Chapter 126: Division of Realms

Chapter 126 -110: Division of Realms

‘So this is the source of my Spirituality’s autonomous growth.’

‘I can’t believe I’m part of a privileged class!’

As Chen Qi read this, he finally understood why his spirituality frequency grew on its own.

He had previously thought all Transcendents were like this, but it turned out to be a privilege unique to the New Law.

Of course, it wasn’t without a price. For instance, he had already been blacklisted by the Four Symbols Book.

Fortunately, Chen Qi never intended to form a contract with it anyway, so it wasn’t much of a loss.

Previously, to “quell public opinion,” Chen Qi had to stop reading and deal with that whole mess.

After the situation calmed down, while waiting for the Source Ore to recover on its own, Chen Qi finally finished reading “Inner World General Knowledge” from cover to cover.

‘I never would have guessed. The Inner Ring World is already dominated by the New Law, while the Ancient Technique only exists in the Outer Ring World.’

The division between the new and ancient techniques completely refreshed Chen Qi’s understanding of Spirituality and the Extraordinary, directly raising his spirituality frequency to 42.

He had to admit, the New Law was convenient.

It could be said that this copy of “Inner World General Knowledge” was Chen Qi’s greatest reward from this battle.

* * *

“The New and Ancient Laws have contended for over 3,000 years. Although the Extraordinary landscape of the Inner World has not been completely unified, it is no longer as chaotic and shrouded in Mist as before.”

“As for Spirit Awakening, it has been completely picked apart and clarified, as it is the central point of contention between the two sides.”

“Inner World General Knowledge” recorded that there were two types of Spirit Awakening: Innate Awakening and Acquired Ritual Awakening.

So-called Innate Awakening meant that a lifeform, without relying on any external assistance, could completely control all of its own Spirituality and awaken on its own once it reached a certain stage of growth.

Once such a lifeform awakened, it could directly capture Spiritual Energy.

Generally speaking, only a small number of such individuals existed among intelligent lifeforms.

Among humans, a naturally-awakened person of Spirituality would often only appear once in millions.

In ancient times, these chosen ones were the main focus of competition among the major Extraordinary systems.

Many times, one or two geniuses could determine the rise or fall of an entire Extraordinary system.

But they were, after all, a minority. The Inner World was mostly populated by those who awakened through acquired means.

Acquired Awakeners, as the name implied, were those who had completed their Spirit Awakening through various rituals with the help of external forces.

Unlike Innate Awakeners, Acquired Awakeners could not directly access Spiritual Energy.

Therefore, they often needed to sign contracts with various entities to obtain Spiritual Energy.

Based on the object of the contract, Extraordinary systems could be further divided into two main categories.

The first category was contracting with a specific entity, such as the Four Symbols Book, which represents the heritage of Magic.

The second category was contracting with a specific type of Spiritual Energy, such as the various forms of Spiritual Qi represented by the heritage of Cultivation.

Of course, the second category of heritages never considered themselves to have signed a contract with Spiritual Energy.

They insisted that they had merely “anchored” a specific type of Spiritual Energy, and that everything was achieved through their own efforts, not granted by the outside world.

To some extent, this was indeed the case.

They used Secret Techniques to have their apprentices directly anchor a certain type of energy during the Spirit Awakening process.

But the compilers of “Inner World General Knowledge” still regarded their “anchoring” as a “contract.”

Because in essence, it was a type of exclusive contract.

The price paid by the Contractor was the inability to use other types of Spiritual Energy.

The “Spirit Realm Declaration,” or the New Law, was in essence just a rather special acquired awakening ritual.

The only difference was that its contracted party was very special: the mysterious and unfathomable Spirit Realm.

But since they were Acquired Awakeners, they naturally couldn’t capture Spiritual Energy on their own.

This was the root cause of Chen Qi’s current inability to capture Spiritual Energy.

Fortunately, the Spirit Realm granted its Awakened the privilege of having their Spirituality grow on its own. After reaching a certain spirituality frequency, they could capture Spiritual Energy by themselves.

This critical point was a spirituality frequency of 80, also known as the High Tier for Transcendents.

Before the birth of the New Law, the Inner World had no unified division of Realms. The major Extraordinary systems did their own thing, even deliberately creating distinctions.

After the New Law unified the Inner Ring World, the World Government, in order to end the chaos, established a unified division based on spirituality frequency.

To make it more palatable for the declining major Extraordinary systems, the World Government directly co-opted and selected the more representative names from each system for the specific Realm titles.

According to the World Government’s division:

Ordinary Person, Spirituality Frequency (36.1-36.9)

Apprentice (37-39)

Transcendent (40-100)

Controller (101-200)

Apostle (201-400)

Weaver (401-600)

Marquis of Ten Thousand Laws (601-800)

Throne (801-999)

Holy Sanctuary, Divine-like. Due to their special nature, no specific values were given.

The major heritages of the Inner Ring World were actually quite disdainful of the World Government’s use of spirituality frequency to divide the Realms.

But they had no choice but to bow to the new power.

Honestly, when Chen Qi saw this division of Realms, he felt a sense of despair.

Because a player’s starting point was [Controller].

The most significant feature of the Controller stage was mastering a unique power—isn’t that just like a player’s various Superpowers?

‘No wonder the veteran players aren’t enthusiastic about the various forms of knowledge from the outside world. They already possess the best.’

