Preparing For The Future (II) : A Cursed Weapon

 Nehar didn't mind her anymore and started looking for the item with rapt attention.

 After scrolling down for twice more his hands came to a stop.

 He looked over the screen and confirmed this was the item he was looking for from the start.

 Weapon No. 937, Bloodkin's Dagger (Sealed).

 Nehar pressed the details about that particular weapon and a bluish screen came up in front of him.

 On the left side of the screen, he saw the exquisite picture of the dagger.

 A blood-red colored dagger, with a sharp fang and sturdy handle devoid of any superfluous designs.

 Only there are 5 small inscriptions in the middle of the blade.

 Nehar knew they were the Seals placed on that dagger.

 He looked over to the right side of the screen and started observing the specs of the weapon.

 -------*****------- 

 [Weapon: Bloodkin's Dagger (Sealed, Cursed Object)]

 [Weapon Description]: Unavailable.

 [Weapon Status]: Sealed (Sealing Technique: Five Great Sealing Array) 

 [Weapon Specifications]

 - Weapon Grade: Unknown.

 - Weapon Level: Unknown.

 - Weapon Properties: Completely Sealed (Information not available). 

 - Weapon Effects: Strong Attack; Attack Power +40. Special Effect: ?? 

 - User Requirement Level: None.

 - User Restriction: None.

 - Special Note 01: User will experience Curse of Blood-Fiend (Effect: Unknown). 

 - Special Note 02: Unsealing Methods are not available.

 -------*****------- 

 After taking a look at the weapon description, Nehar sighed.

 It is the same as before. Nothing has changed.

 Internally, he was relieved that no one picked this one before he could.

 When Nehar returned to the past, he had already set a definite plan for his next steps.

 The first thing he chose to do was to gather some Skills from other Classes while not choosing any particular Class for himself.

 The second important thing was to execute the <Skill: Shadow Steps> perfectly and try to obtain the Privilege of an Administrator.

 With quality effort and great luck, Nehar was able to pull that off too.

 The third thing in his mind was to obtain this Dagger.

 He looked over the dagger in the screen in front of him and remembered many incidents related to it.

 He sighed and clicked the button to buy it.

 [System Alert: You've chosen to buy a Cursed Weapon 'Bloodkin's Dagger'. Cost – 8500 TP. Do you wish to proceed? YES/NO]

 Nehar didn't hesitate and chose 'YES'.

 After all, this dagger was one of the main reasons for the First Great War in his previous life.

 At that time, someone else bought this dagger during the Tutorial.

 And they had no idea about it.

 Only when two of his brothers died from its attack, did Nehar learn about this Dagger.

 One could say if you just eliminate the person who killed your comrades that will be enough.

 Was there still any reason to buy this sealed dagger wasting so much precious TP?

 The obvious answer was NO.

 But Nehar knew it would be best to buy this dagger. The person who wielded it before was able to unseal the first three seals of the dagger and held an immense amount of power.

 But he still fell to the curse of Blood-Fiend and became the Blood-Fiend himself.

 After becoming Blood-Fiend, he slaughtered almost everyone in his path.

 The Evil God Igroth, 'The God of Bloodshed and Slaughter' manipulated him to wield his dagger against the common populace and High-Rankers.

 Several hundred High-Rankers died in battle.

 Seeing the situation getting out of control, the King and Emperor Level Experts intervened.

 After six days of bloody battle, he fell along with nine King Level Experts and three Emperor Level Experts.

 His tyranny ended with the death of 317 High-Rankers, 9 Kings, 3 Emperors, and over 1,50,000 common populace who didn't hold power like them. 

 Within six months, several major wars broke out between different clans – which later marked the start of 'The First Great War' within one year.

 After the person died in the battle, this dagger was lost.

 At that time, people had no idea about the Outer Gods and Evil Gods.

 Naturally, they didn't know the person they had fought so hard to defeat and kill was nothing but a replaceable tool in God's hands after his objective was achieved.

 The Evil God Igroth had chosen another Apostle candidate before the final battle of his little tool.

 After the battle, the Divine being used some of his powers to transfer that dagger to his Apostle.

 No one had any idea about these undercurrents.

 Not even the System was able to detect and stop it via its various means.

 In their heyday, those Outer Gods' and Evil Gods' combined powers easily rivaled that of the System which monitored so many worlds.

 People forgot about the Legend of this dagger slowly and became busy fighting the First Great War.

 Years passed away.

 37 Years later, this bloody dagger reappeared along with the Apostle of God.

 Again massacres started happening but in a controlled manner.

 That time the Apostle candidate moved silently and attacked surely. He didn't make many mistakes like the previous one.

 He continuously targeted many high-profile Players, including the Celestials.

 Ultimately a war broke out between the Celestials and The Evil Gods.

