Chapter 120: Another Eye - XV

I stared at the glowing blue screens that displayed my stats.

I lamented the sheer amount of potential I’d lost because of one of <Fate’s> schemes.

Damn it all.

[Name: Aventine Tidea]

[Level: 1 » 138]

[Health: 200/200 » 9930/9930]

[Mana: 700/700 » 10,730/10,730 (Mana Storage Capacity: 900/900 )]

[Gift: Absolute Awareness (???-Rank)]

[Physique: 20 » 993]

[Mind: 26 » 985]

[Spirit: 70 » 1073]

[Traits: Perfect Estimate (B-Rank), Power of the Sky (A-Rank), Power of the Sea (A-Rank), Power of Death (A-Rank), Soulbound Anchor (S-Rank), Blessing of Light (SS-Rank)]

[Divine Branches Contributed: 5/42 » 6/42]

o=o=o=o

[Class: Mage (4th Circle)]

[Engraved Spells: Mana Core (300/300 (x3) | F-Rank), Mana Storage (3/3 | E-Rank), Manakinesis (Lv. 9 | Complete Mastery | D-Rank), Mana Manipulation (Lv. 1 | C-Rank) ]

[Memorized Spells: Water Bullet (Available | E-Rank), Fireball (Available | D-Rank), Chill (Available | E-Rank), Earthen Grasp (Available | E-Rank), Mana Flash (Available | F-Rank), ...999+ more (NEW! ALL SPELLS UNLOCKED).]

[Psychic Techniques: Mind Force (F-Rank » E-Rank | Growth-Type | Blood-Imbuing Mastery: 100%, Bone-Imbuing Mastery: 15%)]

[Martial Arts: Pure Instinct (F-Rank | Growth-Type | Autonomous Reflexes Mastery: 100% | Danger Sensing Mastery: 0%)]

’Insane... the numbers are insane.’

Because of the +1 additional attribute for each level up due to the increase in my <Growth> from the Divine Branches, I got a +6 for every level up. Since I’d basically killed several B-Ranks and A-Ranks because of the chain explosion that allowed me to unlock basically all of <Archmage> Daimyuon’s spells...

I gained an extra +822 for every attribute, excluding my base growth from normal levelling.

For any regular, all-rounded Hunter at Level 138, I should have had stats around that amount. Louis Hilves was exceptional when it came to the Physique and Mind attributes but lackluster in his Spirit, thus skewing his stat panel in a very unbalanced way.

I, on the other hand, was quite balanced all around, with my talents in Spirit being a little higher than in Physique and Mind.

Still...

What if I had all 42 Divine Branches before everything happened? A +5754 bonus to all of my attributes upon reaching Level 138...

"Sigh..."

I would’ve sat comfortably within the SS-Rank range for my stats alone, even if my level should’ve only been at A-Rank.

Oh right, that said, as I was now somewhat of an A-Ranker myself, with stats near the peak of S-Rank, and even my Spirit breaking through the earliest stages of SS-Rank...

I used <Perfect Estimate> and instantly understood the conversion between the Gaea System’s Levels and Fleim’s Ranking system, all the way up to SSS-Rank.

My updated table looked like this now:

Level 0-19 = F-Rank

Level 20-39 = E-Rank

Level 40-59 = D-Rank

Level 60-79 = C-Rank

Level 80-99 = B-Rank

Level 100-199 = A-Rank

Level 200-999 = S-Rank

Level 1000-10,000 = SS-Rank

Level 10,000+ = SSS-Rank

"Understanding this just makes my heart bleed even more."

No matter how swiftly I had just gained strength, I did not feel a single shred of satisfaction from it. After all, knowing how much more powerful I could’ve gotten if I had completed my collection of those Divine Branches...

"I can only try even harder now to make the most of Levels 139 to 10,000. If I had the maximum <Growth> supplied by the Divine Branches by then...

Ah, just imagining an approximately 42,000 jump in attributes...

It was simply... Divine.

"In fact, with stats like these, I could have survived the destruction of the Living City with just my own body."

However...

[Absolute Awareness].

There were three powerful beings at SSS-Rank currently haggling over a dead Dragon’s corpse. Even if my Spirit was at SS-Rank, these guys had long passed the bare minimum threshold of SSS-Rank.

Perhaps their Levels, if the Gaea System could quantify them, sat around 30,000 to 50,000. Their individual attributes could also vary given their racial identities.

With my current mana reserves, I could peer into a much, much greater deal of information using [Absolute Awareness].

It truly felt like a whole new world.

But despite the amazing feeling of having so much power, I still felt like it was a waste...

Was I being too much of a perfectionist?

"Perhaps..."

But no.

Achieving Level 138 through that earlier explosive slaughter had even more consequences than simply stifling a small part of my potential.

[Absolute Awareness] fed upon my immense, SS-Rank mana reserves and surveyed my current state of existence.

A huge cluster of ethereal threads of grey and white swirled grandly around me.

<Fate> had entangled me with thousands upon hundreds of thousands of threads, practically equaling the number of living beings I had killed to survive.

Looking closer through [Absolute Awareness], I instantly understood that the Gaea System’s siphoning of their existence had also included <Fate’s> threads. As I recycled their powers into experience and Levels, I had incorporated their frayed fates into mine.

Somehow, this gave me an eerie foreboding—especially with the <Gates> now appearing on Earth.

Perhaps... <Fate> was invading Earth, and soon, <Gates> going both ways between Fleim and my homeworld would become prolific.

It was a merging of worlds.

But that’s beside the point at the moment.

Right now, <Fate> had entangled me with such a vast quantity of threads that I felt nervous.

’Perhaps visiting Gron had gone past <Fate’s> bottom line for defiance.’

And since it wasn’t a shredding of <Fate’s> threads through <Blasphemy>, I was schemed against with reckless abandon.

A Dragon had been slain in an internal scuffle, falling like a meteor upon the Living City of Hispe. Its blast radius encompassed me and my companions completely.

It was a coincidence I could not ignore—especially since this was Walvaskaz, the Primordial Dragon Empress’ property.

Perhaps <Fate> was acting against her, me, and the rest of those who’d been playing the great Game of Walvaskaz.

[Absolute Awareness] drained a few thousand points of mana to retrieve that answer.

In short?

There was a clear accumulation of brewing events, and with a little push, <Fate> caused all of it to cascade. Several individuals who defied <Fate’s> arrangements paid the price, and that included me.

Now... There was something else I wanted to check.

With nearly 8,000 points of mana, I focused on all of <Fate’s> threads entangling me.

[Absolute Awareness: Divination]