Chapter 454: The World’s Flaw
Moon lowered the twin swords and stared at them.
"If I use Dual Wielding and Weaponmaster at the same time..."
One skill fueled by spiritual energy. The other fueled by mana. Both active simultaneously without competing for the same resource.
"I would be incredibly potent in close range."
Moon was pleasantly surprised with the outcome. A new skill, a new system of power, and a deeper understanding of how spirits operated. The fight had given him far more than lives and spiritual energy.
But it also raised questions he couldn’t ignore.
The spirit skill hadn’t come from his Classless class. It wasn’t a reward from the system for leveling up or meeting some hidden condition. And it certainly wasn’t something he had comprehended through training like Battle Instinct.
It came from his title. The World’s Flaw.
The same title he had inherited from the pavilion in Lunaris. The same inheritance that had given him abilities and knowledge that shouldn’t have existed at his level.
Moon had accepted the title without fully understanding it at the time. Unfortunately, till this very moment, the title had yet to fully activate.
Now, standing over the body of a Three Star pavilion spirit with a skill that didn’t rely on mana, but purely on spiritual energy, those questions demanded answers.
Who was The World’s Flaw?
The inheritance wasn’t a gift left behind by some talented Evolver who had reached the end of their road. The depth it contained, the power it unlocked, the way it interacted with parts of the system that most humans didn’t even know existed, none of it pointed to an ordinary person.
’He wasn’t a Surpasser.’ Moon thought with growing certainty.
A Surpasser wouldn’t have left behind something this complex. A Surpasser wouldn’t have the ability to share a title that provided spirit skills, or created a pavilion that tested its inheritors in the ways Lunaris had tested Moon.
He was most likely an Ascender. Or something beyond even that.
The thought settled over Moon with paths that were equal parts exciting and unsettling. Whatever road he was walking, whoever had walked it before him had climbed to heights that most humans couldn’t fathom.
And Moon was following in those footsteps whether he was ready or not.
Light crept over the horizon, casting long rays across the floating island. Today was a new day. And for the first time in a long time, the spirits were no longer the apex predators of this place, Moon was.
Moon rode Mirage to the pavilion. No beast dared to approach the castle, even with its masters dead. The residual aura of spiritual dominance still lingered over the peak like an invisible barrier.
"I still need to find the array that teleports us off this island." Moon muttered as they climbed. "But that’s for another time. For now, I need to consume the war bounty."
He arrived at the pavilion gates. The bodies of the spirits he had slaughtered were still there, untouched, exactly where they had fallen.
With no spirit left alive to track the corpses or seek revenge, keeping them in his storage ring was safe. They would most likely fetch a good price once he sold them back on earth during his return for the tournament.
"I need to use my time well. Only hours separate me from the tournament."
Moon sat on the floor of the empty pavilion in a lotus position. He took out every spirit core he had collected and placed them in a row before him. The shards of the pavilion spirit’s destroyed core sat among them, still dense with spiritual energy despite being fractured.
One by one, Moon began to consume them.
Each core took roughly ten minutes to absorb. The spiritual energy flowed into his acupoints in concentrated surges, far denser and richer than most beast kills had provided. With every core consumed, he felt a tangible jump in spiritual energy.
After the fifth core, his seventh acupoint reached maximum capacity. It had already been well on its way, and the cores pushed it over the edge.
Currently, Moon had seven acupoints filled. Of which, the sixth housed Weaponmaster as its foundational skill. Whilst, his seventh housed Bird Dance.
Moon turned his attention to the eighth, deciding which of the remaining two epic skills he would place in it, if any at all.
This one was different. The spirit skill, Dual Wielding, sat inside it. But when Moon studied the acupoint closely, it didn’t resemble a normal foundation. The spirit skill occupied its space within the acupoint, separate from where a standard foundation would sit.
"My eighth acupoint. This one is tricky." Moon stared at it inwardly for a long moment. "The spirit skill doesn’t seem to count as a foundation. Which means I might be able to place a second skill inside it."
Two skills in one acupoint. The idea was thrilling. If it worked, the output of that single acupoint could possibly rival two normal ones combined. It had to be known, one of his acupoint rivaled four normal ones. So that would mean his acupoint could have the power of eight acupoints!
But if he overwhelmed the acupoint and damaged it, the consequences would be severe. Acupoint injuries took months or years to heal naturally, or in the high hundreds of millions dollars worth of natural treasures. He wouldn’t know who to cry to.
Moon gritted his teeth. He weighed the risk against the reward, turning it over in his mind.
In the end, he trusted what his body was telling him. The space was there. The spirit skill occupied its own lane. The standard foundation lane was empty and waiting.
He chose Tenacity.
Twenty minutes later, Moon opened his eyes. A glint flashed within them.
"It worked. I placed an Epic skill inside."
Tenacity settled into the eighth acupoint alongside Dual Wielding. Two skills, two separate energy systems, coexisting in the same space without conflicting. The spiritual energy in the acupoint flowed through both foundations simultaneously, feeding them in parallel.
Moon clenched his fist. He could feel it. The combined output of both skills humming through his body, each one amplifying the other in ways he hadn’t anticipated.
"This acupoint..."
