A day after the press conference, Cipher sat in his office, his eyes glued to his cheat shop.

The previous day he'd been quite busy handling the aftermath of the conference and hadn't had time to check out the reset shop after leveling up. The packs had reset, changing into a normal code and mod pack. But what excited him most was that the shop's reroll cost had reset back to 100.

This confirmed it was resetting per level up and not per major level up.

He then turned his attention to the card slots.

There was actually a skill this time - a C-rank skill called Phantom Step.

It was a movement-type skill that allowed him to move in speed bursts as well as leave a phantom clone behind. Cipher was interested in the skill since he was lacking in the speed department. Although he had almost A rank damage, it would all be useless if he couldn't match an A rank in agility.

The only problem was the price. The skill was worth 800 points. Although he had lots of points at the moment, this was still quite expensive. Previously, he'd gotten the E-rank Iron Skin skill in the shop that was worth 200 points. Seeing as this one was now 800, he concluded that the price doubled with each rank. Starting with F at 100, D at 400, B at 1600, A at 3200, and so on... At the moment, he could actually afford an A-rank skill - if it actually spawned, that is.

He wondered which was more cost-effective: getting an A-rank skill directly, or leveling it up.

To advance a skill, you needed two forks and two merges, which were worth four hundred points total. If a skill was advancing from F-rank to A-rank, he would need to buy these cards five times, spending a total of two thousand points.

It was actually quite cheap - well, without considering secondary costs such as rerolling the shop and such. Still, upgrading seemed like the better option, especially considering the skills he would be upgrading would be ones he considered worth it, whereas buying skills might result in unwanted skills.

But in this instant, this one was indeed wanted.

Cipher closed his eyes and pressed purchase. 800 points vanished instantly.

[Skill: Phantom Step (C-Rank)]

[Type: Active]

[Cost: 90 Mana]

[Cooldown: 30 Seconds]

[Description: Bust forward up to 25 meters. Leave behind a phantom clone that lasts 3 seconds.]

He observed the skill. It was worth quite a bit - actually the most expensive skill he had. Even Aura was just worth 80 mana. Well, it should be fine. He decided to test it out later to see if it was worth it or not.

He then moved his attention to the other card slot. The card was Mirror Card. It applied the inverted edition to a skill, making it do the opposite of what it usually does. He observed it for some time before finally deciding to take it. If it really could work with what he was planning, he just might be able to make his most overpowered skill yet.

After that, he decided to reroll the shop. The new cards were Rework and Patch. Rework applied the muted edition, which made skills behave in unexpected ways. This was quite vague.

As for the Patch card, it removed negative effects from a skill. He instantly bought it - he'd actually been looking for this card. As for the Rework card, after thinking about it for a moment, he decided to take it. He had just thought of an idea for another great skill.

But for it, he needed two more cards: a merge card and another mirror card.

…

He looked at the reroll button and, after some thought, decided to reroll.

This time, the cards were Exploit and Delete. He wasn't particularly interested in either of them, so he decided to reroll one more time. This time he landed on Malware and Blank. Although he wasn't looking for it, he took the Blank. Now the reroll cost was 400 points. It really wasn't worth it, he thought.

If he kept rerolling, where would he draw the line?

He looked at the packs below. He decided to give up on the first skill he was planning on using Mirror on and just use it for this instead. Now he just needed the Merge card. There was a code pack in the shop that allowed him to pick one out of three code cards.

He decided to try his chances and opened it.

Inside the pack was Merge, Optimize, and Commit. He was glad he had hit it, but he had also hit something else just as impressive - another DLC card. Optimize.

He quickly read through the description and his eyes widened. The Optimize card reduced the cost of activating a skill by 20% or increased its efficiency by 20%. This was completely broken. Unlike mod cards which added editions and prevented stacking them, code cards could be stacked.

If he used this five times on a skill, would it become free?

After thinking for some time, he eventually decided to take the Merge card. At the moment, he didn't have any mana problems, so he decided to pass on the Optimize card.

Now, after receiving the Merge card, he activated it and merged both Rework and Mirror card.

Rework mutated a skill and Mirror inverted it. The skill he was looking to modify with these two was actually his Regeneration. Since his Regeneration regenerated HP, if he inverted it, it would drain his HP instead.

As for mutation, he wasn't so sure, as the description simply said "in unexpected ways." That's why he didn't use it alone but with the Mirror card instead. He was hoping that the Mirror card could guide the direction of the mutation.

He decided to try and see if it really would work or not.

Of course, he wasn't going to try it on his main skill. He activated the Fork card, duplicating the Regeneration skill. He then activated the merged card.

[Congratulations! Regeneration (D) has evolved into Battery (D)]

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