It took over a week for Vincent to regain his full strength. In that time he felt like he'd been skinny dipping in a pool of acid with the lady death while her icy, skeletal hands attempted to choke the life from him. OK maybe that was a bit dramatic… but you get the point.

It went far beyond simply reducing his natural regenerations by however many countless times. It reduced ALL incoming sources of healing, so his health was stuck at an absolute maximum of 100. All the while his Soulspace had been severely strained and he saw cracks in his skills' energy flows.

His muscles had been torn asunder and his bones were ground to dust. Using his body or power in any way was excruciatingly painful. Even his crimson essence was all but useless before this crippling weakness.

For the duration of the after effects of the skill, Vincent decided just to take it easy and heal the natural way, because he would be damned if he was just going to waste his time crafting and gardening whilst feeling the way he currently did. It just wasn't happening.

It seemed like the trade off for unleashing Vita's godly powers was being entirely defenseless for at least a week. Or maybe he had tapped into far more of the Goddess's energy then he was meant to.. his efficiency at the end before he blacked out had been over ten million percent. His overall power was effectively amplified one hundred thousand times their natural limits.

But he was sloppy and inefficient, so the multiplier wasn't exact. A lot of the energy Vincent wielded had been wasted due to his lack of control and he still had more than enough to get the job done. It was possible that if he knew what he was doing he could have used a much lesser amount and dealt with far less severe consequences as a result. And he had used the power for all of maybe 30 seconds..

In the present day Vincent groaned as he sat up. He was in his bed with fresh bandages covering his lower torso. His strength was finally restored. But still he felt as if he were still teetering on the edge of crippling weakness. He looked down at his hands.

'So not only can my power allegedly not grow at all while I'm in that state…' He thought. 'But I'm completely defenseless for an entire week after?.. What a joke.' The man clicked his tongue bitterly and shut his eyes.

And now to top it all off he felt nauseous and disoriented. Like a coma patient whose muscles had atrophied from months of seeing no use. When was the last time he had even eaten anything? He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. He suspected that, given the multitudes of drawbacks associated with his new ability it wasn't one that he was going to use very often. It seemed like it was one of those 'only when you absolutely have to save your ass.' Situations.

Eventually after summoning his armor from within him, the comfortability of which was uncanny, Vincent made his way outside and over to the large meteorite. Even now, a week later, remained unmoved since its original landing. Grass had begun to grow in the crater which had mostly 'healed' itself by now. The system's way of slowly repairing the landscape like a living human restored skin had always left Vincent feeling fascinated.

He had studied for many hours the flows of energies as the planet rearranged and repaired the atoms of whatever was damaged so that it formed an exact replica of the land before the damage was done. The only difference was the new arrangement of atoms were strengthened somehow. It was as if the earth got stronger after every cycle of damage and healing just like players in the system did.

That would explain how the planet stayed intact when monstrous beings like Gildarts reached level 100 and fought one another. As a planet's population rose in power so too would its natural minerals by virtue of the system's natural destruction and reconstruction process. That also helped explained why the gravity and environment here was so intense. Most of the strongest creatures in this country had been level 100 for a long time…

The system really seemed to emphasize evolution. And it monitored the growth of every molecule under its thumb.. he couldn't help but feel again like it was looking for something particular. Like a scientist running an experiment…

Vincent sat down and intertwined his fingers with the grass. He felt the planet hum with life beneath him as he continued his internal discourse.

To that end, what was the point for these events? What was the system achieving by influencing its subject's growth or trying to eradicate them altogether? Was it forcing them to struggle to survive so that they would grow faster? It said it was a challenge vut were some of them more like exterminations? Or was there an ulterior motive like finding a needle in a haystack?

He simply didn't know. Although he did have to question why the system insisted on performing the equivalent of am assassination on him specifically? Or was there something special about this meteorite he hadn't noticed yet.. a gift in disguise? He was willing to bet that the system just wanted him dead honestly. He chuckled dryly at the thought.

