After separating the gems by their type, I began to use them to enhance my armor.
The first type I used was the green colored Gem of Recovery.
It was a gem that would give 10% increase in stamina recovery if the enhancement was successful.
The red one was called the Gem of Crit, giving a 1% chance to double your attack power twofold per enhancement.
The black one is called Gem of Defense.
It would increase your defense by 1%.
The stats raised weren’t that significant.
However, if I was in a battle with someone wearing the same artifacts?
Depending on the enhancements I have, the difference will clearly show.
Imagine that transcended Meteor becomes twice as strong, and on top of that, 3 of them fall.
Before the full destructive force can even be demonstrated, their form would be annihilated.
Green, red, black.
These three types made up over 90% of the gems, while there were a sparse few blue and golden colored gems that caught my eye.
It took a long while just to separate them by color though.
First, I took the Gems of Recovery.
Immediately, I attempted to enhance Black Dragon’s Scale that I’ve obtained from Joker.
Initially, it had a 10% chance of succeeding.
Each time the enhancement succeeds, the chance of success decreases by 1%.
In theory, I should succeed at least once out of ten tries initially.
However, despite using up 20 gems, the armor wasn’t enhanced once.
Swears came out of my mouth naturally.
Despite the gems being the size of small pendants and the avatars filling the bag full, if I keep failing like this, I will run out of gems in no time.
These gems were obtained from the Unknown Dungeon, which is painfully difficult to gain entrance to.
As these gems disappeared one by one, I grew anxious.
“It’s already annoying as hell to use them one by one, but if I don’t even succeed once, what’s the point of doing them!”
At first, I thought to enhance Titan Boots, Black Dragon’s Scale, and Butcher’s Sword.
However, at the rate I was going, it would be difficult to enhance just the armor.
With a pout, I continued to try.
Suddenly, a narration that excited me came through.
[Black Dragon’s Scale has been successfully enhanced.]
[Stamina recovery increased by 10%.]
[Does not apply if the item is unequipped.]
“Oh yes! It should have been like this from the start!”
I ended up yelling out in excitement without much thought.
It was almost as if I won the lottery.
Unable to hold back, I checked the armor.
The information that Eye of Insight revealed was as follows.
-Black Dragon’s Scale-
*All stats +300
*All damage taken reduced by 40%
*Stamina recovery increased by 10%
“Yes…. On top of the insane bonus effects, another one was added.”
Just looking at it made me smile.
Now, the success rate of enhancing the armor should be 9%.
Right as I was about to bring another gem to the armor, I stopped.
“Hm. There’s no reason to use all of them on the armor. Okay. I got an idea.”
Tossing the armor aside, I pulled in the sword and boots.
The reason was simple.
Since the bonus effect of increased stamina recovery would be same on any of the equipment, it didn’t matter what I enhanced.
It was similar to how a backpack’s weight wouldn’t change no matter where you wore it.
The enhancement success rate was already low enough, so why try it on the item with 1% less success rate.
If all 3 of the artifacts become successfully enhanced, I planned to enhance them all for the second time and so on.
“Please succeed! Succeed!”
****
Like that, I spent 3 hours on using the gems.
The gems were roughly the size of quarters, and they had filled up a duffle bag, so there was quite a lot to begin with.
However, the look on my face wasn’t that good after having expended all the green, red, and black gems.
No. The expression was akin to have eaten shit.
The reason why is as expected. The result wasn’t anything to be satisfied of.
My infinite mana ability wasn’t enough to console me at this moment.
Despite going through nearly a thousand gems, the results were enough to make me despair.
It was enough to question just how unlucky I was.
I was crying out in anguish while pulling out my hair.
“I… I’m the most unluckiest person in the entire world….”
“……”
“No! Is 8% that low of a success rate? Isn’t it 0.8%? This must be rigged. It’s nonsense.”
Out of all the results, the Gem of Recovery had the worst results.
Those gems only managed to enhance each equipment once.
The Gem of Crit and the Gem of Defense had succeeded twice per each artifact.
The total was 30% increased stamina regen, 6% crit chance, and 6% increase in defensive capabilities.
I had used nearly a thousand gems, but only succeeded 15 times.
I couldn’t help but fall into despair.
Since the situation turned out like this, exhaustion piled onto me.
Due to my expectations being high, disappointment equivalent to that came.
On top of that, I hadn’t slept in two days since the fight with Ghost.
No recovery skill could get rid of the basic human urge to sleep.
Despite looking at the gems and equipment laid over the floor, I didn’t much feel much excitement.
My interest towards them had dropped.
“I’m no longer interested. I’ll do the rest after I sleep… Huh?”
My Eye of Insight was still being used.
