Chapter 91: Damian’s Current Status!

By the time Damian returned to Willowbank Front, there was very little reason for him to remain.

The Nightmare Corpse Sect force had been routed, their trap had collapsed spectacularly, Ning Ruomei was now his prisoner, and the lower battlefield had already proven everything Damian wanted to know about his Valorian products.

So after giving the local command group a brief summary of what had happened, Damian handed Willowbank Front back over to them.

He was merely a temporary commander.

Emphasis on the temporary!

Damian had businesses to run, power to gain, people to cure, gods attempting to seduce him and apparently an entire war trying to crawl up his ass!

Sheesh, he had enough work already on his hands!

The Spirit Boat rose less than twenty minutes later.

Damian boarded alongside Mu Qingyao, Jian Rui, Bo Wen, Lin Meiyu, Shen Lian, Shen Xueyi and, naturally, their newest unwilling passenger.

Ning Ruomei.

Eight people aboard made the Spirit Boat considerably more crowded than usual, especially with everyone instinctively keeping some distance from Ning Ruomei.

The purple-haired beauty sat silently near the rear under watch, her previous confidence having disappeared somewhere between seeing Damian erase eighty-two cultivators with a single spell and watching her companions get purified, cremated and scattered into the atmosphere.

Damian left her alone, as he had something considerably more interesting to examine.

Himself!

He leaned against the side of the Spirit Boat as it accelerated away from Willowbank Front and opened his updated Attribute record.

Damian stared at the numbers.

Then stared some more.

"...Jesus."

He had known the harvest was enormous, but actually processing what those numbers meant was different.

There was simply too much power available.

His fingers tightened with effortless strength, yet his Dexterity was so absurdly high that controlling that strength felt natural rather than clumsy.

His body had become frighteningly responsive.

Strength at 25.

Dexterity at 34.

Agility at 28.

Constitution at 31.

Damian suddenly remembered two Character Sheets he had inspected what felt like forever ago.

Stella, a Level 9 Fighter.

STR 16.

DEX 10.

AGI 13.

CON 12.

Then Ronan, an overall Level 13 Adept.

STR 15.

DEX 18.

AGI 21.

CON 14.

Damian blinked.

"...I’ve completely surpassed both of them."

While not necessarily in combat ability, but in raw Attributes?

It wasn’t even close anymore!

Damian’s Strength exceeded both.

His Dexterity nearly doubled Ronan’s and was more than triple Stella’s.

His Agility had passed the absurd twenty-one that originally made Ronan look superhuman.

And his Constitution?

31!!!

Damian could probably let his old Earth self punch him repeatedly and eventually need to stop because the poor bastard broke a wrist.

Even the mental gap had become comical.

Stella possessed INT 5, WIS 5 and SPI 5.

Ronan had INT 6, WIS 6 and SPI 8.

Damian now possessed 15.5 Intelligence, 16.8 Wisdom and 19.5 Spirit.

Of course, Damian was not stupid enough to conclude that he could now automatically beat Ronan in a sword fight.

The old drunkard possessed decades of battlefield experience, Master-level Dual Longsword Mastery, numerous Adept Specializations and enough dirty tricks to qualify as his own criminal syllabus.

Having better hardware did not suddenly download forty years of experience into Damian’s skull.

Well...

Actually, his System occasionally did exactly that.

Tsk, bad example.

Still!

Raw Attributes and practical combat mastery were not the same thing.

If anything, Damian finally understood why Ronan had looked so grim when Selene revealed Damian had reached Adept.

The man had probably expected Damian to spend years catching up physically.

Instead, a few days later Damian’s Character Sheet had basically looked at Ronan’s best natural advantages and said ’Yoink’!

And the Hidden Attributes were no less interesting.

PER 7.5.

CHA 12.4.

LCK 4.2.

His Perception had more than doubled from the miserable three he originally possessed.

Charisma had climbed far beyond his naturally respectable seven, which perhaps explained why his general presence had become increasingly difficult for people to ignore.

As for Luck?

The ordinary adult possessed roughly one.

Damian had 4.2.

He nodded solemnly.

"Skill issue."

Some people simply needed to be luckier.

