Deforestation

*Their army is the forest, and you are the Hatchetman.*

## Summary

A high-quality F-Grade skill that Zac gained from one of his two level 75 skill quests for his Hatchetman class. It is a ramping skill that could deliver three different and ever more powerful strikes with each new strike requiring more strength than the last. Commensurate with it's power it could only be used every twelve hours or so.

It has an apparent dependence on Hatchetman's Rage in that it appears it's boosting would be required in order to use the second swing of Deforestation while in F-Grade for a typical Hatchetman. They would perhaps also need Hatchetman's Rage to even complete the skill quest since Zac barely succeeded with an E-Grade Spiritual Axe and a Late Seed Dao while not using Hatchetman's Rage.

Zac fused this skill with Nature's Punishment to create Arcadia's Judgement using one of upgrade skill quests.

## Skill Quest

Deforestation (Class): Cut down a tree reaching 500 meters in one swing. Reward:   Deforestation Skill. (0/1) **Book 3, Chapter 99**

* “Well, there are the actual redwoods,” the man said. “Many of them were over a hundred meters before the integration, so one having mutated and grown to five hundred meters is within the realm of possibilities. We have many other examples of plant life growing to that degree compared to their former sizes,” the man said, but his face was still troubled. ... “The former redwood forests are within the Cradle of God.” **Book 3, Chapter 99**
* His gains since meeting Salvation the last time were huge, but this time, they would fight on that madman’s home turf. ... Hoarding his treasures at such a time was a waste. ... But he still felt Sharpness was the way to go. ... stabilize the foundation of his improved Dao Seed **Book 3, Chapter 100**
* Finally, the two found a tree that fit the bill. In contrast to the other trees, it seemed to carry some sort of fungal infection, and cutting it down might even protect the forest from the spread of disease. ... and the crown clocked in at over 540 meters. It was essentially a skyscraper from its dimensions. **Book 3, Chapter 101**
* The edge from **[Chop]** grew with rapid speed until the edge reached ten meters, ... Zac ... completely flood the fractal on his hand with as much energy as he possibly could. ... To stabilize the skill further, he imbued it with his recently improved Dao Seed as well. The edge gained a silver sheen from his Late-stage Dao of Sharpness ... starting to become unstable the moment he passed fifteen meters. He did everything he could to have the Cosmic Energy retain its shape until it finally reached the necessary length. ... There was significant resistance to his swing, even with his E-grade axe and Dao of Sharpness combining to make an extremely strong attack. ... Zac’s muscles strained to push through the tree as his mind started to become dizzy from the effort of maintaining the shape of the edge. **Book 3, Chapter 101**

Deforestation – Proficiency: Early. Their army is the forest, and you are the Hatchetman. Upgradeable. **Book 3, Chapter 101**

## Skill Location

**Right Bicep**

but the shockwave had made Zac miss the fact that he’d gained another fractal on his right bicep. **Book 3, Chapter 101**

## Skill Window

Deforestation – Proficiency: Early. Their army is the forest, and you are the Hatchetman. Upgradeable. **Book 3, Chapter 101**

Deforestation (Middle): Their army is the forest, and you are the Hatchetman. Upgradeable. **Book 4, Chapter 90**

## Three Swings

It was not a single-use skill, but rather a skill that ramped up, as long as his body could take it. **Book 3, Chapter 103**

### Axe of Felling

First Swing

* **[Verun’s Bite]** only cleaved air as Zac finished his motion, but the swing was only there to summon the real strike. The true effect of **[Deforestation]** materialized the moment Zac finished his strike, and it moved to repeat Zac’s own swing. **Book 3, Chapter 103**
* It was a forester’s hatchet, ... The hatchet was well over ten meters long, with its head being larger than Zac himself. ... The fractals along the chestnut-colored handle emitted a sense of imperviousness and fortitude, making it seem the axe would be able to handle any amount of strain without snapping. The ones on the edge gave off a completely different feeling, ... It was sharpness, the ability to cut through anything. **Book 3, Chapter 103**
* they were extremely different from the fractals on a weapon that one might pick up in the System’s General Stores. They contained a boundless intricacy in their simplicity, and it was clear they contained truths that were well beyond Zac’s current understanding of the Dao. **Book 3, Chapter 103**
* The attack was simple and unadorned, but the effect was anything but. ... but soon one puppet after another started to fall apart, bisected in the middle by a clean cut. **Book 3, Chapter 103**
* Zac estimated that over twenty thousand puppets had been destroyed by that one massive swing, **Book 3, Chapter 103**
* The Axe of Felling required somewhere around 500 Strength to launch, whereas the second one required 750. **Book 3, Chapter 103**

