'This is... too easy,' Lone thought as he let another Water Wave spell slam into him, shredding his clothes apart once more, but the magic failed to so much as scrape his skin off.

He restored his ocendium battlemage's armour and used his new nature magic skill - Poisonous Vine Entrapment - to knock out another 20 Aqua Foxkin from the fight.

'It hasn't even levelled up once but Regeneration is stopping me from drawing any blood...' Lone was actually kind of annoyed.

'I learned their formation, yeah, but it's fuckin' useless since it needs at least 10 people with a water affinity of 30% or more in it for it to activate,' Lone complained internally.

An independent and honestly rather stealthy attack hit Lone in his ribs from the side while he was busy being ungrateful for what was essentially a free skill.

Luu had snuck out of the formation and used healing magic to somehow corrode the flesh beneath his armour.

Sweat poured down her face before she quickly collapsed, entirely unconscious.

The host has developed the active healing magic skill: Crude Overheal.

Lone immediately noticed what had happened. 'The sly fox... She healed me so much that my cells couldn't keep up and instead mutated, but because of how my Regeneration works, it killed off the mutated cells by corroding them before healing me. She did that for, what, 5-seconds? Long enough to empty her mana organs and pass out.'

He wore a proud smile even though the girl had almost nothing to do with him outside of their brief interactions within The Academy. "You've got a hell of a granddaughter," he said to the girl's matriarch.

"And you've got a hell of a body and a shocking amount of pain tolerance. Not even a wince? I do hope you still moan when it's appropriate..." Kuu Bluetail teased seductively while she still expertly led the charge of her clan's formation.

Lone shrugged as he deflected another Water Wave with only his hands. "I think it's about time to wrap this up. As an FYI, I'm only about as strong as a weak triple-X-ranker or a strong double-X-ranker when I'm not trying to kill my enemy."

Lone firmly held his Eternal Mana Crystal in one hand as he let his lexicon hover over the other. "Cross your fingers, will you?"

Kuu looked confused as Lone ignored the water magic spells which kept ripping his clothes apart.

Of course, he repaired them as fast as they were shredded, but Kuu Bluetail was rather confused by Lone's odd request. "What?"

"Keep 'em crossed so you and your clan might get the Poison Magic Resistance skill. Maybe the nature one too," Lone said as he wore a wide smile. "Poisonous Vine Entrapment! Poisonous Vine Entrapment! Poisonous Vine Entrapment!..."

He cast the spell a total of 314 times - once for each remaining conscious Aqua Foxkin.

Every single one of them was ensnared by a vine three times thicker and three times more poisonous than they naturally should have.

The sheer pain from the poison coursing through their veins along with the feeling of being squeezed to death made the foxkin all pass out one by one.

Before Lone, only Kuu was remaining. As the only triple-S-ranker in her clan, she couldn't help but feel bitter as she resisted the fiery agony that was spreading throughout her body.

She was forced to watch as all of her kin collapsed. Thank the Primals Lone was only trying to teach them the brutality of combat as well as trying to give them some useful resistance skills.

Otherwise, Kuu feared her clan would have been destroyed with little to no effort by a single fellow SSS-ranker.

'Now I understand why the elders all insisted on me doing this. Living a sheltered life killing weak monsters and going to political meetings for almost a millennium has truly numbed me to the dangers of the world... An SSS-ranker is not special...' This epiphany was just what she needed, and she'd be sure to thank Lone for enabling it later on.

She could already feel that walls to the X-ranks shattering. Now she only needed the required levels and she could rank-up with ease.

Well, she'd thank him for this eventually. Not a moment after her revelation, she, too, like the rest of her clan, lost consciousness.

Lone spent the few moments while Muradon the All-mage was proclaiming his victory to touch each of the unconscious Aqua Foxkin, ridding them of the poison and healing any dangerous cuts they'd sustained from the barbs of the vines.

The host has developed the active skill: Detoxify.

Congratulations! The host's active skill [Detoxify] has levelled up! It is now Beginner Level 2.

