[1% LIFESTEAL] Chapter 190 - The Rank Ceiling

When Freddy first met up with the elites, he had noticed something peculiar about the way they looked at him. Sure, they had acknowledged him as someone who qualified to interact with them, and even respected him enough to make some rather serious offers. 

But that was nothing compared to how they were looking at him at that moment. 

Reggie looked dazed. Peri actually stared at him with eyes wide open. Georgie was grinning at him approvingly, and Emily…

She was glaring at him with open hostility. It was a look of such open dislike that it left Freddy genuinely baffled. With a harrumph, she turned around and marched away. 

Meanwhile, the adjudicator, who was currently headed his way, looked so happy that it gave Freddy whiplash. The man looked like he’d won the lottery. He approached Freddy with a wide smile and offered him a handshake. 

To Freddy’s shock, the man actually pulled him into a hug, laughing uproariously. “Well done, young man! You are a gem I couldn’t have hoped to ever find!” He pulled back and tapped Freddy approvingly on the shoulder. “Well done!”

“Uh… thanks.” He said, a bit bewildered. “Anyway, I believe that marks the end of my shift. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go take my day off.”

“Go right ahead! Take two, even! You deserve it!” The adjudicator declared cheerfully. “Oh, and just to let you know, that giant’s body is exceptionally valuable. I’ll buy it off you for six billion if you want. But I implore you to keep the heart. The meat of a giant’s heart is one of the best things you can eat to improve your strength. It’s disgusting and tough as steel, but if you can handle eating it raw, I urge you to do so. You won’t regret it.”

Freddy nodded. He would never say no to more strength. “Come on,” he told the others. “Let’s go. It’s time to get some rest.”

***

“Oh yeah, this thing is amazing,” Sophia said as she caressed the massive heart. “Holy crap.”

They were in one of Valhalla’s secret chambers, checking out Freddy’s loot from killing the giant. 

The heart was about three times as tall as he was, and colored a deeply off-putting green. “What can you do with it?” he asked.

“I can upgrade your heart with it. Other than that, I can also make it a bit easier to digest if you want to take that man’s advice and eat it.”

“That sounds good.”

“But give me half,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow at her.

Suddenly, she dropped to her knees and put her hands together. “Please please please please please please please please—”

“What do you even need it for?”

“The flesh golem.” She sighed. “Honestly, that thing’s heart has been the biggest pain in the ass. I just can’t find tissue of high enough quality to properly support it. No matter what I do, I just can’t pump the blood around to the extremities. This is the perfect solution.”

He looked at her and shrugged. “Eating the whole thing will have diminishing effects anyway, so suit yourself, I guess.” 

She grinned. 

After first upgrading his and her own heart with the new tissue, she split the rest in half. 

One of the halves, she turned into a massive pile of pill-shaped blobs of flesh, while she got started on preparing the second half to use as material for her creation.

He stored the half he’d be eating into a storage box and then hauled it away, leaving Sophia to her bidding as he went to his room in Valhalla. There, he first caught a few hours of sleep before he got started on eating his prize. 

Frankly, he was a bit disappointed by the effect. It was certainly there, but given the sheer volume of things he’d consumed to improve his body, this was barely the earth-shattering treasure the adjudicator had hyped it up as. 

That being said, his new heart was a notable upgrade. It was beating a lot slower than before, and every pump felt refreshing almost, as if the tissue was doing more than just pumping blood around.

He was starting to feel a little nervous. Every time he felt like he was absolutely at the end of what he should be able to achieve at the second star, he found yet another way to push himself forward.

It would be exciting were it not for a niggling thought that gnawed at the back of his mind—what if humanity was just too ignorant?

If he kept finding so many ways to improve like this, it was obvious there had to be way more where that came from. Sure, he was privileged among his kind, with access to resources that could keep pushing him further and further.

But what about the other races that existed in the interspace? 

How much did they know? 

What kinds of techniques did they develop? 

What if the “power ceiling” humanity knew at every star was just a ridiculous joke to the other civilizations?

It was frankly a rather concerning thought. 

Humanity didn’t even know about the fact that spirit abilities compressed latent aura. And that felt like it should be basic knowledge. So what else were they ignorant to?

