Chapter 6：Self-Torturing Profession

Ye Chen's unusual answer that deviated from the others made Trousse narrow his eyes slightly. It had been a long time since he had heard this answer.

"Are you sure you don't want to? If you choose me to be your Professional Tutor, you can learn some pre-advancement skills from me for free, and even receive well-rewarding profession-affiliated missions. If you give up this right, you will not be able to enjoy these treatments." Trousse didn't talk too much nonsense, and merely gave a reminder.

"I'm certain!" Ye Chen nodded.

Many rookie adventurers didn't know that in the Profession Guild, when an NPC asked whether to choose him as a Professional Tutor, there was another option. Instead of selecting the NPC in the Profession Guild as their mentor, they could elect to pick other NPCs as their own Professional Tutor.

However, this was not a secret among those adventurers who entered the game two or three years ago. Two or three years ago, the majority of the adventurers answered this way when they took up a profession. Instead of choosing a Professional Tutor in their respective Profession Guild, they would rather go look for their own Professional Tutor.

However, this situation only lasted for a while, and gradually disappeared.

In fact, the NPCs who could recruit apprentices in the Profession Guilds had a high status amongst the other NPCs. For most adventurers, it was challenging to find mentors more advanced than the NPCs in their respective Profession Guilds. For adventurers who did not choose a mentor in the Profession Guild, in the end, most of them could only select some other lower-levelled NPC as their Professional Tutor. Else, they would be unable to level up or learn advanced skills after reaching Level 30.

The Professional Tutor didn't have too significant an impact on the adventurer's growth. Finding a fantastic Professional Tutor didn't mean that one would have access to some secret skills. Similarly, one wouldn't have missed out on learning some skills just because one went under the tutelage of a lackluster Professional Tutor. Most of the adventurers thus focused on the independent growth of their own characters.

However, if one could go under the mentorship of an influential Professional Tutor, then this would be akin to having a bigshot as one's father. There were still some unique instances in the game, especially for certain missions, and when dealing with other NPCs, where the selection of Professional Tutor would come into effect.

These effects may not be useful, but when needed, the results were often surprisingly good.

Ye Chen knew that there was a pretty famous Botanist NPC within Titan Megacity and the method of becoming an apprentice of that NPC. This method did not have a 100% guaranteed success rate. However, by getting an influential NPC as a Professional Tutor, even though it was probably not useful for the early stages of the game, in the later stage, it was difficult to say!

"Well, I won't force you then." Trousse nodded and waved his hand lightly. A ray of light shrouded Ye Chen's body.

[System Prompt: You have become a Botanist Apprentice!]

"Congratulations on becoming a member of the Botanist profession. I have some basic skills of the Botanist here with me. Since you are not my apprentice, you will need to pay ten gold coins to learn. Will you learn them now? If you don't learn them, you will not be able to accept the Botanist mentor-apprentice trial mission."

Ye Chen already made early preparations for the matter, and he nodded and paid the ten gold coins. If one did not pay gold coins at this time, then as Trousse said, one cannot accept the trial mission. Adventurers of all professions will only be officially inaugurated if they complete this trial mission. Otherwise, they will not be able to learn more advanced skills and their skill levels cannot be further upgraded.

[System Prompt: You have learned the skill "Pre-Seeding"!]

[System Prompt: You have learned the skill "Single Transplant"!]

[System Prompt: You have learned the skill "Withering Light"!]

[System Prompt: You have learned the skill "Planting: Iron-Armored Willow"!]

After paying ten gold coins, Trousse waved his palm lightly, and Ye Chen immediately received a series of system prompts.

"You are now a Botanist Apprentice. To prove that you are really suitable to be a Botanist, you need to complete one of the simplest trial missions," after distributing the skills, Trousse continued.

[System Prompt: You have accepted the mission "Botanist Apprentice Trial"!]

"Thank you, Mr Trousse." Accepting the mission, Ye Chen turned and walked out of the Botanist Guild.

Ye Chen didn't read much about the mission details, but he didn't even have to look at it to guess that this so-called trial mission was just a mission to kill monsters to collect items. The trial missions of all major occupations were almost the same type, which was not difficult at all, but a little time-consuming.

But even for the simple task of killing monsters, for a Level 10 Botanist, this task still felt rather daunting. So Ye Chen was not in a hurry to do the trial mission. He had to complete another mission first. After completing this mission, even a Level 10 Botanist could increase his output by one-third!

Walking straight out of the Profession Guild, Ye Chen reset his attribute points after taking up the profession, and the total of 45 open attribute points was added to the Spirit attribute.

The Spirit attribute was the most essential attribute of a Botanist. With the addition of Spirit, in addition to the standard increase of MP, Magic Critical Rate, and Magic Defense, every 10 points of Spirit added by the spiritualist could increase the Attack Power of his plants and his own Magic Attack by 1 point!

Following that, Ye Chen went to another building in the Titan Megacity that was more majestic than the Profession Guild.

The Hero Arena!

The Hero Arena was located next to the enormous Central Square of the city. It was a vast gray stone building reminiscent of the ancient Roman Arena.

The Central Square of the city was built on the foundation of neat rows of marble, and there were a few black or white pigeons hopping around on the ground. Many in-game couples like to come to this peaceful square to whisper sweet nothings to each other.

However, in the Hero Arena next to the central square, there was always a frenzy at any time. Here, there would never be a lack of passion.

Walking on the neat rows of marble, passing through the hopping pigeon flock, Ye Chen stopped in front of the tall stone gate leading to the Hero Arena. Beside him, stood an NPC. It was the Arena Manager, Ed.

