Aegis was truly an unfathomable organization that had existed since the dawn of human civilization. The accumulation that spanned thousands of years was no small thing, and the dizzying amount of artifacts presented before him would have already covered his heart in greed if not for his slight detachment from his body, forcing him to remain rational.

For a while, Braun didn’t know what he should pick, for the nearly endless amount of artifacts presented before him could easily boost his power by many folds.

An artifact basically meant a third superpower that he could wield. Even if he hadn’t integrated an artifact into a superpower yet, he was confident enough that he could achieve such a thing, so this was truly a major decision that would affect his development for the following years if he remained within Aegis.

A third power. A third ability.

That mere thought made his heart thump loudly.

His power, the amalgamation of all paths of progress, would make any ability that landed in his hands become unrivaled with enough time, but just because any ability he wielded has limitless prospects doesn’t mean he would choose something of low quality.

He would only do that when he needed to comprehend some aspects of reality or to uncover the secrets of superpowers, such as how much can a single ability evolve and transcend.

There’s no need to rush. Braun reminded himself, yet his scrolling speed remained as fast as ever, with him seeing hundreds of artifacts in mere minutes.

The artifact’s name, serial number, and even their abilities were explained in explicit detail, and with tens of thousands of those artifacts listed out for him to read, it became a treasure trove of knowledge for Braun to savor and enjoy.

Due to his impeccable memory, scrolling at dizzying speeds was his most efficient method to remember all of the lists’ details, needing only a glimpse to imprint an artifact’s info into his mind.

However, for an outsider like Kaya, it appeared like Braun was mindlessly scrolling through the list to waste time, and she secretly snorted, thinking, What the heck is this guy doing?

Unlike Braun, who wanted to digest all of the information presented to him, Kaya only had one goal in mind—to find an artifact suitable for her.

Considering she was a physically strong fighter who mostly fought in close combat, she at first thought of choosing an artifact that could help her weakness in long-distance attacks. She later dismissed this idea though and decided to invest more time in perfecting her feather attack instead.

So, she narrowed down her scope even further and came to a decision that she should perhaps find an artifact similar to Terry’s Giant’s Crown.

Of course, even with a narrowed scope, the sheer amount of artifacts she could pick from still brought her difficulty in choosing.

On the other hand, Braun’s scrolling speed became faster and faster, with hundreds of artifacts being processed per minute.

In Dela alone, a relatively small country, had plenty of cities, each containing numerous Aegis branches. Within those branches, they contained plenty of artifacts and could total up to a sizeable amount, perhaps over a thousand artifacts.

While a majority of them may be low-level like Level 0, it was still a huge amount.

Dela was just one of the various countries in the entire world.

If one thinks about how large countries like Afril are, then one could just imagine the amount of artifacts Aegis had in store.

And now, Braun was seeing it all for himself.

After what seemed like an eternity of just mindlessly scrolling and storing all of those artifacts in his memory, Braun concluded that there were over a hundred thousand artifacts he could pick from, all ranging from Level 0 to Level 2—and those artifacts that they were willing to hand out.

There were probably many more in their vaults that held far more value, but Braun had already found the artifact that he wanted to pick long ago.

As he closed the hologram, Kaya did the same as well, which meant that she had also picked her chosen artifact.

The two stared at each other with slight surprise but remained silent. Instead, they called over for Karsen, telling him that they were done choosing.

“You two ready?” he once again asked, making sure that they were sure of their decision.

The two simply nodded their heads.

Walking up to the terminal, Karsen inputted some strange symbols into it, and a strange power began to well up within the transparent box. The terminal lilt up, and the two could now state out their chosen artifact.

Kaya was the first to say her chosen artifact.

“Artifact 2-3789: Regeneration Amplifying Scarlet Crystal Pendant.”

As its name suggested, the artifact she chose would amplify her regenerative capabilities, and it was by a whopping five times the original potency.

Because she’s a transformation-type Super that can transform into a monster, her regeneration speed is already quite fast, with severe wounds being healed in mere minutes, but with the artifact, it would be cut down to mere seconds!

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In a way, she was practically half-immortal already, with even attacks on her heart being ineffective. Also, as long as her ability grows, her regenerative capabilities would also grow stronger, which would then get amplified by five times its original potency by the artifact!

While the effect of the artifact might diminish the stronger she became and would probably not help much by the time she reaches the realm of Demigods, that wasn’t her problem, because she herself believes she has no hopes of reaching Level 4 and beyond.

Perhaps only one in every one hundred to one thousand Level 3 supers has hopes of reaching that realm if they underwent the ordinary route presented by Aegis, which was just constant practice and reliance on talent, unlike the bloody path of slaughtering others to devour their crystals.

If that secret was exposed to the rest of the world, bloodshed would be inevitable.

That was why Aegis had imposed the rule of ‘no killing unless absolutely necessary’ to all of its members, even adding it to the oath they have to swear to the mysterious artifact known as Heavenly Promise.

As Karsen inputted the serial number of Kaya’s artifacts, the inside of the white box began to warp as space contracted, before white light shot out. When the light receded, a silver necklace with a scarlet red gem was floating in the air, which then slowly flew towards Kaya.

She curiously grabbed it with inspecting eyes, observing the minute details of the elegantly designed necklace. Kaya fiddled around with the necklace, touched the cold scarlet red gem dangling at the bottom, and felt a stream of vitality flowing within.

