Armad led his regiment back to the palace.

They parted ways as soon as they entered. The regiment went towards the training grounds, while Armad and his guards went towards his part of the palace.

Back in his chambers, he secluded himself and checked the System. It had been notifying him about some new developments on his way back after dealing with that troublesome legionnaire.

The first message he received was about the meat he had eaten earlier. It should be noted that the body currently occupied by Armad was allergic to meat. However, Armad ate it all without any visible problems.

The System wasn't done digesting the food when Armad went out with his regiment. Now, it was alerting him to a new substance discovered in the meat and gave him the option of creating pills from it.

Armad studied the message for a while before answering in the affirmative. This prompted the System to get to work, and soon several pills were made-twenty-seven in total.

The most striking thing about these pills was their color, matching the human skin's exact shade, as caramel as any complexion among the Wilberforces. Armad had seen his fair share of pills before, but these were different even to his experienced eyes.

Unlike the other pills he had before, like cultivation boosters, these were the color of human skin. It made him uneasy enough to set them aside and contemplate the wisdom of taking them, if any.

Eventually, he decided to ask the System, as he always did, and the System readily obliged him.

[These pills could be used to enhance the toughness of the body. As the Master of the System, you have the choice to enhance your body in four steps: Skin, flesh, bones, and the last one, blood. These four organs of the body that make up your body can be enhanced to become tougher than any other in the world.]

He read the message much more slowly a second time. It dawned on him that the pill was probably skin-colored for that reason, and it was probably the same color all through.

Still, he felt reluctant to take the pill due to his abhorrence of eating anything closely resembling a human being.

With unease, he picked up two of the pills and threw them into his mouth. Surprisingly, they were not any different from the ones he used to take. They melted easily like candy when eaten, tasteless but evoking heat inside his mouth every time he took them.

The heat spread throughout his body and concentrated on his skin as if he were sitting before a bonfire. When the heat subsided, he picked up another five and threw them into his mouth.

This time the heat tripled in intensity until Armad began to clench his teeth in discomfort. It took an hour before subsiding completely, during which he felt as though his skin were being boiled and stretched.

Since he was a cultivator accustomed to pain, Armad took a couple more of the pills. He sat with folded knees on the bed and went into a deep meditation.

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Sweat trickled down his body despite the open windows, strategically placed high above. The rest of the evening passed by while he meditated until sunset when he rose and went to the bathroom.

After a cool bath, he returned and sat down on the armchair, poised to try his newest skill. The change he felt was noticeable even before trying it out.

He took a knife and held it ready to cut his skin, but the System interrupted him with a message.

[You have successfully enhanced the overall strength and toughness of your skin. Your skin toughness is now 2.1 percent. It is set to be the toughest skin in the world and would be immune to any sword the moment it reaches a hundred.]

As he read the message, he wondered if the System was right. But right or wrong, he had a feeling that his skin was going to become tougher, insanely so.

Starting with the skin of his palm, looked quite unchanged and not visibly affected. But deep down he knew that it was undergoing a unique change.

He placed the tip of his knife on his palm. Though he could feel the pain, the knife didn't seem to be able to cut through the skin.

At first, he put a fifth of his strength behind the stab, then a tenth, twentieth, and then thirty percent of his strength. But the knife couldn't push through or cut open his skin. Not until he put thirty-nine percent of his strength did it draw any blood.

This means that he had become much more powerful than a foundation establishment cultivator. His skin was so tough that a group of dagger-wielding foundation establishment cultivators could not make as little as a scratch on him.

And this was only a two percent increase on his skin; imagine when it would become a hundred percent tougher.

The magic of the System continued, and Armad decided to try slashing at his stomach, then his hair, and eventually his eyes.

He figured that his eyes had become tougher too since they too were made of skin. But unlike the other parts of his body, he felt the pain as soon as he reached a tenth of his strength into the stab.

It dawned on him that this had to do with the eyes made up of mainly flesh, which is softer than the skin.

The eyes would probably become tougher by the time he enhanced his flesh.

Overall, his skin had been enhanced and was now unimaginably tougher than he expected.

All this was thanks to a single meal that gave him the chance to produce these particular pills. He could imagine what would happen if he continued to feed on meat, enhancing his strength in the process.

It also delighted him to think about the gold mine he had stumbled upon, which was the System.

It had been a while since he had used any skills since he reincarnated, but the System's next message took him quite by surprise.

It read:

[Your skills have been cataloged by the System, and you currently have an arsenal of skills as follows: Kaban'shisu, skills of sword cultivation. You have the Wilberforcian-sword-dance, the Yellow Sword, and a defense ward you possess called Dark Ring. You have another one called Miyura and then the Negrinki. These are the list of skills discovered by the System, and after a careful assessment, it has categorized them all into different classes based on their strengths.]

[They are classified into ranks, with Rank F being the lowest and ranks E, D, C, B, and A above them. The highest in rank is S.]

[Kaban'shisu: Rank A; skills of Cultivation Sword - activated when you concentrate your pol into a sword or any metal - Rank C.]

[Wilberforcian-sword-dance: Rank S. Note that this skill is currently a Rank B because you have yet to fully master it.]

[The Yellow Sword you possess is a Rank A, and the Dark Ring is a Rank C.]

[The only Rank S skills you can use fully are two: Miyura and Negrinki. Miyura is an inherited bloodline ability that creates a mark on your forehead and allows you to temporarily increase your cultivation. Negrinki is an acquired skill that you gained when you became a core formation cultivator. You have a 1.4% of expertise and knowledge of it.]

[These are all the skills discovered by the System and which you can currently use. Your cultivation is currently at 6,035 years.]

Armad glowered at the System after reading those long strings of messages.

A