Damian rolled the second Marrow Cleansing Pill between his fingers, but contrary to the declaration he had made moments earlier, he did not immediately swallow it.
He had learned something important from the first use.
These pills were not simple reset buttons.
Every cleanse permanently increased his Experience requirements by another ten percent of the original value, so using one merely because his Qi Nourishing Pills had begun losing efficiency would be idiotic.
Damian opened his Spellbook again.
He was currently Level 4 at 0/44 EXP, while his Qi Nourishing Pill Adaptation Count stood at twenty.
That meant his next ten pills would fall into the third efficiency bracket.
"Twenty-one through thirty gives 0.8 EXP each, doubled to 1.6 by Qi Acceleration... sixteen total," Damian calculated quietly.
The following ten would give 0.7 EXP each, doubled to 1.4, for another fourteen, so thirty EXP altogether.
Pills number forty-one through fifty dropped to 0.6 EXP each, doubled into 1.2, producing another twelve EXP, so forty-two.
That left only two Experience Points.
The next bracket produced one full EXP per pill while accelerated, meaning he required exactly two more.
Thirty-two Qi Nourishing Pills.
Damian looked at the Marrow Cleansing Pill, then put it away.
"Not even remotely worth another permanent penalty yet."
That was the danger of discovering synergy.
People became so excited about combining things that they forgot combinations still needed to be economically sensible.
A hammer and nail possessed excellent synergy, but that did not mean Damian should hammer every object he owned.
He produced thirty-two Qi Nourishing Pills instead.
The process had lost much of its novelty by now, although swallowing pills like candy remained profoundly strange to someone who had spent most of his previous life being warned not to exceed the dosage printed on medicine bottles.
One after another, they disappeared.
[+1.6 EXP.]
[+1.6 EXP.]
The notifications continued until the first ten were gone.
Then the conversion dropped.
[+1.4 EXP.]
Another ten vanished.
Then another bracket.
[+1.2 EXP.]
Damian steadily worked through them without rushing, allowing each pill to dissolve before swallowing the next.
Finally, the last two disappeared.
[+1 EXP.]
[+1 EXP.]
[Experience threshold reached!]
[Main Class: Mage has advanced from Level 4 → Level 5!]
[Overall Level increased to 5!]
[Experience: 0/55.]
[Level Advancement Reward: +1 Free Attribute Point.]
[Special Power: One Feat Per Level activated.]
Damian leaned back with satisfaction.
He was finally at Level 5, the absolute peak of the Novice rank.
He immediately opened his Attribute allocation.
INT had reached ten.
SPI was already ten.
That left Wisdom at eight.
"Wisdom."
[WIS: 8 → 9.]
The change was subtler than Intelligence.
When Intelligence increased, Damian felt his thoughts become cleaner, quicker to organize and easier to hold simultaneously.
Wisdom was different.
The world did not become easier to calculate, but rather became easier to understand.
Damian found himself looking at the magical fountain nearby and intuitively grasping how several flows of mana supported one another before his conscious knowledge caught up with the observation.
His awareness of his own Mental Energy also became smoother.
He could feel where his control wasted small amounts of effort and where his attention wandered unnecessarily around magical structures.
Even his memories seemed to acquire additional context, as though the facts had always been present but the connections between them had become more obvious.
This was judgment, interpretation, and the ability to take knowledge and apply it properly.
Damian slowly exhaled.
"That is disturbingly useful."
It also affected Mental Energy recovery and magical defense, although those changes were far harder to perceive while sitting peacefully in a garden.
His attention shifted toward his next Feat.
The options rearranged themselves, but Damian’s eyes quickly settled upon one he had noticed before.
<Fey Touched>.
He opened the description.
[Fey Touched — Special Feat
Effect 1: Grants the Host innate familiarity with spatial displacement magic associated with Fey pathways.
Effect 2: Acquires the Level 2 Spell <Misty Step>.
Effect 3: Select one Level 1 Divination or Enchantment Spell from the compatible spell pool.]
