Rare Trait: Shadow Avatar

Even though the drop rate for the New Moon Ritual is high, this is way too high!

Or is it because he has enough points and has obtained special victory conditions, so the drop rate has been maximized? Iver recognizes all three of these characteristics.

The first trait, "Challenger's Courage," is the same trait on the Holy Lance —its effect is to grant immunity to "Fear" and "Intimidation" effects with higher priority than oneself. It can be triggered by either level suppression or additional priority bonuses, and its unique feature is that it can ignore priority and become immune to some control effects.

It looks very useful, but it's actually the least useful one.

The basic idea in this world is that immunity to control is less effective than removal from control. All resistances can be penetrated by affixes of the same level.

Just like "the strongest spear and the strongest shield," if they are of equal priority, the spear will always have a higher priority than the shield. Similarly, just like superhumans of the same energy level can have their skills interact normally without being affected by effect reduction or resistance.

Moreover, this resistance has a very narrow application scope; it only works against people with a higher energy level than oneself—however, it cannot work when facing superhumans with the same or even lower energy level.

Furthermore, if the fear originates from the environment rather than the enemy, the resistance is ineffective.

For example, if you create a Ritual Site that instills fear in everyone who enters the environment, the resistance it provides will be ineffective.

Of course, there are other types of resistances, specifically designed to counter the environment... but unless you are a lone wolf with no teammates and no one to help you, the benefit of removing control effects is definitely higher.

Once a spell is cast, its saving throws become irrelevant to the spell itself.

For example, if a curse is difficult to remove, it's only because the curse itself is strong, making it difficult to remove. However, it's impossible to infer the caster's energy level based on the difficulty of removing a low-level curse—because the immunity granted by energy level suppression is actually calculated at the moment of impact.

Controls such as sealing, binding, freezing, and petrification are similar.

Unless the spell's effects are still in effect—such as continuous freezing, uninterrupted curses, or perpetual seals achieved through magic circles—control at the end of the spell is merely control.

Just like the Petrification Gaze used by Aspar Waton before, that was a standard mechanic for him even after he entered the instance. By then, players who were already level 70 could still be petrified with a single glare.

That instance perfectly demonstrated what it means to be immune to control effects but not to be immune to them—because ordinary petrification resistance is ineffective against Aspar Waton's petrification ability.

Moreover, it is different from the low-level Petrification Ray and Petrification Demon Eye.

His petrification ability doesn't trigger rays that can reflect, block, or absorb, nor does it require eye contact to petrify; there's no gradual petrification process. Anyone locked onto by his gaze is instantly petrified.

Aspar Waton's petrification is an instantaneous control effect with no wind-up, no cast time, and no projectile trajectory. In the game, it's a special effect that triggers every 5% of health lost. The main countermeasure is for everyone except the tank to circle around the petrified enemy before their health drops too low, allowing the player on the Dedication Path to instantly break free after the petrification.

Otherwise, if you are killed while petrified, you cannot revive in battle; and if you are injured while petrified, you lose your Maximum Life, and this negative status can only be cleared by dying once.

If the healer is distracted or petrified along with the tank after being petrified, and fails to immediately remove the control effect from the tank, allowing the tank to take a Giant Force Hammer head-on while petrified—the round is basically over. Even if the tank doesn't die instantly, it will become as fragile as paper afterward.

As an ancient giant born before the concept of "professions" even existed, Aspar Waton walks on multiple paths. This is the innate power that this Giant Chieftain received from the Path of Twilight.

The term "Silent Dead" is commonly known among players as "zombie".

It looks like an entry for the Path of Twilight, but it is actually a proprietary entry for Path of Transcendence.

In the game, this is undoubtedly a god-tier skill. However, there is one problem: its resurrection is actually a fake resurrection.

Its effect is that it allows you to immediately respawn with full health after death, entering the "Silent Dead" state. The Silent Dead form is considered an undead, automatically removing all status effects imposed by others, and gaining the "Beyond Death" resistance status, which temporarily resists most forms of control.

However, life will decline more and more rapidly, and you will be affected by spells such as "Dispel Undead" and "Scold Undead".

Generally speaking, a resurrected player can survive for seven or eight seconds without healing. With healing, they can survive for a maximum of ten or so seconds before they can't be healed back to life. In PvE, many dungeons might be just 1% or even 0.5% away from victory, and those few seconds of standing up and unleashing devastating damage without healing can decide the outcome.

In PVP, players often like to use this keyword.

Because Demon Scholar are too fragile. As a backline spellcaster, if they get killed by the enemy, they'll likely get killed a second time after they get back up.

But the demon is different.

The defining characteristic of the Demon class is that when severely injured, it recovers a significant amount of health in one go, then enters a Demonic state where its health rapidly depletes. Most of the Demon's abilities can only be used in this state; therefore, its abilities in its healthy state are mostly self-destructive skills, requiring it to burn its own health while charging forward to take damage in order to quickly enter the Demonic state.

Even after being resurrected by the "Silent Dead," the demonized state will remain.

In other words, the demon has three lives—and the third life is in a state of explosive power.

After entering demonic transformation, the demon who was immediately controlled and killed will stand up again. At this point, the opponent will usually be momentarily stunned and face a dilemma: because even if you leave him alone, he will die soon. The combined decay rate of demonic transformation and the Silent Dead is very fast, and killing him again will waste time.

