Test (2)

Let's check it right now.

There was, however, one problem.

Can Leo even do it?

Skill Sharing required the one granting the skill to designate, personally, which skill would be shared. Leo was no human. Whether he could actually hand over the skills Jin-soo needed was very much in doubt.

Even so, I'll try.

He had attempts to spare.

"Leo."

"Nyaang?"

At the call, Leo tilted his head, wearing a look that asked why he'd been summoned.

"There's something called Skill Sharing. What it is, is..."

Jin-soo explained it to him as simply as he could.

"The skills you gained after absorbing that class book—I'd like you to share them with me. Think you can?"

"Nya!"

Leo thumped his own chest with a forepaw, full of confidence.

"Then we start."

Jin-soo designated Leo as the target of Skill Sharing, then waited quietly.

"Huh?"

What came through was not the skill he had expected, but something entirely off the mark.

He had a skill like this?

Jin-soo checked the information on the skill that had been shared.

Why is the level like that?

The shared skill's level came out a complete mess, as if the characters themselves had shattered.

"Nyaang!"

Leo thrust his chest out, as if to ask how he'd done.

"Hey, Leo. This isn't the skill I wanted."

"Nya?"

Leo startled at Jin-soo's words.

"Want to try again?"

"Nyaang!"

Leo let out a cry brimming with confidence, and Jin-soo designated him once more as the target of Skill Sharing.

"It worked! Leo, you did it! You really did it!"

Jin-soo hugged Leo tight and stroked him without restraint.

"Nyaang? Nya! Nya! Nya!"

Startled at first by the sudden affection, Leo realized it was praise, then lifted his head with a thoroughly smug look and puffed his chest out.

Let's have a look.

Jin-soo checked Skill Predation's information.

This one's level is corrupted too. Because I shared a summon's skill? Or is something else wrong?

He would only know for certain once he tested how the skill actually performed. What mattered right now, though, was receiving Stat Predation as well, right on the heels of Skill Predation.

"Leo, let's do it one more time. Got it?"

"Nyaang!"

Leo answered with vigor, and Jin-soo immediately designated him as the Skill Sharing target again.

"Well done! Well done, Leo!"

Jin-soo praised him with a bright smile.

"Nyaaang!"

Leo, too, grew wildly excited under the praise.

This one will be the same, won't it?

Jin-soo ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠checked Stat Predation's information.

As expected. The exact skill level was not displayed.

Time to see for myself.

Jin-soo cast Shadow Step, the skill Leo appeared to have possessed from the start. A soft shrrk, and his body melted into pitch-black shadow the instant he used it, as though the skill were some form of stealth.

Pretty useful.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Dissolved into the shadow, he moved—and found he could slip freely in and out of the darkness.

A lot like the way the Shadow Summons move.

The Shadow Summons, too, could hide their bodies in shadow or travel through it. The Shadow Step he had received from Leo seemed to produce much the same effect.

Then shall I try Skill Predation and Stat Predation?

Smiling, Jin-soo looked at Leo.

"Leo, gather the monsters."

"Nyaaaaang!"

The words were barely out of his mouth before Leo unleashed a wide-area taunt roar. The ground thundered—thud, thud, thud, thud—as the monsters came running.

"Grrrr!"

"Kyaooong!"

They poured in from every side. He had already drawn one wave and finished hunting it, though, so the numbers were not all that high.

That isn't what matters right now.

Testing Skill Predation and Stat Predation was.

Thwack! Leo shot forward first.

"Nyaang!"

Pap-pap-pap-pap-puck! And then he swung his forepaws with gleeful abandon.

Can't fall behind.

Jin-soo charged as well, drawing Baekcheonsingeom and the Blood-Sucking Sword, and activated Skill Predation and Stat Predation. Shhk. His blades sheared a monster apart.

A system message rose to confirm the skills had activated properly.

And once again, the protections intervened. The skill level and the stats that had risen in an instant snapped back to what they had been.

I expected as much.

The Essence Drain levels and the Vitality devoured by the Yellow God's Protection and the Red God's Protection did not vanish without meaning. They kept accumulating as experience upon which the two protections could grow.

My skill levels and stats won't rise, but the protections will grow faster. That's enough.

Huh? Something about this is off, though.

Skill levels were one thing, but a rise in stats you noticed the moment it happened. They vanished almost as soon as they appeared, so the window was brief—yet Jin-soo could feel the difference with perfect clarity.

Far too few stats are coming in.

Even estimating on the high side, it felt like a little over ten points absorbed.

Let's take a few more.

He kept hunting monsters, gauging how many stats Stat Predation actually raised.

Definitely too few.

At the low end it was single digits. At the high end, a little over ten.

Watching Leo drive a monster to the brink, even a single hit ought to bring in a hundred or more. That's the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠normal amount.

Four or five of Leo's cat punches, and a monster that had been full of fight collapsed into a dying state in an instant.

Even granting that he only steals stats of 200 or below.

