Chapter 257: A Very Big Move

Following that same logic, and based off what he could see on the current ranking ladder, Uhtred reached a clear conclusion: the main difference between talent grades wasn’t just leveling speed, but rather, the ability to cross bottlenecks very easily.

The next realm evolution, for instance — the Nascent-Awakened Realm barrier — would present another hurdle.

For him, crossing it would be infinitely easier than for anyone else thanks to his Primordial Grade talent. It would likely be relatively smooth for Zara as well, but it certainly wouldn’t be easy for ascenders with Epic, Rare, Uncommon, or Common Grade talents.

In fact, Uhtred reckoned a Common Grade might find it outright impossible to cross into the Awakened Realm at all. The Mortal-Nascent Realm barrier had already proven to be an insurmountable wall for them anyway — to his knowledge, not a single Common Grade on the planet had crossed it yet.

So I’m guessing at some major barrier further down the line, even a Legendary Grade will begin to slow down and hit a wall... Uhtred realized.

It also meant that, at the end of the day, King Alexei’s Unique Grade would eventually pull far ahead of Perfection and Diya’s Epic Grades, no matter how hard they ground — the exact same way Uhtred was bound to pull away from Zara much further down the line.

Uhtred gathered his roiling thoughts and refocused on the present, letting out a light sigh.

"I see what you mean," he said, looking at Zara. "Well, that also means this Legendary Grade ’Hero’ kid is only going to keep climbing the ranks..."

"...But still, it’s not like we’re just gonna sit back and wait for him to catch up, no?" He looked at Zara with a playful raise of his brow.

"He’s a non-issue..." Zara shrugged, a sly smirk touching her lips. "Unless you personally decide to slack off. In which case, I’ll happily surpass you and beat you to a pulp until you get back on your feet."

Uhtred chuckled at that — a lighthearted sentiment that was also shared around the table.

Slowly, the lingering expressions of shock on the faces of Dennis, Minh Quan, and Diya began to ease. They had always known Uhtred operated on a completely different plane of power compared to everyone else. The same went for Zara.

Now that she had openly revealed her Legendary Grade talent — and strongly implied that Uhtred held a Legendary Grade or something even higher — it simply served to confirm what was already glaringly obvious.

"A lot of things have shifted on the rankings, though," Uhtred said after a brief pause, his gaze lingering on his ranking panel.

The power rankings themselves hadn’t changed all too much. Of course, there had been minor shifts up and down, along with a fresh entry breaking into the top twenty: Glorious Eagle Vance.

However, the most drastic changes were mainly on the wealth leaderboard.

Uhtred had shot up to the number two spot on the global standings, sitting directly behind Jolene Okafor. The whopping two million Multiversal Tokens he had gotten after his channel capacity went from a hundred to ten thousand, had turned him into a rich man overnight.

As for the remaining five hundred thousand tokens sitting on top of that staggering total, he had earned roughly three hundred thousand through extensive trade deals with Jolene Okafor, supplying Inert Crystals globally on a massive scale throughout the past year.

The rest was simply the System’s automatic valuation of his territory, assets, and everything else under his banner.

Altogether, this was the closest anyone had ever come to dethroning Jolene Okafor in terms of wealth — and that woman was filthy rich.

Of course, one had to keep in mind that she had already crossed the Mortal-Nascent Realm barrier herself, meaning her own channel subscriber limit had also expanded to ten thousand.

Yet that didn’t automatically guarantee she had a full capacity.

Through casual conversations with Zara, Diya, and several other ascenders, Uhtred had learned that very few people enjoyed maxed-out subscribers like he did. Even more, not everyone could get away with charging the maximum System-allowed fee of two hundred Multiversal Tokens per subscription for a Nascent Realm stream.

Basically, that value still hinged on how desperate the multiversal audience was to watch your content.

And this pattern could clearly be seen in the current wealth rankings.

Zara, for example, had shot up to the third spot with more than two million Multiversal Tokens to her name, even without owning a territory or a dungeon of her own.

Uhtred was willing to bet that at least ninety-five percent of that money had come from her channel, especially after the interview in the Tower.

She had definitely maxed out her subscriber limit and charged the full two hundred multiversal tokens for each subscription.

Literally everyone who had entered the Tower had also seen a vast increase to their wealth because of the surge of subscribers it gave — even though none of the others had managed to completely cap their viewer capacity like Uhtred and Zara.

Jolene Okafor, on the other hand, had not participated in the Tower trial. Consequently, the bulk of her wealth still stemmed from her vast commercial empire, with the surge of new subscribers accounting for at most fifty to seventy percent of her current wealth value.

"At the end of the day, she’s just a fucking business prodigy. I’m glad we have her as an ally." Uhtred sighed softly.

Dennis, who had also been carefully scanning the changes to the rankings, suddenly looked up at Uhtred, his expression turning grave.

"About Jolene Okafor, boss... I didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news when you’ve barely had time to settle back in, but there have been some... attacks you need to be made aware of."

"Attacks?" Uhtred’s brow furrowed instantly, his tone darkening. "By whom? The World Government?"

"No, boss," Dennis shook his head grimly. "This time, it’s the Ancient Variants... They’ve finally made a move... a very big move..."