Winning a battle won’t help you squat if you die because of the backlash or weaken yourself to the point where anything can kill you.

Tetsu etched the moral into his memory and got back up, continuing his journey.

By researching various facts, he learned they were thresholds for every aspect of the system. Stealth never upgraded, as Tetsu never met the requirements to cross the threshold.

Similar to working smarter, not harder. While you can strain your body and cross a limit, a proper diet and working out daily for an hour can provide better benefits with zero backlash.

The incubation ground is a hack and a boon to humanity, where experiments can be designed with outrageous risks and still have little to no backlash.

This is perhaps the most effective method to introduce a non-mana user to the concept of mana. It is essential to establish this basic foundation before moving on to the other two pillars. We may not have fully appreciated the importance of the first two pillars earlier, but perhaps this incubation ground can serve as a wake-up call.

Engaged in his thoughts, evading every threat with foresight and an all-seeing eye, Tetsu tried to break through the 'Leech Over' skill's threshold. Such skills will help him scout, escape, and mostly never engage in a fight, keeping his life and vows in one piece. So they became a top priority, and he aimed to upgrade them to Omni level by the end of the month.

Tetsu felt conflicted about the timer-sometimes he wished time would move faster to give him a sense of pressure, and other times he wanted it to stay put so he could have more time to experiment.

A childish dream to awaken his inner Tarzan was squashed by monstrous trees and upgraded monkeys with two tails. These two factors forced him to stay low and navigate the forest on his belly. At times he even went lower, digging tunnels to move ahead. Those monkeys were bad news, and he did not want to test his luck against any of them.

Once he reaches a clearing, moving against his intuition, Tetsu finds himself at the foot of a mountain.

It was almost as if someone suddenly remembered misplacing a mountain and placed it in Tetsu’s path at the last moment because he swore there weren’t any mountains towering into the clouds when he viewed the dream world from the top of the first mountain.

“The incubation grounds sure blew things out of proportion.” Tetsu sighs and tries to measure the mountain’s height.

He eagerly steps forward, unable to estimate but bubbling with excitement. The view from the mountaintop would be legendary.

As if hearing his thoughts, a presence descended upon him, suppressing his very being. The presence was several times stronger than the Dandralith’s boss, and it felt like an arm choking the life out of him.

Like always, a part of Tetsu wanted to run, the other wanted to fight, and a cold, calculating part calmly placed pieces of the puzzle together, forming theories, plans, and conclusions.

“BEGONE!” a being shrouded in darkness ordered.

A cluster of shadows sat upon a throne made of corpses that were woven together. Several beast horns protruded around the throne’s resting rail as trophies.

Within the crimson clouds at the peak of the mountain, the creature didn’t bother getting up from its throne. The base of the mountain was miles down, where only wisps of its aura reached, yet that was more than enough for a mere level-four human.

The being could perceive, identify, and strangle the human to its death from here and with nothing but the lingering mana.

Death loomed over Tetsu. An imaginary arm held his throat, choking him slowly to his death. He didn’t know what kind of power this was, but he wanted it.

A part of him suppressing the fangs loosens its grip. The crimsonfae fangs roar back at the aura, welcoming the challenge, and forcing Tetsu to face the supreme aura head-on.

Tampering with the control over the bloodthirsty fangs, Tetsu began his training under aura suppression.

Memories of the Dandralith flooded his mind and a deeper emotion rose to the surface, suppressing the fangs and supreme aura alike.

After Tetsu regained consciousness, he checked his mana pool and found it to be completely drained. Additionally, he had lost three-quarters of his health pool. The mana exhaustion pushed him out of the state in the nick of time.

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The creature on the throne was startled, causing it to lose its grip on Tetsu, who snapped back to reality and made his escape.

It felt like a second; activating and deactivating the state, yet Tetsu lost a whole day, a skill for aura resistance, and almost died because of pride.

“EEEH!” Tetsu yells, enraged, slamming his fist into the ground with a thud, leaving a small crater at the point of impact. “I’m never even going to try and get into that state.” Tetsu had no choice but to vow.

That state is way too unpredictable and overpowered to subdue. He needed more info before even trying to poke such an emotion any further.

The near-suicide attempt helped Tetsu formulate more plans. By using his fangs and alternating the fang's hunger which wanted a chunk of flesh from the powerful being on top, Tetsu practiced resisting supreme aura suppression.

