Damon's Ascension-Chapter 80: The Issue With Leveling Up 1

[Essence Augmented Reality (Earth) - Fort James Instance 1]

[Objective(s):

A. Escape bondage within the ship with the most minimal impact to the overall situation - Completion Grade: C

B. Return to the shores of the Gold Coast intact. - Completion Grade: SS

C. Recover any key artifacts sold to the Europeans by locals. - Completion Grade: F]

[Remarks: Yes, Damon Arnan, I am watching.]

[Rewards: 65 units of Worldly Essence.]

Damon appeared outside the Fort Instance. Looking at the active crowds who were excitedly bustling about, he couldn’t help but smile and walk to the side to avoid blocking traffic as he handled his own things.

He glanced at the reward screen and chuckled. Things ended up just how he’d expected them to. The Universe Will rarely handed out items or skills to beings in the Essence realms, whether local or official, unless someone did something truly exceptional within the instance.

Everything Damon had received up to this point had been a bribe. And now that he’d defaulted? Even if he somehow earned EX grades across the board, he doubted the Universe Will would toss him another skill or item... not unless he somehow managed to steal it from the instance itself.

That was fine, because at the moment he was mostly interested in Worldly Essence to strengthen himself. Items and Skills were useful, but their utility to those with awakened abilities was minimal, even for EX items.

As always, Abilities were the main capital for anything. They were powerful, did not have any cooldowns, could be developed freely, and they cost only 1% of what an item or skill with the equivalent ability would.

Even if he couldn’t get a second ’nepo-baby’ item like the Golden Stool, it was fine. After all, the reason why others respected, feared, and desired him was not because of the Golden Stool, but because of his three EX-Grade Abilities.

Damon would never be as confused as to choose the small while ignoring the big.In this previous instance, he took down 85 sailors and nearly 250 slaves.

All the slaves were counted as normal kills worth 10 Worldly Essence, meaning 2500 Worldly Essence. Of the sailors, there were 10 elite enemy units and 1 boss-class unit while the rest had been grunt units.

The named roles, like the First Mate (Chief Mate), Second Mate, Third Mate, Sailing Master/Navigator, Boatswain (Bosun), Carpenter/Engineer, Cook, Quartermaster, Purser, and the Doctor/Surgeon had been considered elites, while the Captain had naturally counted as a boss monster.

That was a total of 1340 Worldly Essence from the sailors and 3,905 for the entire 2-hour instance, including the pittance given afterward.

Plus his remaining 9,200, the new gross total was 13,105.

Not bad for 2 hours of work, Damon thought to himself as he plunged right back into the instance to verify something.

Two hours later, Damon came out again, his aura slightly darker than before due to the increased death he brought, but his was not that crazy because everyone was killing things in instances, so the other Ghanaians nearby also had a strange dark aura despite them being fine as usual.

Anyway, Damon had verified that he was now relegated to the masses, in that his instances were no longer unique. Well, they were still harder than the average man’s version, but it was still the same scenario and objectives as before, which was a constant like everyone else.

So yes, he had done the same thing: kill enough sailors to warn the rest, make them sail back to shore, and then destroy the entire ship, harvesting all the Worldly Essence while he walked the final distance to shore.

He earned around the same amount of Worldly Essence, no Skills nor Items, and his completion grades didn’t differ too much. Seeing that his plan was feasible, Damon decided to spend the next few days staying in a hotel near Fort James - which was recently renovated - which granted him a presidential suite due to his status.

While he harvested Worldly Essence continually and methodically in 2-hour periods while waiting for his body’s cooldown to expire, he began to do two things.

The first was to search the Galactic Net for any Item, Ability, or Skill that could either mitigate or reduce the cooldown time for the body’s upgrade.

The good news: Such Items and Abilities existed!

The bad news: The moment they saw Damon wanted to buy, they were no longer interested in Essence Coins and wanted to barter for favors.

Damon rubbed an eyebrow and decided not to compromise on this, as he only wanted to shorten the time out of impatience, but he had 20 years of grace period. He did the calculation and found that...

After twenty years, following up on the doubling of time needed for cooldown, he would only be able to level up to Level 18.

...that was not good.

Damon immediately contacted Ambrose, who answered before he could even get a word in.

