MMORPG: Rise of the Primordial Godsmith

Reading through the notifications he had received, Valyr softly let out a chuckle. "Out of the five possible Intent Seeds I could awaken, I'm surprised that the Gates of Enlightenment had chosen the second last when it came to progression."

"Then again, I definitely wasn't expecting the Gates of Enlightenment to awaken an Intent Seed in advance," continued the young man, dispelling his earlier notion that the Gates of Enlightenment would continue to unlocking and upgrading a portion of his advancements to the max level as a reward.

"Though, wouldn't it make better sense for the Gates of Enlightenment to awaken either of the first two instead? After all, both of them are related to blacksmithing, and the trial I'm currently taking would allow me to head to the Blacksmith Knowledge Repository." Shrugging his shoulders as he decided not to think more about it, Valyr swiftly commanded the system to bring up his list of possible Intents, slightly grinning soon after once he noticed that one of them had taken the top spot.

Ding!

Intents:

[Intent Seed of Shadow Energy Nascent Stage] - 24% progress to the First Stage

[Intent Seed of Flames] - 86% progress to the Nascent stage

[Intent Seed of Forging] - 89% progress to the Nascent stage

[Intent Seed of the Spear] - 61% progress to the Nascent stage

[Intent Seed of the Four Elements] - 42% progress to the Nascent stage

"The Nascent Stage." Valyr briefly nodded as he closed the screen before him. Though the first stage on the path of transforming an Intent Seed did not seem like much in the grand scheme of things, it was still a giant hurdle that many have failed to cross, possibly due to a lack of knowledge on the concept or a lack of depth of understanding on the concept.

Nevertheless, even a Nascent Stage Intent Seed already had effects on Valyr's Attack stat, bolstering the strength of his Attack coefficient by 3%. On the other hand, the boost a 9th Grade Intent had on one's Attack coefficient was 10%, reminding the young man that he still had a long way to go.

Then again, a boost of 3% on one's Attack coefficient was far greater than one might think. For someone like Valyr, whose Attack stat had far surpassed 6,000 due to his high DEX stat, a 3% increase already translated to an additional 180 points of Attack.

Now, what if one were to reach a First Stage Intent Seed? A Second Stage Intent Seed? An actual Intent?

"Intent Seed of Shadow Energy." Taking in a deep breath, Valyr felt his body form a connection with the world for a split second. A few seconds after that, he felt a newfound power begin to course throughout his body, making him feel like any of his strikes from this point onward now had a slightly greater edge to it.

Savoring the feeling for a bit longer, the young man soon stopped using the Intent Seed, letting out a sigh of awe as his body returned to feeling how it was before. "Man, the feeling of an Intent Seed never gets old."

Unfortunately, before he could continue getting even more accustomed to his newly obtained Intent Seed, the disembodied voice resounded throughout the training ground once more, asking the young man a question that he had long expected to hear. 'Though you have achieved 3,000 kills within the Trial of Myriad Aberrations, the Gates of Enlightenment shall give you the chance once more to opt out of the trial and receive the Gates of Enlightenment's knowledge. Naturally, you could also proceed further into the trial, with the opportunity to greater power in advance available once you have amassed a total of 6,000 kills.'

'Now that I think about it, why is the Gates of Enlightenment so obsessed with strength and willpower?' With the conclusion he had arrived at earlier beginning to linger in his mind, a question popped up all of a sudden, prompting Valyr to hold off on his response to the voice's words. 'Surely they aren't only doing it for the reason they've been mentioning so far, which is the thing about their knowledge being more useful to those who have greater strength and willpower.'

'The question is… what other reason could there be?' Valyr inwardly muttered, giving his mind the time to go through multiple plausible trains of thought. Sadly, in the end, he let out a low sigh as he simply did not have enough information regarding the Gates of Enlightenment, pushing the thought aside for the meantime as he decided to keep the trial going.

However, just as he was about to tell the voice that he would like to continue the trial, Valyr went silent for a bit as a thought popped up in his head. Briefly wondering to himself whether or not it would even work, the young man eventually went ahead and did it as he asked the voice a question. "Would it be possible to know what would make up the next 3,000 kills?'

For a while, a palpable silence covered the entire training ground. Beads of cold sweat started to form on Valyr's head as he waited in expectation. Then, as if it had intentionally given pause, the voice eventually responded, causing the young man to let out an audible sigh of relief as he attentively listened.

'You shall be facing against 10 groups of aberrations, with each group being made up of 300 of them,' said the voice. 'These aberrations have the strength of divinity amongst the elite, with the levels reaching the peak of the fourth rank.'

Though he was slightly confused by what the voice had told him at first, it did not take long for Valyr to understand, faintly nodding as another thought gradually surfaced in his mind not long after. 'Why didn't I try this earlier?'

"I would like to proceed with the trial." Nevertheless, with the newfound knowledge that he could actually ask the voice for more details regarding the trials, Valyr decided to leave the matter of admonishing himself for not thinking of the idea early on to the side, watching as the field of aberration corpses before him started to glow gold once more.

Taking a few steps back, he took out his trusty spear and activated his Intent Seed of Shadow Energy, only to then summon the Shadow Energy stored within his body. Moving all of the Shadow Energy towards the tip of the spear he held, he swiftly swung his spear upward once all 300 aberrations had risen from the ground, leaving the aberrations no chance to retaliate against him.

Naturally, thoughts regarding the Gates of Enlightenment's aim still lingered in his mind at this moment. But for now…

It's time for him to grind out 3,000 kills.