34 - 5th Compass Upgrade

It's worth mentioning the automatic barrier the cloak had worked on the wind too, so the wind just brushed past around me as I flew.

In just under a mere 5 minutes, I flew from the forbidden area of the desert to the center of the Axel kingdom, where the capital was.

Going around to the various blacksmiths I had hired, I collected all the batches of equipment they had made.

Unfortunately, most of the effects were useless for me.

At higher levels of power, equipment diverged in utility. Weaker equipment would have no effect, since raising stats or other effects became harder the stronger you got.

Take an armor that gave 10% strength increase at the explosive heart stage. It'd give less than 10% for someone at the class blood stage, and nothing to me at the void magic stage.

In comparison, equipment at the right level would not only keep all its effects, but those effects would get stronger with stronger equipment too.

It seemed obvious that stronger equipment would have stronger effects, but because weaker equipment had no effect at all, there became a unique phenomenon.

If you had equipment at your level or higher, youd get a large power boost, and it would be a larger boost at higher levels, but if you had equipment beneath your level, it would give close to nothing.

This resulted in many individuals at higher levels of power that had no strong equipment to use no equipment at all, since the buff applied from what they did have was minimal.

I had also been running around with minimal extra equipment, and the mythril sets I was collecting today were no different. I couldn't use them.

If I wore all of them, it would collectively barely raise my overall capabilities by about 5%. That wasn't nothing, but I decided to just prioritize comfort.

Actually, there was a very interesting ring I put on.

I had taken of the basic charm ring I had obtained decades prior a long time ago, since I realized I didn't actually need charm when I had strength, since people respected the strong, and I couldn't use that charm without strength since it wouldn't work on those as strong or stronger than me anyhow.

It was better to be more comfortable with one less ring on my fingers.

The other rings had been stat boosters, which had been too low level for a long time now.

This was the first ring I was putting on now after a long time.

The reason wasn't because it increased my strength or was overly powerful, but becauae it had a useful ability imbued into it.

It could give me a basic overview of myself.

Channeling mana into it, I saw a screen appear in front of me with the following:

[Name: Merca Godrich

Sex: Male

Age: 55

Stats:

Strength: 20

Speed: 20 (+40)

Stamina: 20

Health: Perfect

Mana: 10 Billion MP (Maxed Out)

Additional energy(?): ???]

The additional energy meant my void mana. Well, it was a mythril artifact, it wouldn't be able to properly assess void mana. The +40 to my speed was due to the 3x speed multiplier on my cloak.

It didn't really tell me much. In fact, it told me nothing I didn't know already. However, it just felt really nice to have something look at and see some solid data in front of my eyes. So, I kept it on.

I could always try and improve it later or something, too.

Looking at it, I couldn't help but notice how odd it was that the cloak only increased my speed.

Normally, speed, strength, and stamina are all correlated.

I could understand stamina being unaffected, but why would strength be too? Clearly my muscles were staying the same, which was where my strength came from, so how was the cloak enhancing my speed without changing my musculature?

It wasn't a spell. It was one of a few effects that had appeared out of nowhere, all on their own, on the cloak while were in the middle of making it.

This was also a commonly documented phenomenon. The stronger the equipment, the higher the likelyhood of extra effects appearing on their own. They were (almost) always good.

Sometimes, the reason for these extra effects appearing more clear, while other times, it was a complete mystery.

This was a case of the latter.

Turning off the ring effect that had a few people staring at it near me, I continued collecting all the mythril equipment that I would not use and left.

I wouldn't use it, but the reason I had gotten it made was to fill up the 2nd floor of the treasury.

Now, outside the city, many kilometers away, I was in the middle of the western forbidden area of the desert. I liked coming here. It was peaceful in its barren sandy landscape.

I looked at the treasury within me with all 1000 containers filled up. Nothing else changed in it. Looks like unlocking the third floor would take a longer time.

I also had the option now of bundling some of the treasures into ome container, presumably just to save space, but that'd make them count as one treasure, so I decided to do that later.

