Armament Mastery

*The seed is planted as you strive for mastery.*

## Summary

Armament Mastery is a mastery skill that Zac bought in the Orom World on the advice of Pavina to make better use of Chainbox and Love's Bond. Zac was forced to give up Bulwark Mastery to learn this skill as they occupied the same skill slot. He quickly pushed it to F-Grade Peak Mastery and then manually upgraded it to E-Grade. Like all weapon mastery skills it provides a guidance system on how to use armaments and how to incorporate the Dao into them, eventuality providing a peak at the higher stages of techniques.

Manually upgraded to D-Grade on a neutral battlefield during the Intersector War. The association with Bohdi and Coffin was dropped during the upgrade.

## Armaments

* “Armaments or Weapon Boxes were are an interesting but slightly uncommon subdivision of weaponry,” Pavina explained. “They take many shapes, but they can most easily be likened to Mother-Daughter arrays. The box is the mother, and what it releases are the daughters. In your case, it’s a coffin and chains. But it can be anything from a sheath and flying swords to a hive and millions of poisonous insects.” **Book 9, Chapter 49**
* But like Pavina said, it wasn’t that common a method, mostly because they had high demands on the user. **Book 9, Chapter 49**
* Not only did it require much more energy to keep going than a singular weapon, but it also put greater demands on your soul. Furthermore, while more units might mean more theoretical power, the risk of inadvertently creating an opening due to the complexity increased. **Book 9, Chapter 49**

## Acquisition

* “In particular, your control of those chains of yours is atrocious,” Pavina added, dragging Zac out from his thoughts. **Book 9, Chapter 49**
* Go evolve your **[Axe Mastery]** and then buy **[Armament Mastery]** if you have an available slot. **Book 9, Chapter 49**
* Five days later he emerged from the Contribution Store with a skill crystal containing **[Armament Mastery]**. He hesitated a bit, but he eventually went into one of the empty houses to learn the skill. **Book 9, Chapter 49**

## Skill Location

**Heart**

* The reason for his hesitation was that **[Armament Mastery]** actually took up the same spot as the peak proficiency **[Bulwark Mastery]**, forcing him to give up on the old skill to learn the new. **Book 9, Chapter 49**

## Skill Window

[E] Armament Mastery (Bodhi & Coffin) - Proficiency: Early. The seed is planted as you strive for mastery. Upgradeable. **Book 9, Chapter 51**

## F-Grade

### Early/Middle Proficiency

* Over the past month, he had gone through innumerable variations with his chains as he walked through the early reaches of the first band. He had exclusively focused on mastering his armament as he evolved his newly acquired mastery skill, and he only used his axe when out of options. Over the last three days, he had only been forced to do so four times. **Book 9, Chapter 50**
* He simply followed the various concepts hidden inside **[Armament Mastery]** to take out beasts with twice his attributes. He had soaked up the teachings like a sponge, rapidly turning them into something practical and deadly. **Book 9, Chapter 50**
* There were an endless number of patterns that could spring from simple collisions between the four chains he used. Different types of collisions caused different effects, and you could create a chain reaction that became harder and harder to anticipate for the target. And all this could be further manipulated by Zac infusing energy into the chains, retracting, extending, turning, and empowering them. **Book 9, Chapter 50**

### Late Proficiency

* One by one, these concepts were rehauled as **[Armament Mastery]** went from Early to high mastery, and Zac was shocked to see how much his lethality improved. The first few days, every single beast had managed to break out from the proverbial cage of chains, but they were increasingly finding themselves helpless against Zac’s techniques. **Book 9, Chapter 50**

### Peak Proficiency

* In the middle of the circle, he had prepared a cultivation cave where he could reach Peak Mastery of **[Armament Mastery]** in peace. Soon enough, he reached the secluded cave, and he activated the set of arrays he had arranged beforehand. **Book 9, Chapter 50**
* After lighting up three sticks of incense, Zac sat down on his prayer mat, no longer holding back the breakthrough. **Book 9, Chapter 50**
* One such scene replaced the next, and Zac’s horizons kept getting wider as he saw one odd method replace another. He saw puppeteers, insect controllers, armorers, array masters, and all kinds of unique fighting styles. Mages who had somehow pre-stored spells in a backpack, poison masters who unleashed unholy mixtures upon their surroundings, there seemed to be no limit to what was possible with armaments. **Book 9, Chapter 50**
* Out of all the visions, the one that Zac felt most familiar with depicted a reptilian man using two tulwars as main weapons. On his back, a beautiful set of steel wings hung, where the largest feathers at the edge could detach from the wings and be controlled. They were razor-sharp, like small knives that cut through the air, tormenting the reptilian’s enemies from the flanks while he unleashed a storm of carnage with his swords. **Book 9, Chapter 50**