"Where’s my goddamn visa? I’m about to grow cobwebs over here!" Ambrose snapped the moment the call connected.

Damon nodded. "I will come to your ship for us to handle that in a few minutes. Besides that, I wanted to ask, how old are you?"

Ambrose seemed pacified by Damon’s promise and responded quickly. "In human years, or overall?"

"Standard time system," Damon said with a reassuring smile. "It’ll convert it for me anyway."

Ambrose rolled his eyes. "Smartass. Tsk. Anyway, I’m 176."

Damon did the calculation and became even more certain of his guess. "And yet you’re Level 78? How’s that possible? Even if you literally start the moment you’re born, it should be impossible to reach that level in 176 years."

Ambrose blinked, confused, then shot Damon a sideways look. "Wait... did you skip the tutorial I set up for you guys?"

"Nope, I fully completed it," Damon replied. "And seriously, thanks for that. It cleared up a lot."

Ambrose waved a hand dismissively. "Eh, no big deal. But didn’t you bring up something about the Level-Up system?"

Damon shook his head. At the time, he’d been too focused on all the potential pitfalls the human race might stumble into upon entering the IUAS. All his questions had been aimed in that direction.

Ambrose seemed to pick up on this and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Wait a second... for you to be asking this now, what was your starting time?"

"One hour," Damon answered truthfully.

Ambrose nodded with the satisfied air of a proud father. "Not bad at all. That’s a bit above the universe average. And your cooldown?"

Damon blinked. "If you mean the rate it increases with each subsequent Level, then that would be double."

Ambrose’s eyes widened. "For real? Hang on, is that just you, or is that across your whole species?"

Damon’s heart sank. "It’s not just me... it’s the entire human race."

Ambrose was silent for a moment... then burst into uproarious laughter, wiping tears from his eyes.

"Hahaha! So there IS justice in the universe! An overpowered race, blessed with insane abilities, yet your compatibility with Worldly Essence is absolute trash!"

Damon closed his eyes in quiet defeat. He’d expected this reaction the moment Ambrose had been surprised by the cooldown.

But then, Ambrose’s laughter caught in his throat. His face shifted instantly, panic overtaking amusement.

"Initiate a full network blockade on your entire species! Immediately!!!" His voice was sharp, urgent, no sign left of the lightheartedness from just moments ago.

Damon didn’t hesitate. He activated his personal VQD and triggered the network blockade. Instantly, a wave of frustration rippled across the population—roars of protest erupting as people were abruptly cut off mid-browse, like someone yanking the plug on their internet.

Those at home inside their VR PODs were hit even harder, forcefully ejected from their virtual realms, blinking in confusion and outrage as the system locked them out.

Damon immediately used Silver Eclipse to conceal himself lest his fellow irate Ghanaians pounced upon him, Prime Representative or not.

"Good! You did the right thing acting quickly, but the damage might already be done." Seeing that Damon listened to his advice without questioning the Vampire Lord let out a sigh.

Damon glanced at Ambrose questioningly, wondering why he reacted so strongly. However, before the other had a chance to explain his reasoning, Damon’s expression shifted as he connected the dots and thunder struck his mind.

Just now, when he contacted those who sold methods to reduce cooldown - be they excavated Items or Ability hires - they had all attempted to greedily barter knowing that he was the Prime Rep.

Now imagine if those fellows knew that all humans had poor Worldly Essence compatibility and would Level-Up slowly unless they used various cooldown Items or Abilities?

Damon’s expression darkened, his heart pounding with delayed fear at how close he’d come to a disaster. It might sound dramatic, but the truth was simple, if this issue got out and the wrong parties got their hands on it, months of careful planning and hard work could unravel in an instant.

What bullshit license? What nonsense expensive human race?

Apparently, they were nothing but a bunch of fellows who leveled at a snail’s pace without external help. Just consider the consequences about the top 7 companies and various factions blockading all cooldown assisting items, the human race would instantly drop from the ’top newcomer’ to ’a great talent that cannot leave the relegation leagues’.

In the 176 years Ambrose had lived, if Damon were given the same amount of time to grow, he’d only reach level 21. A pitiful level, utterly useless. Not even enough to survive a single second in the Chaos Realm, even with a hundred EX abilities backing him.