Approx. 10% chance of increasing the effectiveness of products made from artisan jobs.
Elental energy required for upgrade: 20/100
Runestone of Duration (uncommon runestone)
Increases the duration of products created from artisan jobs which have duration, by approx. 10% more.
Elental energy required for upgrade: 0/100
He had also used his two rubies to upgrade the Runestone of Enhancent which had the elent of fire. For the Runestone of Duration which had the elent of water, he did not have any sapphire so he just left it for now. Using the last gemstone, erald which had the elent of wind felt like a waste.
He was still pretty exhausted ntally after the ordeals. He went to bed imdiately afterward. Another fact that he found was that each rging with the runestone gave him proficiencies in his runecraft skill. He had not actually applied any runecrafting in his activity but his proficiency was already around 30% from interdiate apprentice grade after rging with three runestones. Too bad the next runestone could only be gotten by luck, he could only increase his proficiency by applying the runecrafting the next ti when he used his auxiliary skills.
The next day he imdiately put the runecrafting to test. In the morning he started by cooking a couple of Egg Fried Rice and used the Runestone of Duration to boost its duration. He almost never consud the food he cooked anymore since he could stock up on Ellie's cooking. The duration of the food increased from three hours to around three hours thirty minutes and three hours forty minutes.
Jack then went to the blacksmith workshop and rent a room that had rare tools. He again put his Red Dawn staff onto the blacksmith forge. With the boost from the rare tools, his success rate was 60%. He then summoned the Runestone of Probability and injected his will into it. The success rate increased to around 74%, which was a much better success chance compared to last night's one. He proceeded to spend 2 iron ores and 1 steel ore to go with the forging. And the result was… failed.
Couldn't help it, he thought. 74% was still not 100%, so there was still a chance of failing. It's a good thing he had a large stock of iron ores and steel ores from the previous robbery incident. He could afford nurous failures, so he decided to continue on it.
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