Chapter 153 Transcendent Tier, Legendary Rank, and the Path of Advancement

Evening.

The White Chickadee Tavern.

Xia Nan sat in his usual spot in the corner of the hall, several steaming bowls arranged on the table in front of him.

Stewed meat, mushroom soup, and white bread—he didn't even need to look. It was, naturally, his favorite Set Meal No. 3.

His status as a Class Holder and the growing fame of his "Greysword" moniker in Rivervale Town might have drawn a bit more attention from certain adventurers.

For Xia Nan himself, however, his downtime between quests was barely any different than before.

He still woke up at the crack of dawn, ate breakfast, and headed out to the sparsely populated outskirts of town to train all morning. Midday, he would return to the tavern for a bowl of mushroom soup and a short break before resuming his training.

At night, he might have a small glass of ale, order a few dishes, and sit in the tavern for a few extra hours, listening to the surrounding adventurers boast and chat while he gathered useful information.

If the night's patrons included a bard or a drunken veteran adventurer who loved to talk, he would sit and listen right up until it was time for bed.

If no one was worth paying attention to, he still wouldn't retire early. Instead, he would use that time to practice his combat techniques and increase his proficiency.

With Xia Nan's current Constitution, he only needed six hours of rest to fully recharge, ensuring he would be full of energy and vigor the next day.

The remaining eighteen hours could all be spent on his own affairs.

Although such a daily routine seemed a bit monotonous and dull, it was certainly fulfilling.

At the very least, watching his combat technique proficiency slowly tick up on his Attribute Panel gave him a profound sense of accomplishment. He even secretly enjoyed it.

Coupled with his growing stash of savings and his habit of avoiding gambling, drugs, and frivolous spending, he was able to maintain a rather comfortable standard of living despite his grueling training.

Today didn't seem any different from the rest.

Rockhammer, Fey Wind, the Adventurers' Association... after spending the entire day wrapping up the aftermath of his previous quest, Xia Nan had returned to the White Chickadee Tavern.

However, unlike the past few months of drinking alone in the corner of the hall, there were now two figures sitting across from him.

"I still think six gold coins was a bit expensive. I should have made him throw in two pieces of emery cloth to save some money," Abi said, his face full of regret as he took a swig of ale. He was wearing a brand-new set of leather armor. "Do you think if I go back and ask for them now, the blacksmith will give them to me?"

The harvest from this quest had been plentiful. Even after distributing the rewards proportionally based on their contributions, Abi had still earned a few dozen gold coins.

For someone who had shed his identity as a farmer and been an adventurer for less than a year, this was the largest sum of money he had ever seen.

It was enough to outfit himself with a decent set of gear.

But perhaps because he had never possessed such wealth, the rookie adventurer was rather timid when it came to spending it.

He had browsed the Rockhammer shop for quite a while, but in the end, he couldn't bring himself to buy the high-quality leather armor he had set his sights on.

Instead, he had gone to Hickory Forge across the way and bought a cheaper piece for six gold coins.

Of course, calling it "cheap" was only true in comparison to the expensive, premium gear in the Rockhammer shop.

Its actual quality was quite decent—at least far better than the battle-worn antique he had been wearing before.

"Go back now?" Adeline wiped the beer foam from the corner of her mouth, giving him an odd look. "Don't forget, you haggled with that poor blacksmith for two whole hours, forcing an eight-gold, five-silver leather armor down by twenty-five silver coins. If you manage not to get kicked out, this meal is on me."

As for why she knew the details so clearly... it was naturally because she had been there.

She had watched the blacksmith's expression shift from polite and friendly, to stiff, and finally to a furious red.

If Adeline hadn't forcefully dragged Abi out when he tried to keep haggling, and then bought a small dagger at full price to smooth things over, she suspected he might not have walked out of the shop at all.

Xia Nan sat across from the two of them. He didn't speak, merely eating spoonfuls of his mushroom soup.

Adeline had previously hinted to him about retiring. After all, her inner obsession had been resolved, and her savings were enough to afford her a fairly comfortable retirement.

But having worked as an adventurer for so many years, being relatively young, and lacking any severe injuries that hindered her daily life, she had long grown accustomed to a routine of traveling back and forth between Rivervale Town and the Misty Forest.