Hehe!

Unfortunately, improving his Attributes had caused several other abilities to change with them.

Damian began checking.

<Cultivation Prodigy> came first.

[Current INT: 15.5.]

[Current Cultivation Speed Bonus: +155%.]

Then <Heaven-Devouring Circulation>.

[Current CON: 31.3.]

[Current Cultivation Speed Bonus: +313%.]

Damian’s eyebrows slowly rose.

Three hundred and thirteen percent?!

His Constitution had exploded so violently that the Feat was now providing more than four times ordinary base cultivation speed by itself!

And that was before <Cultivation Prodigy>, his Perfection Five Elements Harmonization Art, environmental advantages, pills, formations or anything else became involved.

"...Okay, cultivation is about to become stupid again."

<Purified Qi> had similarly benefited.

[Current WIS: 16.8.]

[Current Purified Qi Bonus: +168%.]

Its doubled cultivation requirement remained annoying, but the exchange had become increasingly obscene.

Whether it was foundation purity, Qi stability, Daoist Art attack power, Daoist Art casting speed, Daoist Art effectiveness, or Qi efficiency, all of them now benefited from the same one-hundred-and-sixty-eight-percent scaling!

Then came one of Damian’s favorites.

<Divine Sense>.

Base Spirit Sense range equaled WIS multiplied by PER.

16.8 × 7.5.

126 meters.

Then <Divine Sense> doubled it.

[Current Base Spirit Sense Range: 126 Meters.]

[Current Divine Sense Range: 252 Meters.]

Damian silently expanded his awareness.

The entire Spirit Boat appeared inside his perception, then the air around them, then clouds.

There were also the trees far below, the birds crossing through the surrounding sky, and the cultivators aboard this very vessel.

Everything within two hundred and fifty-two meters existed around Damian in a seamless three-dimensional field.

His mouth slowly curved upward.

Nice!

<Martial Adept> was next.

Its bonus equaled the average of STR, DEX and AGI.

So 25 plus 34.4 plus 28.2 divided by 3.

[Current Martial Adept Physical Skill Damage Bonus: +29.2%.]

That alone made his future swordsmanship nastier.

Then Damian reached the truly hilarious one.

<Boon of Spell Recall>.

((INT × WIS) ÷ SPI) × LCK.

He quickly calculated it.

15.5 times 16.8 divided by 19.5 then multiplied by 4.2.

[Current Spell Recall Chance: 56.09%.]

Damian’s eyes widened.

"More than half?!"

Every successful Spell Slot expenditure now had better than even odds of immediately refunding itself!

And <Lucky> could still force an eligible failed outcome once per day!

Granted, today’s use had already gone into recovering that Level 5 Spell Slot after his ridiculous <Fireball>.

But tomorrow?

Heh!

His new Divine Cantrips had changed as well.

<Guidance> now increased all Attributes by 15.5% for 16.8 seconds.

<Resistance> reduced incoming damage by 15.5% for 16.8 seconds.

That was particularly disgusting because both cost nothing to invoke.

Damian could simply keep using them!

Then there was <Battle God>.

Its current Future Kill Experience Increase remained at 79.6%, but the cross-realm interaction needed one clarification.

The percentage primarily amplified kill-derived cultivation progression in Shengyuan.

Valorian Experience simulation handled the effect more conservatively as fractional increases did not bleed directly into every Experience reward.

Instead, every complete hundred-percent threshold added another full multiple to qualifying Valorian kill Experience.

So 79.6% meant nothing additional yet, but a full 100% or more meant that the Valorian side gained one extra full multiple.

Damian rubbed his chin.

"So basically, Shengyuan accepts decimals while Valoria wants whole coupons."

Fine, he could work with that!

Next came <Demonic Plundering Dao Body> and <Qi Transfer>, both of which had originally been sitting at a neat 10% when Damian acquired them because their relevant Attributes had also been sitting at 10.

That was very much no longer the case.

<Demonic Plundering Dao Body> scaled directly with Spirit, and Damian’s current SPI was 19.5.

[Feat: Demonic Plundering Dao Body

Current SPI: 19.5.

