Thanks to all the poison-related activity, Poison Synthesis went up quite a bit.
Poison Synthesis hit Level 7, unlocking more types I can generate and more customization options.
'Poison Synthesis Menu' 'Weak Poison, Medium Poison, Strong Poison, Spider Deadly Poison LV3' 'Damage Amount Adjustment, Duration Adjustment, Contact Damage Amount Adjustment, Synthesis Amount Adjustment' Matching the level of my Poison Attack, the spider poison evolved into Spider Deadly Poison.
Medium Poison and Strong Poison were also added, but they were really just incremental power boosts over Weak Poison.
That said, Spider Deadly Poison really does have the best effect.
Unfortunately, in actual combat it looks like I'll be going Spider Deadly Poison only.
As for the other new customization features, Contact Damage Amount Adjustment is exactly what it sounds like — it lets me adjust how much damage is dealt just from touching something.
Whereas Damage Amount Adjustment controls the damage dealt when injected inside a body, this one adjusts damage dealt from the outside.
Spider Deadly Poison already exceeded the adjustment cap on both types of damage, so there was no need to tweak it.
Synthesis Amount Adjustment is straightforward — it changes how much I can synthesize at once. Cranking it up does increase MP consumption, though.
It's convenient for power-leveling since I can do it all in one go, and as long as I pick the right moment, I could theoretically rain down massive quantities of poison to torment an opponent.
"Sink into my poison swamp!" or something, while dumping a whole deluge of the stuff from above.
Skills unrelated to poison also went up or increased quite a bit.
MP and SP each granted me a new Skill related to their respective domains.
For MP, I got Recovery Speed and Consumption Reduction.
The effects are just what the names say — natural recovery speed increases, and the amount consumed decreases.
SP got the same pair: Recovery Speed and Consumption Reduction.
However, Recovery Speed applies to the yellow stamina gauge, while Consumption Reduction apparently applies to both the yellow and red gauges.
When I sprint at full speed, the yellow stamina gauge drains more slowly, and the red one does too — apparently.
The red one doesn't drain because of the Overeating effect, so that was something I only learned from Appraisal's results.
Destruction Enhancement is practically a cheat-tier Skill.
Its effect adds a damage bonus when destroying things.
And "things" includes living creatures.
In other words, all of my attacks get boosted.
The corresponding resistance is Destruction Resistance.
Both are scary Skills, so I made sure to acquire them for myself.
Slashing Enhancement and Poison Enhancement each boost attacks of their respective attributes.
So Slashing Thread and Poison just get straight-up stronger.
Ki Battle Art is an unusual Skill — it consumes red SP to provide a blanket boost to my physical Status.
It's basically a buff Skill, but it eats through the red stamina gauge pretty quickly.
The red gauge is my lifeline, so I really don't want to be chugging through it all the time.
The fuel efficiency isn't great either, so unless I'm truly cornered, I'm probably better off not using it.
Ki Infusion is similar to Ki Battle Art, except the target of enhancement is an object.
In my case, that would be my threads.
But honestly, for the same reasons as Ki Battle Art, I probably won't use it much.
The biggest haul from thread-related Skills was picking up Thread Aptitude.
This one applies a bonus modifier to everything when I use threads.
Thread power, thread manipulability — it all gets a bump.
Since it's a straightforward positive effect, it does its job reliably.
Throwing and Accuracy also got quiet boosts.
Aerial Maneuverability — I wasn't even trying to level this one, but just traveling back and forth between my home and the surface caused it to creep up slightly.
Parallel Thinking and Arithmetic Processing didn't go up much.
Well, that's to be expected. I'll just wait patiently for them to rise.
In exchange, Concentration and Prediction went up quite a bit.
Prediction, I don't really care about either way, but Concentration hit Level 9 — just a little more to Level 10.
Looking at the pattern so far, reaching Level 10 triggers either an Evolution or a Derivative Skill.
Concentration has been extremely useful, so I've got high hopes for whatever it evolves into.
No changes to magic-related Skills.
For resistances, by beating myself up — literally — I managed to newly acquire Destruction Resistance, Blunt Resistance, and Slashing Resistance.
And my long-awaited Fire Resistance finally came through.
After all that effort, it's only Level 1.
HP Recovery Speed still barely budges, either. I may have underestimated how long that would take.
All five senses got boosted too.
I also picked up Taste Enhancement.
As expected — well, maybe not — it doesn't seem like it'll be useful as long as I'm in this dungeon.
I leveled up Status-related Skills as well.
The result of bathing myself in poison-related attacks was gaining a new Skill called Guardian, which boosts resistance.
Also, my resistances jumped significantly the moment Poison Resistance upgraded to Deadly Poison Resistance.
I don't know exactly what the causal link is, but maybe upgrading your resistances causes the others to grow too.
The Status Skills that gave me the most trouble were Idaten, Brute Force, and Toughness.
They just wouldn't go up.
For Idaten, I had to do an absurd amount of running before it finally gained a single level.
Compared to my other Status-enhancing Skills, these three are noticeably harder to level.
Well, given their effects, they're clearly high-tier Skills, so I suppose that's only natural.
Now that I know Skill Evolution is a thing, maybe the other Status-enhancing Skills will evolve too once they hit Level 10.
If that's the case, I'd want to get them there sooner rather than later.
What's disappointing is that Appraisal's level still hasn't gone up.
I think it's because my range of activity has been pretty limited lately, so the Proficiency gains have been minimal.
If that's the case, maybe it's time to start pushing into the Middle Layer.
I've at least confirmed that I can offset terrain damage.
I went near the magma once to check, so I'm certain of that.
But it's still just an offset.
If my HP drops for any other reason, my only recovery method is leveling up.
From a safety standpoint, I should probably keep raising my Skills a little more, but I also want to build up Appraisal's Proficiency.
Hmm.
Decisions, decisions.