Asking her to suddenly return to the fields, working from sunrise to sunset, was not something she could easily adapt to.

After thinking it over following the quest, Adeline would likely continue operating as an adventurer in Rivervale Town.

However, her frequency of taking on quests—which was considered absurdly high among ordinary adventurers—would probably drop significantly.

She would likely take ten days to half a month off between each expedition, gradually adjusting her pace.

As for Abi, although he was in the hot-blooded phase typical of rookie adventurers—seduced by wealth and power, itching to take on quests back-to-back without a single day of rest—judging by his personality, he most likely wouldn't leave the Green Blood Squad. Instead, he would follow behind Adeline and grow steadily.

"Right, you asked me earlier if I'd ever been to Nym. Is it..." Adeline looked at Xia Nan, an inquiring tone in her voice.

"I have a quest that requires me to make a trip there," Xia Nan answered with a nod, seeing no reason to hide it. "But I still don't know the exact details."

After learning from Molly, the receptionist at the Adventurers' Association, that the destination for his Class Holder advancement quest would most likely be Nym, a major city near Rivervale Town, Xia Nan had been trying to figure out if he could gather relevant information about it through various channels.

After all, up until now, his entire knowledge of Nym consisted only of superficial impressions: "prosperous," "commercially developed," and "the residence of the Half-Elf Hai'an."

That was why he had brought it up when he ran into Adeline in the tavern earlier.

Unfortunately, because she had been consumed by revenge all these years, she had spent almost all her time in Rivervale Town and the Misty Forest.

If you asked her about the traits of goblins or how to hunt them, she could talk endlessly for an entire night.

But when it came to unrelated knowledge, she didn't know much more than he did.

"Nym, huh..." Joining the topic, Abi sighed in amazement. "I heard that every single building there is as grand and magnificent as the Sun God Church in Kalanfor."

"That's an exaggeration. At most, a few core streets in the city center are well-planned," Adeline said, shaking her head with a subtle smile playing on her lips. "However, Amaunator's church was probably in the half of the city that got destroyed back then. For you to say that isn't very auspicious."

"So what?" Abi craned his neck, offering a stubbornly classic retort. "Nym isn't a small village like Kalanfor that only managed to develop by sucking the blood out of Rivervale Town! It's a proper major city! The ratio of adventurers there might be a little smaller, but there are plenty of large organizations like the Church. Take that Druid you showed me at the top of the Association's quest board—he just dirtied some water, and they slapped such a massive bounty on him. I don't believe anyone would dare cause trouble in a place like that!"

Seeing Abi's flushed cheeks as he argued with Adeline, looking somewhat drunk, Xia Nan decided not to join their conversation.

He took another two spoonfuls of mushroom soup, pondering his upcoming training session. Should he allocate more time to [Fang Hunt] and strive to max it out at lv5 as soon as possible? Or should he continue developing new ways to use [Gravity Control], so that at least in combat he could...

"Creak."

The freezing wind of the autumn evening howled through the crack of the door, pouring into the tavern.

Two figures—one thin, one burly—appeared at the entrance.

Xia Nan instinctively glanced over.

He took only a single glance before instantly withdrawing his gaze.

An indigo ramie robe, a wooden staff, and a refined appearance that made his age hard to guess; short red hair, a full suit of heavy armor, and a resolute, stern expression.

Without a doubt, the people walking into the tavern were the exact same high-tier adventurers he had encountered in the Association hall back then.

However...

'Why are there two missing?'

He remembered that when he ran into them last time, there had also been a half-orc and a blonde Elf.

Right now, only the mage and the human Warrior were left.

'Did they already finish their quest and disband the party, or is it because...' he guessed inwardly.

Deep down, however, Xia Nan felt a peculiar sensation.

When he first met them, he hadn't yet obtained a Class Level. He was just an ordinary, bottom-tier adventurer.

He knew they were likely high-tier Class Holders with outstanding strength, but he had been completely unable to judge exactly how strong they were or how vast the gap was between them. It had felt as if they were shrouded in a layer of mist.

But now, having used [Gravity Control] to fill the final gap required for his advancement, Xia Nan had truly become the Class Holder he had always dreamed of being.

