Demoted to one-star, Robert sat on the rocks of the liminal void, pondering his choices. His single star had no essence pool. He still had the one hundred and twenty percent capacity from his void heart but that was it. His physical prowess, his perception, and his reaction speed were all demoted along with his Ethercosm.

But his spells, his tempering techniques, and the knowledge he accrued remained.

Was it worth it?

To Robert, the answer was, yes.

With each heartbeat, his void heart drew half as much essence from the gates than what the two stars he sacrificed regenerated at the same time. And that was at zero percent progress with the technique. It would grow to two times at the cusp of stage 1, then two and a half times when he reached stage 2, not to mention the concepts he could evolve the ability with.

Not only that. The real boon of the Void Gates of Nirvana was that his black heart beat even in the liminal void. He could recover essence just by spending time there. That was huge. Even if the Void Gates of Nirvana gave no other benefit but this one, it would be worth losing two stars.

His talents were unchanged. Just as Blossom said when he drank the potion from the Minotaur dungeon, talents only change when ascending a star. Not when descending.

Now, he could climb the ladder to power all over again. But he could do better. He could grow stronger than ever.

Usually, an arch-human needed eight hours of sleep or deep meditation to recover their full essence pool without gathering. This value was the same no matter how evolved their stars were. Robert sacrificed two full stars. In these eight hours of deep restorative rest, they produced 200 points of essence. The gates increased that to 600 points in eight hours or 1.25 points per minute. It was a pittance if compared to the satellite, which could make 4% per second. But the essence from the satellite had to be used immediately, while the gates filled a reservoir. But this was the baseline production, at 0% proficiency.

But the most important thing was that, for every five minutes in reality, he had roughly eight hours in the liminal void. He could go, meditate, and come back with a full void heart every time. So far where reality was concerned, the Void Gates of Nirvana gave him a full star plus twenty points of essence in less than five minutes.

Upon developing and ascending the technique with the right concepts, it could improve that production immensely.

And now he had to play catch up to return to where he was in power.

*

*

Back to reality, Fairy-Robert surrounded himself with a mage armor spell to shield his wings from the rain and flew off. Carcinodon's ocean of decay would take a while to vanish but at least it wasn't spreading. He used his primary talent and dove deeper, reemerging a quarter planet away.

Since the Gurglocks weren't coming to the surface, he dove into the water, going deeper and deeper, seeing how the pressure affected his mage armor. He didn't shapeshift into a fish. This was good training in the use of the defensive spell. A mile underneath the surface, he could only trust his extra senses. His fairy eyes could pierce deception but not see in the darkness. But now he had targets. Robert cast drain essence and waited for the contagion to start.

He tried to fight a few Gurglocks to get a gauge of his new strength only to find he had none. He had only a limited reservoir of essence and nothing else. Now that he was back to the beginning of one star of strength, he was little better than a fit mortal. Which was something but a loss of strength was more noticeable than any gains.

At least the darkness protected him from being detected by sight. The smell didn't work because his barrier kept those away. The only thing that worked was echolocation. And that could be solved with a portable sound isolation ward.

He fought for a few hours, then left the realm to go back to Earth. He had gathered a good amount of kills. It was time to lock himself in a gathering chamber to process all that latent Aura. Growing one's stars was a two-fold process. You needed to surpass challenges and gather latent Aura, then convert that to actual growth with time, meditation, and essence. Usually, the growth happens organically and in minute amounts. But in some abnormal events, like what Robert was going through, an excess of latent Aura needed to be processed.

It was mid-morning on Earth. He had spent about one and a half days in the Gurglock realm. Robert stopped by his apartment to make sure Freddy was okay and that Poochline hadn't goaded the Minotaurs into wrecking the living room again. Next, he stopped by the Gym to leave a note on his whereabouts before going to his final destination, the gathering facility.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

With more than half of the students back home and the ones remaining giving themselves a break from classes, the gathering facility was almost empty. Some students had seized the opportunity to use the chambers without competition.

Some of them recognized Robert and approached him. The guys just wanted to congratulate him and get a fist bump or some generic advice. Most of the girls were happy with just staring, snickering, and whispering to one another. The real issue was the ones who went into full groupie mode.

He used the one strategy that always worked in these situations. Robert just vanished into the liminal void and reappeared inside an empty Life gathering chamber. Then he locked the door. Engaging with them was a spell for disaster due to the rules of comedy and a certain tempering technique waiting to unleash mischief. It was much better to apply the Joestar family's secret technique.

The chamber was simple. A round room, with curved walls and a pillow in the middle. Robert adjusted the flow of wisps to one of the lowest settings and sat on the pillow. Meditating, he gathered the wisps and forced them into his star. The latent Aura combined with the essence and fostered the star's growth. He decided to go slowly even though he most likely had enough latent aura to get back his second star already.