Only then did I see the ability of the blue gems.
It was enough to get my curiosity going.
-Gem of Magic Power-
*Enhances all artifacts.
*Successful enhancement grants 10% increase in magic power.
*Success chance: 10%
(Enhancement can stack up 5 times. Each successful enhancement lowers the chances of success by 1%.)
*Low chance that the artifact will be destroyed instead.
*Magic power?”
No stats the Awakened possess and none of the artifacts ever had the term of magic power mentioned in them.
The only thing that existed was mana stat that increased your total mana, which was required to cast skills.
However, this gem’s name and the description both mentioned magic power.
Since I wasn’t sure of the effect this bonus stat would give, I organized the thoughts in my head while muttering to myself.
“Magic power.. Is it literal, increasing the power of my magic? A stat that I’ve never heard of. But if it’s real….”
There were only 100 Gem of Magic Power.
Unlike all the gems I’ve used so far, there weren’t that many.
Next to that were 50 or so golden gems.
After checking the gems, I found that the name of the golden gem was called Gem of Blessings.
It would give 1 to 3 random stat bonuses.
Since it turned out this way, sleep would have to wait, even though I was insanely tired just a minute ago.
“Ha….. It’s enough to drive people insane.”
Bonus stats that weren’t just magic power, but random ones as well.
The name itself had the word blessing in it!
Thinking about the droprate and the name, I knew that it wasn’t just an ordinary item.
However, the last line of information on the Gem of Magic Power really got to me.
It was that the artifact could be destroyed.
Despite the chances being low, as a unlucky man, I couldn’t use them right away.
“If I use it without much thought, it could become quite a disaster. This is difficult, Difficult.”
I decided to use the Gems of Blessings first.
Even if the enhancement doesn’t succeed, at least the artifact wouldn’t be destroyed.
I used the first gem on the Titan Boots.
[Titan Boots has been successfully enhanced.]
“What? Already?”
It was a different result than the ones I had so far.
The enhancement had succeeded despite only using one.
1 to 3 bonus stats should be added.
I check the boots.
-Titan Boots-
*Immune to all status effects. (Obtains immunity to being frozen, slowed, poisoned, and all other status effects.)
*Movement speed increased. (Obtains the same speed as the Boots of Lightspeed.)
*Stamina recovery increased by 10%.
*Crit chance increased by 2%.
*Defensive capabilities increased by 2%.
*Evasion Teleport obtained. (When receiving damage beyond one’s maximum health, negates the damage and teleports 20m in a random direction. Cooldown is 24 hours.)
*Offensive capability of electric magic attacks increased by 30%.
*Stats do not apply if the equipment is unequipped.
“Wow….”
Checking the Titan Boots, the size of the explanation had grown by a lot.
The basic abilities of the Titan Boots were immunity to status effects and increased movement speed.
Excluding the 3 stats I’ve earned using the gems, 2 more were added.
Out of them all, I was focused on the Evasion Teleport.
Despite the cooldown being 24 hours long, it would negate the attack if I received an attack that I wasn’t able to handle.
Even though I had earned a ton of stats through the Butcher’s Sword, one could never know of the future ahead of them.
It was true that defensive capability should be prioritized over offensive capabilities for now.
After transcending my skills, my offensive capabilities were beyond what was enough.
Now, the time that I could hold out against the opponent’s attack was equivalent to the window of opportunity to attack.
Very strongly at that.
On top of the Evasion Teleport, the attack damage of my electric magic spells had increased.
The only electric spell I had was the Lightning Spray, but I knew that I would obtain more as time went on.
I had thought that the offensive capabilities of a skill could only increase with skill levels, but now I discovered that it could be increased like this.
It would have been better if it increased fire magic damage, but this was enough of a steal.
With my expectation increasing, I tried once more.
However, there was a term called beginner’s luck.
All the gems that were left had failed.
However, the results were enough to leave me without regret.
Matching with the anxious beating of my heart, my eyes settled on the Gems of Magic Power.
However, I did not have the desire to use them.
If I had other items that could replace my artifacts, I would have used all the gems without hesitation.
However, the current situation wasn’t like so.
No matter how strong the heart is, there wouldn’t be anyone who would go through with it.
It was then.
“Wait. It said all artifacts?”
I looked at the numerous equipment that I had obtained from the Unknown Dungeon.
No matter what I picked, it was obvious that it would surpass the skull ring I had on right now.
Even though there was a great variation in the loot, there were still multiple copies.
It meant that even if some things were destroyed, there were substitutes to use.
Separating the items into same shapes, I looked at their bonus stats.
I discovered something that was enough to match, no, deny comparison with the equipment I was wearing currently.