Chapter 726: EXP Caches
Trefon Continent
Prime World Nienope
Elyri Star System
November 30th
Year 1054
The other end of the Cosmic Gate didn’t lead to Gozon as one might have expected. Instead, they arrived on a different Prime World in a distant part of the galaxy—Nienope.
This was the home world of Stelan Adrovach, the first godslayer Arthur had met in Valmone.
It was also where the Hellhounds and Infernal Devils he frequently summoned during battles on Aramis originated.
They stood in the heart of a vast, million-square-kilometre-sized forest teeming with hordes of devilish monsters.
Those same monsters scattered like rats the moment Jamie stepped into the area.
As Evan laughed at the sight of building sized monsters who dominated the forest’s central region, Arthur silently closed his eyes and roused his energy.
Time laws surged toward him, and his body turned slightly transparent as cracks ran through his ’time.’ Slowly, the cracks began to dissolve—until they vanished entirely.
Arthur then took a deep breath, before turning to Jamie who was staring at him, dumbstruck.
"Arthur, what did you just do?"
"Hmm? I temporarily put myself in stasis."
Arthur rubbed his chin in thought before shaking his head and continuing.
"Though, it doesn’t really feel like the usual stasis... It’s like I removed ’time’ from my body for a bit, so it wouldn’t experience any ’progress,’ and my energy wouldn’t keep building up."
Hearing his explanation, narrowed his eyes, his suspicions confirmed.
"Time Lock... That’s a Master-Level Temporal Manipulation technique. You shouldn’t be able to use it until you’ve attained a High-Rank Authority."
"...but I just did..."
"You just did."
Jamie echoed and Arthur sighed, pressing a hand to his chest.
"It’s the Candidate Sigil, isn’t it?"
It was rather obvious why Arthur had access to such a high-level technique and was able to sustain its cost with his current cosmic energy reserves.
The Power of an Aspect of the Concept of Time.
Arthur didn’t yet know which Aspect he had, but its influence was already apparent—amplifying the power of his False Authorities to an extreme degree.
The Time Candidate Sigil had been restricted in Bewússtsein’s hands since the man had lacked substantial comprehension of temporal laws. He had only been able to resist Arthur’s Pseudo-Authority by leveraging the Sigil’s raw power.
But in Arthur’s hands—someone who had reached Low-Rank Time Law Comprehension—the Sigil’s true potential was beginning to emerge.
"Seems like the host’s affinity and law comprehension determine how much power a Sigil can display.
Makes me wonder how the Destruction Sigil would be..."
Arthur’s Destruction Affinity was stronger than his Time Affinity, so the thought of how much the Destruction Sigil would amplify his power intrigued him.
"Be careful when using those things, Arthur. Unless you have absolutely NO other choice, don’t use them both at once.
If you’re discovered to have Dual Candidacy, it’ll be a problem—especially since those Sigils seem to be unlogged."
Arthur nodded at Jamie’s warning, recalling how the man had issued a similar caution to Artemisia, Beatrix, Alvey, and McEnda.
He had explicitly told them to keep the fact that Bewússtsein had two Sigils a secret via telepathy when he was speaking with Rilene and McEnda before Cruotis Prime exploded.
Seeing that Arthur understood the gravity of the situation, Jamie decided to move on to the first matter at hand—the two glowing spheres he had formed by gathering and compressing the lost energy of Cruotis Prime.
As he gestured toward them, Arthur pulled a chair from his subspace, sat down, and asked.
"Exactly what are these things?"
"Physical EXP Caches. Condensed energy, Existential Records, Soul Power—I condensed the components that make up EXP, and using my Privilege of Creation, I ’Created’ the EXP caches for you guys.
Each sphere holds about a third of Cruotis Prime’s total energy."
Arthur’s amazement was evident as he took in Jamie’s words, but Evan, more curious about the weight, grabbed one of the spheres and examined it.
"Just how much EXP are we talking about here?"
To his question, Jamie framed his answer in a way Evan would easily understand.
"You’ve been to Earth V, right?"
"Lived there for 16 years."
Evan responded as he walked around the sphere, and Jamie chuckled before continuing.