There were six stats in all: Strength, Agility, Vitality, Endurance, Mana, and Mental Strength. Assume one or two primary skills sat above 200, and in Leo's case a single swipe of the forepaw came out to roughly one to two hundred stats stolen.

So why am I like this? We shared the exact same skill. Shouldn't the performance be identical?

For a proper test, Jin-soo hunted still more monsters. Wondering if killing them in a single blow was the cause, he even beat them with the flat of his scabbard. The result did not change. A monster that lost all fight after a few blows from Leo's paws would take dozens from Jin-soo's scabbard and still come at him, stubborn to the last.

I don't get it.

He simply could not understand why the same skill performed so differently.

Look on the bright side. I gained something. That's already plenty.

Jin-soo cranked his optimism into high gear. These were skills he had given up on acquiring entirely, once the Dark Predator class book was absorbed by Leo. And yet he had succeeded in learning the very skills he had thought he would never master.

And set against what I'd have if I'd learned them myself, the performance is far better.

The decisive point was this: Jin-soo, unable to surpass job level 2, could not have acquired Stat Predation even if he had advanced into Dark Predator. Skill Predation, perhaps. Stat Predation, not at all.

Looking at it now, Leo really was a lucky charm.

If Leo had not found it, he never would have obtained the Dark Predator class book in the first place.

If it had landed in my hands, I'd have just set it on a pedestal in my inventory.

Even if a blessing that locked his job level appeared, he would not have used it lightly. To use it, he would have had to abandon the dark-affinity class Sovereign Necromancer, or give up gaining the skills of yet another class.

It's actually a good thing Leo absorbed it.

Thanks to that, wasn't he able to use the Dark Predator's class skills right now? The gap in efficiency was considerable, true, but...

Still higher than if I'd learned them myself.

Jin-soo wrapped up the test of Skill Predation and Stat Predation.

But can I lock the level of a shared skill, too?

Unknown territory. He had never once attempted it.

Something about it makes me hesitate.

If the level had been clearly displayed, he would have felt easier about it. Had the skill level sat around 200 to 300, for instance, success or failure would have been no burden. Fail, and he could simply use it as it was. Succeed, and it would climb to level 922.

The extreme gap between the skill's efficiency when I use it and when Leo uses it bothers me, too.

If he used it carelessly and Leo's efficiency plummeted, that would be a problem of its own.

I'll try it later.

There was no need to rush.

The Skill Sharing upgrade was a success. Has anything changed with Skill Synthesis?

Jin-soo looked over Skill Synthesis's information.

The restrictions are the same.

Unfortunately, the path of using a synthesized skill once more as synthesis material was still blocked. Two newly added options had appeared, however.

The success rate of Skill Synthesis increases.

That was very good indeed.

If the success rate keeps climbing like this, I might eventually synthesize skills whose affinities are polar opposites.

The versatility of synthesized skills would increase enormously.

The other one lets me know, in advance, the information of the skill Skill Synthesis will create.

That, too, was a considerable gain. Until now he had been forced to guess roughly from the name and make the skill anyway.

When I made a synthesized skill out of Blood-Sucking and Essence Drain, there was even a time the option to steal the opponent's mana got deleted.

In truth, that had been a case of the Blood-Sucking skill neatly taking in Essence Drain's strengths, so it was hardly a loss. With other synthesized skills, though, a core advantage of the original was often deleted, and the loss was frequently far from small.

If I can see the result ahead of time, the losses will drop sharply.

It also became possible to turn into synthesized skills the ones he had never dared use, never knowing what result would come of them.

A Blessing-exclusive skill's fixed level rising is, in a sense, the same as gaining a new Blessing-exclusive skill.

The versatility of the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Blessing-exclusive skills he already held grew wider because of it. On top of that, with the fixed level of Blessing-exclusive skills rising to 222 this time, any new Blessing-exclusive skill he obtained from now on could be raised from level 2 straight to level 222.

As expected, the blessings are the best.

Whatever blessing appeared, it was never a bad thing from Jin-soo's perspective. One way or another, they helped him grow vastly stronger.

More importantly—is this possible?

Jin-soo fixed his attention on Skill Predation and Stat Predation, the skills he had gained by sharing with Leo. Both were dark-affinity class skills. The Skill Sharing uses they had consumed were the dark-affinity ones as well.

Even if it costs me more Skill Sharing uses, it would be good if I could share them with the holy affinity too.

The problem was that he still did not know whether that was possible or not.

A synthesized skill can't be used as material for Skill Synthesis. If Skill Sharing carries that same penalty...

Then of course it would fail. But in Skill Sharing's case, there was hope.

Skill Sharing's options don't include a restriction that a received skill can't be shared again.

At first he had thought re-sharing meaningless anyway, since all he was doing was sharing skills between the holy status window and the dark status window. Bringing Leo's skills over had changed the situation.

Let's try it.

It might fail, but he had to attempt it no matter what. Success would gain him a great deal, and failure would cost him nothing. There was no reason not to.

Jin-soo cast Skill Sharing, targeting the Skill Predation he had received from Leo.