Congratulations! The host's active skill [Detoxify] has levelled up! It is now Beginner Level 3.

Congratulations! The host's active skill [Detoxify] has levelled up! It is now Beginner Level 4.

Congratulations! The host's active skill [Detoxify] has levelled up! It is now Beginner Level 5.

Congratulations! The host's active healing magic skill [Minor Healing] has levelled up! It is now Expert Level 2.

Congratulations! The host's active healing magic skill [Minor Healing] has levelled up! It is now Expert Level 3.

Congratulations! The host's active healing magic skill [Minor Healing] has levelled up! It is now Expert Level 4.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Lone frowned. 'A new skill is nice, but fuck me I hate how it shows me every level-up every bloody time.'

He scratched his head and then smiled and waved at the crowd before he went back to his group and his trusty chair.

Eolande immediately floated towards him and, instead of hugging his neck from behind, she pulled a towel out from her dimensional bag and began carefully and lovingly wiping his forehead for him.

A few seconds later she grabbed a bottle of water from under his chair and handed it to him. "Are you okay? You seem... upset."

"I need to think," he answered as he used his Creation Magic to make the water cold. Lukewarm water was hardly going to refresh him, after all, though he appreciated the thought. "Thanks for the concern though."

"... Will a 5-minute break be long enough for you to recover before the final act?" the Elder Tylwyth Teg asked.

Lone shrugged. "I'll be fine." He looked up and smiled at her. "Don't you have any faith in the man you love?"

"It's unfair of you to say that when you won't return my feelings," Eolande said with a deep pout before she flashed a cheeky smirk.

Lone was almost certain that she was going to kiss him or something with a look like that, but surprisingly she just floated to his side and didn't do anything beyond look at him with nothing but love and care.

'I feel sorry for her... She's really trying to not force herself on me... It's almost tangible how much the possibility of Soph rejecting her firmly frightens her to her core... Ha-ah... What a mess,' Lone sighed mentally.

He put the issue of Eolande in the back of his mind. Despite his good looks and fortunate love-life with Soph and Sophie, he was no casanova.

Instead, he turned his thoughts towards magic.

'I have too many skills,' was Lone's first thought upon focusing on the subject of the arcane arts. 'Getting my own battle technique was great, but I need something similar for my magic. I need to be able to creatively wield the elements however I like, not be confined to the usage of specific spells.'

When they were too many options, none looked appealing. Lone was having the issue of possessing far too much versatility while also being restricted by his capability to think of the perfect spell to use in the perfect situation.

He frowned then held his chin before activating his Meditation skill. 'I need to merge my magic skills, but how? I got lucky with my combat ones since Hubert was the perfect opponent to gain enlightenment from while fighting him... Will I ever get so lucky again but on a magical front?'

Lone's mind wandered to his two final remaining unique skill slots.

Thus far, he had only used eight out of the given ten. Five were forced on him by the god that had summoned him.

Namely, Basic Regeneration - now Regeneration, Creation Magic, his Golden Foxkin species, The Summoning Room, and lastly, Growth Accelerator.

Each of those skills had proven to be instrumental in his ascendance to power. Well, except perhaps for his new species. That had given him no end of grief, though Soph seemed to love his tails, so it at least had some merits.

The species did also give him the ability to house the Primals within his soul, though that was a joint effort between his Regeneration, Growth Accelerator and the species itself. Whether the Primals were beneficial in the long run or not still had yet to be proven.

Not long after being dumped on Altros, Lone had gone on to consume three of his remaining five unique skill slots on Dimensional Storage, Mental Destruction, and, of course, True Contract Magic.

He had been saving one of the remaining two unique skills for a skill that would allow him, Soph and Sophie to return to Earth if he could never find a way to do that himself, but the last unique skill slot was still free to be used.

Lone had never really needed to use it before. He'd been more than capable enough to get by on his own without it.

Well, either that or it was unnecessary to use it like when he was imprisoned in Milindo.

It would have been useless to waste it against a freak of an entity like Clicker, or, it would have simply been a waste like if he had gotten a half-assed skill to resurrect Ele'hunda. Death was final, unique skill or not, after all.

