Terra Nova Online: Rise of The Strongest Player

Chapter 385: The Ghost's Progress

Chapter 385: The Ghost’s Progress

( Jacob’s POV )

Compared to the veteran players who constantly faced new and unforeseen challenges, the new batch of players in Terra Nova enjoyed the advantage of having future knowledge.

Since the system evaluation for new players followed the same pattern as the old ones, the new players already knew exactly what to focus on and what to avoid from the start of their gaming careers for best possible evaluations.

Armed with the knowledge that skills learned from skill-scrolls did not transfer to real life, the newbies avoided learning skills from the skill scrolls, to not make the same mistakes as the veterans.

From the outset, they focused on naturally learning in-game skills and building their social reputation, as they already had prior knowledge about the third evaluation criteria, which was going to be ‘Legacy’.

In just two short months, the average level of the newbies rose to 40, with the better players already being in the high 80s.

It was expected that by the end of the six-month double EXP period, the new players would reach an average level of 110, matching the old players, and the top-rankers would breach the level 200 threshold and enter the top 10,000 rankings alongside the veterans, with Jacob being a prime candidate to achieve this feat.

As the player ‘Ghost’, he had gone from level 0 to 95 in just two months and was on track to reach the level 200 threshold in the coming months before the EXP bonus from the newbie event ended.

Among the common newbie players, he was infamous as ‘The Player Killer’. Daily, players would unexpectedly meet their end at his hands, with the system message [ You have been killed by player ‘Ghost’ ] flashing on their screens.

This notification had become so frequent that it turned into a familiar story among the new players, making Ghost one of the most notorious up-and-comers in the game.

However, his high level and his notoriety were not the only special thing about Jacob, as even the skills that he acquired were the real deal.

His years of experience as a top-class special operations agent, when coupled with the mana and skill based world of Terra Nova, allowed him to transcend his own capabilities.

Unlike the common player, who was too afraid to even learn a skill from a skill-scroll, since they would apparently not carry forward to reality once they entered the rainbow stream in the future, Jacob learnt each and every skill that he came across as long as it had anything to do with death, or assassination.

He even bought new skill scrolls out of his earnings, as for him, he only learnt the skills to study them and nothing more.

Since skills could be deleted from one’s skill slots after learning, Jacob did not worry about how many skills he was learning as his end-goal was something else entirely.

Combining his knowledge from learning skills like ‘Cloud Feet’ , ‘Noise Reduction’, ‘Sound Barrier’ with his real life special-ops knowledge, he invented a new and improved skill of his own called the [ Silent Takedown ]

Using this skill he could soundlessly approach an enemy and kill them in such a way that whenever he would engage with the enemy an isolated sound barrier would form around him in a 2 meter radius, muffling the killing sounds entirely.

The skill was labeled as a ( Self-Creation ) in his panel giving him ( mastery ) of the skill from the get-go.

Although the skill in itself was only an (Epic) rated skill, he became apparently the first player within the Terra Nova world to self-create an (Epic) ranked skill, which gave him the chance to publish a global-announcement which he declined.

The other rewards for his skill-creation included 2 legendary ranked skill scrolls, which contained advanced death-overlord techniques, which Jacob also only learnt for research purposes.

One of the skills was called ( Brainwash ) where he could brainwash any dead creature into becoming his slave.

To test the skill out, he enslaved a low-level undead first and later realized that since the creature was dead, he could store it within his inventory without killing it.

This ability allowed him to store his dead slave in his inventory, calling upon it when necessary, making it a sort of portable tool that could be used when needed.

The second ability he learnt was called ( Undead Transform ) using which he could temporarily take on the form of a Lich.

While in his Lich form, he became completely impervious to stab and slash wounds while his MP temporarily increased by 300%, alongside his magic spell damage output.

It also had the passive of ( Undead Dominion ) which compelled low level undead to obey his will when he was in his Lich form, giving him the powers of a necromancer without actually being one.

Unfortunately, this ability only lasted for 5 minutes currently, after which he reverted to his real form, with the undead slaves he commanded now viewing him as an enemy.

Nonetheless, in a battleground full of undead, this skill could prove to be a huge difference maker in critical moments and hence Jacob did not swap it out immediately and instead kept it in his skill slot to hopefully uncover its secrets with time until he could create his own version of the same skill someday.

In these two months, Jacob also found his own purpose within the game, as when the rebellion in the Southern Duchy began, he resolved to stand-up against the rebellion and started to travel to the Southern Duchy’s biggest city, ‘SouthPort’ where Elena was also residing currently.

His plan was to stay with Elena and make the South his base of operations, from where he planned to kill every rebel spy that he came across.

Being a life-long special operations soldier, trained to kill terrorists and other anti-establishment forces.

Flashing out rebels and taking out hidden targets was what he did best and hence it was the mission he personally chose for himself as a player, alongside getting stronger.