For now, I opened the compass.

It shone with the light that always shone upon an upgrade, and I looked at the change log after it died down.

[Compass upgrade 5 (1000 epic/legendary treasures):

-New tab available for viewing: Status.

-Can now see treasures in layered dimensions (such as the void).

-Filter view to only see treasures of certain rarities.

-Effective range increased from 200KM--> 2000KM]

The range increase was exponentially larger than any before. The 2nd change was also nice, and the third was interesting, since I still didn't know how the compass and treasury ranked treasures.

However, the first thing mentioned was what caught my eye.

But before that, I switched over to the map and saw that not only had the search radius increased, but there was a little thing on the right that said [Void Layer].

Clicking on it, I saw the map change to a map of the surrounding void dimensional layer hidden beneath the normal one.

As expected, it was all just black. When I zoomed in, I could see a slightly lighter black color at times swirling around rapidly. Presumably, that was the void mana.

The void mana wasn't counted as a treasure.

Clicking back on the rectangular [Base Physical Layer], the map went back to showing the dimensional layer I was in.

There was also an extra layer I hadn't heard about ever, called [Astral Layer].

Clicking it, the map showed the same surroundings as before, with only one difference.

There was this energy around certain objects, and it was most concentrated on my body and my shadow.

Asking Ixtra to come out, it was indeed him who was causing the energy to show up in my shadow.

Our bodies looked just slightly different in the map on the Astral layer.

To be precise, I looked almost the same, but had no clothes, instead just wearing the cloak, which also had a mass of energy on it, albeit much less than me or Ixtra.

The map was blue as always, but the energy showed up white.

Meanwhile, Ixtra looked quite different. He also had no clothes on, but instead he was in his fully released demon form, what he said was a demon's "1st Release".

Ixtra's 1st Release form was something I had seen before. He had shown it to me once when I asked him to.

He had a kind of almost scaled natural organic armor his body created on his crotch, waist, and thighs, and a long, thin imp tail coming out behind him.

Don't forget, he was an imp demon.

The tail was black with a red end shaped like a heart.

The natural armor on his body was reddish black, while the rest of his skin was mainly red.

His face had two large horns coming up and out from the front, and bending back slightly as they went up. The horns were striped black and red. His ears became pointed like an elf's and his irises turned bright red.

Besides this, he looked the same. His 1st Release didn't make him look any older than a 12-14 year old boy.

I almost pitied him, but he told me that was rude and that he quite liked the way he looked.

This was his 1st Release that he had shown me, and the Astral layer map showed me that form even though he wasn't in it, except the whole body, tail and horns and all, was all just a pure, glowing white.

In the center of both his and my glowing white bodies, there was a spherical object that we each had, jade-like and translucent. It was in the center of our chests.

I didn't know what the Astral layer was all about, but there was nothing else to see, so I left it at that for now.

Checking on the new [Status] tab now, I was bewildered as a large amount of text popped up.

---------------------------------

Name: Merca Godrich

Sex: Male

Age: 55

Lv. 105

Stats:

Strength: 20

Speed: 20 (+40)

Stamina: 20

IQ: 122

Health: Perfect

Mana: 10 Billion MP (Maxed Out)

Void Mana: ~500,000 VP

Cultivation:

Void Magic Stage (Magic Swordsmen)

11th circle Array Master

Bloodline: Arachne's Direct Descendent

Effects:

-Complete Control of Libido

-Superhuman physique (strength, stamina, fitness, skeletal structure, health, immune system, etc.)

-Increased minimal IQ potential (Fluid IQ below 120 is forcibly increased to 120)

-A grade mana potential (mana is sensed and cultivated easier)

-A grade blood potential (skills are learnt easier)

-A grade void mana potential

-S grade void mana potential (Sealed)

-S grade bloodline skills (Sealed)

-???

-???

