Atlas was greeted with a rush of notifications, some of which were notices of the exact amount of stats he had gained, which he had already instinctively known after using Ultimate Consume anyway, but the vast majority of notifications were new, and very welcome.

  You have defended the town from a wave that was boosted to be far stronger than it should have been. As such, your town has gained a large boost as a reward for defending the town.

  Reward 1: For the next 24 hours, the town will produce at 10x the normal production speed.

  Reward 2: You may upgrade one building of your choice. (Cannot be your town center)

  Reward 3: Your town will be turned into a marble upon leaving the grove, you can place down this marble in any place of your choice and your town will automatically be constructed there. This does not cost you any resources, and the river will be brought with you.

  You have leveled up! X38

  You have reached the maximum level of tier 2!

  Checking…

  You have the achievement level required to advance to tier 3! Would you like to advance? (You may always advance your tier later, but until then, you can not advance any of your skills or your level.) Y/N

  Atlas selected yes, and he was filled with a euphoria unlike any other. White light condensed into ribbons all around him, wrapping him up like some sort of mummy before sinking into his flesh and becoming absorbed. Everytime a ribbon of light would enter him, Atlas felt his power grow, until he felt as though he was bursting at the seams.

  A notification hovered in front of him.

  At Tier 3, your subclass upgrades and you may choose one of up to 5 paths of power (Quality and quantity of the paths of power depends on prior achievements, with 2 being the minimum possible for someone who is tiering up.) You will not gain a subclass upgrade because you have already received one before now.

  Choose a path to power. (You must choose )

  Path of the Hungry Void.

  Path of the Endless Curse.

  Path of the Destroyer.

  Path of the Nightmare Fiend.

  Path of the Skill Sage.

  The five options hovered in front of him, and Atlas frowned, trying to think. He was given no information about any of the paths, so it seemed he would have to simply choose based on context clues.

  He first ruled out the path of the Nightmare Fiend, he didn’t want to take a path that so obviously pushed Atlas to do what he would most likely consider unethical, and he didn’t want to take a path that clashed with his morals. Atlas also didn’t want to take the path because it just seemed evil. Atlas knew that most of his skills and classes would probably be viewed as evil to anybody else, but as long as he was using them for good, they couldn’t truly be evil, right?

  He next decided against the path of the Hungry Void. It sounded powerful, but it sounded like a skill that would revolve around Consume. Atlas knew that Consume was a great power, but it wasn’t his main skill, far from it. As such he was left with the last three paths, which all suited him in some way or another.

  Path of the Endless Curse obviously referred to his debuffs, which had become a large - if not massive- part of his combat style, so even though the name left something to be desired, he was sure the effects would be great.

  That brought him to the next path. Path of the Destroyer. This was close to the concept of Atlas being a reaper, and Atlas had actually been surprised with the lack of any path directly mentioning a reaper, but this was the next best thing. The only thing that Atlas disliked about this path was how vague it was. He didn’t know exactly what benefits he would gain from this path, but they were sure to be centered around combat, which was definitely not a bad thing.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  The final option was the path of the Skill Sage, and it was most likely Atlas’s favorite path. He loved the feeling of making new skills and raising them to become stronger, and most of his skills had come from scratch, or at least, they had, until he had shoved them all into Avatar of Death, but this was still a very desirable option for Atlas, and he knew that he would gain an all around boost from this skill.

  As Atlas contemplated all three of the options, he became more annoyed with the fact that he didn’t really know what paths even were. He knew that they would benefit him in a great way, but even that was a little fuzzy. How exactly would they be able to benefit him? It was annoying not knowing what would happen.

  In the end, Atlas decided on the path of the Skill Sage. It sounded like it would synergize well with his Skill Master title, and it was the last option, which might mean that it was the strongest. He had no clue of knowing if this was true, but he was willing to chance it seeing as this skill would benefit him even if it was just as strong as all of the other paths.

  Path Chosen!

  Path of the Skill Sage: You have proven yourself to be a master of skills, both stealing and creating them. You have endlessly persevered, getting skills made from scratch well into the S-ranks, even managing to create a Z-ranked skill without the help of the system. Your efforts have not gone unnoticed and you have been recognized by the system as one worthy enough to hold the title of Skill Sage. You gain 3 benefits of your choosing, from a list of 6.

  Option one: Upgrades Title (Skill Master[Legendary]) Into Title (Skill Grandmaster [Mythic])

  Short but sweet. It was very brief, but it was a major jump. Skill Master was already a very powerful title in his arsenal, and this option would only make it stronger.

  Option two: Any time you create a new skill, it will automatically jump to the next rank (Example: S -> SS)

  This one was also very powerful, but Atlas wasn’t sure if it was good enough. Sure it was great, but the majority of his skills started at A or B rank, so this option would only save him a little time, and not really help too much overall.

  Option three: All skills will start at a minimum of S rank (Cannot have this and option two at the same time.)

  This option was far more enticing for Atlas. This option was on paper slightly worse than option two, but that was until you read it a little closer. It didn’t say all created skills, it said ALL skills. This option would work beautifully with Consume and would only make him stronger overall. Skills didn’t get very useful until around S or SS rank, in Atlas’s opinion. The only exceptions were higher tiered skills, but he didn’t have very many of those, and they would still benefit from this.

  Option four: Anytime a skill would gain a rank, you can instead choose for it to become a higher tiered skill. (Higher tiered skills gain experience to the next level at the same speed as lower tiered skills, but are far more powerful than their rank would suggest.)

  Now this was a tempting option, this option would make it so that he could power level lower rank skills while keeping them in the same rank and having them gain experience at the same speed. If anything, this was the exact opposite of option 3. While that option made all skills start higher, this skill made skills lower rank, but higher tier. If higher tiered skills were the difference between Ultimate Debuff and Avatar of Death, then this option would definitely be worth it. The only side effect would be the effect on his ego. He loved seeing his skills steadily grow in rank, and this skill would only slow that process, sure, it would make his skills have more bang for their buck, but it would still hurt.

  Option five: You no longer need achievements to gain and upgrade skills.

  That was… underwhelming. But it also intrigued Atlas a lot. You needed achievements to be able to gain skills and upgrade them? Why hadn’t he run into this problem before? He had been able to get all of his skills without much trouble, so it didn’t make sense for this to be a thing. He moved on to the final option.

  Option six: You can combine skills as much as you desire. (Be aware that with this option, you can combine any skills, but they might not have much synergy, resulting in a failed skill*)

  Atlas mentally pressed on the asterisk.

  Failed skills are skills that are no longer usable, and they must be uncombined to become usable again (uncombining skills is a long and tedious process.)

  Atlas hummed to himself, thinking. This option was great, but the idea of failed skills was more than a little concerning. He didn’t want to combine skills only for them to not work. After some thinking he realized that he had a way to circumvent this. Synthesiser. It allowed him to find skills that had synergy with each other, resulting in great skills.

  With a thought, he accepted the options he wanted.

  Are you sure you want option one, option four, and option six to be your three benefits? Once you choose, it will be permanent.

  Atlas agreed, and just like that, he had gained a path.