Draco found himself at the proverbial crossroads. One lane contained 5 Epic Tradeskills which would all give him a bang for his buck, as well as a variety of means to make more money, and more importantly, unique items/services.
On the other lane were 2 Legendary Tradeskills which had far superior versatility and utility, but the proportionate costs were higher, especially the difficulty of leveling up.
Now, it should be said that the gap between Epic Tradeskills and Legendary ones was quite narrow. It was even narrower than the gap between Common Tradeskills and Advanced ones.
Magical Engineering and Scrivener were a good example of this. Even though Scrivener was far better than Magical Engineering in every aspect, one could not deny that Magical Engineering in and of itself was heaven-defying.
Another example would be the Epic Tactics Tradeskill, allowing even the biggest military illiterate to become Zhuge Liang's elder brother. However, the range and usage of this skill were limited by its level and Rank.
There were certain barriers in place that Legendary Tradeskills could cross which Epic ones could never hope to, even if they were at the Grandmaster Rank. Of course, when pondering all of this, the biggest concern in Draco's mind was leveling them up.
He honestly had two choices now after he cleared out his Tradeskill slots and also increased them, which was to either fill them all up with great Tradeskills at once or add them sequentially, or as they come.
If he chose the 5 Epic Tradeskills, he would be going for the former choice yet if he chose the 2 Legendary ones, he would be going for the latter. It was a sort of meta thing, where a set of simple choices/actions represented another set of bigger and more important choices.
Draco pondered deeply. 5 Epic Tradeskills were hard to level, but so were 2 Legendary Tradeskills. Scrivener, for example, was not even at level 10 yet, whereas Magical Engineering was already at level 14.
Well, most of that came from the rewards for creating the Advanced Spatial Creation Device, but still. The difference in progression for the two was quite wide.
Draco even channeled the usually dormant Pinnacle Intelligence so that he could increase his cognitive facilities, but it just made things more complex as he discovered many problems his initial analysis left out.
No one ever said being smart didn't come with detriments, it was nice on paper, but one was more likely to find more flaws and questions to solve for a problem than one could suddenly shout 'eureka' and write the solution on a blackboard.
Draco clenched his teeth and realized that trying to overthink it would not solve the problem. What he needed to be was decisive and clear-headed.
So, he removed all considerations from his mind and concentrated on the most important question.
'What do I want?'
Previously, he had asked himself what would be a wiser choice, what would yield more benefits long-term, what would be easier to progress with, and things of that nature. However, he forwent all such thoughts and decided to go with his gut feelings.
Once he simplified his question to the essential part, the answer almost immediately popped up in his head and he was surprised by how simple it was. It was an answer that had been smothered by his other considerations.
Draco reached out and picked his choices. He had long since eyed them due to their nature which was extremely to his taste, and he couldn't wait to get into the details of them to try his hand at it.
Once he made his choice, Draco noticed that the other books on the aisle had become slightly faded, as if they were black and white. Draco understood that he had lost access to them, but he did not regret his choice.
Draco first put away his new Tradeskills and walked to the other aisles. After all, his purpose in visiting the library of the Evergreen Manor was not limited to just learning new Tradeskills, but also the various techniques and recipes from the old era.
Draco had gained a lot of inspiration from just watching the strange way in which the villagers of Evergreen Village crafted while he passed by their workplaces, so if he could find some more techniques like that, he could increase the level of his Three Pound Origin and Refined Star Techniques for Blacksmithing and Alchemy respectively.
If possible, he could also search for techniques for Engineering, as he mostly just used and abused Control for that. The same went for Scrivener, Draco felt it would be good to develop a writing technique that not only enhanced his literary work, but also saved a lot of time.
Draco entered the aisle for Alchemy first. Here, he saw many technique books as well as scrolls for every single known recipe for a potion or poison from Common Rank to Legendary Rank.
As such, the number of scrolls easily passed the total number of Tradeskill books. It couldn't be helped, as there were just too many combinations one could make with the millions of reagents in the world.
Interestingly, Draco was not limited like in the Tradeskill book section. Here, he could learn any amount of techniques or recipes he wanted as long as he could memorize them.
But had that ever been a problem for Draco? Certainly not. With his enhanced mind, his Control, and the Eyes of Caelo, it was disgustingly easy for him to memorize anything he read.
He first took a look at some of the techniques. There were many different types, those that focused on controlling the fire, those that were focused on the sequential placement of the regents, and those that were focused on the style of stirring.
Draco's Refined Star Technique was at level 5, and here he didn't need to do much by hand. He could use his Control to automate everything to perfection, the control of the fire, the mixing and placement of the herbs, and the collection of the concoction.
