At level 1, Butcher gave one point per kill. Higher levels would grant even more. So, no need to be stingy with the expensive language skill.
Kumoko looked at the two human warriors, barely clinging to life with just a sliver of health left. After only a moment's hesitation, she activated her [Poison Fang] skill and bit down.
Having been human in her past life, attacking humans did weigh on her conscience a little. But she was a spider now. Those humans hadn't hesitated to attack her, burn down her home, and try to kill her. Why should she hesitate?
With that thought, she drained the last of the warriors' HP.
[Experience Reached. Individual - Small Lesser Taratect Leveled Up from LV 1 to LV 6.]
[All Basic Attributes Increased]
Humans gave crazy good EXP! Killing just two of them shot Kumoko up five levels instantly. Her stats panel updated:
Spider LV 6
HP: 128/128
MP: 69/69
SP: 100/100
Attack: 47 | Defense: 65 | Magic: 38 | Resistance: 30 | Speed: 496
Skills: Poison Fang LV 4, Poison Resistance LV 2, Godspeed LV 1, Appraisal LV 3, Taboo LV 1, Heresy Magic LV 1
Skill Points: 2600 (Gained points from levels and maybe Kin Eater title?)
... So weak. Even at LV 6, she still felt incredibly weak. Kumoko didn't even know what to say. But hey, at least she had a bunch of skill points now to learn new stuff.
Ooh, Appraisal reached LV 3! Maybe I can sneak a peek at the Earth Dragon's stats now...
Appraisal, activate!
Name: Elliot
Race: Earth Dragon (Young) LV 8
Huh, so the Earth Dragon's name is Elliot.
But as Kumoko read further down the stat sheet... her jaw dropped. She was completely dumbfounded.
HP: 1308/1308
MP: 136/136
SP: 100/100
Attack: 382 (+26) | Defense: 617 | Magic: 233 | Resistance: 430 | Speed: 31
Skills: Tendo Bansho LV 5, Earth Core LV 7, Rock Burst LV 1, Starfell Stone LV 1, Language Comprehension LV 1, Appraisal LV 10, Dominus Lapidis LV 2
Skill Points: 1000
Aaaah! My eyes! My eyes are burning!
What kind of god-tier stats were these?! Except for Speed, every single attribute was in the triple digits! And his HP was already in the four digits! And this was still just a Level 8 young Earth Dragon!
Plus, his skills were ridiculously powerful! Her strongest attack, [Poison Fang], looked like absolute garbage compared to his skills!
Waaaah! My stats aren't even a fraction of the Earth Dragon's! This is just too cruel!!!
Comparison really is the thief of joy. Kumoko's happiness from leveling up instantly vanished, replaced by silent tears streaming down her spider face.
Why? Why did I have to see this?!
….
Elliot looked over at the little spider, who seemed to have sunk into deep despair. He was puzzled. Shouldn't she be happy about leveling up? Why is she crying? Are they tears of joy, maybe?
Ah well, whatever.
Elliot reviewed his own stats panel. He noticed he'd learned a very important passive skill, likely from leveling up or maybe the Elite Slayer achievement.
Dominus Lapidis (Lord of Geo)
This skill was crucial because it was one of Rex Lapis's (Zhongli's) passive talents from Genshin Impact.
[Dominus Lapidis LV 2]: Attack increased by 2% of Max HP. Damage of all skills that scale with HP increased by 1% of Max HP.
For most other monsters, this boost would be tiny. If Kumoko got this skill, with her 128 HP, it would only add like 2 attack points. Basically useless.
In fact, to keep her speed advantage, Kumoko later chose evolution paths focusing on smaller spider forms.
Compared to her massive mother, the Spider Queen, Kumoko's HP at the same level was probably less than a fifth of her mom's.
Even later, when Kumoko reached higher levels, her HP only hit around 3000, making this skill still pretty weak for her.
But for Elliot? As an Earth Dragon, his HP was already sky-high. This skill was like adding wings to a tiger!
When Dominus Lapidis reached max level, the attack boost would increase to 10% of Max HP. Later in this world, game numbers tended to inflate, so 10% bonus skills weren't that rare.
But this was a boost based on HP, which made a huge difference. At Level 50, Elliot estimated his HP would be at least 50,000.
A 10% bonus would give him an extra 5000 Attack Power! And that was before considering any other buffs or multipliers.
Plus, many skills calculated damage based on Attack Power. Boosting his Attack and boosting his HP-scaling skill damage simultaneously? The damage output would be insane.
Could you imagine? A monster with 50,000 HP also having ridiculously high attack power? Super tanky and super damaging.
Other people would be desperately chipping away at him, throwing all their skills, maybe not even breaking his shield.
Meanwhile, one slap from him, and they'd be on the ground, foaming at the mouth.
That's the difference!
Still, Elliot looked at his current skill list and felt like something was missing. His burst damage was high, sure, but after using [Tendo Bansho], he was basically out of gas, no mana left for other skills. That wasn't good. He needed sustained damage.
Opening the list of learnable skills, Elliot browsed through the options.
[Rockslide]
Cost: 500 SP. Cause damage by manipulating nearby rocks.
[Earthquake]
Cost: 1000 SP. Violently shake the ground, dealing three waves of indiscriminate damage over a large area.
[Stone Shattering Shockwave]
Cost: 2000 SP. Drop a massive boulder on the target, dealing high damage.
These skills sounded cool, but their damage probably wasn't as good as [Tendo Bansho], and they were mostly single-use bursts. Not quite what he wanted.
Scrolling further down, one skill caught his eye.
[True Man's Slash]
Cost: 1000 SP. Reduce Defense by 70%. Increase Attack Power by 200%. Greatly increase attack range and hit ALL targets within range simultaneously!
Duration: 30 seconds
"This skill..." Elliot raised an eyebrow.
Holy crap, wasn't this basically SilverAsh's True Silver Slash from Arknights?! Interesting...
Reducing Defense by 70% would be crippling for most monsters; it meant taking way more damage. But Elliot? He didn't care as much. Losing 70% defense was a big drawback, yes, but his massive HP pool meant enemies still couldn't kill him in just a few hits, even with his lowered defense.
Plus, [True Man's Slash] was a wide-area attack. Enemies couldn't just run around it to hit him; they'd have to charge through the slash zone to reach him, taking multiple hits in the process.
With his boosted attack power, nobody could survive that. By the time they reached him, they'd already be nearly dead. How could they possibly fight him then?
As they say, the best defense is a good offense.
Without hesitation, Elliot spent 1000 skill points to learn it. The skill [True Man's Slash LV 1] appeared proudly on his skill list.
Staring at his now-empty skill point counter, Elliot sighed. Skill points really were precious in this world. Good thing he had the [Butcher] title now; getting more points shouldn't be too difficult.
….
Meanwhile...
Kumoko was trying to decide how to spend her own skill points. She felt torn. There were so many skills she wanted to learn, but she had a limited number of points.
….
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