Oliver’s screams were muffled by the rushing winds.
The two of them would be fine.
The laws of physics dictated that because of drag, there had to be a terminal velocity. Even though they jumped off an eight thousand meter tall mountain, they would only ever reach two hundred kilometers an hour.
Alistair would survive that fall raw, albeit with injuries. He wasn’t so sure about Oliver. With his Fall of Fleet boots, he didn’t need to be sure.
Dev’rox helped guide their descent, making sure to manipulate space to avoid hitting against the mountain. It took almost one and a half minutes of free fall for them to reach the ground.
Even with Fall of Fleet, the impact was earth-shattering. Alistair was sure that the sound of his boots hitting the ground echoed for kilometers. The rocky desert cracked open and when they settled, they were at the center of a small ditch.
Fall of Fleet worked by stretching the time of impact at the very last second by over two times. That didn’t sound like a lot, but it actually reduced the force applied to their bodies many times over.
Despite the sudden move, Oliver was already in combat mode. Alistair knew he could trust him to act alone, and rocketed toward the source of the Dao energy.
Ah, [Dash]. Alistair’s signature movement Skill. It had been a long time since he felt the wind against his face like that. The world became a blur as Alistair connected seven consecutive [Dashes].
When he arrived, the battlefield was a mess. Thousands of trees blocked his view, the same kinds that he had seen Alexandra use against her father. Red embers emanated from the leaves, humming in a demonic chant. There was a figure that dashed from tree to tree. The person was fast, not as fast as him, but quick enough that a normal person would have seen them as a blur of motion. Her aura was unmistakable. Alexandra.
Every time she stopped, she grabbed a tree. The red embers would temporarily go supernova, blinding everything with intense light. The light subsided after only half a second, but Alistair could see how it would be effective against those that primarily relied on sight. After it faded, the tree appeared transformed into a massive spear three time as tall as Alexandra.
She swayed with its weight, leveraging her immense Strength to perform inhuman feats. She swung the spear wildly, though not once did it cleave into her own trees. Her dominion Skill was perfectly in tune with her fighting, the trees swaying and moving out of her attacks.
Alistair couldn’t see with his eyes Alexandra’s opponent, but with all of his other senses, he understood right away who it was. Oracle, the Second Devil King.
He surveyed the overall situation in a split second of arriving. It was a 2v3—Alexandra and Jesse against—Alistair’s heart dropped as he felt the unnatural auras of two familiar faces. Carmen Romero and Richard Atwood. It was all but confirmed they were dead before, but feeling their corpses in person made it all too real.
Not only were they dead, but Karmic threads ran all throughout their bodies, connecting them to the one known as Oracle. She puppeteered them hidden behind all the trees, and her raw aura outstripped Dragonus by a decent margin. More concerning was the mass of Karmic energy he felt that was much higher than his own. That was to be expected since it wasn’t his main Class, but it was still worrisome when he considered how effective his own Karmic Skills were.
Oracle used Carmen’s crosses to block Alexandra’s strikes while the Sniper scoped out Jesse. While they were in a stalemate at the moment, Alistair saw that Alexandra was on the losing end. For some reason, her [Woodland Forest] was already collapsing in and of itself. It almost felt like the natural degradation over a long timescale. Was Alexandra running out of Mana?
The result of the fight was clear. With Alexandra’s dominion Skill on the verge of collapse and Jesse held at bay by his natural counter in that of a long-range fast firing Class, they were on a path to defeat.
Seeing Alexandra and Jesse fighting Carmen and Richard made anger boil in his heart. How cruel, how evil was it, to kill them and use their bodies?
Alistair stilled his rising rage. This was not the time for that. For the first time outside of the Holy Ravine, Alistair let himself into the calm waters of Tranquil Mind.
In his mind’s eye, the standard image reversed itself. Instead of him diving into the sea of tranquility, the mystical waters assaulted his outstretched body with the force of a tsunami. Paradox, Alistair thought, recalling his meditations under the waterfall and the Final Trial of the Steel Body. While the body is ravaged, the mind reaches its peak separation from the world.
