Chapter 752: Merging Lightning And Ice

Could it give me a Legendary skill?

The thought sent a thrill through him.

Every previous merge he’d performed had combined First Order skills fused into slightly better ones.

But this was different. This was two Second Order, Epic-ranked skills, both of them powerful advanced-element assimilations in their own right. He had no precedent for what happened when skills of this caliber merged.

No one did, as far as he knew.

Would it simply produce a stronger Epic skill, a refined assimilation that worked across both elements? Or would it break through to something higher entirely, a different rank altogether? The uncertainty was maddening and exhilarating at the same time.

A unified assimilation of two advanced elements in a single skill. And if the merge favored one over the other, or found some synergy between the opposing elements, the result could be something no elemental mage in the kingdom possessed...not even Sierra herself.

Thankfully, he had plenty of Lives saved for moments like these. Otherwise, he would need to go hunting again just to gain enough.

The frozen gate, the Cragbrute colony, the serpent, the hawk, the shadow panther, and the days of hunting, all of it had increased his Lives counter. He could afford to gamble, even at these odds. And more than that, he wanted to.

The possibility of a Legendary skill was exactly what he wanted to know. He knew that legendary skills could be acquired through super lives, but they could be acquired through other methods?

His companions watched him, sensing the weight on his shoulders even if they didn’t understand it.

Moon took a breath, his decision already made.

"Merge!"

The system processed the attempt, and Moon held his breath, waiting to see whether this first throw of the dice would succeed or scatter, and what, if anything, would emerge from the collision of ice and lightning.

[-1000 Lives]?[Merging Failed]

"Figured that much," Moon muttered. "First attempt never works. It never has, and it certainly wasn’t going to start now."

He sighed and tried again.

[-1000 Lives]?[Merging Failed]

[-1000 Lives]?[Merging Failed]

[-1000 Lives]?[Merging Failed]

[-1000 Lives]?[Merging Failed]

"Five thousand Lives, gone in a matter of seconds." He grimaced. "This is going to be a pain."

Despite the horrible odds, he didn’t stop. He had already chosen to continue, no matter what.

The attempts continued, Life after Life draining from his reserves, the failure notifications blurring together.

[-1000 Lives]

"Twenty thousand already," Moon muttered, and for the first time, a flicker of doubt crossed his mind. The thought of burning through his entire reserve and walking away with nothing to show for it was a real possibility at these odds.

Still, he pressed on.

The failures kept coming, relentless, the fifteen percent proving every bit as brutal as the number suggested.

"Damn it. Fifty thousand gone, and I still don’t have it." He exhaled sharply, his frustration at the failures mounting. "I overestimated my luck. Badly."

He gritted his teeth and kept going, because stopping at fifty thousand meant fifty thousand Lives wasted for nothing, and that was a worse outcome than pushing through.

[-1000 Lives]?[Merging Failed]

The counter climbed toward eighty thousand, each failure a fresh wound to his reserves, his Lives pool slowly hollowing out.

Moon watched the notification flash yet again, eighty thousand Lives so far had been lost, and set his jaw.

"Merge."

[-1000 Lives]

[Merging Successful!]

[Your two Second-Order Epic-rank skills <Lightning-Assimilation> and <Ice-Assimilation> have successfully merged to form <Cryothunder-Assimilation>]

Moon stared at the notification, his eyes sparkling, his heart hammering against his ribs.

At last. After eighty-one thousand Lives poured into the attempt, a staggering, almost obscene cost, the skills had finally merged.

"Finally," he breathed, relief flooding through him all at once. Luckily, the curse of bad luck didn’t continue for long, and finally ended.

Eighty-one thousand Lives. Enough to evolve a skill nearly from scratch, spent chasing a single uncertain merge. But as he stared at the name of the new skill, Cryothunder-Assimilation, born of frost and lightning fused into one, he felt none of the regret he’d feared.

The gamble had paid off.

The two opposing advanced elements, ice and lightning, the still and the volatile, had come together into something entirely new.

Now he just had to find out exactly what he’d created.

With a quick thought, Moon pulled up the details of the newly forged skill, desperate to see what eighty-one thousand Lives had bought him.

[Cryothunder-Assimilation]?[Order: Second]?[Level: MAX]?[Rank: Pseudo-Legendary]

Moon’s heart skipped a beat.

He read the first few lines again, certain he’d misread them, but the words didn’t change.

Pseudo-Legendary.

His breath caught in his chest, and for a long moment he simply stared, unable to fully process what he was looking at.

The same rank as Alaric’s colossal light sword. The skill the Light Sword Saint had obtained from the River of Paths, after walking a path so dangerous he’d nearly died trying to widen it, to carve something new where no one had gone before.

A skill that had elevated Alaric to someone more than just one of the most feared fighters in the kingdom. A rank that sat just below Legendary, the pinnacle of what Moon understood to be achievable.

And he’d just created one. Through a merge.

"No way," Moon whispered, his voice barely audible.

The magnitude of his merge crashed over him. Merging the two Second Order Epic assimilation skills had produced something that leapt past Epic entirely and landed in the rarefied air of Pseudo-Legendary, a tier so rare only one person he knew of had it.

Eighty-one thousand Lives suddenly felt like a steal.

He’d have paid double. Triple.

If two really powerful Epic skills merges make a Pseudo-Legendary... then what makes a true Legendary? Two Pseudo-Legendaries? The path’s right there in front of me... I just need to follow it to the very end.

His hands were almost trembling with excitement.

is two most powerful elements, the soul-damaging purple lightning and the slowing, deep-freezing Cryomancy, both unified into a single skill that would certainly increase his combat strength by leaps and bounds.

He could barely wait another second to see what it actually did.

Moon steadied his breathing, ready to find out what the skill could do.