Azimuth: The Elden Throne (New Version)

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'Wow... Those are some... Crazy specs...'

First, Dale took a deep breath as he went over the item's information.

'This is an incredible Accessory.'

'I may lose quite a bit on my main Stats, but I also gained a lot on another end.'

"I'm very satisfied either way."

'This item seems to rely on situations where its wearer is overwhelmingly stronger than its opponents as it provides little to increase its owner's fighting power.'

'It removes quite a bit of the total Stats, even if the actual growth of Prime Origin is massive, it would still lead to death if someone were to rely on it for too long.'

'Perhaps if I was a Warrior that relied greatly on my Prime Origin, an exchange of several Stats for it would be a blessing, but I'm not.'

'Well… I may be looking at this wrong, if I use it on a very strong monster, then given the difference between monsters and players, wouldn't I be able to recover all of my health?'

"This... Could work... Yes." Dale mumbled out loud as he had an idea

'If I can stack the effect of the Earring and have it activate around a strong enemy, I would be able to unleash a devastating attack... I may even be able to power level myself.'

'The question is getting those stacks high, I would need to defeat 1000 monsters first...'

'This item explains itself in the end, it's a war tool, something made to be used amidst a massive battlefield and to be drenched in blood constantly.'

'It won't see much use outside of such situations unless I was the aforementioned Warrior...'

'There is also a blocked function… Perhaps it holds the key to making this item truly overpowered?'

'In its base form, you lose 25 points for all basic stats, but gain 150 Prime Origin and a Skill of some sort, not quite what I would expect from a Fable tier item, so the rest must be what makes it worth it.'

'Unless this in itself is extremely valuable and I'm making less of what it actually is capable of.'

"In any case, I've just grabbed it, there's no point in evaluating it before even using it…" Dale said as he put the Earrings back in the box

'But there's a problem with that since even if I were to wear the other Accessories, I would still lack and not be able to wear these earrings...'

'Because of that extremely high Soul Power and Prime Origin requirements… I can make do with the Soul power since, in total, I have 35 Soul power at any given time...'

'But 150 Prime Origin is almost 5 times what I have…'

'Still, if I can somehow find a way to wear it, an increase of 150 to Prime Origin would be much more significant than a loss of 25 to all main Stats.'

'Because the higher the Stats are, the more each point is worth.'

'I can only imagine how much it would be to raise my feeble 38 points...'

There was a single doubt on his mind right now though...

"Can I even get there?"

Dale scratched his chin in deep thought.

'Soul Power stays the same from the moment you are born all the way until you die, rarely increasing, the difference isn't big, so perhaps with some luck, I can gain something and shorten the gap.'

'Prime Origin on the other hand increases in value as you grow older, albeit it weakens in strength.'

'Like Tina told me, Prime Origin is akin to a fire, one that will grow stronger and stronger as one reaches the prime of their youth, before slowly burning out as they go past that period of their lives...'

'The fireplace where the fire burns won't ever increase in size, remaining the same size throughout our lives, but it's possible to strengthen the flames beyond their normal growth limit, and rekindling the flames to extend one's lifespan if needed.'

'And for those whose age is already past their prime, only by rekindling it can they make use of their full potential and live longer.'

'Which was what she and Testros did, and even some of the other Elders managed to do something like that to some extent...'

'But that is a matter for another time.'

Dale stretched his arms and rubbed his eyes.

"Sigh, this item is quite perfect for a Berserk-type character..."

'It's something made for going straight into battle, the more you kill, the stronger you get, then you use the Executioners Axe to slay an enemy and recover what you lost.'

'There is also the Stat boosting effects of the item, as even if it takes 1000 enemies to reach the max stack count, depending on where you are, that can be incredible...'

'Even so, it would take 250 enemies to offset the basic Stat decrease of the earings.'

"But... It's not like that's impossible at all."

'In the players' Quest around the farmlands, around 1000 Bone Mice spawn each time, if a player possessed the requirements to wear this ring, and if all waves were focused solely on one side, then he might be able to solo it.'