Putting everything else aside, just the two "Perception" attribute points granted upon leveling up allowed him to break through his previous visual limits and clearly sense the sheer strength of those two.

Yes, they were strong.

But they weren't unfathomably strong, not like the Barbarian Forgan.

'I wonder if they've reached the Transcendent Tier.'

Forgan had mentioned it to him before.

Class Holders on the Aifala Continent were roughly divided into three tiers:

lv1-10, lv11-20, and lv21 and above.

The first tier, "lv1-10," was his current bracket. There wasn't much to say about it—it was the starting phase for Class Holders, the base and lower-middle sections of the pyramid.

The latter two, however, were respectively known as the "Transcendent Tier" and the "Legendary rank."

To some extent, if the heroes from the mythical epics told by bards truly existed, their strength would basically fall into those two tiers.

Forgan hadn't given him a detailed breakdown of the exact power levels of Transcendent Tier and Legendary rank experts.

But the sheer shockwaves from his battle back then—which had nearly destroyed Kalanfor—were enough to prove how terrifying experts of that caliber were.

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to call them walking "humanoid natural disasters."

Thinking of this, no matter how grounded Xia Nan normally was, his imagination still ran wild.

If he could reach that tier in the future...

Setting everything else aside, if he just trained the [Gravity Control] combat technique to lv3, or even lv5 proficiency, it should be able to produce the same level of destruction.

After all, it was one of the four fundamental forces of nature. If he really managed to develop it, let alone a rural town that couldn't even compare to a fifth- or sixth-tier county from his past life, even something on a larger scale...

Xia Nan vigorously shook his head.

His youthful face reflected in the crystal-clear ale. On the Attribute Panel that popped up, the pitiful "1" on the proficiency progress bar for [Gravity Control] brought him crashing back to reality.

As the foundation of everything, the prerequisite for all his fantasies...

Whether it was the Transcendent Tier or the Legendary rank...

First and foremost, he needed to know:

—how to level up.

Yes, even now, five days after becoming a Class Holder, Xia Nan still hadn't figured out how exactly he was supposed to raise his Class Level.

Although he possessed an Attribute Panel similar to the games in his past life, the experience point system hadn't crossed over with him.

Aside from increasing his actual combat experience and honing the proficiency of his combat techniques, killing monsters provided no other direct benefits to his combat strength.

Behind the [Meteor Blade Hunter] lv1 in his class tab, there wasn't even a progress bar.

Although he had heard Forgan mention that raising one's Class Level was also tied to combat techniques, he had no way of knowing the exact relationship between the two.

And looking further ahead, class advancement would be an even bigger headache.

As mentioned before, the reason Basic Classes like "Warrior" and "Ranger" were so widespread across the continent was precisely because of their broad applicability and clear progression paths.

The prerequisites for an Advanced Class, whether a related ritual was required, the unique traits of each Advanced Class... all of it was recorded in class manuals in immense and accurate detail.

As for his [Meteor Blade Hunter], although it seemed incredibly niche, the addition of [Gravity Control] made it look like it possessed massive potential.

Yet Xia Nan knew absolutely nothing about what path he should take or what preparations he needed to make for the future.

He didn't even know if there was anyone else in this world with the same class as him.

Considering the three combat techniques and the related Feat required to unlock [Meteor Blade Hunter]...

The possibility was infinitesimally small.

At this thought, Xia Nan felt a contradictory mix of gratification and frustration.

The gratification was akin to the thrill of accidentally triggering a hidden class in a game from his past life, along with the fantasies of the class's future potential.

The frustration naturally came from the murky road ahead, forcing him to grope his way across the river.

However, considering the rule that the Association Second Floor was strictly limited to Class Holders, as well as the [Adventurer's Guide] he had bought at the Association's entrance earlier...

The Association would likely provide some guidance for a self-taught Class Holder like him.

When he spoke with Molly that afternoon, she had subtly hinted at this as well.

Therefore, his most pressing priority right now was to head to Nym in five days and complete the quest issued by the Association.

Then, he would head up to the second floor and figure out how to level up his class.

Ideally, he could also gather some intel on class advancement to prepare for the path ahead.