Following his full submersion into those stormy waters, Alistair reached a state of serenity previously unknown to him, surpassing his previous escapades through the Kai’tazake Mutra. Without exaggeration, there was not a single drop of resentment within his heart.
Alistair’s Karmic precognition went haywire. Threads of Oracle’s impure Karma assaulted his eyes without any sign of stopping. It was meaningless. He did not need to see his victory to know it would come to pass.
Dev’rox and Alistair reached the best synergy they’d ever had under Tranquil Mind, despite the complete untranquility that defined the imp.
Dev’rox flew toward Richard, shrinking the space in between them. At the same time, he also shrunk the space between Alistair and Carmen.
Alistair [Dashed] toward the witch, fueled by the extra Agility of “Good Samaritan” since Oracle was evil that had to be stopped.
The Devil King’s reactions were fast, but Alistair’s were faster, especially in Tranquil Mind. He was halfway to the target by the time that she acted.
Her puppet grew five crosses that appeared to pierce her body. One through her mouth, one through each lung, one through her stomach, and one through each thigh. Lines of energy flowed from each cross, forming a pentagram.
Alistair recognized this formation—the Formulaic Skill that called down a replica Heavenly tribulation. Carmen hadn’t been able to use that Skill instantaneously before, requiring some set up, but she must have developed a faster version before she died.
That was meaningless, too. Alistair didn’t bother paying attention to that for than a second. He nonchalantly tossed Heavenly Nectar Incense high into the sky and continued forward.
Based on the placement of her crosses, Oracle intended for the replica Heavenly tribulation to be a suicidal attack for her puppet, taking out both Carmen and her opponent. She was out of luck.
The empyrean lightning came down from the skies the moment Alistair touched Carmen’s body. It didn’t land.
Alistair reasoned that if the gourd hadn’t broken when faced with the titanic force of a Mana Storm, any lightning that Carmen called down couldn’t harm it. Since it was already full, he wasn’t trying to capture more lightning or anything. He just used the body itself as a grounding object for the lightning to strike.
The Heavenly lightning collided with the flying container in a thunderous clash that brought forth even more light than Alexandra’s tree transformations.
Alistair did not rely on his sight. He finished his [Dash] and wrapped his fingers wrapped around Carmen’s neck. With all of his newfound 500 Strength, he hurled the dead witch as far away from the battlefield as he could. Without an opposing force, she would fly for over a kilometer.
Not even a millisecond after the woman’s neck left his fingers, Dev’rox snapped his own fingers, swapping the two partners. The imp placed his positioning so perfectly, so that when they swapped, Alistair already had his hand around Richard’s neck. As he was still continuing the momentum of his previous throw, he merely finished the movement with the Sniper.
Alistair didn’t let up his furious assault. As soon as Richard’s neck left his hand, he [Dashed] toward Oracle. The trees between them had already dissipated—either Alexandra had run out of Mana or she realized what Alistair needed was more open space.
Simultaneously, Dev’rox flew at the Devil King as well, revealing his physical form. His body looked almost as tangible as a living being, and he aimed his barbed tail straight at the enemy.
Then, Fate upended. Left became right and right became left, and the future became the past and the past became the future. Threads of Karmic energy popped in and out of existence everywhere in sight, almost like one of those laser beam security systems from the movies. There was no rhyme or reason to when or where the threads would pop up. They stretched from the ground all the way to the ends of the sky, and Alistair knew at once that touching them would spell his doom.
Her attack was meaningless. He could not be touched if he did not wish it. Alistair’s reaction time while in Tranquil Mind surpassed even his hypersonic speed. His body moved without thought, reacting to threats automatically.
When viewed with proper precision, it became obvious that the threads appeared in 0.01 second intervals. In other words, child’s play for Alistair to dodge.