So far any time system interference had been referenced, what should have been his intimement death soon followed. He couldn't help but feel like every time the system was unsuccessful in discovering how best to eradicate him from existence the entity got more aggressive, as if it were actually becoming angry with its inability to snuff out this lower life form with bare minimal efforts.

The system interference he kind of understood, he was messing with things he probably wasn't ready for. But this? Creating a whole event just to smite him really just seemed petty and extra.

One thing to know about a guy like Vincent though, was that he had always enjoyed pissing people in power off. It was too easy and they spent way too much energy overreacting, getting all bent out of shape about controlling others.

And if pissing off people of a lower cognitive complexity was fun.. then pissing off an all-powerful, all-knowing, God-like metaphysical entity that controlled all of existence? There could be no greater amusement. He cackled as he shook himself from his runaway thoughts. He realized he was still staring at the slowly mending ground, having gotten lost on how beautiful the flows of energy comprising this world truly were.

Watching the atoms flowing through the earth was like watching thousands of microscopic fireworks cascading into one another thousands of times per second. There were so many energies.. it was impossible to distinguish between them all. Once in a while he caught glimpses of patterns and shapes that he recognized but more often than not he was lost in the sheer complexity and beauty of it all.

This foreign object the system had created was a whole nother matter entirely though. When he studied the meteorite with scrutiny his tongue felt heavy in his throat and his eyes throbbed. He wasn't quite sure how to comprehend what he was seeing. It was literally as if the flows of energies within the thing were the hardest, most unmoving he had ever seen. It was as if they possessed and indomitable power and will of their own.

Within the system, most objects' behaviors were typically designated by two things; the flow of said object's energy and the shape composed by its molecular structure. It was comparable to the likes of the scientific states of matter typically observed within a solid, liquid or gas.

Objects with high energy contained atoms moving more rapidly. Therefore they tended to be more malleable and adaptive whereas the energies of a harder, more unyielding substance were more akin to the molecular state of solid atoms.

The energy patterns he was currently staring at appeared before him as if they were blazing amethyst diamonds. Thousands of the hexagon shaped 'gems'' wove together into a sturdy, unmoving wall that looked layered like dragon scales. When he tried harder to identify the thing he got a throbbing headache for his troubles.

Error.. chemical and elemental composition unknown. Name: unknown. Uses: unknown. Weight 1000 parcels.

Vincent frowned. He wasn't sure how he knew, maybe because of translation based system fuckery but he somehow knew a parcel was 1 ton. So this thing effectively weighed 2 millions pounds. He took in a deep breath flexing his muscles and popping various bones and joints as he prepared to use the totality of his abilities for the first time since he had activated the Goddess's blessing a week ago.

He slowly began to activate each and everyone of his considerable number of skills one by one, minus the obvious ones like singularity and Silva deus. He tried to focus especially on gravity manipulation to reduce the weight and aerodynamics to create as frictionless a surface as possible but even with all of this plus his strength being amplified by spirit fusion, he was still unable to budge the damn rock.

His feet dug trenches in the ground as he braced his palms against the flat side of the meteor and pushed as hard as he could. Energy gathered around him as Yggdrasil and other such abilities pushed his power to the max and slightly beyond. Futility the man even charged a few unwavering strikes within his pams while pushing on the object as he released the technique.

"1.. 2.. 3.. Push!"

Each time his hands merely vibrated against the ridiculously dense object. Grunting with effort he pushed with all his might. On the final heave shockwaves of force were being generated at the points where his hands made contact with the object as he pushed his power past its limits. With a roar of frustration, he relented, deciding that for now it was an exercise in futility. Huffing for breath, he scowled bitterly at the strange meteorite.

