After getting over the embarrassment he felt from the words he had spoken to himself while testing out his PER stat, Valyr took a look at the sky, noticing that the sun was already nearing the peak of its ascent to the sky.
Coincidentally, his stomach rumbled after finding this discovery, causing a faint bitter smile to appear on his face as he made his way to the cafeteria, pondering over a couple of things along the way as he walked at a slightly relaxed pace.
'With how much my stats have improved after I ascended to Rank 2 and gained a few more levels after that, there's no doubt in my head that I would definitely cause a lot of destruction once the monster tide comes crashing down on the village,' Valyr thought to himself, his hands itching for the monster tide to come to the village faster. 'With [Shadow Energy Empowerment] also working behind the scenes, I'm definitely going to be in for a treat once I decide to use [Tide of the Dark Night].'
'Just a couple more days, Valyr. You'll get to go all out, as well as get the materials needed to upgrade Sanguine to the next rank.' Calming his emotions with a couple of deep breaths, he went ahead and initiated a small conversation with Sana along the way, talking about a few mundane things in order for him to get used to the feeling of communicating with his weapon.
While in the midst of their conversation, a thought surfaced in his mind, reminding him of something someone had told him back then. 'Now that I think about it, I now meet the requirements to obtain the second part of Jekyll's legacy.'
As far as he could recall, the skill [Gambler's Discerning Eyes] Jekyll had given to him was only considered the first part of the legacy he owned, which he had chosen to give to Valyr. Since the latter was still at too low of a level back then, he was not allowed to inherit the entire legacy all at once, with Jekyll instead telling him to come back when he was around Level 30.
'I'd suggest you get the legacy once you're done with upgrading me, Master.' While he was pondering over it, Sana's voice resounded in his mind, which he thought was the optimal decision. After all, he would still have to go to the Lesser Meltierre Mountains, as well as prepare for his entry to the upcoming Four Pillars' Inheritance.
'Then again, I'll probably still have to fork out a hefty sum to get to Anadhar City since I'll be teleporting back to Algerie City after this.' With the thought in mind, Valyr decided that he would think more about it after he was done with the monster tide, coming up with the idea of having Braum pay for his teleports until he was done with the Four Pillars' Inheritance along the way.
…
"Well, well, well. If it isn't the Tidebreaker." After ordering a somewhat light meal from the cafeteria workers for lunch, Valyr brought his tray of food to a vacant table, only for other people to start surrounding him not long after.
At first, a slight frown appeared on his face as he thought that a couple of strangers had decided to sit beside out of nowhere. However, once he heard a familiar voice come from one of these people, the frown on his face swiftly disappeared, instead being replaced with slight shock as he looked at the three people that decided to sit with him.
"Am I glad to see you three again. Leon. Louie. Jonas." Flashing a smile at the trio that had been one of the first few friends he had made at the village, Valyr went ahead and asked the three of them as to how they were doing, deciding to catch up on what the other side was doing while they were gone.
Unsurprisingly, the three told Valyr that they had finally ascended to Rank 1, with all of them being able to consume vials of Reinforcement Elixir since they had saved up quite a decent amount of contribution points. Among the three of them, both Leon and Jonas were already halfway to completing the dosage needed to get the passive skill, while Louie was lagging behind them by one vial each.
Aside from that, they had informed him that they were pretty close to reaching the rank of Guard Captain within the regiment, which Valyr was happy about as he congratulated all three of them on their advancement in advance.
Naturally, once the three were done talking about what had been going on with their lives during the time Valyr was gone at the village, the latter went ahead and talked about what he was doing while he was away from the village. Surprisingly, the three of them were left at a slight loss for words when they heard him say that he had honing his skills as a blacksmith, telling Valyr that they thought he had taken up a combat class.
In response, Valyr clarified to them that even before he ascended to Rank 1, his mind was already set to obtain the blacksmith class, deciding to share a bit of information on how much he had earned from short stint as an owner of a smithy. Of course, the three were left speechless once they heard how much he made, with Leon even joking not long after if he should switch to a production class in the future.
After that, he talked about obtaining a subclass, as well as his recent advancement to Rank 2, ending off his recap with the reason why he had returned to the village, which was to help out in the defense against the monster tide.
Unsurprisingly, the three of them were grateful that Valyr had appeared to help in the upcoming monster tide, even though he was not really a part of Astarto Village from the beginning. In response, Valyr told them that he was just reciprocating the kindness the village had given him while he was starting out.
After talking for a bit more as they ate their respective lunches, the four of them eventually separated ways, with the three telling Valyr that they were eager to see his performance in the battlefield during the upcoming monster tide, especially now that he was a Rank 2 class holder.
Chuckling in response, Valyr waved farewell at the three for the meantime, swiftly heading outside the barracks to head to Tristan's smithy. After all, now that he had allocated all of the unused XP he could…
It was now time for him to upgrade his armor set and weapon once more.