Damian’s eyes immediately sharpened.
A Level 2 spell, his first so far!
He selected the Feat, and knowledge surged into his mind.
[Misty Step
Rank: Level 2 Spell
School: Conjuration
Effect: Instantly relocates the caster to an unobstructed location within visual range.
Maximum Range: 20 meters.
Casting Method: Innate Instant Cast.
Mental Energy Cost: 25 per use.
Restrictions: Destination must contain sufficient space for the caster and cannot be completely obstructed by spatial interference.]
Twenty-five Mental Energy per use was expensive.
Painfully expensive, actually.
Even with Damian’s improved Intelligence, he could not spam the thing without draining himself dry.
But that was irrelevant, as Misty Step was not for transportation but was an emergency button.
Enemy closes distance? Whoosh, gone!
Floor collapses? Bamf, gone!
Surrounded? Well... Potentially gone?
Need to cross a gap, reach a rooftop or escape a restraining formation before it fully activates?
Also gone!
Twenty meters sounded small until one remembered that twenty meters of instantaneous movement during combat was completely different from running twenty meters.
"Yeah, that’s worth twenty-five ME I guess." Damian could only say.
Then came the second selection.
[Choose One Level 1 Divination or Enchantment Spell.]
Two categories unfolded.
[Divination]
<Comprehend Languages> — Temporarily allows the caster to understand the literal meaning of unfamiliar spoken and written languages.
<Detect Poison and Disease> — Identifies nearby mundane and supernatural poisons, diseases and contaminated biological substances within the spell’s limits.
<Hunter’s Mark> — Establishes a magical tracking link upon a chosen target, improving the caster’s ability to follow and identify that creature while the mark remains active.
<Identify> — Examines a magical object, enchantment or compatible supernatural phenomenon to reveal its general function, magical structure and relevant properties.
<Detect Evil and Good> — Detects nearby supernatural beings and influences whose fundamental nature strongly aligns with divine, infernal, undead, aberrant or related metaphysical categories.
[Enchantment]
<Animal Friendship> — Temporarily suppresses hostility in an ordinary beast and encourages it to regard the caster favorably unless directly threatened.
<Bane> — Places a weakening magical influence upon hostile targets, interfering with their accuracy, stability and ability to resist hostile effects.
<Bless> — Temporarily reinforces several allies with supportive magic that improves performance and resistance under pressure.
<Charm Person> — Influences a humanoid target into temporarily regarding the caster as a trusted acquaintance if their mental defenses fail.
<Command> — Imposes one simple, immediately understandable instruction upon a target capable of comprehending the caster.
<Dissonant Whispers> — Projects magically amplified discord into a target’s mind, causing psychic distress and potentially forcing instinctive retreat.
<Heroism> — Suppresses fear and reinforces a target’s courage and mental stability.
<Hex> — Places a hostile curse upon a target that weakens one chosen aspect of performance while improving the effectiveness of the caster’s attacks against them.
<Sleep> — Induces supernatural sleep in sufficiently vulnerable targets within an affected area.
Damian stared at the options for quite some time.
<Bless> was excellent, and so was <Bane>.
<Hex> possessed obvious combat synergy, especially against cultivators where weakening the correct aspect at the correct moment could completely change a fight.
<Command> was terrifyingly versatile if it worked.
"Drop."
"Run."
"Kneel."
One successful word could end an encounter before combat even properly began.
Unfortunately, Enchantment magic carried an obvious problem.
Mental resistance.
The stronger Damian’s opponents became, the less he wanted his survival depending upon whether some cultivator’s soul happened to resist magical persuasion.
Divination was more reliable.
<Comprehend Languages> overlapped heavily with his Master-level Valorian Overworld Language adaptation and whatever cross-realm assistance the System already provided.
<Detect Poison and Disease> was useful but somewhat narrow.
<Hunter’s Mark> was tempting for tracking enemies across difficult terrain.
Then Damian reached <Identify>, and his expression changed.
<Appraise I> was extraordinary, but it possessed one fundamental restriction, tradeable items.
