Chapter 89: Breakthrough into B-rank!
Suddenly, the howling wind stilled for a single second. The entire surrounding wasteland became completely silent for a few tense minutes. Then, the atmospheric mana started to violently react all around him, getting rapidly sucked into his body with an incredible, blinding speed.
As the heavy rush of pure mana flooded deep inside Alen’s body, he immediately felt his overall mana capacity start to increase massively. His mana core started to crack right around its center, and the dense surrounding mana quickly started to flood directly into the newly formed gaps.
The glowing cracks started spreading and continuously increasing in size until they reached their absolute maximum limit. Then, the fractured pieces fused back together and became a solid whole again, as a massive amount of concentrated mana rushed inside his core, completely transforming its entire internal structure. A loud, echoing boom could be heard within his mind as the newly formed core started to expand, drastically increasing its overall storage capacity. The more ambient mana poured inside, the more the core expanded, absorbing the energy exactly like a dry sponge absorbing a vast ocean of water.
As the core finally started to reform and take its true shape, it became much denser than it had ever been before. It now safely contained a truly massive amount of compressed mana, signaling that the breakthrough to the next level was completely successful.
[Ding! Your mana capacity has increased massively!]
[Ding! Your overall skills and stats have ranked up!]
[Ding! You have gained a new Element: ’Fire’!]
[Ding! You have gained a new ability: ’Weapon Master’!]
[Ability: Weapon Master (1%)]
[Description: You have gained the innate talent to use any weapon you desire. You are no longer limited to using or mastering only one particular weapon type. Your comprehension speed and understanding rate for learning new weapons have increased to three times as fast.]
[Status Window]
[Name: Alen]
[Age: 17]
[Titles: The Outlier, The Elemental Master, Illusion Walker]
[Talent: Unknown]
[Rank: B-]
[Elements: Sound, Water, Wind, Darkness, Fire]
[Physique: Celestial Body (0-★)]
[Bond: Godless (First form) → 0.1%]
[ATTRIBUTES]
STR: 165/300
AGI: 167/300
DEF: 160/300
INT: 161/300
HP: 2700/3000
MP: 4750/4750
[ABILITIES]
1. ???? (?)
[Description: Your ???? will not be affected by the ????????. The ????? will cancel every ????? recognized as a ?????. Your ???????????, so you will be ?????? Fate...]
2. Nexus Elemental Art (B+)
[Description: Attacks performed using this art will receive a 750% power boost. The proficiency of this Art depends on the user’s knowledge of the techniques. This Art is evolvable.]
3. Night Vision (A) (Evolvable)
[Description: Your sense of sight will be increased tremendously in the dark. You can see clearly through the darkest nights and the densest fog.]
4. Weapon Master (1%)
[Description: You have gained the innate talent to use any weapon you desire. You are no longer limited to using or mastering only one particular weapon type. Your comprehension speed and understanding rate for learning new weapons have increased to three times as fast.]
[SKILLS]
1. Body Strengthening (Lv. 4)
[Description: Enhances the user’s physical body by reinforcing muscles, bones, and internal structure with mana. Increases strength, endurance, and resistance to damage. Effects scale with proficiency. Continuous use gradually improves the user’s base physique.]
2. Mana Concentration (Lv. 4)
[Description: Compresses a large amount of mana into a single focal point and forcibly discharges it, creating a devastating mana blast.]
3. Phantom Step (A)
[Description: You can move so fast that your body seems to disappear, leaving behind phantom-like afterimages. Enemies are tricked by your illusions while the real body strikes or escapes.]
[SHADOW INVENTORY]
Chaos Shard
Grimoire of Darkness (A+)
(Empty)
(Empty)
...
As Alen felt a profound sense of absolute contentment washing over him after his successful breakthrough, he opened his eyes and looked around at the remaining beasts gathered in the immediate area. There was absolutely no sense of fear visible in his bright eyes, and he stood up to face the remaining monsters with a perfectly calm demeanor.
Just a few moments before, he was a full rank below them and couldn’t have been able to fight them properly, simply because they were overwhelmingly stronger than him in terms of pure rank progression. A single gap in a person’s rank makes a massive difference in this world.
Even if he possessed higher basic stats than the monsters, he still couldn’t have easily won the battle, because raw strength alone was not enough to make someone a truly capable fighter.
Because the beasts possessed a well-refined mana core and their overall ranks were completely stabilized, even if their numerical base stats were lower, their actual strength and destructive power would still be significantly larger than a person stuck in a lower rank with higher base stats. The rank itself is what makes all the difference in a real fight.
A rank increase is never just a simple physical increase in bodily power. It also means that a person’s soul and their internal mana become fundamentally stronger. The magical energy becomes far more aligned with their physical body, constantly and passively strengthening their flesh, bones, and mind.
Suppose a combatant has a particular amount of strength stats; those stats will become much more solidified and will heavily boost their overall power simply because their evolutionary rank is higher than the other party’s.
It operates on the exact same logic as comparing students in an education system. A student who achieves the 1st rank in a standard middle school will still be considered far beneath the person who has come in 1st place during their advanced college years.
The marks don’t actually matter as much as the overall level of the institution. As the journey becomes much harder, the general competition will always increase. The more advanced the education level gets, the harder it becomes to achieve those high marks. Because the higher classes present significantly harder challenges for learning and education, it naturally becomes much harder to maintain that top position.
Similar to that educational logic, pure base stats don’t matter much when the Awakener’s rank is fundamentally beneath their opponent’s.
But now that Alen had finally achieved his highly anticipated breakthrough, he wasn’t worried about fighting these giant beasts anymore. Honestly, he could have likely taken them down even when he was just a C-rank fighter using his extreme tactics, but now that he had officially stepped into the powerful B-rank territory, he truly wasn’t worried about battling them head-on anymore.
