Isabella and her team returned to the table not long after. Lev waited for them patiently, ignoring the look Isabella sent his way. It wasn’t like she and her team weren’t going to be included in the conversation, though he was happy she had stopped him. Revealing something like this while only they were fighting would’ve been disrespectful.
“Alright, there’s not much to say,” Lev said and turned off all of the concealment enchantments present in the glaive. Many pairs of eyes snapped towards Stargazer, specifically the pole housing all of the enchantments and the core.
For his own fun, he observed everyone’s reaction. Melvine was mostly unbothered, having realized that the glaive was special long ago.
Elias and Viktor were sharing glances, excitement budding on their faces, whereas Lisa and Rena were transfixed. The enchantments were vast, too much to decipher properly, and for someone like those two who didn’t work with runes, the flows of mana in the pole likely seemed impossible and mesmerizing.
Isabella looked proud. Lev didn’t know if it was because he had come forward and told everyone himself, or simply because she thought that he deserved such a weapon. Either way, she was not shying away from sending her team smug glances.
Aryan was just smiling to himself. Lev had already confirmed to him that the glaive was unique, so the reveal didn’t come as a surprise.
“What kind of an Epic item has such an aura?” Elias asked, letting out a rueful sigh. “Lucky bastard.”
“It’s not Epic,” Lev casually tossed out, grinning at the reaction. “I turned off the Identify protections.”
One by one, faces lit up. The Identify results were scanned again and again, first in disbelief, then with awe.
As a general rule of thumb, enchantments with simpler names were usually weaker, unless they were single-word names. Stargazer, however, only had unique enchantments, and all of them sounded absurdly strong.
Naturally, the Masters in front of him understood the implications.
“Why did you not take any active enchantments?” Melvine asked, identifying the core principle about Lev’s weapon immediately.
“Because I wanted a weapon that would grow with me,” Lev answered thoughtfully. “To be honest, I sometimes still think about that, even if I know asking for a glaive like this was for the best. A Superior weapon with active enchantments would be extremely strong, but whatever it would do, I would eventually be able to recreate it with my class. The passive enchantments let me get to that point easier and also eventually go beyond.”
“Who even made this?” Kora questioned.
“The Dreamer.”
“You got an Exalted to make a weapon for you!?” Rena asked, a trace of envy in her voice.
Lev went silent. None of them knew what exactly had happened before he evolved to Master, and he didn’t know if he wanted to share it.
That was until he caught Viktor’s gaze, and surprisingly, also Aryan’s look. They both looked at him with no desire to know, only acceptance that they would be happy with whatever he chose to reveal, even if he didn’t say anything.
“I…” Lev took a deep breath, then deflated. “Fuck it. Basically, I was almost eaten alive the day before I evolved. A level six hundred and eighty something Windstrider Warg ambushed me close to Windkeep. It was lethally injured and undergoing a mutation, so it couldn’t use mana or most of its physical strength. I survived somehow, even if I was missing three limbs and half my face by the end. Sherron arrived at the scene just in time.
“The warg ended up dropping a regenerative core. Said cores are apparently documented but unbelievably rare. They can endlessly sustain themselves and never crumble like usual cores, so using the regenerative core for anything mundane was out of the question. Sherron and Drakys got a hold of the Exalted Crafter for me, and well, I had Stargazer remade, as she had also been shattered during the fight.”
Pin-drop silence met his horrible retelling. Only the screeches of harpy flocks chasing after the speeding bubble could be heard. Getting slightly annoyed, he formed a few dozen arrows and filled them all to the brim with lightning.
In less than three seconds, corpses rained down on the grassland, which at least prompted someone to say something.
“Wow.”
Lev turned to Aryan, who had said that. “Wow?”
“Yep. I knew you had gone through something bad before the whole thing in Windkeep, but this? How the hell are you alive?”
“Far too much luck,” Lev shrugged. “I don’t know how I keep getting away with it, but I do. That’s the answer, really.”
“But…” Isabella interjected. “Nearly level 700? Weren’t you an Adept?”
“Mhm. The warg had a really long wound close to its neck, going from the shoulder and all the way to the back of the torso. I made good use of that.”
Unfortunately, as expected, no one wanted to speak after that. Lev was starting to get bothered by the looks they were giving him, so he clicked his tongue loud enough for everyone to hear and jumped out of a hole in the bubble floor.
The pity in their gazes, no matter how well-concealed, was something he could do without. Rationally, he understood that it was an unhealthy mindset, but it was too late to be stuck on that event. He had already mostly moved on and was now stronger than ever.
Consequently, their concerns were appreciated, just not really valid anymore. It was supposed to be Stargazer’s reveal, not a tragic piece of his past. The atmosphere had stopped reflecting that.
Besides, when am I ever going to find a chance to test myself like this? Lev grinned to himself. Just a little old me against thousands upon thousands of monsters.
Mana pools just above half, he imposed some strict limits upon himself. No more than small bursts of lightning and fire, and no more than half of his enhancement formation’s maximum power, as well as the associated enchantments.
The huge wave following the bubble rippled in anticipation, detecting his delicious yet contained aura. Monsters surged with strength, pushing their skills to their limits in a bid to reach him faster.
Lev welcomed them all with Stargazer. No longer was she shrouded in concealments, nor did he feel too weak to be scared of anyone but the Exalted if push came to shove.