"Then you know the names of the planets in the Outer Sol Star System, right?"
Evan nodded, holding up his fingers as he listed them.
"The Outer Planets are the big guys. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune."
"Bingo. Cruotis Prime was somewhere between Uranus and Neptune in size—only about a 1,500 km difference, last I checked."
Evan fell silent, blinking as Jamie’s words sank in.
"You say what?"
Jamie laughed at his reaction before clarifying.
"Exactly what I said. Let’s just go with Uranus’ size. A planet that massive, scaled up to ’Prime’ level.
What you’re holding in your hand is a third of its energy."
Suddenly, the sphere in Evan’s grip felt a whole lot heavier.
Seeing Evan’s expression shift rapidly, Jamie figured he had just run the numbers in his head. He then glanced at Arthur, who was casually spinning the second sphere on his finger, completely unbothered.
Classic Arthur.
"Anyway, back to my explanation. It’s Cached EXP that you guys can absorb later to boost your levels.
I plan to tweak them so they can be used multiple times. As they are now, once you start absorbing, you can’t stop—unless you want the remaining energy to go to waste."
As Jamie continued his explanation, Evan, who had been silent until now, finally spoke up.
"So this is the equivalent of 20 Earth Vs worth of EXP? I’m guessing that’s because of the billions of souls Bewússtsein absorbed, right?"
"20 Earth Vs? Triple that number.
And don’t forget, this came from a Prime World. But yeah, you’re right about the second part."
Evan fell silent again after Jamie corrected him. Some moments later, he asked.
"Can I have other people use this?"
The gears in his head were already turning as he began reworking his plans for future Aidos, anticipating a positive answer.
"Yes, you can let others use it."
Evan’s expression brightened at the positive response, and he was about to speak when Jamie cut him off.
"BUT! No one below Transcendence can handle it."
"Huh? Why not?"
"Because they’d explode, that’s why. Did you not just hear how much energy is in this thing? Even Transcendents would struggle with the output.
Anyone weaker would straight-up die."
Evan visibly deflated at that response—clear proof he had been planning to mass-produce Transcendents. But it seemed that wasn’t going to happen with this.
Still, he wasn’t too discouraged. If he couldn’t create new ones, he could at least make the existing ones even stronger.
’Empowering five Transcendents with this would be a walk in the park.’
Lifting the sphere, he suddenly recalled something he hadn’t thought to ask earlier.
"Why is this thing so light? Shouldn’t it be heavier since it’s so dense?"
"Spatial Compression and Gravity Manipulation. A lot more of the latter."
Jamie’s combination of space and gravity control was the only reason these two spheres—that had enough self-gravity to round themselves—weren’t dragging everything around into their orbit.
With that, Jamie snapped his fingers, pulling the spheres away.
"Let’s set aside the extra EXP and talk about the EXP you guys already have."
""The EXP we already have?""
Both of them echoed his words in unison, and Jamie nodded before continuing.
"The amount of EXP you gained from killing Bewússtsein is, to put it mildly, enormous.
In case you didn’t know, I didn’t get any since the rule is that you can’t gain EXP from something that’s half your level or lower.
No matter the circumstances, Bewússtsein was still below half my level, so all the EXP was split between you two."
Enough EXP from a Low-Tier Deity was divided between the two mortal boys.
"That’s enough EXP to last for generations.
In Arthur’s case, once I handle his True Name Seal and he exuviates, only Chaos knows what level he’ll reach. And that’s not even counting the Caches I created.
EXP should NOT be a problem for either of you for a long time."
Jamie paused, then turned to Evan and asked after some silence.
"Which brings me to my first question—why are you NOT a Transcendent, Evan?"
That was a serious question. Why wasn’t Evan a Transcendent?
For starters, what was his current level?
900.
As previously mentioned, even using just his physical body, he could take on Inferior Transcendents.
If he brought his dozens of skills into play, even Intermediate Transcendents wouldn’t be safe.
He had already surpassed the Cosmic Limit of the Sovereign Realm and exceeded the minimum threshold for the Transcendent Realm.
While the residual enhancement effects of the Scales of Balance played a role in pushing him past the Sovereign Realm’s limit, he would have surpassed it even without them.