 Soon it became large with the participation of other powers and turned into another Great War – 'The Third Great War Of Annihilation'. 

 This was also the last war where Nehar and his comrades fought and ultimately got defeated.

 Thus Nehar knew very well about the significance of this dagger.

 'In my past life, that person bought this dagger from the same Tutorial as me, which means that he must be present in this Tutorial Phase in this timeline too. Out of 26 regions, I don't even know where he might be. But there is a chance that we'll get entangled later due to this dagger. If he had bought this dagger in the past due to sheer coincidence, then it would be a different case altogether.

 But from my experience, such coincidences never happen.

 Either he knew about this dagger himself or someone supplied him with the information to buy it and use it.

 But why did he do that even after seeing the curse in the description panel of the dagger?

 Did he not notice it or was he someone like me who had some knowledge how to unseal the Runic Seals and Array Seals?'

 Nehar shook his head after thinking about this.

 'No need to over complicate things. If we meet later, I'll know about it eventually what compelled him to buy this cursed dagger.' 

 Nehar took a look at the dagger which was currently sitting in his Inventory.

 Then he looked at the Tutorial Shop Interface again and searched for Skills.

 After searching for a few seconds, he paid only 750 TP to buy a Common Grade Skill: Quick Movement.

 Yes, he bought one of the basic skills of the thieves to achieve a greater movement speed while battling.

 Leveling up a Skill wasn't a problem for him currently, as he had points to spare.

 Some more things caught his eye, but he chose to buy them later, after finishing his current Quest. 

 [System: You have used 9250 TP.]

 [System: Your Current TP: 1665]

 Nehar didn't feel anything even after seeing his balance go down below 2000 TP. It's best to use them inside the Tutorial to grow more powerful than the others.

Nehar first opened his Skill Panel (Chart) to learn and then check on the new Skill he bought.

 [System: Do you wish to learn the Skill: Quick Movement? YES/NO]

 Nehar pressed 'YES' nonchalantly.

 [System: You've learned a new Skill: Quick Movement (Common, Rank: D-)]

 -------*****------- 

 [Skill: Quick Movement (Common)]

 [Skill Description]: You can now move faster than before while fighting your enemies. Engage and disengage at will.

 [Skill Status]: Active.

 [Skill Specifications]:

 - Skill Grade: Common (Rank: D-)

 - Skill Effect: Increases User's Agility; Agility +10. 

 - Skill Level: 0

 - Skill Proficiency: 0/5

 - Cool-down: 25 seconds.

 - User Requirement Level: 0 and Above (Not Applicable).

 - User Restriction: None (Thief).

 -------*****-------

 Nehar chuckled after seeing the description.

 In his Skill panel, there were three Skills (Angular Slash, Dagger Throw, and Backstab) whose original User Requirement Level was quite high (Level 10-15). The System had forcefully degraded their Grade and Ranks to make a proper balance in the Tutorial Phase but those Skills still maintained quite high attack powers to finish Level 0 participants in one or two strikes at most.

 The only sad thing was that those Skills had a Cool-down; otherwise, it would've been much easier to use them freely in a chain circle.

 Nehar commanded mentally, "Add 5 Skill Proficiency Points to Quick Movement." 

 A notification rang out.

 [System: You've added 5 Skill Proficiency Points to your Active Skill: Quick Movement (Common). Skill Proficiency has increased by 100%. Current Skill Proficiency: 5/5]

 [System: You've gained a fundamental understanding of the Skill: Quick Movement.]

 [System Alert: Congratulations! You've leveled up your Fifth Active Skill: Quick Movement (Common, Rank: D)]

 [System: Active Skill: Quick Movement (Common, Rank: D); Current Level: 1; Current Skill Proficiency: 0/10]

 [System: Your Agility and Movement Speed has increased. Agility: +15]

 [System: Your Current Agility: 10 (25)]

 [System: Your Active Skill: Quick Movement's cool-down has decreased by 2 seconds. Current Cool-down: 23 seconds.]

 [System Alert: You've been rewarded with TP as you leveled up one of Active Skills for a second time. TP Received: 150]

 [System: TP Collected: 1815]

 [System: Unallocated Skill Proficiency Points: 08]

 [System: Unallocated Stat Points: 12]

 Nehar saw the time remaining for his Quest completion.

 [System: Quest: Remaining Time: 00:08:14]

 'I need 2-3 minutes more to finish preparing everything. Then, I'll move out.'

 If it was someone else in his place, he/she would've been scared silly as the time for completing the Quest was rapidly decreasing.

 But Nehar remained unphased. 

 He has been through these types of situations over a thousand times in the past.

 And he always faced them with the same attitude never losing his cool.

 Nehar started giving out commands one after another, "Add 5 Skill Proficiency Points to Dagger Arts, 2 Skill Proficiency Points to Backstab, and the remaining 1 Skill Proficiency Point to Dagger Throw."

