Luckily, that didn't take me too long. The large explosion had opened this place up considerably, which made checking a lot easier. I could have just used [Broken Sky] to check from the other side, where any remaining rifts would be immediately obvious, but if I did close all rifts successfully, there would be no more rifts potentially anchoring me to this place. Since I didn't want to leave just yet, I couldn't use it.
Well, not going to lie, there was something cool about going around to check the aftermath of your own skills. At least I felt cool while doing it, even if my current appearance was probably anything but.
Even after all the time that has passed since my initial bath in the magma when I first ended up in the volcanic hellscape, I was still technically not in possession of any clothes. I didn't need to care for now since there was luckily no one to see here, but I did want to go back up to the surface at some point. I could cover myself temporarily with a skillful application of [Celestial Fire], but that had a lot of downsides as well.
While I could make the fire solid without any problem, I couldn't make it flexible in the way that clothes usually were. I could use a more viscous version by making the fire not entirely solid and keeping it closer to a liquid, but then I'd constantly have to mentally hold it all in place. While doable after all the practice I had within the recent times, it was still a monumental effort for something so useless.
On top of not having clothes to my name, my hair was basically entirely matted up as well. When my hair first regenerated after burning away in the magma, I thought that I could take care of it in a similar fashion, but that didn't work exactly like I had planned. I still wasn't sure how exactly it worked, but cutting or burning my hair off voluntarily made me unable to grow it back through vitality generated by [Thermal Conversion].
Luckily I had tested it out on only a small strand of matted hair before irreversibly burning all my hair away, so I at least still had my hair, even if it wasn't particularly nice to look at right now. That was a problem for another day, though, there were more important things for me right now.
Having confirmed that I was really alone with no more invaders, rifts, or anomalies to be found, I moved on to the second important thing I needed to check before leaving this place. Let's see, how many levels did all that bring me?
[Name: Hanah Mayflower (Sentinel of the Realm)
Race: Human
Level: 68 (Tier II)
Mana: 6135/6135 | 1547/14500
Achievements: [Hero Candidate], [Predator III], [Molten Rebirth], [Slayer of the Leviathan], [Sentinel of the Realm], [Vanquisher II]
Class: Broken Star (Epic+)
Active Skills:
[Celestial Fire Lv. 28]
[Broken Sky Lv. 15]
[Regalia: Starfire Corona Lv. 29] (max)
Passive Skills:
[Thermal Conversion]
[Broken Celestial Physiology]
[Regalia: Starfire Corona Lv. --]
General Skills:
...]
17 Levels, huh? Definitely not bad, especially since it was technically so incredibly easy to do. It cost me a total of just over 12000 mana and a hole in my stomach, but both could only barely be regarded as a 'cost'. I had been regenerating somewhere between 300 and 500 mana back at level 51, which made this action cost me maybe 40 hours worth of mana at the very most, probably even less since my level was now higher.
Not even two days worth of mana in exchange for 17 levels was a deal I'd take any second of the day. The multitude of experience multipliers I have really pays off in occasions like these. I doubted that I would have gotten even close to that many levels without them.
Speaking of experience multipliers, the new achievement called [Vanquisher II] that I received at some point during today's events, was another multiplier as well. Funny that something like that is even an achievement in the first place.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
[Vanquisher II:
In violent fashion, a fiery death, a fate now ashen, a drawn last breath.
Slay over 30 entities of your own tier or higher with a single attack.
x1.5 Experience gained]
Yeah, it really wasn't anything special, though I wouldn't say no to another multiplier adding onto my experience gain. At that point, I wondered whether gaining achievements for experience multipliers was the intended way of leveling up instead of slowly grinding out monsters slightly weaker than oneself over the course of decades like I heard natives of this world do.
Without such a high multiplier like I currently have, a general total of x2.0 and x5.0 in the case of higher-level enemies thanks to my incredibly high level in the [Predator] achievement series. All that was also calculated for the worst case of having additive multipliers that stack linearly instead of multiplying with each one individually. Without multipliers like these, leveling up would literally take forever.
Also, a short flavor text for a short description for a simple achievement. Interesting to see how the flavor text uniquely fits my situation, but maybe they all did more or less, and I just didn't notice in particular. It made sense for skills and classes, as they were all unique anyways, but for apparently very generalized achievements like these?
Apart from just this new achievement, I also got some skill levels since I last checked. Most notably, [Regalia: Starfire Corona] reached level 29, which was also apparently the maximum level for tier two.