Alistair weaved through the web of Karma like he knew where the threads were going to be in advance. Which he didn’t, his Karmic vision still not working properly. But his reactions were so fast that it looked as if he did.
As the #1 ranker of the world advanced, the Second Devil King retreated. She leaped backwards several times, careful to continuously construct her deadly web. The threads definitely slowed him down, Alistair having to move at odd angles and sometimes even go backwards to avoid touching the light, but he moved forward nonetheless. Faster than Oracle could backpedal. He would soon reach her.
With his [Fighter’s Instinct] at Tier 5, his sense of the battle had never been more piercing. From being in the presence of her Karmic energy, Alistair understood what type of fighter she was. A constrictor.
A magnified version of how Alistair’s [Hand of Karma] sliced away fortuitous lines of Fate for his opponents, she used her Karmic threads to prune down her victims to certain doom. That was why she couldn’t form an impassably high amount of threads and leave it at that. There were limits to how much fell Karma one could imbue to their enemies at their level.
Alistair’s Tranquil Mind adapted to the strange environment. He began to understand the pattern of emergence of the threads, and the minor flaws in typical causality. For instance, if he stepped to his left, sometimes he would mess up and move too far, or too little.
These tiny things would have killed a lesser fighter right away. Even Alistair brushed death’s cloak multiple times, relying on Tranquil Mind’s reaction speeds to avoid defeat. However, after adapting to the rules of the terrain, he could run through the terrain like it was a race track.
Alistair jumped forward, coming within a body’s length of the Devil King. Dev’rox circled around her back. All the while his human host had been pushing Oracle back with a frontal assault, Dev’rox had been flying up, up and away. He had avoided all the troublesome Karmic threads by staying out of range.
That range was enormous, almost five hundred meters, but the imp’s straight flying speed was faster than her backwards shuffling. He had caught up and surpassed her, allowing him to hover behind her as she moved. There were Karmic threads there too, so he couldn’t reach her, but she also couldn’t dismiss this other threat.
Alistair’s danger sense went off before his Karmic sight detected anything. Whatever machinations of Fate she could control within her sphere, a warrior’s danger sense came from a different sphere of existence, unable to be fully meddled with.
The Devil King raised a finger, and the Karmic threads collapsed.
Why struggle so hard? Alistair wondered. Meaningless. The distance between us is that of the sun and the earth. Behind her, Dev’rox unveiled one of his signature arcane arrays. The translucent circle of esoteric symbols pulsed with ancient magic, power derived from a distant time and land. The imp’s willpower could be felt in every centimeter of his arrays, working in perfect unison with his ghost cultivator.
There was not one, but two arrays. One that Dev’rox formed behind Oracle, and one that he formed in front of her. A spatial passageway.
Alistair threw a [Force Fist] containing an ample amount of the Fist Node, combining a [Hand of Karma] on top of it.
Time seemed to move in slow motion as Alistair’s gauntleted fist disappeared through one portal and appeared out behind Oracle. Karmic energy covered force affinity Mana in the shape of a fist the size of his torso.
He did all of this without emotion, without attachment. He was simply an avatar of justice, performing his proper duty with a serene disposition. For all evil was not worthy of hate, but pity.
Alistair’s fist pierced straight through the Devil King’s stomach. However, instead of being a pile of gore, the woman just split. The top half and the bottom half of her body flew apart, connected by thousands of Karmic strings.
Karmic rebirth. Both halves knitted new body parts out of Karmic energy, one a torso and one a pair of legs. Both truly and equally Oracle, registering the same aura.
It was no doubt a trick. At their realm of cultivation, true cloning was impossible. With his mind in synchronization with Dev’rox, he already knew this. But, perhaps for a few seconds, she could really take on the power of two of herself.
Or more. Both new bodies split one more time, even as Alistair’s fist still finished his blow. The speed of the cloning was impressive, outpacing him even if for just a moment.
All four of the Oracles opened their mouths at once. “Delphic Curse.”