That was perfect for commerce, but wasn’t perfect for everything else.
A mysterious altar inside a dungeon might not qualify as tradeable, and a magical seal embedded into a wall certainly might not.
An active curse attached to a corpse, a ritual formation carved into the earth or a strange supernatural device connected to an entire building could easily fall outside Appraise’s domain.
<Detect Magic> told Damian that magic existed, <Truesight> helped him perceive deception and supernatural visual structures, but <Identify> could tell him what the damned thing actually did.
Those three together formed something much greater than their individual descriptions.
Detection, observation, and analysis!
Damian smiled.
"Identify."
[Spell Acquired: Identify.]
Excellent, now came the final Novice threshold.
Damian checked his Qi Nourishing Pill count.
Fifty-two doses since his last cleanse, so his new requirement was fifty-five EXP.
If he stubbornly continued without resetting, the numbers became ugly very quickly.
The remaining eight pills in his current bracket would produce one EXP each for a total of eight EXP.
The next ten produced only 0.8 each, which was sixteen cumulatively.
Then ten at 0.6 was twenty-two cumulatively, ten at 0.4 was twenty-six, and ten at 0.2 was twenty-eight, all cumulative.
So after all of that, he would only have gained a total of twenty-eight EXP out of fifty-five.
With the limit of one hundred total pills, every subsequent Qi Nourishing Pill would be permanently stuck at 0.1 base EXP, doubled into 0.2 by Qi Acceleration.
Twenty-seven remaining Experience Points would therefore require another one hundred and thirty-five pills.
Damian added everything together and stared at the final number.
"One hundred and eighty-three pills..."
Even he grimaced.
That was terrible.
Absolutely fucking terrible!
He removed a Marrow Cleansing Pill from Exchange Storage and rolled it between his fingers.
One pill, one pleasant cleansing cycle, and his resistance would disappear, the toxins would be flushed away and he could return to receiving two whole Experience Points from every Qi Nourishing Pill.
Damian calculated that route as well.
A second cleansing would raise his Experience requirement from fifty-five to sixty, but after resetting his resistance, thirty-five Qi Nourishing Pills would be enough to cross the threshold.
Thirty-five pills compared to one hundred and eighty-three, the difference was a whole one hundred and forty-eight pills.
For several seconds, Damian stared at the Marrow Cleansing Pill with extremely serious consideration.
Then he returned it to Exchange Storage.
"Nope."
The decision sounded insane until one remembered what he was actually trading.
Qi Nourishing Pills were cheap, disgustingly cheap.
At Evergreen Sect treasury prices, one hundred and fifty pills cost only thirty Contribution Points.
The extra one hundred and forty-eight pills he would suffer through were therefore worth approximately that amount.
Thirty Contribution Points?
Pffft, that was nothing to the current Damian!
His first potion transaction alone had earned nineteen thousand five hundred Contribution Points, and he had already purchased ten thousand five hundred Qi Nourishing Pills precisely because they were practically rubbish compared with their value to him.
The Marrow Cleansing penalty, meanwhile, was permanent.
A second use would add another ten percent of the original requirement to every future Valorian level Damian ever attempted to gain.
Today that meant five additional Experience Points.
What would it mean when a level required five hundred? Five thousand? Fifty thousand?
Damian had absolutely no idea how Experience requirements scaled at the higher ranks, but basic mathematics told him everything he needed to know.
Paying thirty Contribution Points today to avoid permanently increasing the price of his entire future progression was not frugality.
It was common fucking sense!
The first Marrow Cleansing Pill had been worthwhile as an experiment.
He needed to know whether the combination worked, how the System interpreted it and whether resistance could genuinely be reset.
That information had been worth paying a permanent ten-percent premium.
Doing it a second time merely because swallowing pills was uncomfortable?
That was not experimentation, that was weakness!
Damian looked at the mountain of Qi Nourishing Pills sitting inside Exchange Storage.
Then he sighed.
"Alright then. We’re raw-dogging it!"
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