The moment she put it on, the glittering gem at the bottom of the necklace was placed just right above her heart, with an endless warm stream of vitality flooding into her bloodstream.

She softly moaned at the comforting feeling and it took her a while to adjust herself to the relaxing feeling of her increased vitality.

When she was finally fine, she took a deep breath and her index finger’s fingernail extended out, forming a sharp claw. Stabbing it into the bare skin of her forearm and tearing open a deep wound, she saw her flesh visibly squirm underneath to reform and mend her torn flesh, healing it to tip-top shape in the blink of an eye.

She nodded with a satisfied grin and stepped back to give way for Braun.

I wonder what he chose. Kaya stared at Braun with anticipation.

Even Karsen felt great curiosity as to what Braun had picked because, in all honesty, this recent addition to his team had been one big surprise.

Karsen even felt that it wouldn’t be impossible for Braun to ascend to Level 4 in his lifetime, which made him inwardly sigh in admiration.

Braun grinned as his eyes glowed brilliantly.

“Artifact 2-4321: Clockwork Watch.”

When Karsen heard the artifact’s name, he smiled and said, “Good choice.”

With great speed, he’d be even stronger combat-wise compared to before. Not bad, not bad at all!

The Level 2 Artifact known as Clockwork Watch is a golden-framed pocket watch with dials made out of a strange black crystal. When in possession of the artifact, one could dilate the time of their body and the area around them in increments of three.

At max, one could slow down or accelerate time by thrice the ordinary speed. It can slow down enemies, accelerate one’s own speed, etc.

It was an incredibly powerful Level 2 Artifact that could affect the mysterious concept called time, but considering it was just an artifact with no hopes of advancing in power like Supers or Monsters, Aegis was more than willing to give this artifact to its members to boost its fighting force.

However, if it was able to accelerate time at increments of somewhere around the hundreds, then it would be a different story altogether.

As Karsen inputted the serial code into the terminal, his long-awaited artifact popped into existence and landed in his arms.

Upon coming into contact with the artifact, its power intuitively appeared in his mind and he felt that as long as he wished it, the time around his body and the surrounding area could either speed up or slow down.

So this is time… Braun, having already come into contact with space, was surprised to see that they truly felt the same. Space and time were indeed connected intrinsically to one another, giving rise to similar sensations, yet the two concepts had their own distinctions.

Deriving from his experience as the Space Tearing Wolf, time around him fluctuated and reality around him warped, with his perception of time accelerating by an increment of three. Because of this, the speed of light became a third of its original speed, causing the colors of his surroundings to slightly shift.

He waved his arms around, and could clearly feel the laws of physics responding to his different flow of time.

After testing it out for a short while, he returned to normal and everything shifted back to what they used to look like.

Karsen wordlessly grinned and deactivated the terminal, before saying to the two, “Well, that’s that.”

“You two have finished your graduation program,” he added.

Braun chuckled softly and began to head back to the elevator at the end of the hallway, mumbling, “That was quite uneventful.”

“What do you expect, some villains to randomly appear and snatch away your precious treasure?” Karsen joked.

“Maybe…,” Braun mysteriously answered, with a strange light flicking in his eyes. Although I haven’t confirmed it yet, there is a common saying that a rough gem can only be polished through pressure. Only through trials can a hero be born.

Karsen didn’t bother to fish for answers regarding Braun’s mysterious answer and instead entered the elevator, with Kaya following from behind.

The elevator door then closed, and the trio went up by a couple of floors before arriving at their destination.

Before they walked out though, Karsen suddenly said, “Look here.”

Spurred by his words, the two subconsciously turned to look towards Braun, when a flash of bright blue light erupted, causing them to uncontrollably blink their eyes. When they finally felt their vision return to normal, they found that their memories had already been erased, erasing everything that they knew about the artifact list—well, that’s what should have happened.

Because of previous rounds of memory erasures, Braun’s brain had already adapted to Aegis’ technology and gained resistance to it, allowing him to retain a majority of his memories, and was already well on his way to recovering them all.

“Okay, we’re officially done.” Karsen grinned and walked out of the elevator, leaving the two alone.

Turning to look at each other, they rolled their eyes over Karsen’s abrupt memory erasing, before bidding farewell to each other.

Soon enough, Braun arrived at his living quarters, with a green light flashing in his eyes. Although he was usually calm and his emotions barely fluctuated, this artifact, nay, this treasure that landed in his lap was truly something to rejoice!

He took a deep breath and returned to his bedroom, locking the door behind him. He hurriedly sat on his desk, with the Clockwork Watch firmly gripped in his hands.

Artifacts were stagnant sources of power, with minuscule hopes of ever growing stronger. Only a small subset of artifacts in the world were capable of achieving growth, and such treasures were usually given to special members of Aegis, not to someone like Braun.

Fortunately, he doesn’t need a special artifact capable of growth to achieve something similar, because hidden within him was the literal manifestation of the concept of growth.

While I may not be able to transform this artifact into my own crystal for now since the others would notice it, it doesn’t mean this future ability of mine should remain stagnant!

Green flames burst out of his hands, covering the entirety of the artifact.

Slowly, bathed by the flames of evolution, the artifact’s power began to grow, just like every other object that landed in his hands.

The Zenithral Force ruled over the domains of growth, evolution, and transcendence, and Braun was its representative.

Under his heaven-defying power, the once stagnant artifact has opened up the path of limitless potential!