To call Arthur's final attack overkill was the understatement of the century. His spear hit a momentary snag when it hit the vampire's chest and a green flash of protection charm breaking later, his weapon pierced through flesh and into Ishaya’s heart. That's when his channelled attack detonated, 55,000 points of energy, all at once. Arthur’s eyes were half closed in preparation for the backlash and so he almost missed it, that’s how fast the world around him changed.

One moment, the world was an ocean of green flames encompassing three-quarters of the territory’s space, and the next, it condensed down to a pillar of poisonous light at the tip of his spear, one metre across and stretching into the clouds above. For a split-second, the world was on fire and the next, he stood in an ashy wasteland, the castle around him nought but crumbling stone. There was a dull thump as all the oxygen he’d burned in the atmosphere was rapidly replaced as the planet rushed to fill in the absence his attack had left in the world.

The pillar of green light persisted for thirty seconds, visible from hundreds of miles away, from space itself, and Arthur knew that whatever protection the Darkstar essence Core had provided him had finally run dry with his grand display of magic. Those who had forgotten him would begin to remember. The system… well, Arthur wasn’t too sure how it would react to his re-emergence. Lady Sleyca, he was certain would be livid. The one opportunity she’d had to meet him- at last in the form of a construct- had gone.

The poison affinity ether his attack had released saturated the clouds above and Arthur worried that next time it rained, people would get hurt. Arthur had no way to solve that problem though, so he hoped the damage wouldn’t be as bad as he feared. The vampire died four seconds into Arthur’s attack, he felt the moment its essence flowed into him, an infusion towards his next level far smaller than what the hivemind construct had provided him, an altogether underwhelming result.

It made sense though, Arthur didn’t know how much the Territory would have empowered Ishaya if he’d given it the chance to, but without it, the vampire was a far weaker creature than Wovan. I almost feel like I should have come after the bastard properly and gotten a good fight out of it at least. He’d gained nothing of note from the vampire's execution, any valuables he may have had on his person were lost along with the rest of his body, disintegrated in his attack. The castle itself was a smouldering ruin and Arthur wasn’t willing to spend days sitting through the rubble on the off chance that he might find something good.

With the territory lord dead, Arthur would have expected it to return to its previously inert state but he could feel the ambient blood ether roiling chaotically, almost as if searching for something. A moment later, Arthur realised what it was. Whatever the process was, Ishaya had somehow set up the territory for inheritance and now that the former lord was dead, it was forming a link with the noble vampire sent to monitor him, Elaina. The reason the territory was behaving so chaotically was because of how far away its new lord must be.

You have ERROR… ERROR… Realigning system logs with host Arthur Ward… Recalibrating…

It looked like his consumption of the Darkstar Essence Core had affected the system a little more than he’d expected.

You have completed the World Quest- Slay the predatory Territory Lord; Ishaya...

Reward: Permanent 5% Concentration increase to Arthur Ward's ether pool

Golden light surrounded him and Arthur felt it suffuse his core, or whatever the equivalent of it was for human beings. All Arthur knew was that it was doing something to the ether his body produced and worked with. As far as upgrades went, it was the least invasive he’d been through, so subtle, he could barely tell anything was happening. He didn’t know much about what an increased concentration of Ether meant, but from his conversations with Iris on the subject, he knew it was a good thing.

In essence, it gave him more bang for his buck, made any spell he cast with the same amount of ether just that little bit stronger. Iris’s Ether concentration was nearing 200%, which made her so much more powerful than others at her level. That and her completely broken class. The one limitation with working on your ether concentration or essence concentration as it was often called at least with the more common cultivation methods, was the fact that it decreased your total energy pool slightly. That made his reward so special, in that it only brought with it the positives of essence concentration and none of the negatives.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

For some one like Arthur, however, who wasn’t reliant on the size of their ether pool as their primary fuel for magic, it meant that he could use the most extreme cultivation methods and refine his ether to near detrimental levels of concentration. His ether pool would become truly miniscule but that issue was made void by the fact that he used health to fuel everything he did nowadays. It was something he’d decided to do after Iris had told him of the benefits, and the little help the world had just given him today was certainly welcome.

