Chapter 3: Absolute Upgrade System
Silas sat frozen on the edge of his squeaky cot, staring at the glowing blue interface floating in the damp air of his apartment.
A new tab had just materialized.
It wasn’t the standard azure of the Sovereign Realm’s native interface as this one was a vibrant gold.
’A System?’ Silas thought, his breath catching in his throat.
For ten agonizing years, a "Golden Finger" was the one thing he had looked forward to the most after transmigrating to this brutal universe.
Back when he was a kid, he used to lie awake in the slums, silently calling out to the universe, begging for a system, a magical artifact, or an ancient spirit to appear and help him defy his miserable fate.
But as the years dragged on and he spent his days eating tasteless nutrient paste and hauling scrap metal, that hope had completely withered.
He had accepted the bitter reality. He was just an ordinary person. He had eventually let go of the obsession, reasoning with himself that he didn’t have a magical cheat in his previous life on Earth, and he had survived just fine.
But now? Right when he had completely made peace with the grind, it actually showed up.
"What the hell is an Absolute Upgrade System?" Silas muttered aloud to the empty room.
As if responding to his voice, a silent [Ding!]chimed in his mind and the golden tab expanded, projecting lines of sleek text directly into his retinas.
[The Absolute Upgrade System is a supreme support System bound to the Host’s soul. Its primary function is to forcefully elevate the conceptual tier, rarity, and power of any item, unit, building, or trait to its absolute highest limit.]
Silas’s eyes went wide. He blinked, reading the text three times over to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating.
’Isn’t that completely overpowered?’ He wasn’t exactly complaining about being overpowered, but he knew the rules of the universe. Nothing was free... Even the Sovereign Realm operated on the law of equivalent exchange.
As if reading his mind again, the golden text shifted.
[Warning: Forced evolution defies the natural laws of the Sovereign Realm. To initiate an upgrade, the Host must expend Upgrade Points (UP). UP is harvested by absorbing the ambient cosmic energy released upon the defeat of Spirit Beasts.]
[Current Conversion Rate: Defeating a standard Tier 1 Spirit Beast yields 0.5 UP.]
Silas slowly nodded.
That made perfect sense.
He knew exactly what Spirit Beasts were.
They were the native monsters that infested the Sovereign Expanse of the Sovereign Realm. Depending on where a Lord’s territory was located, they would face different grades of these creatures, ranked from Tier 1 all the way to Tier 3.
Tier 1 Spirit Beasts were the grunts... goblins, direwolves, and low-level slime variants. They were dangerous to a normal human, but fodder for an armed military unit.
The ladder climbed steeply from there.
By the time you reached Tier 6, you were dealing with things like Abyss Dragons, colossal nightmares that required entire alliances of top-tier corporate guilds to take down.
As for Tier 10? Those were literal, walking calamities and rumor had it they were basically gods of destruction but the good news was that the Sovereign Realm was absolutely crawling with Tier 1 beasts.
He wouldn’t have to look hard to find them. If he just set up a basic defense line and hunted goblins in the woods around his territory, he could farm enough UP to start upgrading his gear.
Another silent [Ding!]echoed in his skull.
[System Initialization Complete. Host has been awarded a ’Free Full Upgrade Card’.]
[Target acquired: Host’s ’Excellent-Grade’ Blue Lord Core.]
[Initiating forced evolution. Please standby...]
Silas blinked.
"Wait, what the fuc—"
He didn’t get to finish the sentence.
A sudden, terrifying heat erupted from the dead center of his chest. Silas clamped his hands over his sternum, gasping for air as the azure crystal anchored to his heart began to violently vibrate.
For a horrifying second, the Blue Core felt like it was going to shatter into a million pieces.
The magical pressure inside his chest spiked to critical levels, pressing against his ribs like a physical weight.
If a Lord’s core broke, they didn’t just lose their power... they became permanently crippled as their soul fractured beyond repair.
Panic seized him and the pressure hit a breaking point but the core didn’t shatter.
Instead, the blue light completely collapsed inward, instantly replaced by a blinding incandescent flash of liquid gold.
The pain vanished. In its place, an overwhelming, volcanic burst of raw strength surged through Silas’s veins.
It was like a shot of pure adrenaline mixed with lightning. He could feel his muscles hardening, his senses sharpening, and the ambient mana in the cramped apartment eagerly rushing toward him as if bowing to a new king.
The overwhelming sensation faded just as quickly as it had arrived, settling deep into his bones.
Silas pulled his collar down, staring at his chest.
The faint blue glow that had been there minutes ago was gone and in its place was a swirling, majestic golden emblem.
A Gold Core... The tier of myths... The foundation of true, untouchable gods...
Before Silas could even process the magnitude of what had just happened, another tab appeared.
