Another instant kill.
This time, John plundered a Shift talent.
Without hesitation, he modified its movement speed to 100% and its movement range to 200%!
After the modification, Shift was practically no different from Blink.
There were still a little over ten people left on the field.
Only after the swordsman Raymond collapsed did the others finally come to their senses.
"Everyone, attack together! Kill him!"
But by then, it was already too late.
With a thought, John suddenly Shifted behind the two mages.
At such close range, combined with Shift's 200% range,
John became a harvester of lives.
As his dagger flickered,
two bloody holes appeared in the mages' throats.
[-1589!]
[-1577!]
Their HP vanished instantly.
Everything they had was plundered clean.
[You have plundered the B-rank talent: MP Recovery]
[MP Recovery: Restores 10% of MP upon activation]
[You have plundered the B-rank talent: CD Reduction]
[CD Reduction: Reduces skill cooldowns by 10% upon activation]
[You have plundered…]
The guild members were not standing far apart from one another.
Almost the instant he killed the two mages,
John activated Shift again.
His figure flashed, narrowly avoiding several longswords slashing toward him.
When he appeared again, he was already behind a warrior like a ghost.
[-1589!]
The basic dagger, after its values had been modified, dealt explosive damage!
Even a warrior, known for high defense, was no sturdier than a squishy target before him.
[You have plundered the B-rank talent: HP Recovery]
[HP Recovery: Continuously restores 1% HP for 10 seconds upon activation]
Three instant kills in a row.
And he could still evade every attack perfectly.
The sight made the remaining players shudder with fear.
What kind of monstrous talent was this?
Someone tried to beg for mercy.
But in the very next moment, a crimson damage number popped up above his head.
He was cut down on the spot and sent straight back to Novice Village for revival.
Clearly, it was more than ten people versus John alone.
But now it had completely turned into a one-sided slaughter by John.
The plain white-quality dagger in his hand had become the scythe of death.
Every time it fell, another life was easily reaped.
[-1506!]
Another instant kill.
The archer Adam was taken down by John.
[You have plundered the A-rank talent: Boundary Break]
[Boundary Break: Increases attack range by 50% upon activation!]
At this point, more than a dozen corpses already lay scattered crookedly around John.
He had nearly wiped out the entire guild by himself.
Only the warrior Kaer remained.
In his previous life, it had been this traitorous disciple who personally dug out John's heart.
From the moment John killed the two mages, Kaer had turned and run without looking back.
By now, he had already made it more than fifty meters away.
Even with Shift, John would not be able to catch him.
But John was not flustered in the slightest.
Unhurriedly, he opened the panel for the newly obtained [Boundary Break] talent.
His System Points had once again accumulated to 2500.
"That's enough."
John decisively spent 500 points and directly modified it to the upper limit.
In an instant, the range value shot up from 50% to 550%!
"My dear disciple, your master will send you off to reunite with them now."
John locked onto Kaer's figure and suddenly hurled the dagger with a flick of his hand!
At the same time, the Boundary Break talent activated.
A dagger that should only have been able to travel a few meters now shot out like a meteor under the talent's enhancement.
In the blink of an eye, it struck Kaer squarely in the head.
The force was so great
that Kaer's skull burst apart like a watermelon.
His headless corpse toppled to the ground.
[You have plundered the A-rank talent: Berserk]
[Berserk: Increases attack power by 50% for 10 seconds upon activation]
With Kaer's death,
the surroundings finally fell completely silent.
Twelve corpses.
The twelve murderers who had sent John to the altar in his previous life had all been killed and plundered by him!
Looking at those corpses, John felt an indescribable sense of satisfaction.
"This is only the interest. Next, I'll slowly collect the blood debt in full!"
He picked up his dagger, found a relatively clean rock, and sat down.
Just now, he had been too focused on revenge to modify the talent values.
Now that he finally had a moment to breathe, it was the perfect time to sort through and adjust them carefully.
"The early-game equipment isn't worth much.
The only truly valuable gains are these twelve plundered talents."
John opened the talent panel.
The first thing worth paying attention to was naturally Universal Synthesis, the talent he had plundered from Guild Leader Sein.
As the only S-rank talent among them,
the effect of Universal Synthesis was at least decent.
"Collect 200 items of the same category and same rank to synthesize one item of the next higher rank."
For example, if John collected 200 Novice Robes, he could synthesize them into a higher-grade F-rank cloth armor.
"Needing 200 items before it can activate… this talent's rank feels a little inflated."
John frowned.
That was because the drop rates in this game were just too low.
Forget 200 items—even collecting 20 was already difficult.
If he wanted to truly gather 200 synthesizable items on his own,
he would probably have to wait until the end of time.
This talent was better suited for someone like Sein, who controlled an entire guild.
He could simply have his subordinates gather materials for him.
To an ordinary player, this talent would probably feel completely useless.
But John had System Points.
He directly opened the details page of Universal Synthesis and started frantically tapping the minus sign on that number 200.
Only when it could no longer be reduced did John stop.
"Modify!"
[190 System Points consumed. The required item count for Universal Synthesis has been modified to 10.]
After the modification, Universal Synthesis only required 10 items of the same category and same rank to directly synthesize a higher-rank item.
Those 190 points had been exceptionally well spent!
"At this point, this talent is probably already SS-rank, right?"
Based on John's understanding,
the talent ranks in Apocalypse ranged from F-rank to SSS-rank.
Item ranks followed the exact same system.
Simple and easy to remember.
After finishing the modification of Universal Synthesis, John began adjusting the other talents.
Although he had obtained twelve talents, in reality they only fell into five categories.
The first was the special sequence, like [Universal Synthesis].
The second was the cooldown-reduction sequence, like [CD Reduction].
The third was the recovery sequence, like [MP Recovery].
The fourth was the range-extension sequence, like [Boundary Break].
The fifth was the mobility Shift sequence, like [Shift].
All the other talents belonged to one of those five sequences.
Compared to the five main talents above, however, the others were only lower-tier versions within their respective sequences.
They did not have much modification value.
Moreover, after experimenting with adding points, John discovered that
when modifying multiple talents from the same sequence at the same time,
only the higher-rank talent would actually take effect.
For example, if he modified both the A-rank talent [Shift] and the B-rank talent [Swift Step] at once,
since both belonged to the Shift sequence,
only [Shift] would ultimately be recognized as active.
The same rule applied to equipment such as clothing and weapons.
Whichever had the higher rank would take effect.
After another round of point allocation,
the talents in all five major sequences had been modified to their upper limits.
Looking at the collection of talents before him, their ranks still uneven, John felt no concern at all.
"With 100% plunder success, raising every talent sequence to SSS-rank is only a matter of time!"