The issue Jamie had was that Evan’s level was stuck at 900—and it wasn’t rising.
At Jamie’s question, Evan sighed and scratched his head.
"...well, I haven’t met all my Transcendence conditions."
His response earned him incredulous looks from both Jamie and Arthur, the latter replying almost instantly.
"Dude, even if you had help, YOU KILLED A PLANET.
If you of all people haven’t met the conditions to Transcend, then no one in the entire Cosmos should have."
Evan chuckled at Arthur’s remark, but his laughter faded when he realized Arthur was completely serious.
And the boy was right. If everything they had done today wasn’t enough to trigger Transcendence, then no one should be able to.
"Relax, guys, you’re misunderstanding the situation."
Evan spoke up before clarifying.
"I have met all the conditions. The reason it hasn’t happened yet is because my Soul doesn’t like my body’s current state."
"...the heck?"
Arthur’s two-word response was met with a sigh from Evan. Behind his mask, Evan twisted his lips, as if weighing his words, before ultimately deciding to explain.
"You guys aren’t dumb, so I’m sure you’ve figured out that I have a previous incarnation—the reason I have a Deity Soul.
But the thing is, I didn’t die in that previous incarnation, so my soul still retains all its power. It’s just sealed away because I was tired of war."
Placing a hand on his chest, Evan continued.
"Obviously, this isn’t the body I had in that incarnation, so there are a lot of differences.
My previous body and soul had a shared trait—something that allowed them to fully synchronize. But my current body lacks that trait, which prevents my soul from manifesting its full power.
And that’s a problem, because the moment I Transcend, I’d end up like Arthur—on the brink of Exuviation.
As Jamie said, we’ve got enough EXP to last generations."
Pausing to take a breath, Evan then finished his explanation.
"Basically, my soul needs my body to regain that trait so I can achieve 100% synchronization before Exuviation."
After hearing his reasoning, Jamie and Arthur exchanged glances before voicing the ultimate question in unison.
""What is that ’trait’?""
Evan let out another sigh before answering with two words.
"Cosmic Superiority."
"!!"
That—that was something neither of them had expected.
Cosmic Superiority was something that affected both body and soul, regardless of whether one was Sub-Cosmic or a fully realized Cosmic Being.
Evan’s soul had retained its Cosmic Superior traits, but his current body didn’t have those traits.
"If your Cosmic Superiority didn’t carry over to your body, then that means you were Sub-Cosmic."
Jamie muttered under his breath, inadvertently revealing an important detail—if a Cosmic Being were to change bodies, their soul would naturally transform the new body to match.
But that hadn’t happened with Evan.
"The problem is that Cosmic Superiority isn’t something you can just obtain because you want to."
Arthur wasn’t one to talk, given that he’d been born with it, but his point stood. If it were that simple, the Cosmos would be overflowing with Cosmic Beings.
Evan, however, remained unbothered.
"Don’t worry, Arthur. I had it in my previous incarnation—all I have to do is get it back. And I do have a plan to make that happen—by taking advantage of the power future Artemisia gave me.
But it’s something I can only do once I return to the future."
After briefly outlining his plan, Evan turned to Jamie and asked.
"Can you do me a favour, Jamie? It’s related to that EXP cache."
"What?"
"Those tweaks you mentioned—you said you were going to make some adjustments to it. Can you do them now so it can be used multiple times and by multiple people?"
Jamie shrugged at the request.
"It’s not a problem. But why the rush?"
"I have certain plans for the future that make me very grateful for this EXP cache you created. And like I said earlier, my plan to Transcend is for the future, so I’ll be returning in my current state.
However, I doubt I can take that cache with me. For one, it won’t enter my inventory, and more importantly, I have a strong feeling it would distort the spatial tunnel—and that’s a whole different problem.
Because of that, I want to store it somewhere safe for the next 10,000 years, so when I return to the future, I can retrieve it at will."
Evan’s reasoning was solid, and Jamie had already been considering the same issue. But from the look in Evan’s eyes, Jamie could tell he already had a solution in mind.
"Sounds like you already know where you’re going to keep it."
Evan simply nodded.
"Once you’re done with the modifications, please send me to Aidos."