As for why these thoughts were plaguing him all of a sudden, it was hardly a surprise. Those square-eyed monsters… they were being herded around by a human. A human who had stepped into contact with some kind of higher power. And that alone was enough to make them a threat to an entire region of the empire. 

For some reason, he wasn’t willing to believe that the chaos would end there. 

Putting those thoughts aside, he grabbed more blobs and swallowed them. They were sitting heavy in his stomach, given how tough they were to digest. It would likely take him weeks to consume all of them. Just as he had the thought to use Adaptive Water Body to help him along, the doors to his room rang. 

Feeling a nasty premonition, he sighed and opened the door.

To his utter bewilderment, it was Janice—or, well, Lily. “Hi…” she said, looking a bit upset but trying to put on a pleasant expression. “I hope I’m not bothering you…” She nervously shifted in place.

Freddy peeked outside, looking right and left. “Is Lu—I mean, Drake with you?”

Her expression darkened slightly. “No. He’s not.”

“Oh… Is he okay with you being here?”

She clicked her tongue. “What? You think I need his permission for everything?”

“No, that’s not what I was trying to say…” he rushed. “Just seeing how he’s being lately, I thought he’d be a bit upset.”

She scoffed. “Let him.”

Oh, he thought to himself. They had a fight. 

Feeling a headache coming on, he asked, “So, what are you doing here?”

“Remember that thing you said about my soul construct?”

Freddy’s back straightened. “Yes I do. What about it?”

“Is the offer still on the table? If you want, I can help you with that.”

He knew damn well that Drake would be pissed if he said yes. But frankly, he couldn’t be bothered to care anymore. “I would love that,” he said, urging her to come in. 

They briefly discussed payment, with her agreeing to do it for only about a hundred grand per coin. He offered her way more money than that, but she was adamant. For him, that really wasn’t too much to pay if he could help improve Bloodshed. But to her, accepting so much money was clearly not something she was comfortable with. 

“I already owe you a lot,” she said. “I’d start feeling seriously guilty if you did any more than this.”

Shrugging, he decided not to push it. He was eager to get started, so as long as she agreed, he wouldn’t push it.

Nervously pulling an ether coin out of his ring, he slowly placed it on the ground. “Here goes nothing.” Next, he pulled out a shard of one of his Sanguine Avengers that had broken during a fight. It was teeming with blood aura.

They both delved into the Netherecho. There, they saw a faint, almost glassy outline of the coin sitting outside. Beside it was the piece of the broken sword, radiating an incredibly aggressive aura of blood and wrath. 

Bracing herself, Lily stepped up to it and sank her shovel into the cursed material. With a good deal of strain, he dug out a roiling mass of aura that started crawling up her shovel. Alarmed, she quickly threw it at the coin. It sank right into the coin’s reflection and completely vanished. 

They exchanged looks. “It seems that it failed…” Lily said. 

“No. It didn’t. This is just a reflection, remember?” he said, feeling a sudden excitement flush through his soul. “The real aura is outside.”

Her projection’s eyes widened.

They rushed outside, and as expected, they saw the coin. 

And this time, it wasn’t just pure ether. No. It was also stained with blood. That being said, most of the coin still looked pure. Freddy turned to face her. “Looks like a lot more can fit into it.”

She nodded, and they delved back into the Netherecho. After spending another hour wrestling with the furious aura, Lily finally filled the coin to the limit of what it could handle. And the limit of what she could handle, as well. Her projection slumped. “I’ll have to stop here for today. I’m afraid of soul damage.”

“No problem,” Freddy said. “Thanks for your help.”

And with that, she parted, leaving him alone with a shining, crimson coin. It almost looked like it was full of blood within, and shaking it caused the liquid to stir. 

Finally alone, he released Bloodshed, handing it the coin. It held it for a moment before its grin widened slightly. “It isn’t nearly as rich as the blood you gave me before, but it will have the same effect.”

Freddy mirrored its grin. “What are you waiting for, then? Take it.”

However, Bloodshed shook its head. “No, Master. You should take it this time.” 

He raised an eyebrow at it. But rather than ask why, he simply took the coin. “Yeah. I think that would be a better choice.”