He was positive that he could move the object using the powers of his blessing but that didn't seem like a good enough reason to be crippled for a second week in a row, especially not fresh off the heels of the last time. His strength was over three hundred with all his various multitudes of bonuses and skills active at once, so that was multiplied to almost 1000 effective strength with spirit fusion taking from the whole pack plus his companion and equipment.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Even with all of this it just wasn't enough. He shuddered wondering what kind of monstrous strength a being would need in order to comfortably transfer a million pounds by hand. He was guessing it was upwards of 2000 purely on a baseless speculation. He wasn't exactly sure how the strength stat translated into the ability to do work. With its strength of slightly over 1000 the Fang was capable of creating an entirely city vaporizing bomb's worth of energy in his most powerful attack.

One thing he had come to notice about stats was that contrary to what one might think, as they accumulated they provided an exponential effect so that each individual point had a much more significant impact overall even at higher levels.

If a stat was at 100 and you got 1 point it wouldn't be like receiving 1/100th more strength but more like 1/75th. The difference wasn't too huge with each individual number but the cumulative effect as they rose truly mattered. Of course that was for the regular mobs of the Nexus. Vincent's stats were unreasonably more potent than most, making the bonus he received from each stat even more exponential.

Biting his cheek Vincent rubbed his chin for several seconds before sighing and deciding that at least for now the damn meteorite was inconsequential. He looked over at the grotesque, makeshift 'tree' he had created to patch the hole left in the wake of the meteor. That one monstrous trunk, writhing with vines covered what once took half a dozen trees larger than any found on his old world.

Oh yeah plus it was alive. He still couldn't believe he had managed to create something like that. It swayed lazily back and forth, looking like a jutting, golden tooth in the otherwise uniform wall of the jungle. Of course this 'tooth' had living branches coming out of the top.

The flows of it's energies were so compact and efficient he didn't fully understand them with his standard level of perception. For one thing he could tell the tree was incredibly dense, much like the meteorite but they were far from unmoving. The elements comprising it seemed to teem with energy and life.

It was probably the second hardest material he'd ever had a chance to sit down and study thus far. Beyond that the branches and vines of the thing were sentient, allowing passage from friendly's while keeping out hostiles. He wasn't sure how that part was even possible but he suspected engravings played a hand in it somehow.

Between his defenses and how damn heavy the rock was, he was worried about leaving the place unattended for a while. If anything managed to break in and take the thing, they deserved to keep it.

He decided his best bet would be for him and his companion to visit his master Zar-Rhah and seek the wizened sage's advice. Even if the Orc didn't know anything about the meteor he might have some sort of insight as to why his companion could suddenly move freely whereas he was confined specifically to the cave before.

He sent a mental message to his companion translating roughly into, 'we're going to meet someone very important and very powerful. Be on your best behavior.' Vincent swore if Lupus knew what was good for him he would completely understand the underlying meaning of 'stay calm, stay silent and stay still!' Or else he would find another reason for him to never leave the safety of that blasted cave.

The plant-like being knew the sentimentality Vincent associated with the cave and he knew it was the only place that would keep him safe as the man would never do anything overly avoidable to damage the place. It had been his home more or less for three and a half years now but to him it seemed much, much longer than that. Probably because of his declining insanity in the earlier years of his existence within the Nexus.

As it stood Vincent had no real reason to keep track of time these days, which made it very ironic that his skills now did so passively. That was how he had known roughly how long it had been since the first day he had arrived in this God forsaken place. Time seemed like such a relevant concept here, where most of his time was spent in the wilderness.

The journey to his master's was smooth and easy, a pleasant change of pace from his usual daily mishaps. Even the Hellspawn were unusually inactive today. As Vincent and Lupus landed with a solid thump outside Zar-Rhah's cave, their momentum dispersed in a thirty foot dust cloud. Truly the fact that his companion could keep up with him seemingly with ease was an unsettling prospect. He was sure the things stats were already eclipsing his own but he hadn't thought to ask or study his attributes in minute detail before. He was positive he had caught up and even slightly surpassed the plant in efficiency though.