### Infernal Axe

Second Swing

* and he once again charged up the fractal representing **[Deforestation]**. **Book 3, Chapter 103**
* This time, it was even more massive, with an edge at least twice the size of the **[Axe of Felling]**. The axe also looked completely different. ... this one was clearly meant for war. The head was larger with a long curved edge looking like molten stone, and it emitted an aura of fiery annihilation. Its handle seemed to be created from a burnt-out trunk of some unknown tree, and scorch marks formed dozens of fractals in a seemingly random pattern along the handle. It was a forest fire turned into a weapon, and as the enormous axe swung, an inferno rippled outward in a massive wave of destruction. ... It looked like a red tsunami that pushed outward toward the puppets, swallowing anything it reached. ... but the flames actually contained an extremely sharp cutting power. The flames somehow chopped the Silver Guards into tens of pieces that were soon turned into cinders before the waves passed on. **Book 3, Chapter 103**
* The wave kept growing and growing in a massive conflagration, and soon the attack had passed hundreds of meters, leaving nothing but scorched earth in its wake. **Book 3, Chapter 103**
* The Axe of Felling required somewhere around 500 Strength to launch, whereas the second one required 750. **Book 3, Chapter 103**

### Axe of Desolation

Third Swing

* he endured the pain as he pushed almost a third of his Cosmic Energy into the fractal of [Deforestation], initiating the third and final swing. His bones creaked and groaned as he pushed his arm forward, but he wasn’t the same person as when he’d attempted the swing in his battle with Salvation. [Zac's effective strength is around 1,600 at this point.] **Book 5, Chapter 41**
* It was an ashy-gray single-bladed axe with a long edge that almost formed an inverted S. The poll and shoulder of the axe seemed to form a robed being whose four arms ran along the cheek of the axe-head. The shaft was straight and unadorned, ending at a spiked knob, showing none of the craftsmanship craftsmanship of the intricate axe-head. But the most striking aspect of the axe wasn’t its incongruous design, but rather the desolate aura that spread out around it. **Book 5, Chapter 41**
* Zac roared in defiance as he finalized the swing even though his arm was strained beyond its limits. **Book 5, Chapter 41**
* A gray wave silently swept forward as the sinister **[Axe of Desolation]** matched the swing, and the whole ship shuddered as the two monstrous attacks collided. **Book 5, Chapter 41**

## Early Proficiency

* All three swings are available at early proficiency if you have the necessary strength.
	+ The air around him twisted from a massive surge of power as he activated **[Hatchetman’s Rage]** to push his effective Strength to over 1,000 points. ... Zac had hoped that the requirement for the third axe was 1,000 Strength, but that clearly wasn’t it, as he hadn’t even been close to finishing the swing before his body broke down and his mind was damaged. **Book 3, Chapter 103**
* You can't infuse your Dao into the skill at early proficiency:
	+ Zac tried to imbue the enormous axe with his Dao of Sharpness, but his mental energy was actually rebuffed when he tried to infuse it. ... Zac quickly tried a few other Daos, but the result was the same. **Book 3, Chapter 103**

## Middle Proficiency

* It seemed that his splinter had greatly assisted him in his skills related to anger ... Even Deforestation had jumped one grade, which had to be considered a great speed of advancement since he had only used the skill a handful of times. **Book 4, Chapter 90**
* This time he didn’t feel any pain or pressure at all, and he swung his axe as he imbued the [Axe of Felling] with his Fragment of the Bodhi. **Book 5, Chapter 85**
* No other textual information.

## Late Proficiency

* The most shocking thing was that he even evolved **[Deforestation]** to Late mastery ... He hadn’t tested the change of **[Deforestation]** because of the cooldown, **Book 7, Chapter 50**
* He had already exhausted his human side except for **[Deforestation]**, and that skill was meant for large-scale battle. His odds of defeating Adcarkas were far greater in his undead form, **Book 7, Chapter 54**
* No other textual information. Never used (or explained) in text at this proficiency.

## Peak Proficiency

* He had spent a herculean effort on his F-grade skills, all of which had now reached Peak mastery. **Book 7, Chapter 60**
* No other textual information. Never used (or explained) in text at this proficiency.

## Fusion

* Zac looked at the prompt from the Nexus Node in front of him and took a deep breath before choosing **[YES]** and swiftly picking his first two skills to fuse. It was **[Deforestation]** and **[Nature’s Punishment]**. **Book 7, Page 525**
* He was very happy with both skills, but they ultimately served a similar purpose in his skill set. **Book 7, Chapter 72**.