 He paused for a second and issued another set of commands, "Add 10 stat points to Agility and the rest to Strength."

 Continuous System notifications rang out.

 [System: You've added 5 Skill Proficiency Points to your Active Skill: Dagger Arts (Common). Skill Proficiency has increased by 100%. Current Skill Proficiency: 5/5]

 [System: You've gained further insights into the Dagger Arts.]

 [System Alert: Congratulations! You've leveled up your First Active Skill: Dagger Arts (Common, Rank: D) once more.]

 [System: Active Skill: Dagger Arts (Common, Rank: D); Current Level: 1; Current Skill Proficiency: 0/10]

 [System: Your attack power has increased. Attack Power: +15]

 [System: Your Current Attack Power: 10 (25)]

 [System Alert: You've been rewarded with TP as you leveled up one of Active Skills for a second time. TP Received: 150]

 [System: TP Collected: 1965]

 [System: You've added 2 Skill Proficiency Points to your Active Skill: Backstab (Inferior). Skill Proficiency has increased by 100%. Current Skill Proficiency: 2/2]

 [System: You've gained a fundamental understanding of the Skill: Backstab.]

 [System Alert: Congratulations! You've leveled up your Second Active Skill: Backstab (Common, Rank: D-)]

 [System: Active Skill: Backstab (Common, Rank: D-); Current Level: 0; Current Skill Proficiency: 0/5]

 [System: Skill's Base Damage has increased. Current Base Damage: +40]

 [System: Your Active Skill: Backstab's cool-down has decreased by 3 seconds. Current Cool-down: 27 seconds.]

 [System Alert: You've been rewarded with TP as you leveled up one of Active Skills for a second time. TP Received: 100]

 [System: TP Collected: 2065]

 [System: You've added 1 Skill Proficiency Point to your Active Skill: Dagger Throw (Inferior). Skill Proficiency has increased by 50%. Current Skill Proficiency: 1/2]

 [System: You've gained more understanding of the Skill: Dagger Throw.]

 [System: You've added 10 Stat Points into Agility and 2 Stat Points into Strength stat.]

 [System: Strength and Agility has increased.]

 [System: Your Current Strength: 12; Your Current Agility: 20 (35)]

 [System: Unallocated Skill Proficiency Points: 0]

 [System: Unallocated Stat Points: 0]

 [System: TP Collected: 2065]

 Nehar looked over all the notifications in mere seconds.

 'Some Skill's cool-down has decreased and my Agility has reached the peak of Level 5.'

 In this world, Leveling up was not all that easy.

 Killing lower-level monsters provided very low EXP points for level up, the same goes for killing weak humans.

 Nehar received around 25 EXP points for killing Level 0 humans and at the same time he received 5000 EXP points just for recreating a better skill from his memories and past experiences.

 Even after leveling up, balancing the stats was the major problem.

 Every Stat has a maximum limit up to which it can be raised with the Stat Points for each level.

 For example, at Level 0, the maximum value for someone's Stats were 10.

 For Level 1, it was 15; for Level 2, 20; 25 for Level 3, 30 for Level 4; 35 for Level 5 and so on.

 One couldn't increase their stats past this point while remaining at the same Level.

 Either increase the Level or keep the Stats at the peak without changing them.

 This was the System's limitation.

 But increasing one's Stats to peak was rather a challenge.

 Someone who doesn't have a Class from the start will receive 3 Stat Points for every level up and 5 Skill Proficiency Points for every 5 level ups.

 It was quite low.

 With these measly amounts of Stat Points and Skill Proficiency Points, increasing someone's Stats or Skills to a good level was nothing but a dream.

 Those with Classes still have a better time than their former counterparts.

 They would receive 6 Stat Points for every level up and 10 Skill Proficiency Points for every 5 Level ups.

 One can easily say, they would increase their strength greatly after every 5 level-ups.

 But it was valid till someone increased their Skill level to the peak of the Common Grade.

 After that, Skill Proficiency Points would become useless and the System will replace them with suitable amounts of Stat points for those particular Players who have reached the thresholds of their Skills.

 After Common Grade Skills, starting from the Uncommon Grade Skills to the rest, increasing their Skill proficiency would solely depend upon the Player who was using the Skill.

 The System will not actively help them anymore to raise their Skill proficiencies.

 All they had to do was practice and execute those Skills again and again to increase their understanding and comprehension of those Skills.

 Other than that, there was no other way to increase Skill's proficiency anymore. Nehar knew it and thus he wasn't much worried that he didn't choose a Class.

 The Class's most practical benefit at the beginner's level was to gain more Skill Proficiency Points and Stat Points. 

 Nehar had his own methods to gain the Skill Proficiency Points and as for the Stat Points, he had a different plan altogether.

 ---

 Nehar belonged to the First Category as he didn't choose a System-designated Class from the start.