Vincent's old grizzled master came out hooting and hollering about young disrespectful brats or something but when his gaze landed on Vincent or more specifically his companion, his mouth slowly shut. The grayed Orcs eyes widened in surprise.

"Wha.. how interesting. So, not only your equipment shares your Aura but this.. what is he? He has a much larger portion of your soul than the others.. and the complexity of his energy rivals your own? Fascinating. I must study him." Zar-Rhah guffawed.

A tick mark appeared on Vincent's forehead. "Yeah, yeah he's just great.. To answer your question, he's my soul companion, originating as a soul seed. Well.. that should just about answer all of your questions." He finished with a shrug. The grizzled old Orc closed his eyes and slowly nodded. "Mostly. I've had a soul seed before." He explained, gesturing to Caelum Rendere.

This in turn caused Vincent's eyes to widen in surprise but before he could say anything or ask one of the million questions he had, his master continued. "But for you to have evolved it so rapidly and as such a perfect imitation of your own Soul.. strange indeed."

Vincent pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yeah well I think he got messed up because up until recently he wasn't allowed to leave our little.. well it's a cave we call home, you can relate to that. There was some sort of system event or something. One minute he's bound to the area he was born in and then all of a sudden, he's completely free to travel whenever he wants like you or me. I haven't noticed any changes in his energy or skills."

Zar-Rhah raised an eyebrow in confusion. "Come inside.. I will make some tea and we shall talk where it is more private and safe. A system event has not occured in over 100 years." Vincent's eyebrows quirked upward in concern but he followed as instructed, his companion skipping gayly along after them.

As he stepped into the damp, dark cave, Vincent took a quick glance at his stats for the 1st time in 7 chapters.

End of chapter 30

AoF Lvl 1 Attack: 100

ME Lvl 1 Defense: 100

Trinity Lvl 1 defense: 100 efficiency: 5%

Strength: 250

Endurance: 250

Vitality: 400

Intelligence: 250

Perception: 240

Agility: 275

Skills:

Dodge (Common) lvl 90

Smithing (Common) lvl 93

Farming (Common) lvl 93

Cooking (Common) lvl 93

Sword and shield (Common) lvl 90

Shockwave (Common) lvl 85

Parry (sword) (Common) 85

Shield bash (Common) 85

Alchemy (Uncommon) lvl 90

Electric resistance (Uncommon) 85

Acid resistance (Uncommon) lvl 85

Ice resistance (Uncommon) lvl 85

Hardened skin. (Uncommon) lvl 90

Reinforced bones. (Uncommon) lvl 90

Geographic inclination. (Uncommon) lvl 79

Tuck n roll (Uncommon) lvl 83

Piercing thrust (Uncommon) 86

Magnetism (Uncommon) 50

Thermal manipulation (Uncommon) 40

Planta/Plante (Rare) lvl 82

Courage (Rare) lvl 80

Enhanced toughness. (Rare) lvl 80

rejuvenation. (Rare) lvl 84

Extract (Rare) lvl 75

Refine (Rare) lvl 75

Combine (Rare) lvl 75

Berserker rage. (Rare) lvl 80

Telekinesis. (Rare) lvl 74

Aerodynamics (Rare) lvl 73

Absolute timing (Rare) lvl 79

Reconnaissance of the Alpha Wolf (Rare) 90

Sixth sense (Rare) lvl 85

Lucky break (Rare) lvl Max

Maelstrom whirlwind (Rare) 70

Shadow manipulation (Rare) 75

Radiant Light (Rare) 75

Water torrent (Rare) 78

Electric Bolt (Rare) 69

Cinder of flame (Rare) lvl 80

Stealth (Rare) lvl 95

Ecology (Epic) lvl 85

Unyielding guard (Epic) lvl 70

Unwavering strike (Epic) lvl 70

Advanced communications. (Epic) Lvl Max.