Either he wouldn't have gotten a relevant skill or a skill so twisted and broken that whatever he would have brought back would not have been Ele'Hunda.

Lone frowned and let out a sigh. 'Not yet. It's too early to decide. I was pretty frivolous when I got Dimensional Storage and True Contract Magic. I can't act like that here.'

He resolved himself to not waste such a golden opportunity on something he may be able to overcome with hard work alone.

'I did it with a bunch of my physical skills, there is no reason why I can't do that same for my magic ones,' Lone convinced himself.

With that mental dilemma out of the way, Lone relaxed his face and focused deeply once more. It would be foolish to not mediate for as long as Muradon or Erion deemed it appropriate to do so.

The event's finale wasn't going to easy on him, after all. Not even in the slightest.

----------------------------------------

"Ladies, gentlemen, esteemed royals, and most importantly, Awe-inspiring Divines! It is now time for me to announce to you the contents of the finale for today's wonderful event!" Muradon exclaimed.

Thankfully, only about 10% of the crowd had left after Lone's final match. They either didn't care at all for the mysterious closing act or they simply refused to believe that it could be more intense than what they had already seen today.

Naturally, every single member of foreign and local nobility had stayed as had all of the present Divines - even the one hidden in the grandstands from the Ancient Foundation.

Lone was a huge threat to the royals and nobles due to him being so powerful. Demi Divines were rare, and while he was far from such a thing now, foresight was a natural gift for the privileged. It was how they kept that privilege, after all.

As for the Divines and pseudo-Divines, to them, Lone was either far too interesting or far too threatening to risk not watching him do something even more absurd in whatever this finale would be.

"I shan't keep you in suspense any further, good people of Altros! Divine Time's young disciple here, Lone, has issued a challenge to all of the present Divines!" Muradon's words surprised everyone bar Erion, Grand Guildmaster Sarah, Hazel - of course, and all of The Wanderers as well as Archon Milos.

"Lone Immortus is giving an offer to the present Divines to challenge him to a fight! Now, everything I say from here on is a direct quote from him. Ahem. 'I fought an Ancient and lived to tell the tale! Can any of you say the same? If you think it's beneath you to fight an SSS-ranker even though I've just shown you that I'm capable of easily destroying armies and higher-ranked individuals, then think again! Don't assume that your Divinity excludes you from who I'm able to fight on even grounds with!'" Muradon's projection was wearing a stern expression like Lone would have been when he had said these words, but on the inside, the American man was screaming his soul out.

'I can't believe my skill is making me repeat what he said word-for-word!... I'm so dead...' the poor fraud lamented.

Clearing his thought once more, he finished Lone's message. "'I don't want to fight Divine Thread or Divine Eruption. Sorry, but I actually want to learn from the experience. One of you uses fate while the other uses extreme power. Not great match-ups, in my opinion. Any other Divines though I'm fine with.' ...and there you have it."

Silence consumed the altered training room of The Academy.

Practically everyone was thinking the same thing. 'Such arrogance!'

A few seconds of silence turned into a few dozen seconds. Slowly the crowd began to whisper and make fun of Lone for his stupidity.

In her own private booth, Grand Guildmaster Sarah frowned. "Am I actually gonna have to step in to save him some face? Erion said it would be fine, but he's cryptic at the best of times, the strange little bastard..."

Gilbert sighed upon hearing Sarah - the acclaimed seventh strongest Divine - so openly and unabashedly berate the widely renowned third strongest Divine - Divine Time, Headmaster Erion.

Thankfully for the worried dragonkin, something happened to pry his attention away from his boss.

Out of nowhere, a handsome middle-aged human man appearing in the centre of the arena. He was lazily holding a halberd as he leaned against it, supporting his body.

"Sure. I'll accept your challenge. Divine Bumblefuck at your service," the dishevelled and slightly drunk-looking man said as he performed maybe the sloppiest bow in the entire history of bows, all while he continued to stop himself from falling over with his halberd.