Indeed, if one treated the King’s Game as just a game, then focusing one’s efforts on developing Cards was the correct path.

But the power of the Cards ultimately didn’t belong to the player. At most, a player could be considered an “operator,” not someone who had truly mastered a unique power.

Moreover, since players were initially just ordinary people, their actual combat strength after obtaining a Card was likely pathetic compared to a true Controller.

Trudeau had left a long annotation here. Unexpectedly, the man seemed to have a rebellious streak and didn’t praise the strength of players too highly.

In his annotation, he compared the strength of players with the outside world, believing that a LV5 player could barely contend with a true Controller.

Given that Trudeau had been exposed to powerful Extraordinary heritages and had experienced a King’s Judgment, Chen Qi thought his judgment had a certain degree of credibility.

A player reaching LV5 would have already completed their ability puzzle and constructed an Apostle Armament, yet they could only contend with a Controller from the outside world.

‘Is it because a player’s Superpower is inherently fragmented, and only after being fully pieced together does it equate to a single, complete, unique power?’

As for the LV6 Apostle, Trudeau didn’t offer an evaluation.

Because he had never seen one.

Trudeau even suspected that the LV6 Apostle didn’t exist and was just a legend.

He had traveled all over the Lanyu Kingdom and found no trace of an Apostle taking action.

When a true Apostle made a move, the destruction caused would be far greater than the hundred-meter crater on the Carlos Plains.

* * *

“According to the information I gathered from headquarters, the strongest captains right now are only LV4.”

“As for whether it’s possible to create an Apostle Armament from just a single Card, it is theoretically possible.”

“But once that feat is accomplished, the player isn’t LV5, but directly LV6.”

“Because the hallmark of LV6 is the player using the card-shuffling mechanism to transfer the Apostle Armament’s ability to the core Card.”

‘That’s too big of a leap. Has any player actually achieved that?’

Chen Qi couldn’t help but suspect that the emergence of Traitors was because players found it too difficult to create an Apostle Armament from a single Card and had to find an alternative path.

LV5 itself was just a transitional stage.

Chen Qi had never deeply considered these issues before, as he felt they were too far off.

But as his mentality toward the King’s Game changed, figuring out how to clear it had become his top priority.

With his current understanding of the King’s Game, relying solely on the power of Cards would definitely not be enough to clear it.

If it were that easy, players from the previous rounds would have already done it; it wouldn’t be up to him.

Chen Qi was self-aware enough. After seeing how several players developed their Card abilities, he didn’t think he could be that much stronger than them.

He could only take a chance by using powers from outside the Cards.

But it would be naive to think that external power alone could turn the tables.

If it could, the King’s Game would have been dismantled by people outside the Lanyu Kingdom long ago.

Therefore, Chen Qi decided to pursue both paths, pushing whatever power he had to the absolute limit.

It sounded arrogant, but Chen Qi was confident that if anyone could clear the game, it had to be him.

Because he had a third power: the bronze dice that could create miracles.

Sometimes, just a tiny change is enough to move everything.

* * *

The maximum Spiritual Energy the Source Ore could store was 30 points, a conclusion Chen Qi reached using the game’s Spiritual Energy points as a standard.

Chen Qi’s previous great battle had completely exhausted it.

At the Source Ore’s current Spiritual Energy capture speed, it would take at least three days to fully recover.

Of course, Chen Qi wouldn’t sit idly by for these three days. After he had “Inner World General Knowledge” down cold, he began to study Trudeau’s other relic.

‘A B3-grade Biological Gene Module… How did Trudeau get his hands on something that’s so obviously a big deal?’

Inside the old castle, Chen Qi fell into deep thought, toying with a small iron cube, two centimeters on each side, in his right hand.

Honestly, if the name hadn’t been marked on this iron cube in [Erosion Text], Chen Qi would have mistaken it for an ordinary magnet.

Of course, in Chen Qi’s hands now, it really was just a magnet.

Because aside from discovering its magnetic properties, he had found nothing else.

If not for the string of [Erosion Text] branded on its surface, Chen Qi would have been tempted to dismantle it by force.

[Erosion Text] was also one of the 15 ancient scripts.

It came from a rather unique ancient human civilization, the Demon Sun Civilization.

Something incredible must have happened in that era, for people didn’t worship the Sun, but the black spots that covered it.

Erosion Text was created in imitation of the black spots on the great sun.

In the eyes of the ancient humans, something that could devour the sun’s brilliance naturally represented power and danger.

Generally speaking, Erosion Text was the least frequently used of the 15 ancient scripts.

If it appeared on something, it basically signified that the object was extremely dangerous and highly unstable.

A B3-grade Biological Gene Module. According to Chen Qi’s understanding, this might contain the genes of a B3-grade creature.

B-grade lifeforms was a human classification for certain powerful, non-intelligent lifeforms.

According to “Inner World General Knowledge,” B-grade lifeforms corresponded to Silver-rank lifeforms among the Aliens, and the Apostle Realm for humans.

Although he didn’t know how strong B3-grade was, if such a creature appeared alive in a small country, it would basically mean the end of that nation.

‘How did such a dangerous thing end up in Trudeau’s hands?’

The term Gene Module couldn’t help but make Chen Qi think of Trudeau’s ultimate move, [Life Withering].

‘Could the genetic material that radiated out have come from this little iron cube?’

‘Could the so-called Insect Emperor be the true identity of this B3-grade creature?’