On top of that, he even used his State of Being to control Worldly Energy to harmonize the process, infusing the new concoction with more value and making it purer as well as reducing the chance of failure.
This was precisely why he was stuck though. How do you surpass what was pretty much perfection? Any seasoned Alchemist who saw Draco's Refined Star Technique would agree that there was no technique that could surpass it in the world.
After all, the most important thing in most vocations was not just creativity, but mechanical accuracy. With the Refined Star Technique, Draco had perfect mechanical accuracy to the point where even an android powered by a supercomputer would only be slightly better.
His creativity too left no room to be questioned. After reincarnating, he brought all of his knowledge from over 7 in-game years of Alchemy, in which the final 3 were spent mastering the foundation of Alchemy so that he could break into the Grandmaster Rank.
Where exactly could he improve from here? Draco had a special innate ability to create techniques for almost anything with ease, and this ability had nothing to do with his bloodline or his soul or whatever.
It was like a sort of computer existed somewhere in his brain which analyzed his knowledge of various combat or vocational styles and auto-generated the best methods in which to practice them.
Whenever this happened, he would know how to grow the technique to higher levels, when he could use certain attacks/skills with the technique and most importantly, how many levels the technique had.
Both the Refined Star Technique and the Three Pound Origin were supposed to have 10 levels, but he was now stuck on the 5th for both. The reason for this was quite comical, as it was due to his rapid growth.
His body, mind, and Control had grown too fast. They were stipulated to develop along with his other aspects, so if Draco broke through level 5 of the Refined Star Technique, his Control should reach tier 2 as well.
However, his Control was currently at tier 4 at the minimum, almost double what should have been. As such, this hamstrung his ability to grow as there was little to develop upon.
However, looking at these various techniques that had many different styles of solving the same problem gave Draco some ideas. Not only that, but these techniques were also close to perfection in terms of mechanical accuracy.
Just like Draco had assessed for the crafters of this Treasury, which was that they need some external inflow of ideas and information in order to develop their creativity, his techniques were also in the same boat.
Now, that inflow was coming, so was it any surprise that his minds would flourish and his eyes would brighten? Even more interesting was the fact that his mind started to analyze the faults in these techniques and try to patch them up.
This alone did far more for his technique than even reading the various scrolls here. Even methods as mechanically perfect as these had outward flaws that he could spot, so how could his own technique reach true perfection at a mere level 5?
Draco was hit with instant enlightenment. It wasn't that his techniques had reached perfection, but that they were held back by his external improvements. The current 'perfection' he thought he had achieved was only an illusion, a false.
It was just like a software developer trying to optimize a certain software to work better on all systems while making the best use of any available hardware. However, he had failed to consider that he had moved the software to a supercomputer instead of a high-spec PC.
As such, while it looked like the program had reached perfection in terms of optimization, that was only a mirage since the performance of the supercomputer was so high.
However, if this same software was made commercial, many average consumers would complain about bugs and issues with the software as their specs were not as high as the supercomputer.
If one wanted to perfect this software, they would have to test it across all forms of PCs and with many different environments/variables in order to reach true perfection. That way, no matter the kind of environment the software was introduced to, it would be able to perform as expected.
This was a very unique way to look at the problem, but it's what Draco got from his enlightenment. Now that he understood his problem, he also had an idea on how to fix it.
As the saying went, the outsider can see better than the parties involved. Even with his enlightenment, he could not see the flaws in his technique so easily, but others at the same level of proficiency should be able to.
Just in the same manner as he could identify flaws in these perfect techniques from the old era. In essence, all he needed to do was interact with the other crafters of this Treasury.
By having exchanges with them, they could point out his flaws and help him rectify them while he could do the same for them!
Draco sighed. This Unique Quest was truly the epitome for Tradeskill players, for no matter how talented or bottlenecked you were, there was a way to solve it while waiting for the competition.
Draco finally understood in the depths of his heart that this Treasury was a holy ground for Tradeskills, and even the most bullish amateur could become a genius if enough time was spent here.
After thinking this, he continued to lazily browse the various techniques here, but he did not check the recipes. For Alchemy and Blacksmithing, he would never need a recipe for anything, only materials to work with an experiment.
After spending another 20 hours going through the various techniques, Draco put the last scroll down and went to the Blacksmithing section. Here, he slowly perused the techniques once again, immersing himself in the world of crafting.
It was certainly interesting to see the various takes of other geniuses from the old era on how to smelt, filter, and heat the ingots, and especially how to shape and cool them.