 Still, he was able to increase almost all of his Skill levels tremendously by earning Skill Proficiency Points continuously as he had prior knowledge and vast experience in executing them. 

 Although some advanced Skills like <Shadow Steps> and <Angular Slash> strained his current body and mana pool quite a bit, he still went with it, as the reward for executing them was more enticing than his predicaments.

 But still, he wasn't able to bypass the System's limitations and increase his Stats too.

 Due to a reward, all of his Stats reached the maximum limits of Level 0 and that's that.

 It didn't increase any further, even when he leaped into Level 4.

 Nehar nonchalantly added his 12 Stat Points, which he acquired after many difficulties only via level up to his Strength and Agility stat. 

 He was not worried about using them.

 After adding the stat points into respective areas, he looked over his Status Profile. 

 'Though I'm at Level 4, most of my stats are only at the peak of Level 0. If this goes on, it will hamper my future growth. As I'm not going to choose a Class anytime soon, I hope the gamble I played will work this time.'

 Nehar took out the Cursed Dagger from his Inventory and equipped it in his right hand, changing his sword to the offhand.

 A System notification rang out.

 [System Alert: You're trying to equip the Cursed Weapon 'Bloodkin's Dagger'. Remember, you'll not be able to unequip this weapon unless you die or are completely devoured by its Curse. Do you still wish to continue? YES/NO]

 Nehar was taken aback for a moment, as he didn't know about it.

 He thought for some time and pressed 'YES'.

 [System Alert: You've chosen to equip the Cursed Weapon 'Bloodkin's Dagger' into your right hand. You'll not be able to unequip it anymore.]

 [System Alert: Warning! Blood-Fiend's Curse is taking effect!!!]

 [System Alert: Attempting Curse: 'Blood-Lust'…]

 [System Alert: Attempting Curse: 'Violence'…]

 [System Alert: Attempting Curse: 'Fear'…]

 [System Alert: Warning!!]

 [System Alert: You're trying to resist the Curse with your indomitable Mental Strength and Will Power. Resistance Failed!!!…] 

 [System Alert: You're resisting the Curse with your indomitable Mental Strength only…]

 [System Alert: Attempting Curse: 'Fear'…]

 [System Alert: You're resisting…..]

 At that moment, Nehar was sweating profusely while he was continuously trying to resist the Curse effects of the Dagger.

 His <Will Power> Stat wasn't high enough so the first resistance against the curses had failed.

 Still, he ground his teeth furiously and held on.

 In his past life, Nehar had unsealed several cursed objects to gain an immense amount of power.

 When he unsealed his first Cursed Object, he was over Level 100 at that time. 

 But this time, he was only at Level 4 and the Dagger in his hand was a Legendary Killer Weapon.

 Although its Grade and Rank were unknown in his previous life, it was assumed that the weapon was at least a Legendary Grade item.

 Nehar remembered some whispers from his memory while trying to prevent the curse effects with all of his mental strength.

 'Nehar, try to obtain that dagger first. We still don't know everything about it even after researching it for whole five years. It'll be easy to get as this was the only item present in the shop during the Tutorial Phase. Take it away before its original owner gets his hands on it. If that happens, even I don't know what will be the outcome. But if you're able to take it out of the Shop, you must be aware of the Curse. You've unsealed many demonic weapons in the past too, but still don't underestimate that killing machine even a little bit….'

 'You must hold on, Nehar…..'

 'You must hold on...'

 Nehar felt he was getting dizzy all over. His movements become sluggish; he is having deep trouble keeping his eyes open. 

 'I must hold on….'

 'A little bit more….a little more…'

 'I MUST HOLD ON TILL THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THEM REACHES THE PEAK….'

 'I AM HOLDING ON….'

 'I AM HOLDING….'

 Nehar screamed at himself in his mind, cursed himself, and did everything to hold on and keep his sanity.

 He knew the moment it gets a weakness in his mind, the Curse will devour him whole and he will be the one to turn into a Blood-Fiend this time.

 [System Alert: The Clash between The Curses and your Mental Strength has reached its peak.]

 [System Alert: You've met the Criteria to fulfill a Hidden Condition.]

 [System Alert: You've successfully resisted the mental attacks of the Curse. A new Stat is being unlocked in your Profile!]

 [System: You've obtained a new Stat --> Mental Strength (Passive): 20]

 [System Alert: Two of your Passive Stats, <Will Power> and <Mental Strength> are now merging to become one…]

 [System Alert: Warning!!! The Curse of Blood-Fiend is trying to corrode your consciousness….]

 [System Alert: Warning!!! Your consciousness is being pulled away into the 'Blood Domain'- A Domain created by the Blood-Fiend himself. Please remain calm…]

 Nehar closed his eyes as his consciousness was pulled into Blood-Fiend's Domain.