Bloodshed had already improved greatly as far as its complexity was concerned. Frankly, this coin wouldn’t really do much for it, not without literally hundreds of them. But for Freddy, this was an opportunity to get some extremely valuable insights. 

With a resolute nod, he swallowed the coin. It melted into liquid in his mouth. As soon as it reached his stomach, he felt it seep into his soul, and in the next moment, he knew things he hadn’t known but a few seconds ago. 

Quickly sinking into his ethercosm, he took a look at some of his abilities. As soon as he spotted the shell for Sanguine Avenger, he winced. “Damn. I could have done that quite a bit better.”

The aura from the coin he’d just swallowed had come from pushing Sanguine Avenger to its very limits. Naturally, a good deal of the insights within were directly related to ways the ability functioned. This would come in extremely useful when it was time to reform it at Stage 3—50%, but for the time being, it would cause him great pain as he had to look at an ability full of mistakes.

Abilities, actually. There were a number of insights he could generalize, and now, he could see mistakes in the other abilities as well. Sighing, he left his ethercosm. All things told, his mood was quite good. “It pays well to be cursed,” he mused. He stumbled into trouble all the time. But that was only one part of his fate. The other brought him fortune and opportunity. 

Even if that fortune sometimes brought him into even more trouble. 

Before he could blink, their day of rest was over. He could have taken another day off if he wanted to, but he didn’t, so they were stepping right back into the thick of it.

As soon as they set off, he immediately noticed a change in Sophia’s flesh golem. It was moving more nimbly now. “The heart served you well, I see,” he noted.

Her puppet grinned. “It sure did.”

Drake was in an awful mood, same as always recently, while Lily appeared to be ignoring him. Whatever they were fighting about, they weren’t done yet. 

The mercenaries were professional as ever, tagging along and doing their job. As soon as John picked up their new batch of supplies, they set off.

From then on, they fell into a rhythm. 

The days passed by as they fought, killing and pushing the monster hordes back. The invasion was growing a lot more intense, and with every passing day, they spent more and more time hunting down particularly problematic targets.

Just because they weren’t thinning the hordes as much, it didn’t necessarily mean that the city was in trouble. 

The walls were packed with defenders. Any fighters who came in looking for refuge weren’t allowed to just cower behind the walls. Everyone who could fight was fighting.

Bit by bit, Freddy continued eating the heart, meeting with Lily every so often to make another blood coin. Each one he swallowed left him more jittery. Not being able to fix his old mistakes was starting to become genuinely agonizing. 

As such, the days continued passing by. 

Sophia’s flesh golem got more sophisticated. Previously, she couldn’t give it a particularly great grip strength, seeing how little blood actually reached its fingers. But with the giant’s heart, things had changed drastically. Not only could it grip things, it could also hold things. Such as a weapon.

Along the way, she had crafted a massive sword of living bone tissue. Then she scrapped it because it was too unwieldy, replacing it with a much shorter club. Still, in the hands of her creation, it was quite something, especially against big, slow-moving targets, like golems.

That being said, the more she stress-tested her new creation, the more apparent its weaknesses became. They had encountered a relatively intelligent mantis monster that had seen right through her and targeted the exact spot she was hiding. It lunged, stabbing its blades forward. It came far too close to hitting her brain for comfort, and if Freddy hadn’t chased it off, it just might have with its following blow.

On top of that, the flesh golem was also starting to hit a lot of bottlenecks. Without a soul, its physical limit would always be quite low. She would need a number of advanced abilities to get around this, and even then, she would probably be better off focusing on something else. 

Her talent broke all sorts of rules, making it exceptional by anyone’s standard. But it wasn’t omnipotent. And she was ultimately still just a one-star. Frankly, unless she also took on three spirit abilities, he doubted she would see much of an upgrade at the second star. But even if her talent remained unchanged, she would never be an ordinary existence for her rank. She was simply too monstrous.

They fought for four days and rested for one. During those rests, Sophia and Freddy started chipping away at the vast number of organs they needed to supply to the adjudicator.

Just like that, two weeks passed without any major hiccups. 

And then, on one rest day, Freddy spotted a large line of people trying to leave the city. All civilians. All mortals. 

As soon as he saw the waiting line, he knew something fishy was happening. And he immediately decided to get to the bottom of it.