"Let's see… which skills should I upgrade first?" After commanding the system to hide the skills that he had already leveled up to their limits on his skill list, Valyr focused his attention on the skills that remained, taking into consideration the two general categories that separated the great amount of unleveled skills he had.
Unsurprisingly, it did not take long for him to come to a decision, thinking that the answer to the question was a no-brainer, seeing as how one category had far less skills to upgrade than the other. "Guess I'll start off this upgrading spree with you first."
Ding!
[Would you like to spend 84,452 XP to upgrade 'Basic Weapon Mastery' to Level 10?]
Hearing the notification sound resound in his mind, Valyr responded to the prompt that had appeared before him with a faint yet stern nod, causing a small chunk from the large amount of unused XP he still had to disappear as an influx of information washed over his mind not long after.
Due to the fact that he had endured far greater mental anguish thanks to him deciding to learn over 40 skills at once, only to then fuse almost half of them into three stronger skills, the amount of pain Valyr felt from the influx of information was next to non-existent, taking him about a minute or so to process and organize the information he had received regarding the usage of various weapons, including the spear.
Of course, Valyr knew that the reason why the amount of pain he felt from the action was almost imperceptible was due to the fact that he was far from reaching his mind's limit on how much skills it could handle per day. Aside from that, he had decided to only upgrade one skill to its maximum level, unlike back then where he decided to learn multiple skills of the same branch in a row.
Since there was still a lot of time before the monster tide truly bared its fangs at the village, Valyr was going to take it easy on upgrading his skills for the meantime, a shift of pace compared to what he had been doing back in Algerie City. With that, he rested for a bit before upgrading [Unearthed Innate Potential] to its max level, causing a surge of energy to circulate throughout his body for a brief bit to accommodate for the increase in overall strength.
After that, he focused his attention onto the other unleveled passive skills that remained, all of which were inclined towards the magic side of things. Looking at the skills for a bit, he upgraded both [Basic Spellcasting] and [Basic Incantation] to their max level first, making sure to pace himself in order to make sure the pain he felt would be negligible.
Once he was done upgrading those two, he thought about practicing the magic skills he had in his arsenal sometime in the future before shifting his train of thought back to what was important, upgrading all of the elemental affinity passive skills he had to the maximum level.
Although the amount of skills his mind could handle per day had increased thanks to his ascension to Rank 2, by the time he was finished upgrading the last unleveled passive skill in his skill list to its max level, Valyr felt a bit of strain weighing down on his mind. Fortunately, after a bit of self-introspection, he eventually concluded that he could still upgrade a portion of his active skills as long as he paced himself.
Deciding to give his mind a bit more time to rest from the strain it had felt from upgrading a bunch of skills earlier, a certain thought popped up in his mind once more, reminding him of the set of Intermediate Reinforcement Elixirs he had gotten from Riekan, the same set that reminded him of Vera while he was with Damian and the others earlier.
"Should I go get it?" asked Valyr to himself in a mutter, briefly scratching the head of his back as he weighed the pros and cons of both choices.
Compared to consuming an entire set of Basic Reinforcement Elixir, the amount of stats one would get from consuming an entire set of Intermediate Reinforcement Elixir was exactly double what a set of Basic Reinforcement Elixir gave, with its accompanying skill also following the same line of thought.
However, rather than have the set's stats and skill overwrite the stats he had gained from the Basic Reinforcement Elixir, consuming the set of Intermediate Reinforcement Elixir would instead have its stats stack on top of it, which meant that Valyr would effectively gain 30 points in each substantial stat if he consumed the Intermediate Reinforcement Elixir.
Of course, 30 points did not mean much in the long run. But to Valyr, whose stats were already high for someone at the beginning levels of Rank 2, 30 points was still a substantial addition to his strength, which he thought would help out greatly during the monster tide.
Unfortunately, at the end of his train of thought, he decided that he would just consume the set of Intermediate Reinforcement Elixir when he returned to Algerie City, the main reason stopping him from doing so was the fact that it had cost him five platinum coins to get a round way trip to Astarto Village.
Sure, gaining a marginal increase in strength was great, but it wasn't 'I would spend another five platinum coins to get it' great.
"It does kind of suck that I'm only recalling that I still have the set of Intermediate Reinforcement Elixir after the fact that I teleported back to this village." As these words came out of Valyr's mouth, he let out a mocking chuckle, the target of his mockery being himself. "Then again… my current stats are definitely far higher than what someone with a common Rank 2 class would have. Even those with common Rank 3 classes are lacking in terms of stats, I think."
"Anyways, I think that's more than enough rest for my mind." Taking in a deep breath, Valyr psyched himself up for the next array of skills he would have to level, feeling that his mind had somewhat recovered from the upgrading spree from earlier.
"Time to continue."