## Commentary

* he felt that **[Deforestation]** should be the ultimate offensive skill of his class, perhaps something akin to Nenothep’s Spear World. **Book 3, Chapter 99**
* The **[Deforestation]** quest reminded him of his first Class Quest. That time, he was supposed to chop wood, and now he needed to chop an enormous tree. **Book 3, Chapter 99**
* **[Chop]**, the first attack skill that he had obtained, had finally evolved from Late to Peak mastery [this was after using it for this skill's quest], **Book 3, Chapter 101**
* It was time to unleash **[Deforestation]**. **Book 3, Chapter 102**
* He’d received no explanation of how the skill worked when he got it, ... **Book 3, Chapter 103**
* The fractal immediately activated, and he finally received a burst of insight, making him understand how to properly utilize the skill. **Book 3, Chapter 103**
* He guessed that normally only the first swing was meant to be used in the F-grade unless perhaps someone managed to reach the required Strength for the second with the help of **[Hatchetman’s Rage]**. **Book 3, Chapter 103**
* Deforestation has a set pattern, Zac can't do them out of order, as clarified by the author on Discord, 2020 Nov 01.
* Zac realized that the attack was a bit like his upgraded axe. The powerful skill had charges, and it needed to restore its energies before it could be used again. **Book 3, Chapter 10**
* The amount that the Abbot personally infused was just shocking, and Zac felt it was even more energy than what his **[Infernal Axe]** contained. **Book 4, Chapter 4**
* Even the final axe from **[Deforestation]** felt slightly related to his Dao of Rot, though that axe seemed to be based on some higher Dao. **Book 4, Chapter 37**
* It looked like its swing heralded the end of the world, as a towering inferno ripped across the earth, swallowing the whole undead army. **Book 4, Chapter 39**
* The first swing of **[Deforestation]** was all he needed, as it destroyed over half the towers. **Book 4, Chapter 52**
* “It’s a general suppression array from what I’ve heard; it restrains both your mind and your body. ... But the strain was only slightly worse than the power required to unleash the second axe of **[Deforestation]**, **Book 4, Chapter 76**
* The machines had proven a tough target for **[Chop]**, but against the **[Axe of Felling]**, they were little more than pieces of lumber, and they fell apart and exploded in an instant. **Book 5, Chapter 43**
* It seemed that **[Deforestation]** had been put on its cooldown since the first swing had technically been initiated. **Book 5, Chapter 51**
* There was no need to even use **[Hatchetman’s Rage]** to activate the third swing this time, his evolved physique more than enough to handle the massive strain. A coruscating wave of destruction ripped into the inner structures of the fortress, causing a chain reaction of buildings collapsing. The ground shuddered as almost a third of the fortress was leveled with one attack. **Book 5, Chapter 85**
* If he didn’t use the swing within a minute or activated another skill, then the skill would reset and enter its cooldown period. **Book 5, Chapter 85**
* the **[Infernal Axe]** unleashed a rampant wave of flames at the weakened barrier. This time, he did utilize the Fragment of the Axe, and the splintered shield was quickly cut to ribbons before the wave continued forward into the physical wall. **Book 5, Chapter 85**
* At least it didn’t seem to be a long cooldown skill like **[Deforestation]**, which could only be used every twelve hours or so. **Book 6, Chapter 14**
* Activating **[Deforestation]** was essentially effortless by now [Zac's effective strength was over 4,500 at this point], and an extremely sharp wave of destruction rippled out the next moment. **Book 6, Chapter 45**
* It had been a pretty big disappointment to see that the Endurance-based defensive skill [referring to Innate Ward] clashed with **[Deforestation]**, **Book 6, Chapter 75**
* A single Annihilation Sphere had done more harm to the creature than all of **[Deforestation’s]** swings combined, and the thing lost its ability to stay in this dimension. **Book 6, Chapter 90**
* An army made up of over ten thousand drones and thousands of other weapons was destroyed in an instant, ... The defenders managed to weaken and delay the wave a bit, but hundreds of people still died in an instant, some of them even E-grade. **Book 7, Chapter 18**
* It looked like two wrongs did make a right in this case, as the terrifying cracks were actually destroyed by his strongest attack. **Book 7, Chapter 31**
* However, a skill like that would quickly lose its efficacy at higher levels, and not only because of limited energy. Someone at late or Peak E-grade wouldn’t just stand around ... Someone that powerful would be able to ... simply move out of the way. Or rather, they might launch a counterstrike during the short instant when Zac gathered the energy to summon the enormous axes. **Book 7, Chapter 42**
* while both **[Deforestation]** and **[Nature’s Punishment]** had amazing effects, they were ultimately High-quality skills. They were extremely close to Peak quality, but they were still a short distance away. **Book 7, Chapter 72**