Chapter 264 : Seventy strikes first.

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"This is one of your skills?" Sora asked Newtons.

The young alter ego nodded. "Exactly. I can extract data from everyone present, and these glasses are just a proxy that lets me use my power."

"So you didn’t tamper with the data? Twelve is really in that bad of a spot?" Sora had a special connection with Twelve and was surprised by his nearly nonexistent odds of winning.

Newtons scratched the back of his head again. "I don’t play with these parameters… The only thing I freely tweak is the comment. If you wanted him to win, don’t you think you should’ve helped him earlier?"

Thousand, who was sitting on the couch next to theirs, burst out laughing and chimed in to clear up a misunderstanding. "If Sora wants to see Twelve win, it’s just because he’s scared of hearing him ramble non-stop in the [Soul Palace] once he’s stuck there!!"

Annoyed, Sora took off the glasses and gave them back to Newtons. "Thousand, I really like your new skills… Wanna be useful and fuse with me? I think your strength could be pretty handy."

The smile vanished from Thousand’s face immediately, and he turned his gaze toward the fight about to begin in the sky. "Look, it’s starting."

Sora smiled, watching his brother change the subject. "That’s what I thought."

Noticing Newtons tinkering with his glasses and burning through more [Soul Pearls], Sora sighed. "Stop messing with your toy and tell me how you’re predicting the outcomes."

Newtons stared deeply into his eyes, to the point it almost became awkward. After a few seconds, he started his explanation.

"You know we all followed different paths to get where we are now. After some training, some fights between us, and a fair amount of data collection, I put together a system to compare our skills and power."

Newtons put his glasses back on and continued. "First, there are the four aspects of power. They’re quantified by the system and easy to compare. Most of us have reached Omega 73 in one or more aspects of power, and that value seems to be the first ceiling of this server version."

Sora narrowed his eyes, but Newtons raised a hand to stop him. "Let me finish. We may have all hit that limit, but each of us has a different level of mastery over our body, mind, or energy depending on the skills we’ve acquired. We haven’t given it a name yet—this ability to go two, ten, or a hundred times beyond the limit. But back when you were level 180 and pushing yourselves further and further with Kara, you kept increasing that limit."

"We’ve tested nearly all the skills we’ve gained since the beginning, and made several discoveries."

"The first isn’t surprising. The rarer a spell is, the more it seems to increase one’s ability to go beyond the limits. It looks like ultimate-tier skills or higher can push power past the ceiling."

"Innate and supreme skills can also do something similar, once they’re pushed to a certain level of mastery. But it doesn’t seem intuitive or easy. You noticed it yourself: even though your body kept improving, your speed started stagnating once you hit the limit."

Sora nodded, but stayed silent.

“To keep increasing your speed, you had to rely on other methods, like [Void Tunnels] and applying [Overlap] on your movement skills. That’s why I say it’s not intuitive.”

“While testing different supreme skills, we discovered something incredible. That this bottlenecked growth — which seems to be a system-imposed cap — is actually a safeguard. Shade was the one who led to this discovery.”

He glanced over at Shade, who turned briefly toward the two before enveloping himself in a cocoon of shadows and darkness.

“Shade focused all his growth in one direction: developing his supreme skill. His [Supreme Skill: Eternal Night Shadows] hit a limit when his body couldn’t supply enough energy and elemental fuel to his partner and shadow clones. From there, he stopped improving. But with the 2★ skill he recently acquired, his mastery of his supreme skill exploded, and so did his power.”

Sora, who hadn’t taken part in their training, was confused by that claim.

“I wasn't around when he acquired it… What’s his 2★ skill?”

Newtons smiled. “He acquired [Mana Tax], a passive skill that turns 1% of consumed mana into maximum mana and regen capacity… Since then, his reserves have grown, and [Eternal Night Shadows] started progressing again. We tested it with others, and it’s the same across the board. Any skill that stops growing can be ‘unlocked’ if we find what limits it.”

Sora lit up at the revelation. “You mean I can give a huge boost to my supreme skills by figuring out what’s holding them back?”

