"What is this?" I asked my nobles.

"It's a gift for you, great Emperor. As you are such a good Emperor, we have gotten this for you."

I opened the box. Inside was this odd thing. It was this thing with a strap, a bar, six strings, twenty-four pieces of wood divided by wires, six pegs, thirty gray dots, and a body shaped like irregular double cutaway-yes, I had learnt all the shape names as part of a challenge that me and a few friends had done back on Kantala. Well, not on Kantala, but in Holthar.

It came with a black box with a bunch of knobs on it.

The two things were connected with a wire.

The shape of one of those things was something I had seen sometime. I tried to remember when it was. I knew it was when I was living on Mars. It was just before I fixed my pathways. Then I remembered.

The band that had played Painkiller had some of their members playing this to make music.

I then remembered what it was called.

A guitar.

I picked it up. The metal parts were arcanite, and the wood was a high-quality wood called arcebony. It was basically a level 65 version of ebony.

I put it on.

I remembered what the finger pattern the guitarist from the band had used. I tried it, and usually, I just landed on empty space. I only then remembered that that was the four string guitar. I tried doing the same thing as the 6-string guitar player, but I realized I was missing some things: A bar and a triangle thing. I found those things in the box, then played it.

I put my guitar in my inner world, then jumped to Venus.

I just fought monsters for a few yeds. It was odd to just worry about cultivation, not the empire. Somewhat nostalgic.

But those kills were mine. Within a week of yeds, I had gotten 3/5 through level 75. However, I wanted to see the Sasomac day celebrations. For the thousandth Sasomac day, they were terraforming a level 60 planet made of pure gold into a statue of me.

I just conquered a few galaxies until the statue was revealed on the 1000th Sasomac day.

It was quite a good statue. I looked at it for some time, as this was the greatest statue I had ever seen, and as it was a statue of me, it was great, but then decided I had better things to do then to stand around and look at statues. I sensed that the second-weakest empire had claimed some planets on the edge of my spiritual sense when I was at the edge of the empire-yes, people over level 50 had a large range they could sense with their souls. Mine was about quadruple the size of the empire.

It was owned by some level 70 noble, who I could quash like a bug if I liked, but if the emperor found out, he was level 87-the level where the gaps became too big for almost anyone to overcome.

I knew that to most spiritual senses, people in this area of space would stand out. I had, based on that empire's expansion, figured out Earth's coordinates on the general space grid. It was generally considered a barren waste, as the entire empire's land was created like this:

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All four empires had a peak level 99. They stood around the area. There was a great battle between the four of them. In the end, all four were forced to ascend, but this area became a barren waste, devoid of any material: with just an abundance of essence.

Over the last hundred trillion years, the area had somewhat recovered, yet it was still a waste. I knew that to leave the waste would be pretty hard. I just blocked expansion in the direction of the other empire, otherwise they would know something was strange. I focused expansion on the easiest way to leave the waste instead. For all provinces.

I had a level 70 simulacrum expand my province, but I stood no chance against the full might of Cancall. The nobles of the Sasomac Empire were no more than rank-and-file soldiers for Cancall, and I would merely be a leader of a squad or something. I, as a holder of a legendary class, could probably fight Cancall's elites, and maybe level 85s and 86s, but if their level 87 emperor came, I'd be squashed like a bug. That fight against the Monolith of Hell had been pure luck. Had I been slightly less lucky or slightly less skillful, the Monolith of Hell would have melted me. And the fight against the Monolith of Hell was probably one of the top two times my luck had been extremely good.

I decided I'd finally fight a level 85 boss.

It took me about a nanosecond to find one in my spiritual perception. I left the planet, and positioned myself at precisely the right position, like no other member of the Sasomac Empire could.

I dove down right into the monster. It was a level 85 fire elemental, with level 86 fire. It did have physical form, but didn't use essence too much.

I decided to use the freezite tactic.

Within a nanosecond, a sculpture made of freezite foil was striking a humanoid made of fire with a hammer. It must have been quite the bizarre sight, but that weak elemental stumbled.

I took that opportunity and sprinted two the elemental, bashing it in the face eight times with my hammer, as hard as possible. It's face was so disfigured it would probably die.

I smashed the rest of its body. Within a second of me attacking, it was dead, and I hadn't been burned at all.

The rush of essence was nice though. As my compression factor in essence gain was 10, it propelled me about 1.8765/5 of the way through level 75. I was basically on the cusp of level 76. I just needed like 6 or 7 more exp.

I farmed a few thousand more gold-section idiot mobs, who I literally just smashed with my hammer, without resistance, at such high speed that gold-sections couldn't began to comprehend.

I felt the immediate compression. Now, my essence compression factor was 16.5. The weirdest factor anyone had ever seen. Basically, one unit of mana, health, or stamina from me was worth 50,000,000,000,000,000 of that unit from a level 1. And usually someone at my level would have a factor of 11, meaning that one of their resources was worth 100,000,000,000 of a level 1's. I was between a level 80 and a level 81 in compression power at level 76. At level 77, I would have the same compression as a level 82. At level 80, I'd have compression levels between a level 83 and 84. At level 87, I'd have compression at the level of a level 98, possibly allowing me to fight up many levels. At level 100, I'd have compression levels between levels 127 and 128. At level 125, my compression would be at the level of a level 155-yes, greater than the system (if level 155s had existed). At that point, I might have been able to hold my ground against the system. At level 150, my compression would between levels 192 and 193-if they had existed.

At a hypothetical level 175, my compression would be at the level of a hypothetical level 230. At a hypothetical level 200, my compression would be between the hypothetical levels of 267 and 268.

That meant I'd break the trend, and I'd definitely be able to fight up levels-in fact, at the hypothetical level 200, I'd be able to fight up sections.

I relished the power that came with level 76. Since I leveled up, the Empire leveled up. The essence compression felt great.

We were only eleven levels away from Cancall now. I was confident in escaping from them with my life, though I would be injured.

However, level 76 wasn't enough to fight Cancall. I created an army, finally.