Ascension of the Master Assassin

"What are you laughing at?" Lilith who had transformed back to her original appearance asked annoyingly. She was honestly creeped out by Venn's sudden outburst from out of nowhere.

"Sorry, I was just glad to be able to have entered the guild and meet you. Please continue the briefing." Venn quickly apologised and changed the topic before returning back to his train of thoughts. But even after some time had passed, he couldn't hide his smile because of the newly learned information.

If he could plan his next step properly with it, his strength could very well double or even triple in an extremely short amount of time!

In Heaven Descent, monster core skills are categorized into sixteen different unique branches. Out of the sixteen, only 11 of them are known among the entire player base with the remaining five still undiscovered by the players.

However, Venn was certain that the powerful and strong guilds must have information about them, just that they refused to share those important information to the public as there was no incentive for them to reveal their trump cards to the outsiders.

As long as the corporate-driven guilds control such vital information, an individual would be powerless against them, much like the case in the real world.

Although, a story about an underdog sounded really nice and inspiring, reality often managed to disappoint. 

However, with the dragon emperor's blood within him, Venn might finally be able to stand a chance against those capitalist giants provided if a particular condition could be fulfilled. He was hoping he could capitalise on it.

The eleven unique branches of monster cores that are widely known and obtainable by the public were as follows.

The most common category that most players have are the [Elemental] cores. Skills that involve elements like fire, water, ice, earth, lightning, light and darkness all belong to this category. The skill - [Flame flash] which was used by Silverfox in her battle with Venn was one of the many skills that an elemental core user can unleash.

The second most widespread monster cores that were activated by players would be the [Humanoid] cores that are dropped by all humanoid creatures. Examples include Orcs, Elves, Goblins, Dwarf, and other races that are similar to humans. Most of the time, the dropped cores would translate into the skill sets of their learned techniques.

Other than those two, there are also other types of monster cores that are much more uncommon and rare like the [Serpent], [Beast], [Plant], [Undead], [Winged], [Oceanic], [Mechanical], [Insectoid], and the [Dragon] cores that all players can select to opt for.

All the different branches provide its users specific skill sets with their own distinct pros and cons. And out of all the categories, some of them require special conditions to use them.

This was especially true for the cases like the [Mechanical] monster cores], and the [Dragon] cores.

In the case of the [Mechanical] monster cores, in order to use the corresponding skills, it was not enough for the players to just activate the [Mechanical] monster cores in their constellation slots. 

They would first have to hunt for a special item called a golem heart to replace their own internal one, and which could only be dropped by a shiny golem that appears in 1 out of a million other stone golems. Sometimes, it would even take months for a shiny golem to spawn if there was no one clearing the golems in their spawn areas.

Adding to its difficulty of obtaining one, it was not even guaranteed that the golem heart would be dropped with its drop rate being so ridiculously low as well. 

Thus, one would have to have insanely good luck to obtain one without any background or support.

Furthemore, the amount of effort to obtain a golem heart was also extremely high due to the fact that the level of a typical stone golem was around level 60. Without powerful methods of clearing the golems efficiently, the public had no chance to obtain one especially when they still have to challenge the large guilds and big corporations as well for the precious resources. 

All these factors in turn led to the result of the resources being monopolised by the large guilds and big corporations. The supply was cut off directly from the source and many players could only wallow in their pool of tears after they found out they had wasted their monster core slot.

In the end, the price of a golem heart became so exorbitantly high in the black market that only the truly rich could obtain one. In his memory, Venn recalled that the price of a golem heart had even reached 26 millions in one's player auction!

Many players were even commenting on how cheap it was when the buyer of the golem heart reached the top ranking of the player base as a nobody. 

That was how powerful the mechanical cores skills were despite the many limitations it places on the user's body such as not being able to use other monsters' core skills that utilises a modified part of the body. 

In terms of raw power and damage, it ranked above the rest and surpasses them.

As for the [Dragon] cores, no one knew the special condition to successfully unleash the dragon skills. Players had even complained to the game site but to no avail. No announcement was made and no information was clarified.

Cores dropped from slain Wyverns, Cockatrice, and many more with tinges of dragon blood in their ancestry were absorbed by many players with the impression that they had struck it big as dragons were associated with strength. 

But in the end, instead of becoming more powerful, most of them ended up regretting their choices as no matter what they did, they couldn't figure out the way to use those dragon-related skills.

Despite how powerful the skill description sounded in their monster core interface, they couldn't access it and use it. The whole situation was like having a beautiful childhood friend and watching her get hooked up with someone else other than you.

So near yet so far...

However, that changes now. Venn had finally learned the secret behind the [Dragon] core by accident. One must have the blood of a dragon within him to unleash the Dragon skills!

However, that was not all!

Blood has a certain property in them!