Alistair did not understand what those words meant, but he did grasp the essence of what she was doing. A proto-Domain, multiplied by four.
Something that could only be described as a field of darkness spread from the four bodies of Oracle.
May you rest at peace. In banishing you from the record of this world, I give you my sincerest apologies that it has come to this eventuality. For you shall not enter the cycle of reincarnation, in your permanent slumber, I shall give your last moments the splendor of truest justice.
Alistair activated [Draconic Roar], condensing the majority of his overall nue in a single scream. Force Mana beamed out in streaks. The nue was invisible, but Alistair could feel its weight.
Nue was the natural counter to a Domain. He wasn’t sure if this was a multiversal law that applied to those at the top, but as Foundation realm, it was true. The reason was simple. A Domain required the physical manifestation of spirituality, governed through the mind’s leadership. The mind’s leadership.
[Draconic Roar] washed over the nascent proto-Domains. The nue infected them, making them completely unstable, disconnected from Oracle’s mental designs. She could no longer control their output or size, causing them to stagnate after only expanding a meter.
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That would only hold for 1.5 seconds. Alistair was no nue master and Oracle’s Dao energy was deep with meaning, along with her general resistance to nue with her high mental stats.
Alistair only needed one second. He activated [Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva Judgment].
The air itself hummed with a deep bass rumbling noise. A voice spoke in a language that Alistair did not know, a tongue of superior enlightenment that blessed the ears of all that listened. It spoke its name faster than any human could intelligibly understand, yet somehow all in the vicinity understood nonetheless. It was the Thousand-Armed Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. When the unseen voice finished chanting its name, the being emerged.
Out of thin air, the avatar appeared. It was six meters tall and constructed out of force and lightning-attuned Mana. Like traditional depictions of Avalokiteśvara’s thousand-armed form, the Skill had eleven heads, stacked on top of each other in groups of three groups of three, with another head on top of that and then another head on top of that. There weren’t truly a thousand arms, but dozens that extended from its back, and three central pairs of arms that each held a different traditional pose of meditation.
The melding of force and lightning affinity Mana was pristine. Perfectly in unison with one another and neither taking the other’s place, the composition was three parts force to one part lightning, giving the avatar a mostly coral appearance with gold highlights. This was despite the color draining atmosphere of the Wasteland, a testament to his finishing Skill’s power.
The mouth continued to chant with inhuman speed after it was summoned in the same deep voice, reciting the Great Compassion Dhāraṇī. Even without attacking, the power of its voice softened the hearts of all who heard it.
Dao energy flooded its very being. Alistair’s Fist and Justice nodes lost a considerable amount of their reserves, but the Skill contained meaning beyond what he should have had for the amount he lost. The Tier 5 Expert Skill was using Alistair’s Fist and Justice Nodes in a far more efficient way than any other method he possessed.
Indeed, it contained Dao energy up to its limit—any more and it would have collapsed, the Mana unable to handle that amount of raw spiritual presence.
All of this [Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva Judgment] created within in an instant. Alistair only needed that one second of chanting where he himself had to be perfectly still and concentrated—time that he bought with [Draconic Roar].
Star-like Karmic energy wrapped around each of the avatar’s hands. Judgment. This was the Skill’s name, and judge it did.
The avatar’s scores of palms flew out at Oracle’s four bodies with speed surpassing Alistair’s [Dash]. Each Karma-covered palm contained only slightly less power than one of his normal Dao-laden [Force Fists], and there were dozens of them.
The palms hit their mark, collapsing Oracle’s Delphic Curse. They shot out at a steady pace every third of a second, taking almost twenty seconds to unload the entire arsenal.
The serene judgment of the strikes was their very existence. Serenity became compassion and pity, flowing through all the endless blows.
Like his prototype technique, each strike sent out a shockwave that only affected evildoers. Oracle’s bodies were the only ones within range, so even though the palms only affected one body each, the aftershock carried to the other three. In the physical sense, Alistair perceived it as a wave of golden and coral energy, accompanied by the reverberation of a gong.