Current Plundering Ratio: 19.5%.]

Nearly 20%.

Which meant that every compatible Attribute extracted from someone he personally killed now gave him almost a fifth of that target’s value rather than merely a tenth!

And the living-target side was equally ridiculous!

If Damian successfully overpowered somebody and chose to drain Cultivation Base or compatible Experience instead of an Attribute, he could now convert 19.5% of whatever eligible progression he devoured.

Almost one-fifth of another person’s accumulated effort!

Then came <Qi Transfer>, and its two numerical effects scaled separately.

Cultivation Base transfer followed INT while Attribute transfer followed WIS.

[Feat: Qi Transfer

Current INT: 15.5.

Current WIS: 16.8.

Current Cultivation Base Transfer Efficiency: 15.5%.

Current Attribute Transfer Efficiency: 16.8%.]

Damian rubbed his chin.

So if he permanently surrendered 100 points of compatible Cultivation Base to somebody, they would currently receive 15.5 points.

If he surrendered 10 points of an Attribute?

The recipient would gain 1.68.

...Indeed, not exactly efficient.

But that wasn’t the point!

Damian could farm Cultivation Base ridiculously fast, steal Attributes through <Demonic Plundering Dao Body>, and then turn portions of those accumulated gains into permanent growth for people under him!

And unlike those two effects, transferring compatible Skills, Specializations, Daoist Arts and Martial Skills remained a full transfer rather than being reduced by an efficiency percentage!

His smile slowly widened.

"Faction building simulator indeed."

With the Attribute audit complete, Damian finally turned toward the truly beautiful number waiting for him.

[Current Skill Points: 554.]

"Hehehe..."

Mu Qingyao glanced over. "What are you laughing about now?"

"Nothing important." Damian answered with a cough.

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously and glared at him, but Damian wisely avoided her and opened his Bag of Holding, causing seven Mage manuals to emerge.

Time to spend!

The <Skill Upgrade System> immediately recognized them.

Learning costs remained wonderfully predictable.

Level 1 spell was 1 Skill Point, a Level 2 was 2 Skill Points, and so on in a linear fashion.

Even better, <Myriad Arts Master> reduced compatible combat-ability costs by half.

Damian selected all seven new manuals.

[Compatible Spell Manuals detected.]

[Myriad Arts Master detected.]

[Adjusted Total Learn Cost: 16 Skill Points.]

[Learn all compatible Spells?]

"Yes."

Knowledge poured into Damian’s mind, seven completely different magical structures unfolding almost simultaneously.

[Name: Lightning Bolt

Type: Level 3 Evocation Spell

Grade: Novice

Power: 150% Lightning Damage

Effect: Releases a concentrated destructive bolt of Lightning energy.]

[Name: Animate Dead

Type: Level 3 Necromancy Spell

Grade: Novice

Effect: Raises one compatible corpse as either a Skeleton or Zombie for an unlimited duration. The resulting Undead retains 15.5% of the applicable Attributes possessed during life.]

Damian paused.

Permanent undead?

Interesting.

His newly appointed Goddess of Life was going to love that one.

Moving on!

[Name: Ice Storm

Type: Level 4 Evocation Spell

Grade: Novice

Power: 300% Frost Damage

Effect: Creates a violent Frost storm across a targeted area of approximately 10 to 15 meters. Applies Light Freeze.

Current Duration: 16.8 Seconds.]

[Name: Conjure Minor Elemental

Type: Level 4 Conjuration Spell

Grade: Novice

Effect: Permanently summons one Minor Elemental in one of four available forms: Fire Imp / Water Spirit / Wind Sprite / Earth Mini-Golem.

Current Summon Attribute Ratio: 15.5% of caster Attributes.]

Damian’s eyes immediately brightened.

Permanent!

That word was dangerous around someone with business instincts.

[Name: Wall of Fire

Type: Level 4 Evocation Spell

Grade: Novice

Power: 250% Fire Damage

Effect: Creates a continuous wall of magical flame extending up to 50 meters in length and 20 meters vertically.

Current Duration: 16.8 Seconds.]

Holy shit, fifty whole meters?!

