Assassin and Ultimate Speed weren’t really normal roles, but that was just how Sage had thought of them when Guan Zhenyan explained the combinations. The abilities in each of the concepts were actually not anything new, especially since Sage had already packed most of them into his body in the past. It was actually more of a methodology in how to allocate Body Power and also how to shape his physical body. For example, if he wanted to focus on defense, a body shaped like a tortoise would be a more optimal shape than a butterfly.

Most of the combinations seemed pretty obvious for the most part. The ‘Tank’ was a focus on thick scales or plates and healing factor. There was also a variation to include the Warp Worm’s energy swallowing along with the Qi Nozzles to ‘reflect’ energy attacks. For ‘DPS’, he could combine the Qi Nozzles with the recently recovered breath weapon attack. As a bonus, he could add wings and even take on a classical western dragon appearance. That brought him a smile.

A ‘Controller’ was a little more complicated and also dependent on future improvements. This would be the build where he focused upon the Soul Fragment ability from the Myriad Wyrm, combining it with the Black Enhydros. As for his physical body, all of his Body Power would be focused into his Hypnotic Eyes except for a small amount to keep his second set of poison meridians around. Guan Zhenyan was a Poison Master and there were more than a few that could reduce resistance to mental attacks. This combination would be putting to use a rare ability as well as Guan Zhenyan’s expertise, but the heavy specialization would make the rest of his body pretty weak.

The ‘Assassin’ build would take advantage of all the stealth related abilities that Sage had accrued to perform powerful ambushing attacks. The color changing skin of a chameleon, wall crawling from the Viridian Gecko, the pheromones from the Succubus Beetle, and also the Cerulean Mist technique to hide him from Spirit Sense. From there it branched into a few other choices. He could add webbing to capture foes, the firing spikes from the Thorn Hornet as a ranged option, blades from a mantis, acid from the centipede, and of course the option of poison meridians to make them more lethal. Sage found this idea pretty appealing since, in his opinion, the best defense was for no one to even know you were there.

Last, but not least, the most interesting: ‘Ultimate Speed’. This idea was something of an afterthought for Guan Zhenyan. He wasn’t particularly impressed with ‘Cosmic Traction’. Space Laws were some of the most difficult to study, so it was good to have an ability to boost training speed, but otherwise it was underwhelming. The good space abilities would teleport, open portals, bend space to redirect attacks, or most famously slice through space to damage even the toughest. Cosmic Traction couldn’t really do any of those except for slicing space, but only barely and with great effort. As its name suggested it was mainly a way to increase or reduce friction. In Guan Zhenyan’s words, “This would only be useful to someone pursuing the most extreme level of speed, or maybe a master of the soft styles.”

The soft styles were those that met hard with soft. Redirecting the flow of an attack instead of resisting it head on. The embodiment of water like attacks, they do not defend with force, but gradual resistance. You couldn’t hurt a pool of water with your fists no matter how strong you are, yet they could even stop a bullet. As for the other thing Guan Zhenyan said, Sage found it to be an interesting idea. He would use Qi Nozzles as thrusters instead of weapons, and then focus on wind, space, and thunder laws.

Cosmic Traction came in as the ultimate application of strength to speed. Normally, there was an upper limit on speed that could be obtained from purely physical means. The ground itself was only so hard. Once physical strength reached a certain level the very ground would be unable to resist and even solid rock would feel as soft as sand. Every step would be like an explosion and it would cause immense collateral damage in their path. There was also the issue of air friction, something which he believed fell into the inverse square law, requiring drastically greater forces to increase speed after a certain level. Cultivators who studied the laws of wind would use their understanding to control the air and reduce this effect.

Sage, on the other hand, had seen and been taught by King the method to use Cosmic Traction to completely avoid such friction. He also wouldn’t have to worry about destroying the landscape as he could find traction between layers of space. It would only ever be as hard or soft as he wished it to be, and could handle that is. Of course, this build would also be extremely specialized, but on the plus side the focus on pure physical speed would in fact equate to a large amount of pure physical strength.

So many options. Sage couldn’t really decide on which was the most advantageous. They were all pretty appealing. He was very against being killed, and the Tank would protect him the most. Or, he could just focus on never being seen at all and just let use minions as a distraction while he shot people in the back with a poison dart. Then of course, he could just forgo acting personally and hypnotically command an army of golems and insects that couldn’t betray him. Lastly, the most dangerous option, both to himself and others, is the pursuit of extreme speed. If he could get moving fast enough he could just toss a pebble and it would hit with the force of a bullet. Even if guns weren’t actually that threatening to high level cultivators, it doesn’t mean he couldn’t keep progressing. With enough mass moving at a high enough speed it could cause damage at the level of a nuclear detonation.

Guan Zhenyan let him stew over it for a while before he spoke up, “Don’t worry too much about it. As I said before, we can always find more beasts in the future to improve you. As for which to choose now, I have a requirement of my own. Whichever direction you decide to go, you need to keep that second set of poison meridians. You won’t be much of a test subject if you die from the testing, understand?”

That new information limited Sage’s options. An Assassin or Controller build were the only ones that included poison, but then again he hadn’t planned on completely sticking to the builds that Guan Zhenyan outlined. He wasn’t planning on leaving out the Fat Grass Worm’s healing factor no matter which build he went with, it was just too useful. He wouldn’t devote too much Body Power to it, but he was still planning to include it. With that same line of reasoning, he could choose any build he wanted, but he’d just need to also include the poison meridians. With Guan Zhenyan wanting to use him as a poison testing dummy, it might be more useful to do that anyway. It could be very dangerous to base his combat power around a constantly fluctuating ‘test poison’. Was he crazy enough to constantly gamble that his poison would be effective?

In the end, Sage leaned towards the build that gave him the best growth rate. If Guan Zhenyan was keeping him around, then surely the man would protect him, right? In that case, instead of the choice with the greatest strength he would pursue the option that had the greatest growth rate!