Those shockwaves struck at Oracle’s very Dao Heart. The palms flew toward the Devil King at every angle, so the ripples ragdolled her, each wave pushing her in one direction only for the next to come in at a different angle.
Alistair couldn’t see or sense his opponent beneath the seemingly boundless onslaught of [Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva Judgment]. The shockwaves made it impossible to see, and even his impressive senses couldn’t penetrate their density.
Finally, the avatar shot its last palm and disappeared without a trace. The chanting stopped and everything returned to normal, as if nothing had happened. Dust kicked up by his Skill’s palms blanketed the entire region.
“It is finished,” Alistair said out loud to no one in particular. He slipped out of Tranquil Mind and felt a strange sense of apprehension. His personality had completely changed while in Tranquil Mind. While he knew he would never do anything completely out of character while in any state, it was still weird knowing that was him. I shall give your last moments the splendor of truest justice? That was a bit melodramatic, no? If that was Tranquil Mind, how would Infinite Arsenal and Black Impermanence operate?
All-in-all, his new state of mind performed exceptionally well. He counted at least three times that he would have died if he had been in the third stage of the Kai’tazake Mutra instead. The reaction time and instinctual defensive maneuvers were invaluable.
Dev’rox flew over to his side. “That was something. Seeing that bodhisattva was something else. But I didn’t take you for a monk.”
“I feel like the system appended that. A bit uncreative, in my opinion. Just because I’m a Karmic cultivator and follow the Dao of Justice doesn’t mean I’m trying to become an arhat.”
“Mhm,” Dev’rox said. “I hope you don’t infringe on the copyright of the Heavenly host. I don’t think they’d like that very much.”
“How do you even know what copyright is?” Alistair laughed. He drew all the power within his lungs for a giant huff of air that blew away most of the remaining dust.
Only one body remained.
There were four equally sized craters, each large enough to fit an elephant. Oracle lay buried at the center of one of them, half of her body stuck inside the ground. While she looked beat up, her body sustained fewer injuries than Alistair was expecting. But he wasn’t worried about her anymore.
Despite the lack of physical harm, he could instantly perceive that her lifeline had come to an end. [Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva Judgment] destroyed her more on a spiritual level than corporeal, though the Skill still evidently had a physical impact on the world.
Oracle’s aura had all but vanished and her existence felt incredibly hollow, even more so than usual for the Devil Kings. Interesting as well was that the taint of demon blood seemed almost gone from her body, as if the compassionate sutras and palms of Avalokiteśvara’s avatar had washed her fell Karma away.
Alistair was under no delusion that he was powerful enough now to upend the reality of breaking the Pact, but maybe one day he could. With reincarnation, they could have a chance to rectify their mistakes.
If it is their own mistakes, Alistair thought. He remembered how it was known that the people who would one day become the Devil Kings were murderers before that point. Yet that was also uncertain, since the Final Frontier Empire was messing with people’s minds from the beginning. The demand for war outstripped its natural supply. All to stand at the top of the Grand Dao. It disgusted Alistair to no end.
He approached the fallen woman, taking out his needle. She was an older woman with crow’s eyes and graying hair. Despite her near true death, she wore a childlike smile on her face. Alistair was struck with a pang of sorrow upon seeing her. Her appearance reminded him of his mother.
Alistair held the needle to her neck. Like with Admiral, it was difficult to penetrate the skin, requiring concentrated effort.
Unlike the last time when he had negative Karma, Alistair could see the exact effects of the needle. Upon examining the woman in his Karmic sight, he could see the smallest hooks within her body. Those hooks were within her spiritual system, attaching to the meridians and the soulcore. After the needle reached her bloodstream, the hooks vanished.
“This needle doesn’t change a thing,” she said. “We all follow him because we believe in him, not because of his commands.”
