Chapter 59: Off To A Good Start, Leveling

The First Blood bonus put a fresh thousand Tower Points in his pocket, and Logan didn’t waste time putting them to use.

Star Hunters didn’t split summons into Combat and Production the way Floor One’s game had. Just one type here. Spacecraft, every one of them capable of fighting, building, or both depending on what came out of the circle.

He spent the full thousand in one go, ten spacecraft rolling out of the circle one after another, each one settling onto the deck in a shape that had nothing in common with the last.

He paired them off by rank without waiting around, the same rhythm he’d fallen into a hundred times over by now.

```

[ 6x Normal merged into 3x Uncommon ]

[ 5x Uncommon merged into 2x Rare, 1x Uncommon remaining ]

[ 3x Rare merged into 1x Epic, 1x Rare remaining ]

[ 2x Epic merged into 1x Legendary ]

```

One Legendary-rank spacecraft stood on the deck when the light finally settled, a Rare and an Uncommon sitting off to the side, still waiting for partners of their own.

Logan walked around it once, taking in the whole shape properly.

It was built long and narrow, hull plated in overlapping sheets of dark violet metal that shifted faintly with every small movement, like scales instead of armor. A ring of pale blue sensor-lights ran along its spine from nose to tail, blinking in a slow, steady rhythm that looked less like machinery and more like breathing. Twin engine housings flared out at the rear, each one carved with fine grooves that glowed faint gold whenever the ship’s systems stirred.

```

[ Nebulon Voidfang ]

Rank: Legendary

Tier: 4

Level: 1

-- Stats --

HP: 44,000 / 44,000

MP: 44,000 / 44,000

Attack: 440

Speed: 440

Constitution: 440

Arcane: 440

[ Active Skills ]

> Voidcannon Barrage - Fires a spread of concentrated void-energy shells from its main cannon array.

> Phase Drift - Briefly phases out of normal space, allowing near-instant repositioning over short distances.

> Piercing Lance - Charges and releases a single high-velocity beam capable of punching straight through heavy armor.

[ Passive Skills ]

> Adaptive Plating - Damage reduction that increases the more damage the hull has already absorbed in a single engagement.

> Living Hull - Slowly regenerates HP over time, faster when it isn’t actively taking damage.

```

Logan grinned at the readout, already thinking about where a war machine like this would fit best.

Half an hour passed quiet after that, the Mothership drifting steady through open space while Logan let his summons handle the smaller upkeep tasks around the ship.

Eventually the cooldown cleared, and Logan didn’t waste it.

’FTL Drive.’

The stars outside smeared into a single unbroken line for a fraction of a second, and then the whole galaxy snapped back into focus somewhere else entirely, a full light year closer to the Hive than they’d been a heartbeat earlier.

One light year down. One more still waiting.

The alert came almost immediately after, ten separate signatures lighting up on the display, closing fast from the direction of the Hive itself.

```

[ Filburn Skitterlings x10 ]

Level: 30-35 | Tier-4 | Common / Uncommon

```

"Hold back." Logan didn’t look away from the approaching signatures. "All of you."

"They are mine. I want to level up first."

Billy’s eyebrows went up, but he didn’t argue. "Your call, boss."

The first wave of them crested over the ship’s bow a moment later, insectoid shapes with too many limbs and chitin plating that caught the starlight wrong, moving in a loose, coordinated swarm that suggested more intelligence than their size implied.

Logan met the first one with a plain swing, no skill behind it at all, just years of training doing the work.

The blade caught it clean across the thorax, and it dropped before it finished closing the last few meters.

```

[ Filburn Skitterling (Level 32) defeated. +70 Tower Points ]

```

Two more came at him from opposite angles at once, and this time he let Reaper’s Stride carry him between them instead of trying to meet both head-on.

Reaper’s Stride!

He came out the other side of the blink already swinging, and both of them went down in the same motion, one from the blade itself, the other from the speed still trailing off his own momentum.

Due to the overpowering stats from his mythic gear, these Normal and Uncommon were getting one-shot with simple attacks.

The fourth one hung back longer than the others had, circling instead of closing, and Logan watched the pattern of it for a second before he understood why. It was waiting for an opening he hadn’t given it yet, something building behind its mandibles that had the shape of a ranged attack.

He didn’t wait for it to finish charging. He closed the distance himself, faster than it had planned for, and ended it before whatever it had been building ever went off.

