Infinite Awakening: 10,000x EXP Converter!

Serah Garrick looked up when Alvian walked in. Her circuit pad was lit up on her lap with complex Essence pathway drawings. Her face changed quickly: first curious about his messy look, then worried about the blood, and finally serious when she saw his hands shaking.

"You look awful," she said.

"I need your help."

Serah put her pad down. "Sit down before you fall."

Alvian sat on the only open chair. His whole body ached. Using the Domain had strained his Talent pathways in a way that normal regeneration could not repair. He needed expert help, not just sleep.

"The tournament results," Serah said directly. "I checked the energy levels from your final match. Your Clearwater output was higher than my tools could measure." She held up her pad, showing red error messages. "My scanner broke while checking it. It showed an error I have never seen before."

She showed him the screen. The message read: EXCEEDS MEASURABLE PARAMETERS.

"What does that mean?" Alvian asked, though he already had an idea.

"It means your Talent power was higher than the maximum limit for B-Rank Talents. My scanner caps at A-Rank, which was the highest I could build." She paused to let him think about it. "Your power in the final fight was beyond A-Rank."

The room was quiet.

"An E-Rank Talent making power higher than A-Rank," Serah said. "That is not normal growth or a small change. It is something I cannot even describe."

Alvian thought carefully. He could not tell her about the System. That secret had to stay hidden. But he could tell her about the Domain itself.

He needed her knowledge to control this strength. Without her help, the Domain was like a bomb attached to his chest.

"I unlocked a new Skill," he said. "It upgraded from Clearwater Palm during a fight in the Warrens. It is called Abyssal Dissolution Domain. S-Rank."

Serah dropped her pen on the floor. It rolled under a shelf. She stared at him for five seconds without moving. Then she picked it up, dropped it again, picked it up once more, and placed it carefully on her desk.

"S-Rank," she repeated.

"I can make a field that dissolves all matter at the molecular level. Fifty-meter radius at max power. But it uses almost all my Essence, and I can only keep it active for one second."

Serah’s mind immediately went into research mode. She grabbed her circuit pad and opened pathway maps.

"Using an S-Rank Skill with your small Essence pathways is like trying to push a giant river through a tiny straw." She showed him his old pathway map. "We made your pathways wider before, but they are still E-Rank size. You need a total upgrade to your pathways, or you need your Essence stat high enough that raw volume fixes the problem."

She did rapid math on her screen.

"At 22 Essence, you can barely use the Domain for one second. To hold it for five seconds, which you need for real fights, you need at least 100 Essence. To hold it for ten seconds against giant threats, you need 200 Essence or more."

200 Essence. His current Essence was only 22. The gap was huge.

[DING!]

[Internal calculation verified.]

[Current Essence: 22 (regenerating, currently at 15)]

[Target Essence for practical S-Rank deployment: 200]

[EXP required per Essence point above Level 20: ~1,000]

[Total EXP needed: 178,000]

[Estimated farming time at current Warren rates: 3 to 4 months]

[Estimated farming time with Gambler’s Delay optimization: 4 to 6 weeks]

[The System suggests the Host stop bleeding before planning long-term goals.]

"There is another way," she said. "Essence circuitry. If I completely rebuild your main energy channels to A-Rank size and clear out all your blocked secondary channels, I can triple your Essence flow. Your Essence stat stays the same, but the Domain will cost 70 percent less energy per second. One second of Domain at 22 Essence would turn into three seconds."

"How many sessions?" Alvian asked.

"Five sessions. Each one gets more dangerous. The first widens the main path. The second and third clear out blocked paths. The fourth and fifth strengthen the paths so they do not collapse." She looked at him. "The third session is the most dangerous. Those paths have been blocked since you Awakened. Opening them is like defusing a live bomb."

"What do you need for it?"

"Five hundred credits per session in materials. Magitech wire, resonance crystals, and pathway fluids." She listed everything from memory. "I have most of it, but I need more wire and crystals."

Alvian reached into his pocket and put three Bloodhound spatial rings on her desk.

"These rings have forty-five thousand credits, plus magitech blueprints and gear. Take whatever you need for all five sessions."