Alistair peered at the emerald-colored needle. “Maybe, maybe not. I find it unlikely since George feared this thing so much to kill one of his own Devil Kings. Plus, Saturn clearly felt otherwise. He was able to free himself of George’s control with it.”
“The Master fears nothing,” she spat. “You are nothing compared to him. If you had a thousand tries, you would never defeat him.”
“You have your own destiny and I have mine.” Alistair shook his head in sadness. The impassioned sutras and [Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva Judgment]’s shockwaves had not softened her heart for genuine change. If there was nothing in her conscience to begin with, then no virtues could be cultivated. “I thought you might have been a victim in this as well, but you’re not. There is only one thing I can do for you.”
Alistair held out a gloved hand. The sheen metal of his Devilsbane Gauntlets looked ominous in the Wasteland’s polarized light. He used [Blood Hand], the coagulating and boiling blood affinity Mana gathering around its proper conduit.
Even though she was a Devil King, Alistair could not help but feel some empathy, as he saw the fear register in her eyes as she understood what was to happen next.
“No, no, no!” she screamed, trying to bang her head against the ground to kill herself. "I curse you, Alistair Tan. Join me in solitude."
Alistair rushed to grab her, but she moved with the unnatural speed of a Hollywood possession victim. In one fell swoop, she was dead.
Karmic threads assaulted him from every direction. He knew they were coming, but his defenses were still inadequate to handle the full assault. Fell Karma attacked him from all angles, trying to destroy his Fate.
Alistair drew upon his reserves of Karmic energy, flushing the foreign Karma out of his system. He had to expel more of his own compared to hers, since she was more seasoned in Karmic cultivation. That left him at only 13 points of 90 maximum Karma, a far cry from where he wanted to be.
Loyal to the end. Alistair thought. I might have slightly underestimated her going for this move. The whole reason he hadn't blown her up from afar was to not mess with her life force. Since she killed herself, he had to act fast anyways. He grabbed onto her face and breathed in.
It wasn’t a sure thing. When he absorbed Saturn’s life force, the Purification leaf of the Blood of the Devil Talent Tree stripped all the individuality from the blood. Alistair was hoping that his finishing Skill had “pre-cleansed” the taint from their blood, so to speak.
Alistair’s life force was on par with the strongest Beast Lords in the world, like Vritra. Taking on the ghost blood dragon bloodline and especially Draconic Physique made him a vitality god. Adding the amount he could absorb from Oracle was like putting a single drop of poison in a vast ocean of ichor.
That single drop of poison still would have been enough to turn him into a Devil Prince without the Purification leaf, however.
“Your people are like radioactive time bombs,” Alistair said to Dev’rox.
“Not my people,” Dev’rox snorted. “The Demon Clans of the Physical Plane and the spiritual demons of the Hells are as far apart as you humans are to elves or lizardfolk.”
“Still, there has to be some connection. Or why else would they call you both demons?”
Dev’rox looked up into the sky. “You’ve learned enough on your own that I can divulge this to you. The split between the demons of this world and the demons of the lower planes happened hundreds of billions of years ago. More, probably, but the Asura Hell doesn’t have all the answers to our heritage. The archdevils of the Eight Hot Hells would know more. They’re sort of like the multiversal core to the frontier of the lower planes. The way the Final Frontier Empire barely has any information on the core, we don’t have much knowledge of our true origins.”
Dev’rox wagged his tail. “Though, even the Asura Hell is more storied than this universe. I’d place it on par with a frontier universe closer to the involved.”
“If that’s the case, does that mean those demons of the Eight Hot Hells are stronger than the cultivators from the multiversal core?”
“How should I know, brat?” Dev’rox said. “That’d be a fight I’d want to see. From a far, far distance.”
As Alistair and Dev’rox talked, he slowly absorbed the final remnant of Oracle’s life force. When it was finished, she was no more, her soul dragged down into the depths of the earth. Alistair said a few words, hoping for her to get a chance at reincarnation. He knew the odds were more than stacked against her, but you never knew.