Damian immediately imagined battle formations, then trenches, then monster hordes... then Corpse Qi cultivators running directly into a fifty-meter wall of their favorite natural predator.

Wonderful!

[Name: Wall of Stone

Type: Level 5 Earth Spell

Grade: Novice

Power: 120% Earth Damage

Effect: Creates highly moldable magical stone structures with permanent duration.]

So fancy English for ’permanent construction magic’, huh?

Now that was sexy!

And finally...

[Name: Chain Lightning

Type: Level 5 Evocation Spell

Grade: Novice

Power: 500% Lightning Damage

Effect: Strikes one primary target before jumping to up to three additional targets.

Jumping Damage: 500% → 450% → 400% → 350% Lightning Damage.]

Damian slowly smiled.

Five hundred percent?

Good heavens!

He was apparently done pretending to be reasonable.

[16 Skill Points consumed.]

[Skill Points Remaining: 538.]

Damian considered upgrading them immediately, then stopped.

He had not used a single one, and increasing abilities before understanding their ordinary performance would be stupid.

His old arsenal was another matter as those spells had proven themselves repeatedly.

So Damian went shopping.

<Firebolt>.

<Frost Ray>.

<Bone Chill>.

All three main offensive Cantrips went straight toward the top.

[Firebolt advanced.]

[Adept → Master → Grandmaster.]

[Power: 20% → 50% → 100% Fire Damage.]

[Status: Severe Sear → Extreme Sear → Persistent Sear.]

[6 Skill Points consumed.]

[Frost Ray advanced.]

[Adept → Master → Grandmaster.]

[Power: 20% → 50% → 100% Frost Damage.]

[Status: Severe Freeze → Extreme Freeze → Persistent Freeze.]

[6 Skill Points consumed.]

[Bone Chill advanced.]

[Novice → Journeyman → Adept → Master → Grandmaster.]

[Power: 5% → 10% → 20% → 50% → 100% Necrotic Damage.]

[Status: Mild Decay → Moderate Decay → Severe Decay → Extreme Decay → Persistent Decay.]

[8 Skill Points consumed.]

20 Skill Points, easy.

Then came the dependable classics.

<Burning Hands>, <Mage Armor>, <Speak With Animals>, <Speak With Dead>, <Misty Step>, and finally...

<Fireball>!

Especially <Misty Step>!

After experiencing just how ridiculous upcast teleportation became, Damian wanted every improvement possible squeezed into that spell.

<Burning Hands> reached Grandmaster.

[Name: Burning Hands.

Type: Level 1 Evocation Spell.

Grade: Grandmaster (Signature)

Power: 640% Fire Damage.

Effect: Releases a huge cone of flame that covers the entire area 180 degrees in front of the caster for up to 50 meters. Targets struck suffer guaranteed Destructive Burn.

Limit Break Cost: 100 Skill Points.]

<Mage Armor> reached Grandmaster.

[Name: Mage Armor

Type: Level 1 Abjuration Spell.

Grade: Grandmaster (Signature)

Protection Value: 45 degrees.

Barrier Stability: 350%

Resistance: 30%

Effect: Creates a semi corporeal full body armor that first resists damage, reducing its value, before absorbing the rest. It drains Mental Energy to function.

Limit Break Cost: 100 Skill Points.]

<Speak With Animals> and <Speak With Dead> also reached Grandmaster, although <Myriad Arts Master> refused to subsidize either one because apparently talking to wolves and interrogating corpses did not qualify as combat arts.

The new Speak With Animals allowed for many new species, including beasts and mythical beasts, where only common animals were possible before.

The new Speak With Dead though, allowed him to raise half-body corpses and much older corpses not recently killed, and his five answers were the same, but the corpse’s clarity in answering had increased and its ability to resist answering had greatly weakened.

When <Misty Step> reached Grandmaster, Damian felt it.

[Name: Misty Step

Type: Level 2 Conjuration Spell.

Grade: Grandmaster (Signature)

Effect: Instantly relocates the caster to an unobstructed location within visual range.

Maximum Range: 280 meters.

Restrictions: Destination must contain sufficient space for the caster and cannot be completely obstructed by spatial interference.