But if you just ignore it and go straight past it, you'll be pinned down and beaten by the demon in its demonic state—because the demon knows it will die soon, so those few seconds of standing still and unleashing its furious attacks are really hard to withstand. After all, the characteristic of the Path of Transcendence is that the conditions for inflicting damage are harsh... but as long as the conditions are met, the numerical value is the highest level.

"Beyond Death" also provides resistance. Trying to control the enemy and let them die on their own might result in resistance, which is incredibly frustrating. As a melee class, the Demon Slayer is significantly tankier than the Demon Scholar; trying to kill them in one round would waste too many skills.

The biggest significance of this term is to lower the opponent's intelligence, forcing them into a dilemma. As long as the opponent reacts quickly enough, a demon who can only survive for five or six seconds after standing up is not actually that threatening.

But usually, players are a little confused when they see someone they just killed standing up again with full health. And in that moment of hesitation, the demon who was already mentally prepared has already finished his combo.

In the real world, this ability to briefly resurrect after death is indeed useless.

Its greatest significance is probably that it allows players to perish together with the enemy who killed them—after all, most players are familiar with the term "Silent Dead," and they will suspect whether the opponent has this trait as soon as they see that the opponent is a demon.

But the native inhabitants of this world are unaware of this. Seeing a murdered person rise again would catch them somewhat off guard. It could even serve as a surprise attack.

While there are indeed many resurrection abilities in this world, at least in this version, the conditions for resurrection are still quite demanding, or the resurrection is incomplete.

The Path of Twilight offers the most resurrection options, but most of them are somewhat strange.

Preservationists can preserve the memories of others and implant them into an infant's body to achieve a kind of possession and rebirth, but that is only a partial memory and not a true soul; Amber Artisan can make things similar to lich caskets for themselves, but currently they can only be used on specific Doll, golems, or corpses, because they cannot yet create normal physical backups; Necromancers can also raise the dead, but the resurrected dead must not only obey the necromancer's orders, but will also have their path adaptations stripped away.

The most complete resurrection at present is the advanced ability of the Dedication Path.

There is a ritualistic magic that can exchange one life for another—as long as the other person's soul has not dissipated or has been preserved in the first place, the priest can revive the other person through self-sacrifice, specifically by giving his own body to the other person. Rituales Path of Transcendence have all sorts of chaotic and unpredictable possibilities; anything is possible.

The resurrection spell, which is commonly possessed by healing professionals and can even be used with a short cast time during combat, does not actually exist in the storyline, let alone be available in the early stages of the game.

This is a spell purely based on game mechanics. The evidence is that all NPCs who are killed cannot be resurrected.

Both of these characteristics are beautiful in an ideal state, but in reality, they are not very useful.

The only option Iver could choose was the third one.

Or rather, he came specifically for the third one— Iver deliberately used Shadow Fiend the entire time, just to see if he could get that keyword.

—This is the best purple affix Demon Scholar can obtain during their first Promotion Ritual after making a pact with the Shadow Fiend! [Shadow Avatar (Purple): You are the vessel, and you are the avatar. The shadows are no longer your enemy.]

This entry's effect is similar to "Vessel of Burning and Radiance," combining two sub-options. The difference is that it specifically enhances the specialization of a single attribute, making it slightly stronger than attributes that enhance multiple attributes.

Its default effect is to provide both level 1 Shadow Affinity and level 1 Darkness Vessel. However, if you have at least level 1 Darkness Vessel in addition to this attribute, you can use a ritual to change its effect to provide level 2 Shadow Affinity; if you have at least level 1 Shadow Affinity, you can change it to provide level 2 Darkness Vessel.

Its effect can be changed or not. The attribute can be adjusted once during each new moon and full moon.

In other words, this is a specialized trait specifically designed to compensate for weaknesses.

Specializing in a single attribute requires both a container for that attribute and an affinity modifier. This affinity modifier isn't particularly useful for individual players, mainly saving them the trouble of resetting their skill points... but for Iver who don't have respec items, this modifier effectively solves the problem of wasted skill points!

Currently, his effect on Iver is to raise Iver's "Shadow Affinity" level to two and add a level one to the Container Entry. This allows Iver to more easily use Shadow Fiend and create "Field Card: Shadow Cellar" with mana!

In this way, no matter whether Iver obtains the Dark Attribute "Affinity" or "Container" in the next Transcendence Ritual, he can upgrade Shadow Affinity to level three—thus, Iver can get rid of his wheelchair! Ideally, he could obtain Darkness Vessel, so that this trait can be fully utilized.

If Shadow Fiend were nurtured into Greater Phantom Demon by Iver and sealed into a card, he wouldn't need Shadow Affinity and would be able to get rid of his wheelchair. At that point, he could also switch his specialization to Container Entry to increase his mana.

If he is preparing for a difficult battle and therefore needs to specialize in Shadow Fiend, he will need to further increase the "Shadow Affinity" stat to raise the upper limit of his combat ability. At that time, he can use a ritual to turn the "Darkness Vessel" stat back.

Although it's just a purple entry, its flexibility means it could theoretically be considered as having a level four basic entry!