Did this implicate the maximum level for tier three to be 39? I couldn't be sure until I reached it, but I thought the chance of that to be pretty high. Now that I think about it, isn't it pretty weird that Instructor Wyn never told us about any maximum skill level even if he was so thorough with everything else? Instead, he only mentioned it to be incredible to get even one skill above like fifteen while below tier three, or something.
I really wonder why that is. After all, I didn't really struggle with getting them high enough in level for them to reach the maximum before my actual level hit the maximum for that particular tier. Even back in tier one I had one or two max-level skills, which was already higher than the aforementioned level 15.
Even [Celestial Fire] was scraping along the upper ceiling with its level 28. Only [Broken Sky] was way behind, though that was justifiable in my opinion since the skill itself was very hard to understand and use. I only started really using it recently as well, not to mention that I received it at level 1 when reaching tier two, instead of already having it at level 19 as a result of skill evolution with a max-level skill.
Concluding my status check, today was worth a lot to me. If I can find another nest like this, I could reach the fabled tier three almost immediately. Luckily for me, the large explosion had already burnt away most of the moss that seemed to accompany every single rift, including the large one that was in the center.
With nothing holding me back from leaving this place for good, I cast [Broken Sky] again to wrap myself in the already intimately familiar world of strings and reality. While it had seemed daunting at first, I've really come to like this place. It was lonely, of course, but that was pretty much expected with a skill like this, especially since I was completely alone already anyway.
Apart from that, the part I enjoyed most about it was the freedom it gave me. I had become used to the tightness of the endless tunnels after spending such an incredibly long time wandering through them, but it still made me feel like a bird trapped in a cage.
Actually, I could leave if I really desperately wanted to. Even if my mana regeneration itself was somewhat slow in comparison to my enormous reserves, I could melt my way upwards with enough patience. If I started that now, I would probably be out sooner than I even thought possible.
Still, I didn't, and that for a reason. Even if it may have seemed a little bit stupid and went completely against what my heart was telling me, I needed to remain down here a bit longer. I could not, under no circumstances, leave without reaching tier three first.
Me reaching the surface was not the end of all of this, it was a looming goal I was coming closer to as time passed, but it was just an intermediary to my other goals. Point one was the invasion which, while not being tied to the underground, could frequently be encountered down here. I wanted to investigate what they were doing exactly a bit further before potentially leaving them to scheme by themselves down here. The actual reason for not leaving just yet were my classmates, though, or more specifically, Blake the [Hero].
I didn't know how strong they were by now. How much time had I spent comatose hanging onto a thread of life inside of a vicious pool of magma? How long had I absentmindedly wandered the tunnels of the Great Labyrinth searching for anything that wasn't walls of stone? How much time did I spend traveling through the string world every time I entered it?
All these were questions I didn't know the answer to. I could guess to a certain extent, but I could easily be off by months or even years. Not having anything available to count the passage of time while also repeating the same few motions over and over again did something to the mind that could not be put into words. Well, maybe it could, but I certainly couldn't. Not that I wanted to if I could either.
What if Blake has already somehow made it to tier four? With him starting his journey with a legendary class right off the bat, he had such an incredible advantage over the rest of us that it would be unfair to compare progress just like that.
If he truly was at tier four already, maybe I could stand a sliver of a chance with a comparably high-grade tier three class, but certainly not with an epic tier two class, no matter how well I could fight above my own tier.
Evolved classes can not be worse in grade than the previous one, which means that he still has a legendary class at the very least. Fighting above one's tier was possible, but really only if your opponent was not someone who could fight above their tier as well. I had no delusions about thinking that a legendary [Hero] could not fight like that for some reason.
If I was truly going to face him anytime soon, I needed to be prepared extremely well. I had the advantage while he still thought I was dead, but my countdown would start as soon as he got information about my unlikely survival. He has already tried to kill me once, so I had no doubt that he wouldn't hesitate to try again.
I also wondered how my classmates would react. They didn't hate me, but I wasn't friends with them either. Would they still be happy to find me alive, or would they just not care? How are they going to react when finding out that Blake actually tried killing me if they don't somehow already know that?
The time for a reunion wasn't quite right yet, though, so I'd have to set my curiosity aside for a bit. For now, my goal would be to finally reach tier three. Only after I have successfully ascended to the next tier will I be free to finally leave the underground behind.