Alistair didn’t care about absorbing any of her latent powers—that would be impossible considering the circumstances. All he cared about was her memories. Specifically, memories of George. Anything about his abilities and habits would serve them well.
Three notifications popped up.
> Level up! You are now level 56. +3 Agility, +3 Intelligence, +3 Charisma, +3 free Attribute points, +23 Upgrade Points.
>
> "Deliverance of Justice": +2 free Attribute points.
>
> Bonus Quest Reward: [Vanquishing the Devil Kings] - 3/12. +40 Upgrade Points.
Alistair allocated all the 5 free Attribute points to Agility. His stats were nice and high in all categories, but almost too balanced. His style of fighting still required speed as his highest priority, and he wanted his distribution to reflect that. The added solidity and defensive capabilities of [Steel Body] made additional improvements to Constitution less important.
That left him with 63 Upgrade Points. He rubbed his hands in anticipation as he alloted 60 of them to "Deliverance of Justice", bringing it from Tier 3 to Tier 4. Alistair had been waiting quite some time for this change, which required a total of 500 Upgrade Points that he had accrued and given to the Badge. The rewards; they were juicy.
> Badge Upgraded: “Deliverance of Justice” (Tier 4 Mythical Badge): The most important aspect of justice is the saving of innocent lives. Each life you personally save grants +2 free Attribute point, capped at 6 per level. (Upgradeable 0/1000).
While it didn't say so in the text, it was retroactive. Alistair found himself with an additional 98 free Attribute points to alloacte, doubling his total amount of points earned to 196 over the course of his Badge's existence. Each point, Alistair cherished with all his heart, knowing they came from the innocent lives that mattered the most.
Those 98 points he allocated automatically, knowing what he wanted to improve already. He placed 50 into Agility, 30 into Intelligence, and 18 into Wisdom.
Except, he didn't.
The first 61 of those points worked normally. Indeed, it felt like the last 37 were allocated correctly as well, but when he moved to see his Attributes, he found something he'd never seen before.
> Strength: 501
>
> Agility: 981
>
> Constitution: 319
>
> Endurance: 352
>
> Intelligence: 522 (19 base points in reserve)
>
> Wisdom: 318 (18 base points in reserve)
>
> Charisma: 506
>
> WARNING: You have exceeded the amount of Mana deemed safe for a cultivator of your level. Further Attribute points will be held in reserve, increasing comesurate to your level and with your species evolutions, including bloodline and ancestry improvements.
Alistair had imagined this day coming in the past. His Subclass, with its Attributes per level and "Deliverance of Justice" Badge, offered a ridiculous amount of stats compared to other cultivators. He had seen Alexandra and Oliver's Badges, and they couldn't hold up to the sheer numbers he was getting.
But that was at an end, at least temporarily. There were consequences to being such as stat monster. Well, it wasn't really a consequence, more that he was so powerful that the system had limitations. Not necessarily because it didn't want him to be stronger; the Pathfinder AI was telling him he was so chock-full of Mana refining his body that it was getting dangerous.
At least it didn't only revolve around the part the Pathfinder called "species upgrade." He was a Spectral Superhuman I, and as far as he understood it, he would have to wait to Adept to evolve that to Spectral Superhuman II. But for bloodlines and ancestries, upgrades were far more numerous and granular. Those were technically under the purview of "species evolution," but rarely spoken of in that manner.
Absorbing life force would also help his "species upgrade" too, though, as the Lazarene Minister said. Alistair didn't quite understand it all, but maybe it was possible to evolve a species early? His ghost dragon bloodline was greedy with its points, though. He probably wanted to focus on that and stick to the one species upgrade per realm. There was a nagging sense that having his body too far ahead of his other cultivation would lead to ruin.
> {Bloodline Evolution} (Ghost) Blood Dragon [Peon] — Draconic Physique, Emperor Will, Blood Affinity, Endless Mana, LOCKED, LOCKED, LOCKED, LOCKED. (Upgradeable 25/1000 - Only accepts blood essence).