Limit Break Cost: 300 Skill Points]

Then Damian dumped the largest amount into <Fireball>.

[Name: Fireball

Type: Level 3 Evocation Spell

Grade: Grandmaster (Signature)

Power: 2500% Fire Damage

Effect: Launches a humongous sphere of flame that violently detonates over a broad area of 150 meters. Survivors struck directly suffer guaranteed Annihilation.

Limit Break Cost: 800 Skill Points.]

When the final wave of understanding settled, Damian remained silent for several moments.

The spells felt different.

No, calling them ’different’ was underselling it!

Their structures sat inside his mind with the familiarity of abilities practiced for years rather than days, and several had undergone changes so extreme that Damian almost wondered whether calling them the same spell was still accurate.

Take <Burning Hands>.

The Novice version he originally learned produced 40% Fire Damage across a short cone in front of him.

Now, it was 640% Fire Damage over a range reaching 50 whole meters with full 180 degrees of coverage in front of him!

And instead of the measly Minor Burn it originally inflicted, anything properly caught inside suffered a guaranteed Destructive Burn!

This meant that anything hit would be turned into charcoal instantly or rendered useless, not limited to flesh too.

Damian’s lips twitched.

He had just watched what a much weaker fire spell did when introduced to Nightmare Corpse Sect cultivators.

The idea of turning this version loose upon them was rapidly crossing the line from ’combat’ into ’war crime’.

Then there was <Mage Armor>.

Its original function had been rather simple, create magical armor around an otherwise lightly protected Mage and help keep sharp objects outside the important squishy bits.

The Grandmaster version had become an actual defensive system.

30% Resistance reduced an incoming attack to 70% of its full damage before the 45 degrees of damage even needed to absorb what remained, while the once relatively simple magical coating had become semi-corporeal full-body armor.

For comparison, degrees was a lesser used measure of power, typically for Legend and above skills and spells.

1 degree of damage was equivalent to a Novice Firebolt received without any defensive covering on a normal person with 5 points of CON. To compare further, something like Novice Burning Hands did 5 Degrees of damage.

Then came <Misty Step>, and Damian stared at the 280-meter range again.

He had literally just upcast the old version into a Level 4 Spell Slot to reach 60 meters during the battle.

Now its ordinary Grandmaster version could throw him 280 meters anywhere he could see!

No Upcasting!

No special preparation!

Just... Poof!

And he was gone!

If he ever needed to appear behind some smug bastard who believed standing 200 meters away made him safe?

Surprise motherfucker!

And finally...

<Fireball>.

Damian looked at that one for several seconds longer than the others.

The original Novice spell had possessed 150% Fire Damage with a roughly 5-meter destructive area.

That same spell had just been upcast to Level 5 and, with everything else stacking behind it, erased most of a Nightmare Corpse Sect battle force.

The Grandmaster version now possessed...

2,500% Fire Damage over a 150-meter affected area, and guaranteed Annihilation upon anything surviving a proper direct strike.

Annihilation... did that even need explaining? Without high fire resistance, that meant that you were going to be given the Nightmare Corpse Sect treatment.

"..."

Right.

Apparently, the spell he had used earlier today was now the ’small’ Fireball.

What even the fuck was going on here anymore?!

Even the Cantrips had transformed.

<Firebolt>, <Frost Ray> and <Bone Chill> had all reached 100% standardized damage while their associated conditions had crossed from Severe into Persistent.

Persistent meant that their effects, whether burning, freezing or decay, would continue FOREVER until you dispelled it.

This... this was beyond taking an arrow to the knee!

This was goddamn Amaterasu!

And these were Cantrips!

They were the cheap little spells specifically valued because a Mage could spam them repeatedly without burning prepared Spell Slots!

His previous Adept <Firebolt> had possessed 20% Fire Damage, and now Grandmaster made it five times stronger!

At that point, Damian was essentially walking around with repeatable attacks carrying the standardized power of proper low-level spells.

And that still wasn’t the most interesting part.

Damian’s gaze returned to the word appearing beside several spells, (Signature).

<Burning Hands>.

<Mage Armor>.

<Misty Step>.