-??? grade evolution potential (See Mother Arachne to learn evolution conditions)

Techniques:

[Void Severance Technique] - [Void Severance Slash]

Skills:

(E) [Stealth] (Not Blood-Infused)

(C) [Multicast Proclivity]

(B) [Swift]

(B) [Adrenal Moment]

(D) [Aura Boost]

(E) [Aura Blade Beam]

(D) [Improved Aura Blade Beam]

(D) [Mana Proclivity]

(C) [Mana Proclivity II]

(C) [Mana Flow]

(C) [Basic Healing Factor]

(B) [Advanced Healing Factor]

(B) [Basic Chaotic Mana Absorption]

(A) [Advanced Chaotic Mana Absorption]

(S) [Void Mana Absorption]

(C) [Killing Intent Resistence]

(C) [Lesser Blood Burst Resistance]

(B) [Greater Blood Burst Resistance]

(C) [Fire Resistance]

Equipment:

[Cloak of the Deep]

Rarity: Legendary

Description:

[A legendary cloak resembling the deepest darkness of the night sky, and yet also the depths of the deepest, darkest ocean.

Forged after a year of intense collaborative effort by the greatest artisans of the Rekka Kingdom, for and with the help of the renowned Magic Swordsman, Merca Godrich, after hearing of how he slayed a water dragon and was commissioning equipment with its parts.]

Effects:

-Speed +200% (Gross)

-Mana circula...]

It was like what the ring I just got today did, but infinitely better.

'Well, guess the ring's useless now. Unfortunate. I just got it today too...'

I was a little bummed out about a treasure I had just aquired becoming useless, but when I thought about the fact that it was already mostly useless anyway, I felt better.

After all, I had already known everything the ring showed me. On the other hand, this...

'Arachne's Direct Descendent? Is that what the fruit gave me? Who is she? And tbis level thing again, what is it?'

I had a lot of questions, but at the very least, I knew everything else on the status screen besides the bloodline bit.

I was surprised to learn some of the effects. Most of them I knew, but the sealed S grade was presumably a tier above A grade, which shocked me.

'If I'm only A grade, how strong is someone a tier above that? Could they reach the void magic stage in a day? No, that'd probably too much. Probably.'

My mind went to outlandish thoughts, but then I recalled what was mentioned right under the S grade void mana potential.

'Skills? In my bloodline? And they're even S grade?'

Looking over my skills, I only had one at the S grade, [Void Mana Absorption]. If I could unlock more S grade skills, that'd be overpowered.

Well, it probably wouldn't be easy.

Calming myself down, I continued looking at the various parts of the status screen.

I was surprised at some of the skill grades, but most made sense.

It was, however, somewhat unsettling that besides the one S grade skill, I also only had one A grade skill, [Advanced Chaotic Mana Absorption].

Both of my best skills, by the compass' judgement, which I trusted, were mana absorption skills. To be fair, I had spent the most time on that, and mana absorption was the foundation of anything in the class blood system of power, but still...

The fact that all my other skills were B grade and below made me annoyed. I needed to get better skills.

Thinking back to the S grade bloodline skills, I glanced up at the bloodline section of the screen.

'Evolution potential...see Arachne...hmmm'

Regardless of how I could unseal things, seeing this Arachne person should provide all the answers. After all, I had her bloodline.

And I reckoned she should help me, right? Since I had her bloodline, I was kind of like her adopted son, right?

Right?

I got a bit emotional since I was young when my parents sold me off.

Whatever, it was too soon to get emotional. For all I knew, she was a psychopath or something.

Placing "meet Arachne to get answers" in my mental to-do list, I finally finished processing the dense status screen and closed it.

Between this, and the Astral layer stuff on the map, I really had a lot to learn about.

All this was fine and all, but it only gave me more questions than answers. And those answers likely lay outside this realm, but guess what I didn't have?

Thinking up to here, I heaved a deep sigh and rubbed my temples.

Anytime I thought about how I still had absolutely zero clues on how to get a warp drive, it always gave me a headache.