Before Marvin came to the Dead Area, he received 50000 exp from Mark 47.
With Sky and the monsters of the Seafloor Tunnel, he had close to 70000 exp before he set foot on the Dead Area Continent.
Of those, he used 20000 to learn Desperation Style and originally thought he would have to find a place to farm some battle exp before he could level up his Night Walker class.
After all, reaching level 9 Night Walker required 144000 exp!
But he hadn't expected that the challenge Kangen gave him, the Ice Monster Cave, would turn out to be a decent farming spot.
In the end, each Ice Monster gave about 800 on average and Marvin killed a total of 126 of them!
That was six waves of Ice Monsters. In the final wave, Marvin was encircled by a whopping 64 Ice Monsters and he had to desperately fight his way through.
During the extremely troublesome slaughter, not only did his Desperation Style reach Master level, but he also harvested more than 100000 battle exp.
It was this exp gain that allowed him to level up his Night Walker class.
Thus, after reaching the Legend threshold at the 21st level, an option appeared on his interface.
[Choose a Legend class: Ranger (lv9) - Night Walker (lv9)]
Right now, he could only choose between Ranger and Night Walker to be his Legend class, because Ruler of the Night's advancement required Ranger (lv8) - Night Walker (lv10).
Although Marvin had the Advancement manual, he didn't meet the requirements and thus couldn't advance to Ruler of the Night.
Marvin instantly declined to choose a Legend class.
The advantage of the game-like system could be seen here as he could choose his Legend Class at any time. He had to meet the requirements first.
Thus, Marvin's total level went back down to 20 from 21.
Indeed, without choosing a Legend class, he would remain a level 20 Half-Legend. Although he had enough levels to be a Legend, he didn't have a Legend class.
And when calculating his total level, regardless of what the levels of his classes were at, it would be stuck at level 20 without a Legend class.
Marvin didn't care much about this. He chose to upgrade his Night Walker level in order to get a step closer to Ruler of the Night, while also increasing his own strength.
Level 9 Night Walker gave Marvin an additional 36 skill points and 246 HP.
At the same time, Marvin gained two Night Walker specialties:
[Major Tenacity]: Serious injuries won't hinder your moves.
[Magic's Foe]: Substantial increase in Magic Resistance.
These two specialties were very powerful passives. In fact, the closer to the Legend Realm, the more often the specialties would be passives. But it was these passive specialties that were the most powerful.
The first specialty and Marvin's personal specialty [Endurance] covered both sides of the coin, making him more powerful in battle as he could ignore both pain and the hindering effects of injuries. This was very significant.
After all, there would be a deviation when injured. This slight change could make the difference between life and death.
And the [Magic's Foe] specialty would be useful when fighting a caster. This specialty would weaken the effect of the spells cast toward Marvin. Regardless of anything else, level 9 Night Walker had already demonstrated its strength. Rarely would a class gain such tyrannical passives before the Legend realm.
This was also the reason most of the people in the Night Walker organization chose Night Walker as their Legend class.
Both Constantine and O'Brien showed the power of the Night Walker class, even though they had different paths.
After dealing with the level up, Marvin continued to rush toward the Secret Garden.
In fact, he hadn't thought he would be able to complete Kangen's test in three and a half days.
After all, the wooden daggers were hardly any better than bare hands against Ice Monsters. The only advantage was that he could block. But Desperation Style wasn't used for blocking.
The essence of this Blade Technique Style was in attacks, continuous attacks.
Marvin originally expected that based on his efficiency, he would need at least a week to defeat all the Ice Monsters.
But as his Blade Technique Style leveled up, his pace grew substantially faster, completely showing the power of his Desperation Style.
Marvin hadn't trained in the Martial Path in the game, so he didn't know what bonuses it gave!
When his Desperation Style reached [Intermediate], his first Martial Path property appeared!
[Weapon Sharpness +15].
The increase in weapon sharpness made it a lot easier for Marvin to kill the Ice Monsters, enhancing his offensive abilities even with the wooden daggers. He originally needed more than a dozen slashes to kill an Ice Monster and it suddenly decreased to just a few, greatly increasing the efficiency.
It also was from that point in time that Marvin began his farming.
When Marvin's Desperation Style reached [Expert], the second property appeared as planned: [Armor Break +20]
This was a property that belonged to weapons, but it appeared as a bonus from the Blade Technique Style. Although Ice Monsters didn't have armor, after Marvin obtained this property, he clearly felt that the wooden daggers had an easier time slashing their bodies.
He spent no less than a day and half fighting the last wave of Ice Monsters before Desperation Style reached the Master realm.
There, he obtained his third reward:
[Desperation Burst: When using Desperation Style, each attack has a chance of having its damage multiplied.]
It was still a passive, and the damage multiplication made it so that Marvin was able to occasionally one-shot a level 17 Ice Monster!
Even if the probability wasn't high, when handling multiple enemies or engaging in a battle of attrition, this would make a huge difference.
With those three bonuses, Marvin defeated the remaining Ice Monsters and finally killed his way out of the cave.
The power of Desperation was greater than he had expected.
If he could train this Blade Technique Style to Greatmaster, or even Grandmaster... he didn't even dare imagine.
No wonder Kangen was able to cut down the Winter God's avatar.
It was just unfortunate that Desperation Style couldn't be leveled by experience anymore. The system also had its own limitations. Otherwise, with Marvin's farming efficiency, he could easily level his Curved Dagger Mastery and Blade Technique Style to the peak.
He thought of his harvest in the Ice Monster cave while urging his horse to hurry toward the Secret Garden.
After approximately a day, Marvin reached the western part of the Dead Area.
On the journey, he changed horses three times to stay at the maximum speed. He soon started to meet people on the road.
These people were also rushing forward in a hurry, apparently toward the Secret Garden.
'I hope the Secret Garden hasn't opened yet and Ivan didn't get into trouble,' Marvin worried.
The Secret Garden wasn't like Saruha. In the past, this place had another name: [Tomb of Legends]!
'Every time the Secret garden was opened, it was because someone deliberately threw some bait…'
Marvin narrowed his eyes, thinking over his memories from the game.