On the last floor, also known as the fifteenth floor of the base. Ashes suddenly came out of nowhere and took a form of a human being. It was a woman dressed in a purple robe with a gracious body. Yes, this was Erica after she got to talk with Fein on the first floor.
Erica whose face could cause wars, downfall of countries, has an ugly expression on her face. "Terrible... That human is simply terrible!"
After she met Fein, she finally knew what kind of person have invaded their base this time. In a millennium, Erica met a lot of invaders, and all of them didn't even manage to go past the fifth floor. Those past invaders, almost all of them, were S-rank and could be considered a genius in their realm. Some of them could achieve cross-realm kill before they ascended to S-rank.
Erica couldn't help but think about the degu energy quality of Fein and the aura on his body. It was the aura of a strong! She could feel the confidence deep within his bones, and it gave her a terrible sense of danger that she only feels when Niki was around her.
'I couldn't even maintain my infinite loop for 9 hours to him.' As Erica thought of the previous encounter, she couldn't help but grit her teeth.
Erica lied to Fein... In reality, she could maintain her curse, an infinite loop for longer than eight hours. If her target was A-rank, she could use it longer and trap the A-rank for forty-eight hours. For S-rank, which was the same realm as her. She could keep it longer than twelve hours.
Although Erica's degu energy quality and amount were at the level of S-rank. She was a witch, and a specialist at that, which was also the strongest degree. Hundred thousand times more powerful than a scholarly witch.
After all, the difference between specialists like her and the scholarly witch was the result of the different amount and complexity of knowledge they possessed. Erica lived for millennia, all her life was spent studying curse energy, curse technique, and applications of the two. She spends countless years researching and experimenting, testing her knowledge.
Because of such a large amount of time, coupled with her rigorous character. She had a lot of S-rank curse techniques on her hands, even SS-rank curse techniques were created! For example, the infinite loop was an SS-rank curse technique. Over the years, her degu amount has reached the peak.
But no matter what method she tried, she couldn't break through to SS rank! She was stuck for many years and even Niki couldn't help her. Niko found out the problem. It wasn't that Erica's potential is lacking, contrary to her potential was enough for the SS-rank realm. She's the problem, but the curse energy! It turns out that the limit and potential of course energy was only the S-rank realm. Unlike degu energy, which theoretically doesn't have a limit. The curse energy which gave her power and immense advantage against degu users was also in the end the one that limited her growth. Overall, Erica realized that curse energy was ten times better than degu energy in the short term. But in the long-term, degu energy wins!
This completely cut off her future path. She couldn't improve any longer. Her heart despaired. Now, she could only use the SS-rank curse techniques such as the infinite loop with her S-rank curse energy amount. This severely limited her.
In the end, she chose an alternative path. Although she couldn't improve her curse amount and quality any longer. She decided to advance her knowledge and optimized the SS-rank curse techniques. With years of effort, she managed to make the SS-rank curse technique consumption 75% lower. And their effectiveness also increased by 10%.
It's also the reason why even though she's only an S-rank. She has the combat power of SS-rank. Completely relying on SS-rank curse techniques, she could fight monsters of SS-rank. As a specialist, her knowledge completely surpassed the scope. Her powers came from her vast amount of knowledge. She specializes in two fields of curses. Disease-type and Strange-type.
Her infinite loop was under the category of strange types. Strange-type techniques are curse spells that aren't within the scope of normal curse spells or six elements. And just like their name, they have strange but almost miraculous effects. As for the other curse field, although she didn't specialize in them, she has a decent accomplishment at the level of a scholarly witch.
'This is really a problem.' Erica cast a detection-type curse on Fein when they conversed on the first floor.
This curse doesn't detect the specific realm of the target but detects the comprehensive combat power! In her detection, Fein's combat power had exceeded the peak of S-rank. What does this mean? It means that Fein's battle power had reached SS rank!
Erica didn't want to believe it at first. As the leader of the Order of the Witch. She has a lot of contacts and she has a few acquittances who were SS rank. On the whole continent, she only knew four of them! Of course, that doesn't mean that there are only four. Almost all SS ranks chose to hide themselves for one common reason.
In order to advance to SSS rank, they needed to eat the heart of an SS-rank creature. It's literally forcing SS-rank to kill each other to advance. This was a cruel condition for advancement. Due to this, SS-ranks don't trust each other and always avoid one another. For this reason, on the surface, there's no SS rank degu user. Only S rank exists.
The few SS-rank degu users always tracked people with the same realm as them to hunt them and advance. The opposite is true; they hide their tracks and location from their best. Of course, to advance, they have to reach the peak of SS rank first.
That's why Erica's four SS-rank acquaintances didn't know each other at all. SS-rank conceals themselves and avoids interaction with almost everyone. They established their own forces and play the role of pulling the string behind the scene. They would erect a leader, and the leader would act on their orders. That's why it's not that there's no SS rank. They're just deeply hidden, like Zero.
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