An aura of a supreme or higher being, suppressing a lower-level aura.

He tried to learn, resist, and mimic it a bit to find a small gap to gain a similar skill. With a hack, he can get more info and better learn the skill, yet only his resistance increased as he slowly climbed higher and higher, marking each milestone with a makeshift flag.

Several days passed by as Tetsu kept climbing higher. Every milestone increased the difficulty tenfold. The climb itself was smooth thanks to Tetsu’s stats, but the higher he climbed, the denser the aura became.

Tetsu shuttered to imagine the creature at its epicenter.

Thanks to his math skills, he never guessed the creature’s true power and powered through with other burdening thoughts.

Halfway through or at the latest milestone, he lost track of his progress. Tetsu did not rely upon the fang's hunger to climb and a sudden realization dawned on him.

“Can I improve my resistance to other aspects as well?”

Aura suppression, what Tetsu called it, relied on one’s mana, pushing away others. Like the fear when the prey notices a predator. The predator might or might not attack, but the prey is scared shitless either way. It sure as hell won’t try to fight.

By adding mana to the aspect, now one can project their presence. This meant predators could shoo away their prey without lifting a finger.

The more Tetsu broke down the concept, the better he understood it.

If a simple concept can be enhanced to such a degree that the tiger doesn’t even have to hunt and can just stare its food to death, imagine the other concepts and techniques with mana.

It’s not farfetched to conclude that a predator can not only kill but also survey everything that falls under its aura. Much like his Asura-level skill, he blatantly dismissed.

The idea of power in numbers becomes ridiculous if you are facing a single individual who can kill you with a mere thought.

They can also stand on a different continent and scan all of your country’s defenses, weapons, and high-ranking individuals.

All these theories are hearsay but Tetsu dreamt big, expanding the concept to understand it better.

Information is power and imagine a way to sit on your ass and gain all the information in the world, kill who encourages the idea of crossing you, and power your allies. Tetsu’s mind ran wild with possibilities and probabilities.

Aura in some martial arts meant willpower.

So is the creature projecting its will onto others?

This opened even more theories. The more Tetsu poked the tree, the more fruits or puzzles kept falling.

In the heat of battle, nothing made sense, but with a stupid dark emotion and ever-famished fangs, Tetsu grabbed the concept and refused to let go a second time.

“Wait..!” Another puzzle clicks into place.

Every aspect of the world has increased in strength because of mana. Even if humans had and never used mana, now with the system flooding the new world with mana, everything is going to become stronger. Fire is going to burn hotter and for longer, water can accumulate faster, buildings grow stronger and sturdier, and with little to no effort, true peace can be attained.

Mana is the missing piece in Kile’s plan.

It’s like the gods said yes to Kile and threw out the one piece he missed. The one-piece Tetsu used against Kile to secure one of his few victories. Humans are going to find a way to screw everything up, but that’s not the point.

This meant two things.

One; Tetsu can build an oasis like he always envisioned. All the hypothetical scenarios he played with Tetsu were finally paying off and now he only required power and a good plan for a small auto functional house.

Both of which he can work out on the incubation grounds.

The second was resistance. He could build his body to resist literally anything. Earth already had individuals who proved a slight resistance against fire, poison, cold, and so on. He can mold his body here as the high concentration of energies can teach and heal him quicker.

Plans for the future became tangible in his vision, the route for reaching said destination clear as the sky.

After avenging his friend and if he comes out in one piece an oasis awaits him.

Luck always eluded Tetsu. He never fully understood the concept or its capabilities until it appeared as a quantifiable stat on his status screen. As he explored the mysterious nature of luck, it began to open up to him.

Whether knowingly or unknowingly, Tetsu imagined an oasis that relied entirely on luck to be accomplished. Although every plan requires a certain amount of luck to succeed, plans do not always go as intended. Being an overthinker, Tetsu was capable of sabotaging his own journey. Such individuals don’t need the world to impede their journey.

Even if everything went according to plan, there was always the possibility of glitches occurring that would lead to an alternate outcome. Of course, the mighty system’s code stays true to its creation, yet with the worst draw such as Tetsu’s, even the mighty code glitched and paved an alternate path.

One such glitch weaved itself into the pattern Tetsu planned to achieve, and the oasis took a new form.

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