'Kill 1000 regular and Elite mobs before using the Axe on the Boss.'

'Though... If he did possess the stats for it, then he would be able to do it regardless, but the point stands.'

"Still... There are some things that irk me..."

'This is an accessory, and from what I learned during my time in the Beta over a year ago, Accessories are meant to raise your basic stats, not grant you Skills.'

'Those are the jobs of equipment...'

'Albeit the system classifies those as 'Item Effects' they're still pretty much Skills, it works like one at least.'

'It's like some sort of imbued power, but too overly complex to be called an item property or imbued attribute.'

'Is this a misunderstanding brought about due to me only observing lower-class items? This is a Half-Fable item after all, the second highest rarity I saw apart from Legendary.'

'From Normal all the way to Unique, Relic, and Epic... But Fable seems to be directly above that unless there is a missing rarity here, a possibility I wouldn't turn a blind eye to considering the place I got this from.'

'Other rarities may not have such things... As I seem to have jumped a few rarities... So I just have to take a look and see for myself...'

'And I can't really use the previous games for reference as some of their rules were different, this was proven by info-checking the Lore Arquives on my PC.

'In this scenario, I already expected Accessories not to possess any Skills, but I still looked forward to seeing some "Unique Effects".'

'Yet, this is too much for that, it's just a Skill but without the Star Rating.'

"Haa…"

Dale let out a dry laugh.

'It seems that I got this too early, doing things in reverse…'

'I'm getting higher rarity items and questioning about the functionalities of the lower rarities... A bit ironic and even arrogant in a sense.'

'But if I were to go over how things became this way... Everything gets explained.'

"All goes down to my Stats and how starting with extra stats snowballed to this." Dale said with a smile as he remembered his path

'From my achievements in the Tutorial, getting stronger than anyone, to evading the arrow from the guards and getting the chance to enter the village...'

'To meeting the boy in the Church, to defeating the monsters in the Southern Corps tombs...'

'Recovering the Holy relic, David, after defeating that strange monster and not being sucked into the dark abyss due to Miasma draining away...'

'I built some sort of agreement with David, and due to Rodi live-streaming videos on the web, people got curious about the village and they decided to join, and this led to God giving his power to me and in essence, allowing David to recover a portion of his original functions.'

'With this, we passed through the first barrier, and with the other key, the second barrier of the hidden tunnel beneath the city.'

'Finally, we arrived at the Commander's Office...'

'All of those achievements culminated in me gathering this insane assortment of high-Level items, it seems as if they came for free, but in a sense, they followed a pattern… Like a path… A Questiline.'

'If you were to consider this from the developers' perspective, none of this was supposed to be doable.'

'Normal players would start at Villages with Level requirements of around 5 to 15, sometimes even lower since some players straight out jumped the Tutorial.'

'While the Big Guilds would stick to a broader 30 to 45 range, as only they can afford to work there.'

'On average, all players would start with similar stats as the Tutorial forces you to stay at Level 5 at most, so only by gathering High-Level gear and other opportunities would they be able to succeed in those Higher difficulty areas.'

'With cooperation, items, support, information, and more. Only this way can they thrive in such harder areas...'

'So, on that note, the developers never created any sort of opportunity within Azimuth for a player to grow strong enough to do what I did.'

'By the time a player arrived at Resko, the sealed monster would've likely been released already, or they wouldn't be strong enough to complete the questline and the same result would end up happening with the Miasma being released in the Village, effectively killing everyone and ending Resko for good.'

'Because the Village itself is not its land, but its inhabitants...'

'Perhaps out there exists one path one could take, consuming opportunity after opportunity to grow as insane as possible, arriving at Resko within a few months and taking down the monster with ease...'

'But to do that, you would either need to be the son of lady luck, or know insider knowledge of the game.'

'There is a third possibility, and that is Regressing, but I don't know how that would be possible...'