Still, he wasn’t aware the world could hand out rewards or tasks for that matter. It also raised the question of whether or not the world had signalled him out for the task or if he’d just done a job that was open to everyone. Had the Darkstar Essence Core prevented the world from sending him any messages. Arthur decided that the exact mechanics of how the world worked weren't so important so long as he benefited from them.

Looking around the territory of blood, Arthur was once again taken aback by how much destruction his attack had caused. Sure, he’d spent 55,000 ether on it, but the energy had been focused on a single individual. Everything else was just collateral. I don’t think Wovan would have survived that. The hivemind’s monster core was burning a hole in his storage pouch and at the Epic rarity, it was practically begging Arthur to consume it. He controlled himself, though. Arthur had other plans for the core and now that he knew he was limited to two before his next refinement he was pushing for legendary monster cores and above only.

Either he would hunt the monsters himself- an option he much preferred- or he’d find a way to somehow trade for them. The universe was a vast place and monster cores coming from the strongest creatures were not always the most valuable. Either they lacked the right affinities, or they didn’t make for the best ingredients in elixirs for whatever reason. That particular limitation didn’t phase Arthur with his unique method of elixir creation. Not for the first time, Arthur wondered what would happen if an ordinary person ate one of his creations. Would it benefit them in some way, or would they just… die?

Frowning, Arthur considered the energy circulating around him. The Territory's ether had finally settled and he knew that somewhere out there, a new vampire had just been crowned territory lord. She’d become a problem, sooner or later, Arthur was certain of that. The question was, would she become his problem? He didn’t know. From the rant he’d overheard, the vampire noble hadn’t been too pleased with Ishaya’s mass killing of children, though not for the reasons most normal people would be displeased by the deplorable act. She worried it would make it harder for them to establish relations with Earth's alien overlords, not that it was a disgusting misuse of power that was truly monstrous.

Did she need to be held responsible for the crimes of her partners? Shaking his head, Arthur rubbed at his temples. His post-refinement long hair had the annoying habit of getting into his eyes. Now if it didn’t look so damn amazing, he’d cut it immediately, but he was loath to cut off such luscious locks. That and he didn’t think there were scissors sharp enough to cut through his hair on the planet. His draconic vitality was applied to every part of his body and his hair probably classified as a rare item just on the basis of its durability. I’ll leave the vampire noble be for now. Since there's only one of them, I’m sure Iris will find a way to deal with her. Thinking about Iris, it’s about time they start remembering me. Arthur grinned. Last time he’d seen the fae woman, she’d asked him out on a date. She was probably feeling mortified now that she remembered it. If she did. He didn’t know how the memory recovery worked and if the entirety of a person’s memory would come back.

Arthur waited around for a while to see if the Territory would undergo any further changes. That and he was resting after using 110,000 health to power his latest attack. Even if no wounds appeared on his body after using health magic, it left him feeling weak and fragile in a way that flesh wounds never did. Now that I think about it, though, when was the last time I received damage? Wovan had managed to hurt him but the damage had been so little he’d hardly registered it.

The ascended blood beast, as powerful as it had been, had never gotten the chance to hurt him. In fact the regular blood beasts, or at least the ranged variant, had been far more successful in harming him. Another twenty levels invested in Draconic Vitality and Arthur didn’t think the lich-queen would be able to touch him. The problem was getting those levels. Monsters coming from ‘black gates’ tended to not survive too long, the ambient ether on Earth being too low to sustain their existence and causing them to starve to death and those that did survive, weren’t strong enough to benefit him. He could go around chasing dimensional incursions as they formed, but he doubted he’d get lucky enough to fight another Wovan any time soon. Monsters like the hivemind weren’t exactly common.

Arthur grinned as the hazy outlines of a plan came to him. Sure, accurately predicting the right dimensional incursions to go to would mean he was the luckiest man on the planet, or unlucky depending on how you saw things. It was a good thing he knew a seer who’d make the perfect portal detector. Ayesha, and by extension, Iris wanted to secure a dominant position on the tier 1 planet. That meant they’d need to deal with the greatest threat the world faced: The Lich-queen. It was in their best interests that Arthur became stronger as soon as possible.

I guess it's time to powerlevel.