Ryker tossed a treasure in his hand before conveniently storing it away.

The Third Elevated treasure he had taken was quite simple: it was a protective treasure. It was designed to sense when lethal damage was about to be levied and teleport him away first.

In its passive state, it would absorb about 50% of all the energy-based attacks he took up to the Third Elevated level, and lost 20% for every step up.

It was in the form of a chain-mail-type armor, though in reality it was as soft and flexible as silk while also being just as light.

All-in-all, it was an excellent haul.

However, Ryker didn’t have the intention of leaving the weapon district this time. Leaving the Weapon Exchange without a care for what would happen after him, he headed toward the weapon forging regions.

He strolled in without a care. Isabo had given him full access to these regions long ago, but that was also made under a different circumstance. After all, because of his low cultivation, there were certain regions that he simply couldn’t enter because the heat was too oppressive.

Unfortunately for the buddha-shaped woman, she probably didn’t remember to retract that order. As such, his access was still unrestricted, but this time, he had the cultivation needed to step into whatever region he wanted.

Fire Type Spirit Energy danced off his skin as though it was scattering across a marble surface. His appearance caused several to look toward him, but much like in the Weapon Exchanges, he directly ignored them and headed up.

The forging rooms were divided into several segments, from Enlightened, to Ascended, Elevated and Mythic. Ryker simply moved up to the Elevated stages and picked out one of the better rooms before slipping inside.

Inside the room, there was a large open pit fire that seemed to blow up from the fiery pits of hell. Ryker knew that this was an illusion.

Instead, the forging compound was built on top of a fire vein that was loosely connected to the Earth Flame of Planet Valorian. Thanks to some expert planning, there was a system of pipes that guided it from deep underground and controlled it like the flow of fire.

‘I wonder if it’ll be enough…’ Ryker thought curiously.

He pulled out another rod of refined metals from the prison and tossed it into the flames. Standing in silence, he watched.

‘Not bad. It’s slow, but it’s working. It was instant above the Earth Flame, but here it’ll take about… three hours or so to melt down?’

Ryker wasn’t impatient, nor did he move up to the Mythic rooms. He pulled out the broken sundial and began to study it.

‘Yes, as expected, it is repairable. That’s interesting, though. There seem to be faint tendrils of the Dao of Life, or something similar. No, it feels more like the Dao of Potential, or the Dao of Youth… How esoteric…’

Of course, there wasn’t even an incomplete Dao in this treasure, let alone a complete one.

But after touching the gate of the Valorian Clan, Ryker realized that there were insights to the Daos everywhere in this Clan of his. It was just that they could never take that final step because they didn’t have something like Prometheus to open the door for them.

The net over this Iteration stopped everyone from taking that step, no matter how profound their comprehension.

And yet, even so, this treasure, and others like it, were furiously pounding on the gates.

If he could take a look at God Treasures, or other things on the same level, he was sure that he could benefit greatly as well.

‘I can adjust it. I can use the normal functions of the sundial to lock onto an aura, and I can incorporate the Dao of Space ores, tweak the runes a bit, and allow the egg to teleport right to me so long as I’m within… 100 meters or so. If I make the distance any further, it’ll start to affect the other runes.’

Ryker analyzed this thoroughly, and then he began to work.

The fires melted the sundial with far greater ease than the ores from the prison.

Tools flew from the side of the room over to Ryker’s side. He didn’t even look at them as he stretched out his hand and caught them.

There were only really three steps to weapon and treasure refinement that one had to be considerate of… if said weapon didn’t have a spirit, that is.

The first was the metals themselves, and the alloys they formed. This required temperature control, and insight into the interaction between various kinds of metals and things of the like.

The second were Spiritual Patterns—sometimes called runes—and how they would interact with the metals. Inscribing Water Type Spiritual Patterns on Fire Type Spirit Metals was the pinnacle of foolishness.

The third was form. The shape of a treasure was an overlooked, but highly important piece to the puzzle.

Who cared how perfect the first two steps were if your sword was warped?

This seemed less important for sundial, but it was probably even more so for complex pieces like this.

The detection abilities of the sundial were reliant on the mechanisms within. Imagine if one had a compass, but the arrow within couldn’t move smoothly or was hindered.

The sundial was similar, but its moving pieces were several times more complex, especially with the changes that Ryker planned to make.

However, Ryker confidently moved.

Thanks to his Pure Soul, his theoretical knowledge was deeper than maybe even Leopold’s. Because he couldn’t cultivate for so long, he had spent every waking moment learning about everything he could. There wasn’t a single book, barring those limited to him by cultivation, that he hadn’t read in the Valorian Clan.