'Yet, I'm none to talk because I have a System in the real world...'

"Cough..."

'In any case, this was all thanks to my initial boosted stats, that one year of training I did was very much worth it.'

'Was all of this just a very long Quest? Or is it just me overthinking?'

Dale became silent.

"Regardless... What about the other items?"

'I need to check each to see if there is any chance of me being able to use these Earrings... At least the armor...'

'If I can stack some of these Trinkets, I may be able to activate the Armor Set Skills that are grayed out due to me not fulfilling the requirements.'

'Time to dig in...'

...

Dale started to check each and every Accessory, quickly realizing that the lowest rarety among the items was Unique... And there was only one such item.

In total, there were 6 Relics Grade items, 2 Epic, and one Half-Fable.

But there were still 2 items to check... A pair of thin Silver rings with two tiny gems, one for each, one blue, and one red.

He started with the left ring, the one with the red gem.

"Urg..."

'What is this?...'

Yet, the moment he inspected it, his expression soured.

[Left Jian Ring (Unique)

Rating: 4.5-Stars

+25 Strength and Constitution.

+15 Mental Power and Mana.

+5 Soul Power.

Unique Effect -> Eternal Flight.

As long as the wearer of the Left Jian Ring is within 100M of the user of the Right Jian Ring, all previous effects are Doubled.

The users of the Left Jian and Right Jian rings are capable of feeling each other's presence and know their overall conditions at any moment as long as they are within 10 km of each other.

The base effects and requirements of the Left Jian Ring respectively increase and decrease in proportion to your affection towards the wearer of the Right Jian Ring, up to 3 times, this can stack with the previous unique effect for a total of 6-time increase.

[Blocked]

Requirements: Strength: 99; Constitution: 99; Dexterity: 99; Mental Power: 99; Reflexes: 99; Mana: 99

Description: A marital ring made with the image of a forgotten mythical bird by an extremely skilled artisan, so the bond of their wearers may never end.

And so it lasted, even towards their deaths, they still held onto these rings as their Souls departed from their bodies.

Inside the ring, the text: "Bellow the arched pale tree, we…"

]

There was another ring just like on the side, its only difference was the text inscribed within it and the blue gem.

The text read as follows: "… held her for the first time."

"..."

'It's a lovers' ring?...'

Dale frowned, but those effects were too good to be ignored.

'It is indeed very good, but it didn't have what I truly wanted.'

'If I had a… Forget it.'

'It may be a Unique item, but its potential seems to be above Relic, perhaps even Half-Fable Grade.'

'The total Stat increase is significant.'

'A 3-time increase would mean a +75 to Strength and Constitution, +45 to Mental Power and Mana, and +15 to Soul Power, which is insane, about the same increase as the Aspect of Might.'

'This effect can double if the two rings are in close proximity to each other...'

'The problems, however, are quite apparent.'

'Its conditions are a bit... Odd.'

'And in the end, I wanted something to increase my Prime Origin… Guess that pair of earrings will have to wait for some other time…'

'It's not like I have nothing else to do, Tina's questline should resolve this issue for me as I progress through it.'

'But how long will it take?... Certainly not longer than whatever I have in mind... Because I have no idea of how to raise it otherwise.'

"Sigh… I look ungrateful."

'I should be happy I even have such an item to use, this is the kind of item most players might not even see in their whole playtime.'

Dale opened his character screen, thinking about what to do.

"Alright, time to build a basic loadout and fill all of these gear slots, and from that… Continue on with my day."

Thinking, he inspected the Accessories one by one, trying to see which would fit the best for his current needs…

[DING!]

[DING!]

[DING!]

But midway through that, suddenly, he heard the sound of bells bellowing in the skies!

He frowned, walking to a nearby window.

But when he looked at the sky, he saw a massive Golden carriage being pulled by a pair of strange ethereal horses, behind them was a large piece of cloth with several words inscribed on it.

They read:

[Server-Wide Announcement]

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