There was a long way to wait before getting to his next bloodline evolution. That meant he was capped at his current Attribute pool for a while.
While there was most likely a discrete increase for level 60, he couldn't be sure of how close that change would come. Leveling had gotten pretty slow near the end.
So that's where all this life force I've been accumulating can come in handy, Alistair thought. Even though I thought I was ahead of the game there, it seems like my life force still pales compared to my stats. Maybe adding an ancestry would help, but I have no idea how to do that.
Bloodlines came from the Dao blueprint, affecting the soul and spiritual DNA. Ancestries were a physical trait coming from a physical material. Both were part of lineage, and hard to acquire in their own ways. Alistair had obtained his bloodline by meditating on the ridiculous amount of life force he obtained. He had a feeling that situation was rare, and most got their bloodline from an old treasure or heirloom rather than straight from the Akashic Records.
For ancestry, he didn't have a contemplation to exhaust. You 100% needed the ancestral material. Which he did not have. They were exceedingly rare on Earth. Plus, he needed one compatible with his Dao Path, which narrowed down the possibilites even further.
“Alistair? I can’t believe it’s you.”
Alexandra's voice brought him out of his musings. She along with Jesse approached hesitantly. Alistair stepped out of the way, showing Oracle’s dead body.
“She’s dealt with. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried about her,” Alexandra said. “What the hell was that?”
“Opposite of hell, more like,” Dev’rox whispered to only himself and Alistair.
“I could feel those shockwaves from all the way back there,” she continued. “It was, inspiring, almost.”
“My new Skill,” Alistair answered. “I needed someone to try it on.”
A deluge of emotions surged through Alistair. The aftermath of Tranquil Mind was almost like a rebound, forcing the absent feelings he should have had during that period to surge twice as strong. It took a second to register, though to the others at the scene, it felt like Alistair went from stable to sentimental without warning.
Alistair brought Alexandra in for a hug. “I missed you.”
He couldn’t fully make out her response. He had grown a little taller from his time in the Holy Ravine too. But he heard something along the lines of, “me too.”
When she finally broke free, she met his gaze with a funny look on her face. “You’re going to tell me everything very soon. But even before that, what the fuck happened to you? Were you stuck in some gym rat’s dream demiplane?”
“Something like that,” Alistair said. Dev’rox brought in the bodies of Carmen and Richard. Without the Karmic strings that Oracle used to puppet them, they were lifeless corpses. The only solace he could take was that they weren’t Devil Princes. There weren’t any of the signature characteristics.
“We should return them to their families, if they have any,” Alexandra said somberly. “They deserve proper funerals.”
Alistair nodded. He had forgotten his manners and greeted Jesse, who was silently watching the whole affair, focused mainly on Alistair. “Hey, how are things going?”
“Never better, boss. You showed up at exactly the right time. Alexandra held open her Skill for a day. We were both trying to wait the other out.”
Alistair felt thundering footsteps in the distance. He had already caught a whiff of the smell, though Alexandra and Jesse weren’t as aware, both going into an alert state.
Alistair chuckled. “That’s going to be Oliver.”
The Necromancer looked funny sprinting. His form was off, though he was still as fast as a speeding car. The kind of speeding that would get you in really big trouble. He made it over to the craters, kicking up a cloud of dust and panting with his hands on his knees.
With his seven [Dashes] and subsequent pursuit of Oracle, he had traveled over three kilometers from where he and Oliver landed on the mountain. Doing some quick math on Oliver’s top speed, that meant he had dealt with Oracle in just over fifty seconds. Perhaps his past self wasn’t that arrogant to claim that the fight was below his level.
“You already finished the fight?” Oliver asked incredulously.
Alistair tapped his foot. “What did you think that massive explosion of my signature aura was? You think too little of your leader. Anyway, I think we should get the hell out of here. I’m tired of this drab environment. I have a feeling I’m going to have a lot to catch up on.”