Ch.145145. Corrupted Ring Stage 1

The concept of this swamp area had a slight elemental magic feel to it.

There was an excessive amount of electrical current, and the plasma fish manipulated that current freely.

I barely managed to survive by overusing my leap ability and restoring my health with elixirs, but without those, it would have been quite difficult to overcome.

Perhaps that’s why.

The second option that appeared on the Corrupted Ring was [All elemental damage +50% / All elemental damage reduction +25%].

Whether there’s a correlation or not, it felt like options were being added based on some connection, which made growing the Corrupted Ring quite enjoyable.

Actually, the options themselves are fun just to look at, so what does it matter?

Besides, this Corrupted Ring will eventually reveal its true options when I put it in the Chaos Stone Purification Cauldron after completing Main Quest 2, so it also serves as an unscratched lottery ticket.

It’s like having a lottery ticket with “First Prize” clearly written on silver foil, giving me that feeling of happiness as the value increases each time I hold onto it.

“It would look pretty good with reinforcement applied.”

It seems I’ll have to go quite far from here to obtain a hero-grade reinforcement stone, but even if there are some difficult and tedious tasks along the way, it gives me a reason to persevere and push forward.

Well, even without reinforcement, it’s already providing excellent effects in its current state.

You might wonder what elemental damage I have, but when I apply my SSS+ grade divine magic, my attacks become divine attribute attacks, fully benefiting from this +50% elemental damage effect.

A magic that makes damage 50% stronger without doing anything extra.

As for elemental damage reduction, I already experienced how useful that was when facing the plasma fish.

Since magical elemental damage is practically my only weakness right now, this can be considered a survival option.

“I want to visit the next corrupted area soon.”

I postponed experimenting with the ring’s effects.

In reality, while wielding the Light Demon Sword, there’s no particular place where I could notice the increased damage.

Against monsters that die in one hit even without the Corrupted Ring, it’s hard to gauge how much stronger I’ve become with the ring at level 1.

Instead, I decided to use my remaining ability selection cards.

First, I had already decided where to use my two SS-grade life skill selection cards.

“First, I’ll learn Butchering at SS grade.”

[‘Butchering’ has been raised to SS grade.]

Butchering has been an important ability since coming to the Rift Dimension, and will become even more crucial going forward.

Gathering, Mining, Butchering.

These three basic farming abilities, known as the three major abilities for hunting-type gameplay, aren’t essential to playing the game, but they greatly help with resource acquisition, as they were called in the Farming World.

[Master of Butchering]

– Grade: SS

– Passive Skill (Butchering)

– Butchering speed increased by 200%.

– Probability of rare grade or higher rewards increased by 300%.

– Amount of resources obtained increased by 100%.

– 10% increased chance for obtained resources to be higher grade.

Animals leave behind their hide when they die.

This saying can apply to humans and monsters as well.

Hunters directly butcher monsters to obtain leather and meat, but with this ability, I can cleanly butcher and obtain large amounts of meat, blood, and leather.

This skill essentially enhances that.

How neat and convenient that it applies passively just by learning it.

I couldn’t help but smile at the thought of hunting the remaining plasma fish in the Black Swamp and putting this skill to use.

I gave the other SS-grade life skill selection card to Kim Soo-jung.

[‘Kim Soo-jung’s’ Cooking has been raised to SS grade.]

Cooking is undoubtedly one of the most important abilities in the Farming World.

I can bring ingredients back and forth between the Rift Dimension and reality, so I’m relatively free to eat whatever food I want, and I can cook easily by saving cooking videos from YouTube. But originally in the Farming World, cooking ability was quite tricky, and edible options were limited.

Eating random things could cause stomach problems, and without proper recipes, cooking would result in tasteless and nutritionally deficient dishes.

The cooking system is a convenient element that helps with gameplay, but unless you have professional knowledge, you have no choice but to rely on the cooking ability while playing the game.

Even if you know how to cook, most ingredients in the Farming World are unfamiliar, so without recipes, you have to learn by trial and error.

That’s why the grade of cooking ability was quite important.

Nothing is more important for long-term gameplay than eating well.

Cooking with various crops from farming.

If your cooking tastes good, you naturally try different things and grow crops specifically for certain dishes.

Once you reach cooking grades like A+ or S-, cooking transcends the romantic notion of simply eating home-grown food and becomes a means to buff your stats before adventures.

High-grade cooks can add bonuses and options to completed dishes.

Eating these dishes can temporarily increase stats, attack power, provide immunity to cold, or various other buffing effects for several hours, which is why in the Farming World, cooking ability was something you should learn when possible and improve whenever you could.

In the Rift Dimension, cooking’s importance increased even more.

The difficulty is higher, and since we’re making real food every day, taste matters too.

If delicious food also comes with stat bonuses, that’s extremely beneficial for me when I go hunting.

It’s not like I can walk around with an 8-hour buff every day.

Above all, using this SS-grade life skill selection card meant that someone from our farm could take the position of the cooking shop NPC in the village, which was another great advantage.

[Kim Soo-jung has been registered as the village’s cooking shop NPC.]

[Kim Soo-jung has acquired the authority of the cooking shop.]

[You can grow the cooking shop using farming stat points and Farm.]

There is an NPC who cooks well at the tavern, but the tavern seems to require skills in both cooking and alcohol, while the cooking shop appears to only require cooking ability.

Learning about alcohol might be useful someday, but there was no need to spend an SS-grade on it right now, and the cooking shop was sufficient.

“So I just need to learn recipes and buy ingredients to make them? This will be fun. I wonder what kind of dishes they have here. Oh! Amazing, oppa.”

Kim Soo-jung immediately began exploring the small shop interior as if it were her own home, checking the system and quickly adapting to it.

“Look, the ingredients I have, the main ingredients. It seems to sort and show recipes that match those ingredients? There are several recipes that can be made with plasma fish.”

“Look at it and figure it out yourself.”

“Will you loan me Farm and farming stat points too?”

“Not the stat points. You’ll have to earn those yourself.”

“Then just loan me some Farm. I want to learn recipes for the omakase dishes I’m planning to make.”

I had to admit that Kim Soo-jung had become an indispensable person for our farm.

At first, I brought her along just because she was family who wanted to come, thinking I might as well see if she could be useful. But she’s shown enthusiasm, and while her farming isn’t exactly to my standards, she’s doing well for a beginner, so I let her learn cooking too.

Cooking and farming are incredibly synergistic, so learning both opens up countless possibilities for the future.

Of course, that also means her workload will double or triple.

But since she enjoys it, there’s nothing bad about it from my perspective.

There was also positive news regarding the Naru tribe.

“Oh, and about Chunbong, that cute female chieftain.”

“Yeah.”

“She also has some farming recipes. She knows some crop variety recipes that can only be learned in the Elf village and agreed to teach me. Maybe because her affinity is 100%, she’s teaching me for free? In return, we need to support their farming efforts as they rebuild their settlement in the Forest of Purification. Is it okay to give them resources?”

“Go ahead. Let me know if you’re short on resources. I’ll get whatever you need.”

“Okay. There seem to be many good varieties.”

If these are crop varieties from the Elven village, there are likely to be crops available in higher-level biomes.

The Naru tribe’s arrival was already helpful just for their numbers, but now they’ve brought gifts as well.