[Warning: Host’s Territory Trait ’War-Forged’ is fundamentally incompatible with a Mythic Gold Core. A Legendary Lord cannot possess common traits.]
[System Directive: Initiating forced evolution on Territory Trait.]
Silas watched in stunned silence as the blue text of his highly practical, military-focused [War-Forged]trait dissolved into nothing.
Golden runes sparked onto the digital panel, rapidly spelling out something entirely new.
[Evolution Complete. Territory Trait upgraded to Legendary Rank: Divine Sanctum.]
[Divine Sanctum (Mythic Quality): You are heavily favored by the divine. The standard Hero Summoning pool in your territory has been permanently severed and replaced. Every hero you summon is guaranteed to be an SSS-Rank Mythic Female entity (Goddesses, Divine Warriors, Saints). Note: All summoned divine entities will enter the Sovereign Realm at Level 1, possessing their full, unlocked mythic skill trees. Additionally, all summoned heroes are bound to your soul, starting with maximum (Diehard) loyalty.]
Silas just sat there, staring at the glowing words until his eyes watered.
Legendary Rank? In the academies, they taught that traits capped at the "Superior" Purple tier. A Legendary trait was a theoretical myth. The massive corporate guilds... corporations that possessed billions in Spirit credits and commanded armies of tens of thousands would quite literally assassinate world leaders to get their hands on a Legendary trait.
And his trait didn’t just boost his farming speed or make his walls tougher. It guaranteed that every single Hero he summoned was a mythic female entity... Divine warriors who would drop into his camp with their legendary skills fully intact and an unshakeable loyalty to him.
A wide, slightly feral grin spread across Silas’s face.
With a Gold Core pulsing in his chest and a Legendary trait loaded into his interface, his starting line was miles ahead of every other Lord on the planet.
He didn’t want to wait another second.
The Novice Trial in the Sovereign Realm was a brutal, seven-day survival test where Lords were locked in their territories and forced to defend against waves of Spirit Beasts. He was ready to drop in, summon his first Goddess, and slaughter his way to the top of the leaderboards.
Silas brought up his interface, his finger hovering over the glowing [Descent] button.
Bzzzzzt. Bzzzzzt.
A harsh, grating vibration broke his concentration.
Silas paused with his finger hanging in the air. He dug into the pocket of his worn jacket and pulled out his beat-up cracked smartphone as the screen was lit up with notifications.
The first three were angry text messages from his shift manager at the alchemical refinery where he worked part-time hauling scrap.
[Graves, where the hell are you? You missed your shift.]
[I’m not paying you for today. If you aren’t here in ten minutes, don’t bother coming back.]
[You’re fired. Leave your access card with security.]
Silas actually laughed out loud.
He swiped the messages away without a second thought.
As if he cared about hauling rusted pipes for pennies an hour when he had a Gold Core sitting in his chest but the fourth notification made him stop. It wasn’t a standard text... It was a heavily encrypted, official message carrying the digital seal of the Valoria City Government.
...
[MANDATORY NOTICE: Valoria City Awakening Council]
Attention, Student Silas Graves.
Congratulations on successfully awakening a Lord Core. As a newly recognized Awakened, you are legally required to attend the Official Lord Induction Ceremony today at 14:00 hours in the Valoria Academy Assembly Hall. A State Officer will be present to officially register your Lord Status with the global registry. Upon registration, you will be issued your State-Sponsored Novice Rewards and your monthly resource allowance, scaled to your Core Grade.
Failure to attend will result in the forfeiture of all state-sponsored building materials, summoning crystals, and financial stipends.
...
Silas dismissed the screen, his eyes widening slightly.
’Dammit. I almost forgot about the Induction.’
When you made your Descent into the Sovereign Realm, your whole body was transported into the Sovereign Expanse... for the entire seven-day Novice Trial, you could not return to Earth.
If he clicked Descent right now, he would miss the assembly entirely and he desperately needed those state rewards.
His [Divine Sanctum] trait was incredibly powerful, but it only applied to Heroes. To build a functional army, he still needed a Barracks. He still needed raw wood, stone, and iron to construct his defenses and most importantly, he needed a Hero Summoning Ticket to actually activate his portal and pull his first SSS-Rank Divine being.
Right now, he had zero wood, zero stone, and barely enough silver in his bank account to buy a decent meal but because he had publicly registered an Excellent-grade Blue Core on the altar today, the city government would be practically throwing high-tier resources at him to secure his loyalty.
They would hand him everything he needed to build his Barracks and kickstart his empire for free.
He couldn’t afford to skip it.
"Alright," Silas muttered, standing up from his cot and grabbing his jacket. "The Sovereign Realm isn’t going anywhere. Let’s go get my free loot."
