"Hurry back," she said calmly, though the statement carried the unmistakable weight of a command rather than a request. That dick of his now belonged to her, and she genuinely didn't enjoy sleeping without it pressed against her during the night. The bed felt empty without him.
Seth ignored her possessive comment entirely and simply raised his hand, casting a teleportation spell with ease. Reality warped around him, and he vanished in a flash of displaced air, reappearing moments later back at the mall entrance where his journey had first begun.
But before entering the dungeon, he reached into his storage space and withdrew the one thousand tier-six monster cores he'd been carefully saving for precisely this moment. These cores represented an enormous investment. Without a second thought or any hesitation, he consumed one hundred of them in rapid succession, swallowing them like pills despite their considerable size.
One hundred tier-six monster cores represented one hundred million experience points—the absolute maximum he could absorb per day from cores of that tier.
The effect was immediate and dramatic. His power skyrocketed as the monster cores dissolved within him, their concentrated energy flooding through his channels and dramatically increasing his combat capabilities.
He pulled up his status screen to check the results, watching the numbers climb with satisfaction. His combat power had jumped from seventy-five thousand five hundred all the way up to eighty-one thousand. He was tantalizingly close to reaching the psychologically significant one-hundred-thousand threshold now.
With his newfound strength surging through his veins and making him feel invincible, Seth teleported once more. This time his destination was a merchant's establishment—one of the mysterious shops that had appeared throughout the world. He paused before entering to cast a concealment spell over himself, obscuring his features and aura beneath layers of magical distortion.
"Greetings, guest..." The merchant, an elderly man with a practiced smile that had welcomed thousands of customers, began his standard greeting. But he paused abruptly mid-word, his expression shifting to confusion as he peered at Seth more closely.
He was clearly trying to pierce through the concealment magic, attempting to see the truth before him. Seth's spells were useless, but it made him overthink, seeing as he couldn't see Seth's talent, and the full list of his skills. His confusion only deepened the harder he tried to penetrate the disguise he didn't know he had penetrated, his weathered face creasing with effort.
He finally snapped back to his professional demeanor when a bag landed on his table with a heavy thud that made the wood creak. The bag contained fifteen hundred tier-six monster crystals—each one worth a million standard crystals. Just like that, one point five billion worth of monster crystals sat before him in a simple cloth bag.
"I want to exchange these for tier seven monster crystals," Seth stated calmly, his voice flat and emotionless.
The merchant stared at the fortune spread before him in genuine shock, his practiced composure cracking for just a moment. After all, such an enormous amount of wealth didn't simply materialize from thin air. Only someone extraordinarily powerful—someone who'd slaughtered countless tier-six monsters—could have possibly acquired this quantity of high-grade cores.
"Certainly. You're aware of the exchange fee, which is fifty percent?" he asked carefully, watching Seth's obscured face for any reaction to the extortionate rate.
Seth nodded his agreement without hesitation or negotiation. The merchant's smile widened with barely concealed greed as he accepted the bag and reached beneath his counter. He produced one hundred tier-seven monster crystals from his personal storage and handed them over. Seth took them, gave a curt nod of acknowledgment, and turned to leave without ceremony.
"Friend, I sell many other things—" The merchant's sales pitch died in his throat as Seth walked out the door without acknowledging his words or even glancing back. The complete dismissal made the merchant's smile fade into a deep frown.
Once Seth had departed and the door closed behind him, the merchant activated a skill, sending a detailed report of this transaction to his superiors through their communication network. The merchant organization, after all, served purposes far beyond simple commerce. They were information gatherers, spies embedded in every corner of this new world.
Meanwhile, Seth reappeared inside the mall's entrance and immediately swallowed all one hundred tier-seven monster crystals without pause. His power exploded upward far more dramatically than before, each tier-seven core containing exponentially more energy than their tier-six counterparts.
The sensation was overwhelming—raw power flooding through every cell of his body, rewriting his very existence at a fundamental level. Seth couldn't suppress a soft moan of pleasure as the growth washed over him, the feeling almost intoxicating in its intensity.
But his satisfaction turned to frustration when he checked his status and saw that his combat power had reached ninety-five thousand and then simply stopped climbing, hitting another invisible ceiling.
But he had expected as much, so he settled down onto the cold floor and began attempting to bond with his talent on a deeper level. It was something he had been working on diligently for the past two weeks, ever since Chu Yin had taken the time to explain to him in detail how her trial had gone and what she'd experienced. He had made huge progress in this particular field during that time, advancing further than he'd initially thought possible.
'What is my talent?' Seth thought carefully, organizing his understanding of the power within him. 'It's the power to govern over all of creation as a mortal… but what are its primary abilities? What makes it function?'
The answer was simple: space, time, and reality.
'I have come across those three elements before, so I know how they work and what it takes to control them,' Seth continued his internal analysis, piecing everything together.
Seth put together all of his accumulated knowledge in his mind, drawing from every experience and observation he'd gathered. This was the first time he had dedicated all of his focus into this one singular task without any distractions pulling at his attention.
The effect wasn't small in the slightest. After a few hours spent in deep meditation like that, Seth felt his body lighten to such a profound degree that he felt like he could fly with just a thought—as if gravity itself had lost its hold on him. Or that he could run to the end of the world and back in a single heartbeat, covering impossible distances in mere moments. Hell, he felt like he could rewrite all of existence if he truly wanted to, bending reality itself to his will.
But it was all illusion, he realized as his mind cleared. None of those sensations were real. Only his combat power had actually increased in any measurable way, reaching a newfound limit of one hundred ten thousand without his armor equipped—a significant jump from where he'd been before.
[Congratulations on reaching a new limit on how strong one can be. Former limit: 103,000. Reward: [Nexus Gear Set]]
[Nexus Gear Set] - A set of gear made especially for the talent [Nexus], which greatly increases the talent holder's capability across all areas. Once equipped, the user's bloodline shall evolve to become the Primordial Human.
'I'm guessing only those with UR-rank talent can come close to breaking that previous threshold,' Seth thought as he analyzed what he'd accomplished. 'But I broke the last limit by seven thousand points… nice.'
He allowed himself a moment of satisfaction before he went on to begin his tier one advancement, preparing himself for what came next.