He had no idea if he would get other talent evolutions. But there was a very good chance he would. He was in a no-man's land right now. He found no records of people losing stars. He needed to stall this time and get the most out of it.

In his Ethercosm, he stood before the black gates. Part of the essence he gathered went into the shell as he meditated on the deep insights hidden inside the fractals. Or some bullshit like that. In fact, he couldn't make sense of what these were and no DAO or anything was sending Heaven's truths straight into his mind. Oh, how easier it would be.

Once he finished developing his (single) star, he unlocked the chamber and teleported back to Pittersville.

*

*

Noah sat with Caroline in the Gym's office. The girl was dismayed at the amount of work placed in front of her.

"You have a powerful talent," Noah said. "A very versatile one. With the right monsters, you can adapt to any situation. But this versatility comes at a huge cost. You need to train each new affinity from scratch. You need to understand what each monster's talents do and how to apply them in fights. You need to care for your monsters. But you can use any affinity in existence if you find the right monster."

"I know," Caroline whined. "But it is so much work! I wish my talent was as easy to use as Robert's."

"Robert has almost the same issue as you do. How many affinities do you think he has?" Noah asked to test the waters. While Robert and Amanda were fully open with one another, he wasn't sure if this openness extended to Caroline."

"Seven. He has Life, Void, Force, Time, Space, Mind, and an undisclosed Unique affinity. It's all over the news."

"And how long did you think he spent studying to master these seven affinities?"

"Six months!" She said with all the confidence in the world. "It's all over the news. From his parents' death to his delving in the mollusk passage, to the slaughter he failed to prevent, and then he starts dating Amanda Samson in secret."

Leave it to the media to get stuff wrong and then fabricate shit on top of everything else.

Caroline had a lot of unusable shells in her Ethercosm. She could develop abilities that used the affinities she borrowed from her bonded monsters but they became unusable if said monster was inactive. And she couldn't train body tempering techniques with inactive shells. The shock to her system was too big whenever one of those was deactivated.

She was limited to the Beast affinity she started with for body tempering. Primal instincts gave her a lesser version of Robert's foresight along with enhanced senses. And savage physique improved her locomotive systems, giving her better bones, skin, and muscles.

"Okay, I see," Noah continued. "No, you're wrong. Robert has spent fifty years to get where he is at now."

"What? How?"

"Time affinity," Noah said curtly. "I hope this motivates you to train harder. Let's go, we need to improve your synchronization."

Noah had an exercise schedule for the whole summer vacation for her. She needed to complete the whole training regimen if she wanted to join Robert and Amanda and not be a burden.

*

*

Somewhere on the East Coast. A bunch of rogue Archs were at a bar, drinking and enjoying themselves. A particular group was playing poker.

"Hey, did you see this? Five rookies bit it at the Imperial Academy," one of them said to the others at the table. "I raise five."

"I told you the bounty wasn't worth the effort. That black beam guy downed a four-star. Then ate Disintegration Field for dinner," a second guy said, using the headmaster moniker. "Call."

"He did lose his hands," a third said. "Pay your five and raise two."

"And how long did he stay without hands, dumbass? Life Archs only remain crippled if they want to." The second guy laughed.

"How much are they paying now?" Another guy asked. "I fold."

"Ten million," The first said. "Call your two."

"Pfft," The second guy, the oldest among them, scoffed. "I wouldn't take that job for a hundred. And with how many people they are feeding that guy, I wouldn't be surprised if he secretly became three stars after the tournament. I pay the two and raise another two."

"Report says he's been an Arch for only seven months tops." The third said. "Call."

"If they're feeding him Ether pills to give him more essence to train with, it's possible," First said. "Raise one."

"But that would cripple his stars. He would be stuck at two stars," Fourth argued.

"Call," the first said, moving chips to the middle.

"The guy is backed by Samson," Second remarked. "Don't you think it is highly suspicious they are building a fortress right next to the Academy? Let me tell you. They found a good passage and are using it to train the guy. From one killer to another, this Blaze fellow has zero qualms about killing. Did you see the way he killed the Shayver clan's young master? I raise three."

Everybody on the table looked at the guy wearing the Minotaur armor promotional shirt. "Cease your aggression," One of them snickered.

Another round of betting went around the table. They started showing their cards or folding them.

"Yeah, the guy was already blown to bits when he finished shouting that. Let me tell you," First look at his card game buddies. "Any of you morons want to take that bounty, please do so. And name me as your sole beneficiary in your wills." He broke into a bout of chortles after that and dropped his cards on the table. "Full house, motherfuckers."

The fourth guy, the veteran, scooped the pot.