Serah stared at the rings, then at Alvian.

"Where did you get these?"

"The Bloodhound Mercenaries," Alvian said. "Duke Magnus sent twenty Level 30-plus killers to eliminate me in the Warrens last night. They failed."

Serah went totally quiet.

"Twenty mercenaries," Serah said slowly. "Level 30-plus. And you survived."

"Eleven are dead. Three are buried. Three ran away. The leader and her lieutenant are broken." He added, "The Domain did most of the work."

Serah put a hand to her mouth. She was calculating the scale of it. She paced around the room, her circuit wires glowing blue.

"You used an S-Rank Skill against twenty mercenaries in the tunnels under a populated city level," she said.

"I kept the range controlled. I aimed it down and away from the city above. No damage to the level."

"That is not the main problem." Serah’s voice turned sharp. She stopped pacing. "An S-Rank Skill creates a giant shockwave in reality. The kind of wave recorded by dimensional sensors. The kind that gets noticed by powers far beyond the Guilds or the Academy."

Alvian felt cold. "What kind of powers?"

"I am not entirely sure. My research mentions something called the World Will. It is a passive defense system that keeps reality stable. When something breaks the rules too much, the World Will sends clean-up forces." She looked at him closely. "An E-Rank Talent using S-Rank power breaks those rules."

"How long before the World Will notices me?"

"I don’t know. It could be days or weeks. It depends on how much damage was caused." She sat down, looking serious. "You must prepare. The World Will does not send normal fighters. It sends Fate Enforcers. Special beings that delete anomalies by destroying the source."

"Destroying the source," Alvian said. "Meaning me."

"Meaning you."

The lab was quiet again. Outside, normal Academy sounds echoed down the halls. Students were talking and teachers were shouting, completely unaware of the threat forming in the East Wing.

Alvian stood up. His body hurt, but his mind was focused.

"I need the first session tomorrow."

Serah nodded. "I will prepare the materials. Come here at 2100 hours when classes are done." She paused. "Alvian, whatever you plan to do about Magnus, you cannot fight this alone. You need allies and power behind you."

"I have Tobias."

"Tobias is a retired scavenger with one metal arm. You need real power. People inside the system."

"Like who?"

"Helen Croft."

Alvian looked surprised. "I have a meeting with her tomorrow morning for review."

Serah almost smiled. "Helen Croft filed seventeen corruption reports against the Guilds during her old career. Sixteen were ignored, and the seventeenth caused a training accident that destroyed her ear. She teaches here because it keeps her alive." She looked in his eyes. "She hates the system more than you do. And she used to be an A-Rank fighter. She can fight."

Alvian thought about Helen Croft, the scarred instructor who judged his tournament fights. The woman who noticed his energy surge against Torsten and stayed calm.

"Tomorrow," Alvian said. "I will speak to her first. Then I will come here for our session."

He walked to the door.

"Alvian," Serah called out.

He turned around.

She held one of the spatial rings, turning it in her hand.

"Be careful. The Domain is the strongest Skill I have ever seen. But that much power draws attention from things that are neither friends nor enemies. Things that just enforce reality." She put the ring back down. "The World Will does not care about good or bad. It only cares if you break the rules."

Alvian nodded and left the lab.

The hallway was empty in the evening light. His reflection showed a thin, bloody boy in a ripped jacket with dark eyes and burn marks on his hands.

’S-Rank,’ he thought. ’World Will. Fate Enforcers. Duke Magnus. Guild corruption. Martha’s sickness. Leo’s drawings. Tobias’s lost arm. Twenty dead mercenaries in a crater.’

He kept walking.

Tomorrow he would meet Helen Croft. Tomorrow he would start Serah’s circuitry training. Tomorrow he would start building his power to survive what was coming.

But tonight, he needed to go home. He needed to sit by Martha’s bed and listen to her breathe. He needed to watch Leo draw heroes on the wall.

He needed to remember why he was fighting.

[DING!]

[Daily quest complete: Survive another day.]

[Reward: You are still alive.]

[The System considers this an acceptable outcome.]

Alvian closed the screen and stepped out into the evening air.

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