My Plunderer System

After opening the inspect skill, Milo's eyes widened reading the description of the new weapon:

[Ghoul's Bane(Unique)]

Durability: 400

Damage Rating: 300

Str +7

Agi +5

Attached Skill: Blood Mark - When an attack draws blood, this skill causes a mark to appear on the target whose blood was spilled. The mark causes the target to receive increased damage from all incoming attacks. A max of five targets can be marked at one time, and the mark lasts for 15 minutes following the skills activation. (cooldown: 10:00)

Description: A chain whip sword that offers an extremely sharp edge. By pressing the button on the hilt, the weapon can change modes from sword to whip. Due to the metal used to create this weapon, it offers a good compatibility with the undead element.

[clear]

Milo's new weapon had incredible stats, exactly what he was looking for. It also came with a very useful attached skill that would allow for him and his teammates to do more damage to beasts. By reading the skills description Milo determined that he could also mark multiple beasts at once using a single activation of the skill. This would decrease his team's gate closing time significantly by allowing them to finish combat faster.

Since it was a weapon, the stat boosts were less than that of his armor, but Milo expected this to be the case. He also noted that his chest piece had two attached skills and his the Ghoul's Bane only had one. Although the two skills on his chest piece worked in tandem with each other, the charge skill also required a lightning element attack to be able to be activated. Because of this fact, Milo wasn't upset that the chain whip sword that was made only had one skill, as it was an extremely strong one, and it was a debuff skill no less, which were fairly rare, especially on weapons.

Milo wanted to test the skill asap, and decided he would have to jump in a simulation to test it, as the training dummies didn't spill blood when attacked which was required to activate the skill. While in the simulation, Milo could turn on a damage indicator as well, that would show a numerical value for damage done using an attack, which would allow him to know just how much more damage the debuff caused. Because of this, Milo ran to the simulation floors and jumped into the lobby of the simulation, turning on the damage indicator before summoning a dummy beast to test it on. Milo set the beast to frozen mode so it didn't fight back, and created a small cut drawing blood from the test subject. After a bit of blood could be seen coming from the cut, Milo activated the skill, and a strange black mist emitted from the blood that was spilled. The strange mist then moved to the beast's back where it covered the area behind the beast's shoulder. When it dissipated, a strange symbol could be seen where the mist just was. The symbol looked like four claw marks and had a red glow to it. After the new symbol appeared, Milo received a notification screen from the system stating that the target had been successfully marked.

After testing the skill, Milo went into the settings of the lobby, spawning another test beast. He then slashed the beast with a normal attack, and a 300 popped up above the unmarked beast's head. Milo then turned to the beast that had the new marking from his skill and slashed at it doing the same attack. This time the number 360 popped up above the beast's head. Milo calculated it in his head quickly and determined that the mark would increase damage received by 20%. This wasn't a crazy boost in damage but the extra 20% would add up quickly if he had teammates assisting him. He assumed this was the case, as the description of the skill didn't state that only his attacks would deal increased damage, instead stating that all incoming attacks would have the damage increase.

After testing, Milo chose to create a random D rank gate to test the weapon some more in a simulated gate, and also to test the new attached skill as well. He noted that the weapon was a bit more tough to use than the chain sickle, since he had used the system tutorials to learn how to use it and its fighting techniques. He took note of this and decided that he'd have to check the tutorials tab to see if any new tutorials were generated from him equipping the new weapon after finishing with closing the simulated gate.

As he made his way through the gate, he found that the thing that would need the most work was his swordplay. He hadn't used a sword extensively before and it showed, as he still wasn't used to the difference in range, as well as weight when moving from the sickle to the sword. His attacks were very simple and it was obvious that he was a novice with a sword the minute he got into combat with it, but this would not deter him. The chain whip sword also only used one hand, whereas with the chain sickle, he had the sickle in one hand and the chain in the other. Overall this was another thing Milo would have to adapt to, but this also freed up his offhand and would allow him to maybe dual wield swords, or add a shield to his equipment.

With the new attached skill, as well as the other attached skills he had on his chest piece and gauntlets, Milo was able to clear the gate quite easily, the strongest beasts he faced normally throughout the gate were of the rare tier and the boss was only unique ranked. After training in C rank gates where unique tier beasts appeared normally throughout the gate, Milo dispatched the boss at the same pace it took him to kill a beast in the C rank gate. The gate had taken him around 4 hours to clear on his own, and after logging out, Milo went to shower since he hadn't done so after training with Harvey earlier in the day.

Jorge was currently in his office and noticed that a new video had been uploaded from one of the simulation stations' cloud server. Jorge had the simulation stations set to automatically record when a simulated gate was formed. He did this, so that they could use the footage to go back and review the raid team's strategy and critique on mistakes the team made following a training session. Jorge didn't recall having any of the raid teams set to clear a simulated gate that day, and opened the file out of curiosity to see what could have activated the automatic recording option of the simulation. When watching through the tape, Jorge was confused seeing Milo wielding a new weapon, but overall was surprised to see that he was the only one clearing the gate. Not only this, but he cleared the D rank gate quite quickly even though it was obvious he had close to no idea how to use the sword in his hand effectively.

Watching the tape from beginning to end, he began to see Milo adapt to the new weapon, and was amazed to see the weapon morph from a sword to a bladed whip in the blink of an eye. Seeing the sword change forms, he could finally understand why Milo would be using the new weapon after seeing him train with the chain sickle for as long as he had been working for the guild as an intern. Jorge was engrossed, watching Milo adapt to the new combat style and learning to use the strange weapon in real time. After the tape ended he made a call to the Academy to put in a special request for Milo, one that would prove to be extremely helpful at allowing him to grow even faster with his new weapon.

Milo had since finished up at the guild building, and returned back to his apartment to rest ahead of the continuation of his training at the guild the next day. Milo's team was set to attempt another B rank gate in the simulation so he decided to hold off on using his new weapon. He would use it once he learned it to a certain extent, but still felt he was too inexperienced in swordplay to use it in a B rank gate where his team would be depending on him. Harvey questioned why he chose to use his chain sickle again, but after explaining it, Harvey nodded in understanding.

"Makes sense," he said, "once you get better at using it, I'd recommend swapping to it. Your new piece of equipment looks a lot higher quality than what you're using now, and I'm excited to see you slaughter some beasts with it following your demonstration in the training room yesterday." After finishing his thought, he gave Milo his usual slap on the back, before returning to the front of their formation in preparation of their simulated gate training.

The team still was too slow closing the gate, but had cut a significant chunk off their time, being able to close it in 10 hours instead of 11. Milo predicted that David and Jorge wouldn't send them to a B rank gate until they cut their clear time to at minimum 8 hours, and because of this, he decided he'd ask David for the footage he captured of them clearing the gate so that he could study it and find areas where he could improve, as well as help the other dealers improve, being that he was in charge of that part of the raid team.

Milo headed back home, and stayed up late reviewing the footage of them in combat and tried to pick out any things that they could change in order to dispatch groups of beasts more efficiently. Eventually he nodded off, still in the chair at his desk. Corinna came in to see if he was still awake and seeing that he had passed out, she put a blanket over his shoulders allowing him to continue sleeping. He had been working so hard over the past few weeks, and she thought he deserved the rest. Milo eventually woke up and moved to his bed where he continued to sleep until the next morning. Milo had no idea, but a familiar face would be visiting him that day at the guild when he went in to train more with the new Ghoul's Bane.