Newtons nodded excitedly. “You’re the perfect test subject, but since you were with mom and dad most of the time, we couldn’t run experiments on you. You’ve got one supreme skill for each power aspect, which in my opinion makes your potential infinite!! Just thinking about it drives me insane.”

Sora grabbed Newtons by the ear, and the excited expression vanished instantly.

“So among the fighters up there, some rely on their supreme skills acquired through various mythic classes… Like you advised, they’ve all abandoned their classes after getting the supreme skill, just like Shade.”

“Those who don’t have that kind of skill rely on newly fused ultimate abilities, whether 1★ or 2★. Since the throne's skill fusion is random, and you never know what you’ll get, some ended up with better results than others.”

He pointed behind him at his brothers named Eleven to Hundred, then gestured at the sky. “Most of the players who could afford 2★ spells were either supplied by them or are part of this company.”

“100,000 [Soul Pearls] for a 1★ skill, and ten 1★ skills for a 2★ one. The cost of skill fusion alone forced everyone to start generating [Soul Pearls] nonstop. And with the cut Tian Long takes, she’s made millions off our backs.” Sora threw in his own complaint.

Seeing Sora irritated, Newtons added, “And on top of that, those skills are just like supreme skills… Once fused, you can’t transfer them to anyone else! Sora, I don’t think that woman wants to help you — she wants to drain every drop of your soul power. She’s not a dragon, she’s a leech.”

Sora shook his head. “We can’t cheat and create thousands of skills for free, but it’s still worth it. The abilities we get are irresistible.”

Newtons looked disappointed that Sora wasn’t angrier at Tian Long, but went back to the main topic. “So yeah, everyone up there has at least one 1★ skill, and a few lucky ones got 2★ spells.”

“To stand out, most went to specialists for help in specific disciplines.” He continued.

"Everyone here has raised their [Human Bloodline] to at least SS rank, with a few players having reached SSS. Triple Seven is the only one who made it to EX level—and in two different Bloodlines..."

Sora simply nodded. He was aware of Triple Seven’s research progress.

Triple Seven, sitting a few meters away, cut in.
"I'll explain my discoveries once I find a way to make the process reproducible."

Newtons ignored his brother and turned to Sora, a smile on his face.
"Based on the type and quality of each person's ultimate skill, their previous training results, my glasses calculate their odds of qualifying. Funny, right?"

Sora chuckled at his excitement.
"Just watch the fight. No one wants to witness a battle where the outcome’s already decided. Put your glasses away and pay close attention. This chaos might teach us a lot."

Seeing the little genius giggling, Sora looked up as the countdown reached its end.

3...

2...

1...

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Seventy stood in mid-air, surrounded by a scattered crowd of players who looked almost identical to him.

Without access to the system interface, none of them had their names displayed above their heads.

And from a distance, it was hard to tell them apart. Some had different-colored eyes. Others were taller—or shorter by a centimeter or two.

Still, after all the time they’d spent together, and with their sharp vision, they could recognize each other without any problem.

Seventy looked up at the closest opponent, who was already staring back at him, his sword in hand.

‘One-Hundred-Thirty... I’m sorry, little brother. I hope you’ll forgive me.’ he thought.

[Be my shield. Protect me from those who come after me today.] As soon as those words left his mouth, they surprised everyone who heard them.

While One-Hundred-Thirty was still confused and about to reply, he froze. His body tensed up, and the sword he held fell from the sky. He grabbed his head with both hands, as if trying to resist some force invading his mind.

Moments later, all signs of resistance vanished, and “he” regained his calm. His face was expressionless, and a purple glow shone from his eyes.

He flicked his hand slightly, and the sword that had fallen appeared once more in his grip. A second later, he was standing beside Seventy, back to back with the one who had just stolen his body, ready to defend him with his life.

Seventy let out a sigh.

‘Of all the powers I could’ve gotten, I ended up with the one that makes me feel like absolute shit...’

The 2★ skill he had acquired was terrifying.

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