Chapter 23

Title: Level 100

A few more weeks have passed and he has gotten incredibly close. Today Phesto will reach level 100 in his first skill.

The last few weeks he has been doing nothing but smithing and spamming his skills constantly looking for ways to improve them as efficiently as possible. And now all the grinding would pay off.

The skill in question was energy sense, he reached level 90 a few days after he arrived in Tuula, but ever since then, progress has slowed down exponentially. Before he reached level 90 he wasn't sure what would happen once he hit level 100 in a skill, but with the way it's getting more and more difficult to level it up, it really made him hope something would happen.

And so with the motivation of completing the last level, Phesto decided to reach level 100 before doing anything else thus immediately practising after waking up without doing anything else.

Practising Energy Sense, Phesto thought back to how he learned many different applications for Energy Sense. In the beginning, he used it as a band-aid fix for the fact that his system didn't come with its own appraisal function. But since then he has learned to use it for much more.

As the name says, the skill allows someone to sense energy around them. Energy in this case was a very loose term because it included all sorts of energy, whether it was heat, electricity, vitality, the spirit or even the souls of others. If the concentration of energy was dense or thin, if it was agitated, in motion what it was flowing through. He could sense everything.

The more he learned the more he saw. At the current stage, he would get a headache from all the things around him if he tried to use energy sense in a place with a lot of life, whether it was a forest or a crowded street.

Still, the sheer amount and depth of information he could see was all recorded by the system and its appraisal function became that much better. Even all of the information that would usually be filtered out whenever one looked around was used by the system. It was the main reason why he could quickly improve all of the spells Nejime worked on and why he became so good at smithing. He could see the entire process. How the energies flowed through everything, where they interacted what they caused and how they caused it.

Though there were still one or two things he couldn't see. In addition to the occasional headaches, caused by information overload he also wasn't yet, now was he?

So he continued practising until the evening where he finally levelled up. Only for nothing to happen. So he looked at the system.

[Energy Sense lvl 100:

You can sense and control energy (1,01^100)% more efficiently]

This was interesting, instead of a 100% increase it was one hundred 1% increases and it also seemed like this wasn'T the max level which meant that the skills effectiveness would grow exponentially. Even right now, the effectiveness jumped from 2 times to about 2.7 times. And the more the skill grew the more extreme the increase in effectiveness would become.

Strong! Really strong! Exponential growth really was something. Once other skills such as energy strengthening and spirit attunement reach start reaching level 100 he would probably become a monster. He had to test though. How strong did his energy sense become?

"AAAHH!"

With a short yell, a headache like he never felt before suddenly assaulted him and he was immediately knocked out. A few minutes later he slowly woke up again. The headache was still there but at least he was awake now. This 70% increase wasn't just for show, he had to be a lot more careful with the skill. Sure the range increased, but that wasn't even the issue, he expected that. What took him by surprise was the qualitative increase in its effectiveness. If before he had a 10x times magnification now he had a 100x times magnification.

Though a bit painful this only made him much more excited. Suddenly improving by dozens of levels at once was something he had never really felt before, especially not to this extent.

But as excited as he was he should still be a bit more careful with the other skills. Especially with energy strengthening. Up until now, the change it brought was always very gradual and comfortable, but what if this change wasn't gradual and instead way faster. He shuddered a bit when he remembered how sudden breakthroughs were described in cultivation novels.

Searing pain, tearing muscles, breaking bones and healing quickly so that everything could be repeated a few times. He still wasn't sure what he was going to do to avoid it, but at least he was aware of it now.

Trying his energy sense again, this time a bit more carefully, he looked around the room. And once again his vision changed. Before whenever he used energy sense everything turned transparent with energy glowing in different colours and now it wasn't too different in concept. But in practice, it was as if he swapped from 360p to 1080p. There were many details he would have never seen without this increase in 'resolution'. The magnification that came about after he reached level 100 would probably have been useless as well.

What did he say before? He could see the entire process whenever magic was used or materials were processed? Compared to now he could have been considered legally blind for all he knew. And who knew? Perhaps he could still be considered legally blind. With energy sense's exponential growth he would only see more and more. And the more information he had the faster his other skills would grow.

He smiled, this is it. This is his golden finger, his very own BS ability. Chuckling to himself he checked the system again and saw another surprise he had not noticed before. The system really didn't want him to be idle, did it?

(A/N: I kinda fucked my hand up but it's ok, I can still type)