And thankfully for him, while the Valorian Clan gate-kept cultivation methods and techniques, they were much more lax with secondary profession materials.

Now that his cultivation was quickly catching up to his true comprehension level, Ryker was like a phoenix just gifted his wings. He soared through the skies and in just three and a half hours, he had not only repaired a Mythic Treasure back to its original standing, but he had improved it.

He stood to his feet, feeling satisfied.

Before he left, he slipped on his new silky protective treasure and slicked his hair back.

It was time to go to exchange for those very same techniques he had been barred from reading for so long.

How embarrassing. He had to stumble his way into the Ascension Realm because he hadn’t been able to read those materials.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

But now he would be able to cross reference what he had learned from the other Iterations with the solid foundation of the Valorians. Then he would be able to begin cultivating once more.

Once he was done, he would go and see his mother, then head off to Jaana’s world.

When he returned two weeks thus, he would be a changed man once more.

…

Ryker looked up at the tall pagoda standing before him. It was so tall and imposing that it seemed to have no limits at all. But he knew that it was an illusion, much like the Weapon Exchange had been.

If the Weapon Exchange had had an illusion on the inside, the Technique Pavilion had one on the outside. Despite the fact it looked like it stretched into the skies, Ryker knew that it had exactly seven levels.

One for each of the three large dividing tiers of the Enlightenment Realms, one for the Ascended Realms, one for the Elevated Realms, one for the Mythic Realms, and finally one for the God Realm.

He didn’t actually know if there were any techniques on the God Realm floor. Ryker would be very impressed if there were, especially since there was only one God Realm expert in the Clan, as far as he was aware.

However, when he remembered the aura his Ancestor had left at the gates… he couldn’t help but be interested.

‘Once I’m strong enough to ignore my grandfather, I’ll take a look.’

He had a plan to reach the God Realm within six months, of which over a month had already passed.

But he planned on being able to contest against the Gods of this Iteration long before that.

His cultivation Realm wouldn’t dictate his strength. If he allowed it to, he would never be able to face off against those real monsters on the outside.

‘By the time I become a Third Elevated, I have to have the strength to destroy Gods of this or any other Iteration…’

Ryker took a breath and calmed himself.

There was a lot of pressure on him. These thoughts of his were ultimately just arbitrarily set limits. He had no idea if it would be enough.

He thought about telling others… but what good would it do?

He had a feeling that unless he could find a way to help others grasp Daos, then no matter what he told them, he would just be adding unnecessary variables, not to mention making them worry for little reason.

But how could he do that? There was only one Prometheus at the end of the day.

‘I’ll have to see if I can find a path. At the very least, if father can grasp a Dao, his power will skyrocket and he might step into the God Realm before I do…’

The Glory Mythics were the only three existences in the Clan that had stayed on the Glory Path until the end, thus their title. Now, they were just vying to be the first to enter the God Realm. But everyone was ready for it to take decades.

‘I’ll find a way.’

Ryker’s gaze flashed, and he took a step inside.

He swept his gaze to the side as the elder overlooking the tower opened his eyes.

‘Ergen.’ Ryker thought with a sneer.

This was the man who had stopped him at the gates last night. But who cared?

Ryker directly ignored him. A Third Elevated? So what.

Ergen was instantly annoyed by Ryker’s look, but everyone was used to this kid’s sharp tongue. Now that he actually had strength, there was little stopping him from doing whatever he wanted to do.

He had been an expert at skirting Clan rules in the past, and nothing had changed.

It was impossible for him to punish Ryker for a sneer. And since he was in the Ascension Realm now, he had a chance to climb the tower.

“You have exactly one hour. You can go as high as you can stand so long as it is beneath the Mythic floor.”

After coldly stating these words, Ergen didn’t say anything else.

Ryker didn’t even acknowledge him. He knew that he had only said so much to remind Ryker that he only had an hour.

But did it matter to him?

Ryker’s gaze flashed with a fierce light. He had already read every technique there was on the first floor, but he ultimately only used four regularly.

The first was his cultivation method, the second was [Soul Ripple], the third was [Whip like Shield], and the fourth was [Whip like Needle]. Of course, there were also the chain variations of the latter, but they were really just one technique.

Everything else was the most basic of basics which one could learn without even stepping into this place.

Now, he could finally step onto the second floor.

He began to climb the stairs and felt a pressure rustle his hair, but he practically glided through it.

What surprised Ergen was that Ryker actually stopped on the second floor, causing him to frown.

Suddenly, Ryker closed his eyes and spread his arms out wide. In his dantian, the Silver Mirror began to flicker, but Ryker didn’t take it out. Even so, its surface began to ripple with various images as it scanned through the pages of each one of the books on this floor.

The air rippled, and a cyclone warped through.