Mana responded to his will. He basked in the heightened control, letting his ropes tear through the weaker monsters. Harmony had made all of his enchantments and class skills even more intrinsic. They responded to his beck and call in an instant, reducing the already negligible time to an unperceivable moment.
Now, it felt as if he truly controlled everything with a thought. No longer did he need to think and plan as hard for each move, which was depicted clearly when he moved his body.
The barrier armor shadowed his movements flawlessly. Lev was used to moving the armor first and then empowering its might with his physical strength. Harmony had made his control over the skill so fluid that he could reverse the roles without even trying.
Hold on a moment, is this supposed to be possible?
His fist punched a poor orc in the face. Teeth, bones, and flesh were mixed in with a blood shower, which he smoothly avoided by jumping back.
Ever since the start, he had always led physical assaults with his armor. His body worked in the background, providing that extra oomph to each strike and making use of all of his excess physical attributes.
Reversing the roles was always possible, except it also wasn’t. He didn’t have nearly enough control over his physical limbs to excel in brawling after evolving to Adept, at least compared to his armor, nor did he have any reason to rely on his body first.
Now, though, if he could potentially take the physical and mental might combination a step further, and truly combine them into one, more doors would open to him. Specifically, a body enhancement skill.
By design, body enhancement skills had very low costs. Warriors used them with their meager mana pools, and as such, the skills were meant to complement their fighting styles to a reasonable extent.
For someone like Lev, who had more mana than what should’ve been possible at his level, such skills could turn into something else entirely. What if he lucked upon an evolution that would prepare his body for an eventual physique?
Potential futures were springing up in his mind, all because he was sort of bored and wanted to test new things. General skills were known to start at a point much lower than the average class skill, only to catch up with them a few evolutions later.
A distinct possibility was infusing or imbuing his body with mana. As Drakys had once carved runes in his own body, Lev could sew barrier threads into his skin to bypass the body’s natural healing. Flesh and muscles would heal around them, though, as it stood, he was very, very far from managing such a feat with any viability.
Regardless, the seed of greed, progress, hope, and more had been planted in his head. It would be him to advance to a point to realize it, but for now, he let his body take control.
Even if he didn’t have Arcane Brawling anymore, the natural skill and improvements he had seen back then were still with him. Which meant that when a harpy tried to tackle him to the ground, he charged his armored fist with a smidgen of blue flames.
Physical strength was responsible for the first movement this time. The impact was a type of mental feedback he hadn’t felt in a long while. His punch thudded onto the harpie’s face, cracking the beak.
Mental strength followed after an instant, digging into the head in tandem with a small explosion of blue fire. The harpy was dead before it could even think of defending itself, though Lev had the misfortune of being showered in gore due to its flight’s direction.
Weathering the collision with the body, he tossed it aside and took a step back. A strange snake-like monster was trying to take a bite out of him with surprising speed.
Lev infused a bit of lightning into his armor and danced around its range. Again and again, two giant fangs almost caught his arms, only because he allowed them to come close.
While it failed repeatedly, he observed the monster’s physiology. Four strong arms covered in thin scales, and a humanoid torso that looked even uglier than harpies. If anything, he was probably disrespecting all humanoid beings with that comparison.
Still, for the sake of knowledge, he had to test its strength. Closing in, he slapped away the first arm, ducked under the second, flew back a bit to avoid the third, and just to be sure, slapped the torso with Stargazer.
The final arm suffered as a result, its momentum cut in half. His armor weathered the blow without even coming close to any form of strain, though the amount of kinetic energy absorbed was still surprising. It confirmed his theory that the monster was only focused on physical strength, possessing more than its level would suggest.
Having seen enough, he amped up his Perception and enhancement formation for a brief instant, decapitating it.
[
You have slain [Lesser Nure - Level 223]
]
Nure? Why have I never heard of this type before?
That should’ve tipped him off, but it didn’t. Lev put the monster out of his mind and continued mowing through each enemy arrayed in front of him. Not a single third-threshold monster was anywhere near him, allowing him to truly let loose.
Fists shattered bones. Legs tripped and shattered even more bones. When it came too close, he just let a few monsters swarm him, then launched a small, blue fireball at his feet.
It was a good crash test for his armor. The construct was stressed slightly, and the Epic suit beneath also struggled to ward off the heat. They did manage to succeed in their tasks in the end, courtesy of the little mana used in the fireball, but the monsters had it much worse.
Blue fire, as opposed to normal fire, was sadistic. It didn’t just explode; it did so with vengeance. That meant shearing through whole monsters before it could even burn them, ultimately reducing them to nothing more than bits and pieces.
Lev did get tossed around like a rag doll. He used that to his advantage, keeping an eye on avian monsters and suddenly launching himself at their face.
A galeworm was his latest victim. The poor thing, as poor as a monster could be, tried to jerk out of the way, only to slam into an invisible shield. Lev’s hand wrapped around its length in the next moment, releasing enough lightning to turn it into a charred, disgusting snack.
Tossing it aside, he was about to jump back into the bubble when an odd sensation assaulted his mind.
It started negligibly, as if the world was holding its breath. Lev’s confusion turned to alarm when his mind started blaring warnings, and he powered his armor’s enchantments to the fullest just in time for a wave of gray, visible mana to hit him.