## E-Grade

### Upgrade

* Mastery skills had two empty sockets, where one was recommended to leave a pattern representing one's Daos. **Book 9, Chapter 51**
* Would it be a mistake, locking the mastery skill to his Fragment of the Coffin? **Book 9, Chapter 51**
* Ultimately, he decided to add his Life-based Dao to the skill fractal. **Book 9, Chapter 51**
* He booked an unattuned cultivation chamber, which was a higher-quality version of the **[Fractal Framework Array]**. **Book 9, Chapter 51**
* Things progressed as expected over the next few hours. The basic patterns of the skill fractal were as simple as they came, barely at the level of a low-quality skill. Most of the effort was spent adding two Dao arrays to the skill fractal. **Chapter 814**
* The skill was still upgradeable, though Zac read in the missive that D-grade was the last stage of the skill. **Book 9, Chapter 51**

### Early Proficiency

* It mostly went fine, but he found himself unable to completely utilize all the tricks he had picked up from **[Armament Mastery]**. **Book 9, Chapter 51**
* The more he fought, the more the lessons from **[Armament Mastery]** were elevated from being a mastered ability into instinct that required no thought. **Book 9, Chapter 51**

### Middle Proficiency

* Because of that, it took another two months before he reached middle mastery of **[Armament Mastery]** and managed to infuse the concepts into his Inexorable Stance. **Book 9, Chapter 51**
* After reaching Middle Mastery, the trajectories and strikes the skills showcased became even more sublime. They didn’t only exact extreme requirements on force and momentum, but there was something ethereal about them, something that defied being grasped easily. It was like every swing contained thousands of variations, and every time he performed the attacks Zac sensed something different. **Book 9, Chapter 52**

### Peak Proficiency

* Four months ago, Zac finally reached peak proficiency of his two Mastery Skills. The skills hadn’t provided any visions this time around, but rather taken his techniques even closer to the Dao, showing the way in a sense. **Book 9, Chapter 54**

## D-Grade

### Upgrade

* The Mastery Skill Fractals were among the simpler ones between his two Classes, and the upgrade smoothly proceeded. The only issue came from his Arcane Pathways, which wasn't too happy about the unattuned skills. **Chapter 1,097**
* It was only a small issue since all mastery skills were quite flexible, but he was probably better off removing the fractals after reaching Peak D-grade and incorporating all their teachings. Technically, he could have infused the skill with the Branches of Pale Seal and War Axe to push them closer to his Inexorable path, but Zac had opted to keep the skills unattuned. **Chapter 1,097**

### Early Proficiency

* Upgrading his two mastery skills had been easy, but incorporating their teachings was another matter. There was no end to the variations hidden within the D-grade trajectories, and he'd only reached initial success after a month of effort. **Chapter 1,106**
* The E-grade skills had taken him a couple of months to push to Peak Mastery and incorporate into his technique, but Zac felt the D-grade versions would take at least ten times that long. **Chapter 1,106**

## Commentary

* A wave of nostalgia hit him as the familiar guiding lights appeared in his vision as he activated the new skill, this time pathing trajectories for the chains of his replacement coffin. It was just like when he learned the basics of swinging his hatchet back on Demon Island, lost and alone in a forest crawling Barghest, Gwyllgi, and Imps. **Book 9, Chapter 49**
* But all the while, he had used his chains, a major component of restricting and seizing the momentum, like a flailing orangutang. **Book 9, Chapter 50**
* The chains were not separate entities, they were one. There was always cause and effect, where even the enemy was becoming a part of the method. This method of control was the greatest takeaway over the past month, and it was what had skyrocketed his efficiency with his chains. **Book 9, Chapter 50**
* This ability bordered into the techniques of some types of mages, who created inescapable nets of death by planning dozens of steps ahead like in a chess game. **ook 9, Chapter 50**
* If he wanted, Zac could have pushed **[Armament Mastery]** to peak mastery [*peak F-grade*] in a few days, but he had wanted to completely digest every piece of information. **Book 9, Chapter 50**
* It was like his swing was invisible to the hulking monkey. The effect wasn’t thanks to superior attributes or the Dao, but rather due to the smart usage of his chains. **Book 9, Chapter 503**
* However, when he started infusing **[Armament Mastery]** with the Fragment of the Bodhi, finally ran into some issues. As expected, using **[Coffinbox]** [*sic*] felt extremely uncomfortable in his human form. It had already been a noticeable issue when he trained the unattuned techniques, but it became a lot worse after his attacks started containing a hint of life. The trajectories still appeared when activating the skill, but everything felt wrong. **Book 9, Chapter 52**
* Not only did she possess a wealth of knowledge regarding the Path of Life, but dueling against her thousands of plant species was an immense assistance in integrating the vines into his fighting style. After all, he only had **[Armament Mastery]** on his undead side, and he sometimes hit roadblocks in translating the lessons. **Book 9, Chapter 56**
* Currently, he had extracted any hint of his Daos from the way he used the vines, and rather fought as he did while trying to level his **[Armament Mastery]** skill from high to peak mastery. **Chapter 864**