"Esteemed Mr. Ed, I would like to challenge the 100 Arena Victories missions." Standing in front of the sturdily-built Ed, Ye Chen stated his intentions respectfully.

"One hundred victories? What an aspiring little guy, maybe the next hero of The Boundless Continent is you!" Ed praised loudly.

[System Prompt: You accepted the mission "100 Arena Victories"!

100 Victories: Achieve 100 Victories in the Arena, and receive Ed's rewards.]

"Thank you, Mr. Ed." Ye Chen turned around and walked along the colossal stone staircase in front of the Hero Arena leading to the Arena stage.

"Wow, isn't this a Botanist? Wanting to enter the Arena at such a low level, could he be asking to be abused?"

"Haha, it would be nice if I was matched up against him."

Two adventurers who were similarly walking towards the Arena looked at the set of Botanist equipment that Ye Chen was wearing and scoffed loudly.

Ye Chen has changed to the Level 10 Black-Iron-grade Equipment Set. The types of equipment of each class in the game could not be worn randomly. The types of equipment of each profession had their own characteristics and were easy to distinguish.

To most professions, Level 10 Botanists were even easier to bully than Priests.

Ye Chen smiled, disregarding their scornful opinions, and just stepped into the Arena.

Both the interior and exterior of the Hero Arena was similar in appearance to the ancient Roman Arena. Within the Arena was a colossal stone circular staircase, where adventurers could sit and watch the battles in the Arena stage, situated in the middle.

Although the Hero Arena was enormous but compared with the number of adventurers, this area was simply not enough to hold the number of observers. The battles that could be observed in the Arena and watched by other adventurers were actually fairly high-level battles. Otherwise, for most adventurers' battles, especially those between adventurers below Level 30, were played in the Virtual Arena.

"Connect to the Virtual Arena and enter training mode." After entering the Arena, Ye Chen gave the order, and he then appeared inside a small Virtual Arena.

In training mode, one could set the behaviour of the opposing NPC. Ye Chen directly set a wooden man who could not move and was used to test skills.

Subsequently, Ye Chen used the Pre-Seeding skill to plant the seeds of the Iron-Armored willow tree.

On the way to the Arena, Ye Chen purchased some seeds of the Iron-Armored Willow from the grocery store. For Botanists to summon plants to fight, they must have the seeds of corresponding skills, or even if they have learned the specific skill, they cannot summon any plants to fight.

One minute later, a gray-black willow tree nearly two meters high, grew out from the area that Ye Chen threw down the seeds.

Plants planted using the Pre-Seeding skill took one minute to grow, which was one of the main reasons why the Botanist profession was considered weak.

During times of crisis, if the most crucial plants of a Botanist were not summoned in time, it meant not having any fighting capabilities. In that minute, it was enough to slaughter the Botanist who had a low HP bar and puny Defense eight or even times.

"Single Transplant!" Ye Chen's staff waved, and the Iron-Armored Willow appeared beside the wooden man in an instant.

The plants grown by the Botanist were rooted in the ground and are unable to move. To move the plants, one must use the Transplant skill. Low-level Botanists only had access to the Single Transplant skill, and this skill cannot be upgraded. After each use, it could only be used after a 30 seconds interval. Only after obtaining the title of "Plant Master" could the skill cooldown be shortened and the Botanist could learn Mass Transplant.

Iron-Armored Willow, as its name implied, was a defensive plant that does not have a high Attack Power by itself, but it could swing its two wickers to attack.

SNAP! SNAP!

Under Ye Chen's commands, the Iron-Armored Willow attacked the wooden man, but the HP values leaking from the wooden man's head left Ye Chen dumbfounded.

The default pieces of equipment of the wooden man were set to Bronze-grade. Bronze-grade was better than the White-grade but was worse than Black-Iron grade. Ye Chen was decked in Black-Iron-grade gear, which raised his Spirit. The grown Iron-Armored Willow only managed to hit for 20 damage points. If it was after deducting the bonuses from equipment and attributes, when encountering adventurers with high Defense, he was afraid that the Iron-Armored Willow would not even break through their Defense.

"Fuck me, this is truly a self-torturing profession."

Silver-grade equipment for Level 10 adventurers was extremely scarce. A set of Black-Iron-grade equipment was basically the best equipment for Level 10 Botanists. Then, under the circumstances of using a set of Black-Iron-grade equipment, the output of the Botanist was still so tragic. The title of "self-torturing profession" was indeed veritable.

"Withering Light."

Ye Chen raised his staff and a ray of Withering Light shot towards the wooden man.

Withering Light was the only skill that the Botanist can use to attack in the early stages without using seeds to grow plants. It was instantaneous, but the cooldown was only three seconds. Based on Ye Chen's knowledge, most of the Botanists in the early stages relied on this very skill to sustain themselves.

But for the Withering Light, the damage output was also a tragedy. Although it was only a Level 1 skill, and there was room for improvement, as a mage-related profession, hitting for only about 30 points of damage was really unreasonable. A mage of any other profession with Bronze-grade equipment could casually hit for forty or fifty damage points.

If Ye Chen were to enter the Arena in this state and encounter melee adventurers, considering his skills, slowly whittling their health to zero was not a problem. But if he were to face off against any magic-related professions, victory would require strenuous efforts on his part, while there was a real danger of losing to the other party at any time.

After all, for magic-related professions, early low-level skills could be locked to auto-aim. As long as people bombarded his area, they could easily take care of him, and no amount of expertise was enough to evade them.

"However, hehehe."