After just a few seconds, Ryker had read all the books on this level and continued to the third level, then the fourth.

When he made a move to walk to the fifth, Bergen’s gaze sharpened.

The spiral staircase of this hall pagoda was a very open concept, and they were also wide. As there were usually several people struggling to move up at the same time, it was clearly visible to everyone around.

However, other than his face being a slight flush of red, Ryker seemed completely unmoved by it all.

Then he stood out in the middle of the hall once again, spreading his arms out wide. A light rustle WHOOSHED by.

Ryker stood in silence on the Elevated level for a much longer time, an entire five minutes.

But soon, he opened his eyes once again and slowly began to walk down.

Those inside were shaken, not understand what Ryker was doing. Wasn’t he going to actually read anything?

What they didn’t know was that Ryker had already recorded everything there was from the first to the fifth floors.

Nothing had escaped his notice.

‘I didn’t expect that the Treasure Pagoda to have such a secret…’

Ryker walked out without sparing Ergen another glance. His mind was too occupied, though he would have ignored him, regardless.

He found that many of the Valorian Clan techniques were just upgrades.

For example, although he had just read so many techniques, his new methods would still share the same names. They would just be on another level entirely.

However, the secret lay in the upgrades.

‘Someone is trying to teach me… no, us, something. Every step up it meticulously crafted, and it reveals another layer of the secret.

‘There are five layers of [Whip Like Needle] that I’ve read now, and each one seems identical aside from small tweaks here and there… but are they?’

Ryker carelessly stretched out a hand and his wrist flickered. At that moment, a hollow point in his curled fingers seemed to grasp an invisible whip. The wind shook, and a crack echoed through the air.

Surrounding Valorians were so scared by the sudden action they leapt out of the way, their eyes widening.

‘Fascinating… This incorporates a secret of the Dao of Sealing, but I didn’t expect that it could be used for attacking like this, and…’

He stretched out his other hand and an invisible chain seemed to be formed with a flick of his wrist.

BOOM!

The air shattered and exploded, and yet it was in such a concentrated region that it almost felt like one was observing a star collapse in on itself.

‘Fascinating, fascinating…’

Ryker walked around absentmindedly.

After he finished with the Technique Pagoda, he left this region of the Divined Scholars to go to the Divined Cooks.

His Soup Stone had been destroyed in the crash and he had still yet to find a suitable replacement. So he could only go to the Divined Cooks division to get a new one.

He left that region with unhurried steps as well after causing yet another commotion. However, he didn’t seem to care as he left carnage wherever he went. Well… a carnage of the heart, that is.

The scion of the Valorian Clan had only returned for a day, but he took a Third Elevated Treasure, climbed to the Elevated steps, and then he entered the forging room of an Elevated and only left after causing the phenomena of a Mythic treasure to shudder the forge. Even after he left, the fire was still trembling with the aura of the treasure it had just created.

But as though all of that wasn’t enough, he then defeated Head of the Divined Cooks, Violet Valorian, and snatched her Soup Stone Embryo away!

All the while, he didn’t seem to care about the commotion he was stirring at all. In fact, he was thinking of the best way to accelerate the growth of the Soup Stone.

Prometheus could grow with Fire and Water Type Spirit Treasures alone, and he still had those two Third Elevated beast corpses he had yet to feed them.

But even that processing would still take the touch of a Spiritual Cook to do it properly.

Then, whether it was Phoenix, or his future Contracts, they would all need his cooking. It could be said that Phoenix’s growth was at least 50% slower because his Soup Stone had been destroyed.

But now that he had the embryo of one, he was in another troublesome situation.

It took time to nurture a Soup Stone, it was like seasoning a cast iron. It had to be done with time and attention.

Time he didn’t have.

And he certainly didn’t want to use the already seasoned Soup Stone of some other mediocre Spiritual Cook.

But he had an idea.

Didn’t he have Time Type Spirit Energy now? Couldn’t he use it freely?

If he set this up correctly, he could take this Soup Stone Embryo, and make it akin to a Soup Stone that had been passed down for generations…

No, as though generations of Ryker Valorians had passed it down, with the most perfect preparation possible.

Let alone 50%, at that point he’d be able to double Phoenix progress.

Maybe he would be able to help both his Contracts reach Ascended status in these two weeks.

His eyes glowed with a fierce light. However, it was soon replaced by a gentle expression as he entered his mother’s room to find that she had managed to prop herself up.

“Mother.” Ryker smiled brightly.

He didn’t seem like the boy that had turned the Clan upside down in just a few hours at all. Instead, he forgot about everything else and accompanied his mother, holding onto her frail hands and telling her all about the adventures he had been on since had disappeared.