<Fireball>.

All four now carried the designation.

In ordinary Valorian magical culture, a Signature Spell was exactly what the name implied.

It was essentially your spell, and not because nobody else could learn it, but because a Mage had practiced, refined and internalized that particular spell so thoroughly that casting it became closer to instinct than deliberate magical construction.

Most serious Mages eventually developed at least one spell that other people associated with them.

A famous fire specialist might become renowned for an exceptionally refined <Fireball>, while a battlefield Mage could spend decades turning some ordinary defensive spell into the technique that kept him alive through a hundred engagements.

True Signature Spells though? Those were usually the product of years or even decades of repetition.

That provided several practical benefits.

A Signature Spell was permanently engraved into the Mage’s active spellcasting repertoire and effectively treated as always prepared.

Manual casting became vastly easier because the Mage no longer needed to consciously reconstruct every portion of the formula from scratch.

Its magical framework was more stable, less wasteful and easier to maintain under pressure.

Upcasting and Metamagic were also considerably easier to apply because the Mage understood the spell well enough to know exactly how much strain each section of the structure could tolerate before something went horribly wrong.

Of course, using a prepared Spell Slot still consumed that Slot normally.

Signature did not mean free infinite Fireballs, unfortunately.

Damian sighed mournfully.

Still, the benefits were ridiculous!

Especially for him.

Normal Mages slowly developed Signature Spells because those were the handful of spells they had used thousands upon thousands of times.

Damian had just manufactured four of them in a few minutes by feeding dead people’s souls into the <Skill Upgrade System>.

"...Cheating really is wonderful."

And there was another advantage unique to his situation.

<Boon of Spell Recall> already gave Damian a 56.09% chance to recover an expended Spell Slot.

<Quickened Spell> could accelerate compatible casts.

<Transmuted Spell> allowed compatible elemental magic to change its elemental expression.

<Spell Sniper> extended the effective range of offensive spells.

Then his absurd Attributes supported all of it from underneath.

A conventional Mage might possess a Signature <Fireball>.

Damian possessed a Grandmaster Signature <Fireball> that could be Upcast, Quickened, Transmuted, extended through his existing spell-range advantages, and potentially refund the Spell Slot afterward!

"...Okay."

That was nasty.

Very nasty!

How long had Damian actually been a Mage? Not even a week!

He had Signature Spells within days!

A veteran Mage hearing that would probably ask him to repeat himself, then accuse him of lying, then suffer some form of spiritual injury after discovering it was true.

Heh!

Damian could live with that.

After all listed Mage upgrades, his remaining count was still impressive.

[Skill Points Remaining: 435.]

Damian briefly checked his Cleric magic too.

Nothing, no grades nor advancement options.

It seemed that Divine Spells simply did not possess mastery Grades under the <Skill Upgrade System>.

They were Divine invocations rather than ordinary learned spell structures, and therefore could not be advanced through Skill Points like Mage magic.

"Fair enough."

He had already received an entire second spellcasting system through divine nepotism, so complaining would be greedy.

As such, Damian switched realms and let one hundred points immediately vanish into <Artifact Refining>.

[Artifact Refining advanced.]

[High Grade Two → Low Grade Three.]

[100 Skill Points consumed.]

[Skill Points Remaining: 335.]

A massive torrent of refining knowledge entered him.

Grade Three metallurgy, more complex spiritual channels, higher energy tolerances, and advanced material interactions.

Damian closed his eyes for several seconds and smiled.

His planned Flying Sword had just become considerably more interesting!

Then he opened the <Seven-Turn Sword Art>, as Great Success was no longer enough.

"Perfect it."

[Seven-Turn Sword Art advanced.]

[Great Success → Mastery.]

[3 Skill Points consumed.]

[Seven-Turn Sword Art advanced.]

[Mastery → Perfection.]

[5 Skill Points consumed.]

[Skill Points Remaining: 327.]

BOOM!

Damian’s understanding of the sword transformed!

The seven transitions no longer felt like techniques at all, but they were simply possibilities!

Damian slowly opened his eyes.

"...Yeah."

He definitely needed to finish that Flying Sword ASAP!