Damon's Ascension-Chapter 99: Level 19

On Earth, during the 3 hours while Damon’s second Avatar went to Ambrose’s ship and made the various orders, his first Avatar was seated on a shuttle that was heading towards China.

He was serious about his plan to diversify. He was not going to look for some immortal cultivation Skill and start ’going against the heavens’ because he had already done his research.

Mythologies with an ’unlimited upper limit’ like the Chinese were not rare in the universe, and when the Universe Will manifested those zones, it transformed those Skills into something that suited its system.

So no, there was nothing convenient like finding the Dragon Tiger Vajra Method that let you absorb Worldly Essence through cultivation to raise your Level outside of the Universe Will’s influence.

Any Skill that affected Worldly Essence only ever drained it to produce an effect, like the Golden Stool. There was a reason, after all, as to why Damon’s Devour and Felicia’s Empower have caused a galactic-wide sensation.

However, putting aside cultivation legends, there were more tangible martial legends that were not mitigated in power.

The famous Iron Sand Palm, Dugu Nine Sword Skills, and such were available for collection in the martial worlds as long as one could learn. These Skills did not increase the bodily power of a person like in the myths, but rather did what martial arts were supposed to do—allow one to bring out the full effect of their bodily stats for battle.

So for Damon, his goal was to acquire an attack method for unarmed combat, one movement Skill for evasion and closing the distance, as well as one defensive method. If possible, he would try to get weapon Skills or escape Skills, since those were famous in Chinese mythology.

For this, he had even consumed a lot of content on his VQD about Chinese mythology and history, as well as Chinese fiction, which heavily relied on their mythology for inspiration. On top of that, he had already mastered the basics of the Chinese language system with his 4 points of Mentality.

Also, while he was on his way, it was time to consume the 100 million advance he took to upgrade himself. frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓

He was currently Level 13 and needed 327,680 units of Worldly Essence to Level up, as well as 4,096 hours of cooldown time in total. Accounting for the penalty, that was a total of 655,360 units of Worldly Essence that took 13 minutes to take effect on his body.

The newly gained stat point was added to Fortitude first and foremost, reducing all future cooldown costs by 10%. This was pointless to Damon because he planned to pay the penalty for cooldown at all times, until after being cleansed by the Primordial Lake and fixing his racial defect.

Next was the climb from Level 14 to Level 15, which required 655,360 units and 7,782 hours, which came to a total of 1,310,720 units and took a total of 14 minutes to take effect.

The newly added point was invested into Mentality, in order to increase the effect of Silver Eclipse and also to make his ’comprehension’ better since that was an important requirement for these mythical oriental martial arts.

From Level 15 to 16, Damon spent a total of 5,242,880 units due to the doubling and invested the new stat point after 15 minutes into Power, not just for the purpose of stability, but because the ’root bone’ was apparently also an important thing for where he was going.

Likewise, it should be predictable that upon going from 16 to 17, he invested the new stat point into Mobility, making his main body and mind stats 5 across the board.

But Damon did not stop here as he raised his Level to 19 in one go, consuming a gross total of 83,230,720 units of Worldly Essence— including from the start— out of his total balance of 100,430,610—100 million from the recent transaction and 430,610 left from the previous one— left him with 17,199,890 units in the bank.

A lot compared to the mere thousands he usually harvested, but it did not come cheap, and it also wasn’t enough to solve the problem.

Even for Damon alone, reaching Level 30 with 150 billion units of Worldly Essence seemed daunting, much less accounting for the whole group. Unfortunately, they were at a dead end because he could only pull big sale gimmicks like the auction every now and then, not to mention that he did not dare to use all of the human race’s money in case they had to make important purchases later.

So they would have to share it as fairly as possible and get as far as they could and go into the Chaos Realm with that.

The task was so arduous that Damon’s teeth ached, but it had to be done. The human race could afford to be spending around 100 million units of Worldly Essence per person just to reach Level 20.

No matter how sweet their Abilities were, no one would invest in such a species and their ranking in the IUAS would plummet to the thousands in an instant.

17 million units... Damon pondered whether he should try redrawing a Divine Skill from the Golden Stool, so that he could get a higher-ranked version. Unfortunately, his nepo-baby days were over, and as the draw was based on ’luck’, it was likely that the Universe Will would give him the Skill he least desired, rather than the one he wanted like last time.

Even if it did not interfere, which it promised not to anymore, it was still a gamble. If he invested a lot, he could get a good Skill that was powerful, but not one that was useful to him at the moment.

Damon also considered investing Worldly Essence—like 10 million—to summon Nyame, the Creator God of the Akan Pantheon, and ask him to use his creation Divine Power to create a mini Primordial Lake.

However, Damon doubted this would work, and even if it did, it would not be on the scale he needed. It might not be a bad idea though, to summon Nyame and have him ’fix’ Damon and his crew so that they could maximize their Leveling ability for the Chaos Realm.

Damon hesitated because there was no guarantee for this. If Nyame appeared and could not deliver, those invested units of Worldly Essence would not be returned, this was a normal operation for divine weapons he already knew from research.

’...after the instance.’ Damon chose to postpone it for later.

For now, he was more interested in his outcome within the martial arts instance as he checked his character panel to see his latest stat spread.

[Name: Damon Arnan || Race: Homo Sapien (Pure) || Faction: None]

[POW: 6 || MOB: 6 || FOR: 5 || MEN: 5 || PRO: 1]

[Abilities: Probability Manipulation (EX), Avatar (EX), Devour (EX).]

With these stats, he should be at the top, if not near the top, of all Tier 2 instances, making sure that he wasn’t easily bullied or denied certain opportunities because he was ’weak’. Not to mention that with his already present Abilities and slew of Skills, he was already a serious threat.

The shuttle soon reached the mainland of China and traveled towards the central part of this humongous and ancient country, one of the few with a persisting history that could be traced back to the earliest days of civilization.

Damon was not detected by the radars of the military, but he took the initiative to inform the Chinese government of his arrival in order to be diplomatically stable.

China was not really a closed state, and while it did have strict immigration policies, especially towards Africa, they were not in the position to say no to the Prime Representative of the Human Race who, if we are to put it bluntly, owned the entire species for the duration of his term.

Of course, this entry was not easily given. The so-called ’Dragon Country’ sent a military escort to direct Damon to a suitable landing zone in a nearby base in his target province of Hubei.

The official reason was for escort, protection, and diplomacy, but it was obviously done to monitor Damon’s actions during his visit. After all, the government was not stupid. The moment VQDs had been made available, they had researched everything that they needed to know and were aware of the Prime Rep’s special privileges.

They could tell what he was coming here for without having to ask, as indeed, Chinese mythology and culture had been growing exclusively in popularity worldwide in recent years, with many abandoning the western mythologies and fantasies for the oriental side.

After all, the western side had a hard limit and came with various rules as well as detriments, but for the oriental side, the power ceiling was as high as your imagination and it promised absolute indulgence in one’s desires with no consequence.