The next three came at him in quick succession, and he handled all three on nothing but footwork and timing, reading each swing before it landed and putting his own blade exactly where it needed to be instead of chasing the movement after the fact.

He was sharpening his basics.

```

[ 4x Filburn Skitterling defeated. +290 Tower Points ]

```

The last three pressed in together, clearly having learned something from watching six of their own die in the last few minutes, coordinating in a way the earlier ones hadn’t bothered with.

Logan felt his own MP sitting lower than he liked, but there was still enough left for one more push.

Overgrim Slash!

The slash tore through the first of the three without slowing, punched clean through the second standing behind it, and the third barely managed to peel off before the edge of it caught a leg instead of a center mass.

He closed the last of the distance on foot, blade already swinging, and put an end to the final Skitterling with a strike that didn’t need any more help than his own two hands.

```

[ 10x Filburn Skitterling defeated. Total: +780 Tower Points ]

[ Player Level: 10 -> 19. You have acquired 90 unassigned stat points. ]

[ Class Level: 10 -> 16. You have acquired 6 skill points. ]

[ Class Level 15 reached. Select a new Class Skill. ]

```

Logan stood there a moment, breathing harder than he wanted to admit, MP sitting close to empty and every muscle in his arm aching in a way that felt earned rather than punishing.

Nine levels off ten kills. He hadn’t expected the jump to land quite that hard.

A new prompt sat waiting, three unfamiliar names hovering in front of him.

```

[ Select a new Class Skill ]

> Blade Spiral Blow (Active)

> Grim Siphoning Edge (Passive)

> Doom Slash (Active)

```

Logan read the details of all three, and he didn’t need to mull over what choice he should make.

Blade Spiral Blow was a control/damage type skill. Creating a vortex full of small and sharp blades that can pull enemies and shred them.

Doom Slash was a single-target powerful attack skill.

But Logan picked the Grim Siphoning Edge without hesitation.

[Grim Siphoning Edge]

> Type: Passive.

> If your blade cuts through something containing magic power, you siphon half of the Magic power it contains, recovering your MP accordingly.

’Just perfect.’ Logan’s eyes glinted. This was something he didn’t know he needed, but now that he saw it and got it, he was thrilled.

He could never run out of Mana in battle with this!

Because his 50% Omni-Penetration could always allow his blade to slash through any magic, be it incoming attacks or defence, and that would recover his MP while draining the potency of whatever he slashed through!

"Master, more are coming!"

The Rare-rank Spacecraft shaped like a toad with wings suddenly cried out.

Logan turned to it and checked its status.

"Thirty Targets approaching." It informed.

Logan saw that this guy had a scanning skill.

"Alright, everyone. Prepare to engage. This is the second wave of swarm, and it’s bigger. It will have stronger summons as well."

Star Hunters game was not a slow-paced one.

It was a brutal high-risk, high-reward game that demanded proper preparation and a powerful load-out before entering it because the gameplay events of this game and the main quest would force players to gather, causing a mega bloodbath where even a strong player might have to surrender to avoid dying, not to mention the terror of the swarm inside the hive, so this game demanded strategic executions from players as much as combat.

"Let’s roll them up." Logan summoned his Elderwood Phoenix by using the skill, preparing to meet the enemies head-on this time instead of letting them land on his mothership.

Fighting thirty of them on the ship would damage the ship for sure.

In the next two minutes, a bigger carnage happened, mainly initiated by Billy and Solveig.

...

"It’s fun cutting them apart, but their blood is stinky." Billy wiped off his tires and blades.

Solveig proudly stood like a statue of a knight, completely clean and shining.

Billy glanced at him, and his nose flared. "Come on, man! Use that Astralwind on your brother here and clean me up!"

Meanwhile, Logan looked at the spoils.

[ Tower Points: 2780]

But before that, he distributed the stat points and assigned skill points.

He reached level 30, and his class reached level 19 after this fight.

The stats gained per level changed every 10 levels.

1 to 10 gave 5 stat points per level.

10 to 20 gave 10 stat points per level.

20 to 30 gave 20 stat points per level.

30 to 40 gave 30 stat points per level, and so on.

This also applied to summons.

’Let’s increase my Attack and Speed mainly, while a little bit into Arcane and Constitution. 80/20 split would be best.’