Shadow step (Epic) lvl 80

Comet (Epic) lvl 70

Pilfered kinetic force (Epic) 70

Impact reduction (Epic) 70

Pain tolerance (Epic) 65

Diverging perception (Epic) 25

Gravity manipulation (Epic) 20

Blazing trail of Wrath (Epic) 15

Flamecloak (Epic) lvl 10

Flurry of strikes (Epic) 15

Optical incandescence (Epic) 5

Intermediate engraving (Epic) lvl 25

Complete tranquility (Legendary) lvl 75

Unparalleled physical fitness (Legendary) lvl 70

Bleeding heart (Legendary) lvl 60

Ancient Slumbering Tortoise (Legendary) lvl 65

Mercy of the revered patreon (legendary) lvl 40

Yggdrasil; Ancient world tree (Legendary) lvl 50

Wrathful Flame (Legendary) lvl 30

Critical strike (Legendary) lvl Max

Spirit fusion (Legendary) lvl 3

Tempered atomic structure (Legendary) lvl Max

Singularity (Divine) lvl 1

Network of souls (Unique)

Blessing of Silva deus (Unique)

System interference (???) Lvl.??...

Perks:

Will to survive VI +12% vitality

Smithing +3 strength and agility

Limit breaker + 20 endurance +5 strength

Camouflage. Harder to detect +5 Agility.

Connoisseur. Cooking, crafting, alchemy knowledge. +5 Intelligence and Perception.

Ecologist. Ecology. +25 perception.

Fortitude II Grants the user a permanent + 10 in strength and agility

Marquis of science. Grants +10 intelligence

Transmutation grants knowledge of the atomic structure of all things +5 intelligence

Gourmet chef. boost from food. +10 Vitality

Honor. Whenever facing an enemy one on one, gain a 25% increase in attack and defense. Receive greatly reduced damage from sneak attacks. +10 strength +5 agility

Sanguine toxicity. Lifebringer plus toxic affinity. Toxic blood. Heals allies. Used as a catalyst in most crafts. +20 vitality +10 endurance

Second wind. Restores the user's health and stamina once per battle.

Apex predator. Gain +25% to all stats when not in a party or fighting with allies. +25 to all stats

Bleeding heart. A wailing significance demands to be felt. User shares half of all damage received with the target. +100 vitality. +25 endurance

Unparalleled physical fitness. Due to repeated evolutions, grants multiple free stats per level which the user can allocate as they please.

Against all odds. III. Skills level up +75% faster. Gain +150% experience. All stats increased by +30

Somatic expression. You express your thoughts and emotions in unique ways within the Nexus.All skills and stats benefit from one another a moderate amount. Intelligence gains the regenerative effects of your vitality stat and vice versa.

Empathy. Understanding the value of all life. +25 vitality. +25% vitality.

Animal lover. Less aggressive creatures may instantly befriend you and most others can be tamed over time.

Wolf pack Alpha. All skill levels will now rise moderately faster while leading your pack.

Grandmaster alchemist. Obtain maximum potential of mixed concoctions with bare minimum effort. It is second nature to get the most of all things in life.

Living off the land +100% all resources harvested from all sources.

Higher level intellect I +25 perception. +25 intelligence.

Elemental mastery. +25 to all stats.

The Flaming Lord of Despair. +1000% resistance to heat based energies. User's flame skills are exceptionally strong. User's flames burns other flames.

Starscourge. All stats +20. Additional +20 to perception. Additional +10 to intelligence.

Anointed prince, the Monarch fledgling. Effects unknown.

A fire has been lit in your soul.. effects unknown.

Superior genes! Your genetics have evolved far beyond… Gain a permanent +20 to all stats! Gain +50 to your Agility! Gain an additional +25 to Endurance and Intelligence.

Network of souls (Unique)

Blessing of Silva deus (Unique) (???)

System interference (???) Lvl.??...