The wave of intense heat and light physically knocked me backward. I bounced off a hyper-dense cloud, managing to snag the edge with my one free hand.

  The woman staggered, coughing and shuddering violently as her body terminated the process, then tried again. Her veins flared orange, absorbed the mana in the clouds and detonated half-heartedly.

  She looked down at her smoking hands, glitching grey and orange.

  “What?”

  {Absolute Complex Abstraction : Detonation : Active}

  She turned to me.

  “You’re safe!” I shouted, clutching the side of a cloud for dear life. In my other hand, I held her name plate, frozen solid.

  “Sir.” Her empty eyes started to blur. “Let me go.”

  “Not a chance.” I flung myself onto Crapshoveler moments before the cloud dissipated into loose mana. “Not until I get some answers. Who are you?”

  “Grey,” she said. Something caught in the back of her throat.

  “Grey absorbs.” She said, “Grey explodes.

  The woman stopped.

  “I am not?” She shook violently, grabbed the sides of her face. “I AM NOT!”

  “What do you mean by that?!” I shouted. “By any of that?”

  What even was she? She had to be some sort of monster, right? But what kind of monster explodes to kill its prey?

  It was probably some sort of ability absorbing monster I didn’t know of. The second area’s a dangerous place.

  If I wasn’t careful, this could turn ugly.

  But what were the odds that an ability absorbing monster would just show up out of nowhere and offer me advice?

  She stopped. “Am I Grey?”

  Grey?

  Come to think of it, I had a massive orb of power lying around, which had been trying to turn grey, for whatever reason. Judging by the damage I dealt to the Stormhaven and some loose head math…

  The orb must’ve never fired.

  A static hand grabbed my neck. “AM I?”

  “I don’t know!” I snapped. “Let me think!”

  Her eyes flashed white, and she shrank back. “A-apologies. Sir.”

  That…that wasn’t something a monster normally did, was it?

  This was, at the very least, an Npc.

  An Npc who strongly associated herself with one of my projectiles. She also appeared when I was alone. In the middle of the sky.

  There wasn’t any way to get out of this, was there?

  “I can’t seriously have created a person with an ability, could I?” I asked Grey, kneeling down. She shrank back. “Excuse me. What do you know?”

  Grey sniffled. “Grey takes mana. Blows up. Or blows up with no mana. Nothing else needs knowing.”

  Her word choice was…odd. Not necessarily incorrect, but slow, and certainly minimalistic, as if each individual word was incredibly taxing.

  Her body trembled, distorting around the edges. Even though her body remained grey and didn’t look like it would explode again, she continued to absorb the mana around us.

  “We need to go. Now,” I said, summoning Crapshoveler. “Then we’ll figure this out, okay?”

  She clutched my ankle, stopping me from leaving.

  “Why not blow up? Why not?!” A flicker of white sparked in the back of her head, and she fell unconscious.

  This couldn’t seriously be my fault, could it?

  “Doctor,” I swallowed. “We need to see a doctor.”

  The ocean of dense cloud suddenly vanished into Grey’s hands, knocking my shovel out from under me.

  We fell.

  And we were falling faster.

  My health had skyrocketed within a matter of hours. It was unimaginable compared to the measly stat I had before. Meaning, I had absolutely no control over my health, or by association, my weight.

  We would hit the ground like a wrecking ball.

  I tore scraps from my shirt, stuffing it between my teeth, and biting down, bracing for the explosive pain coming my way.

  {Grind}

  [(-12k) 738.3k Hp

  I felt a faint, shivering numbness from my toes up into my knees.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  The ground, meanwhile, bowed out like rubber, flattening on the harder rock beneath as my force of impact blew a horizontal crater into the desert surface.

  Master Fred laughed, clapping with a big grin across his face. “Beautiful! Beautiful! I haven’t seen…power like that in…” he wheezed, stopping to clear his throat. “For a first court?! You’re good!”

  Was that it? I’d jumped from at least a mile in the air.

  Apparently, even with increased density, my sheer durability and health made me a lot stronger than I realized.

  Speaking of which…

  “You dropped something,” Master Fred said, tossing me a crystal ball larger than most cars, knocking me off my feet as the Exp exploded against my chest.

  {RANK UP!}

  [Progression to Lead: 100%]

  [Progression to Silver: 33.1% (+3.4m Caster-type Exp)]

  Master Fred laughed. “You’re…lucky Exp clusters together. That…blast of yours…sent all those stats beyond the horizon.”

  My fingers twitched.

  {GRIND}

  [Lead]

  Rank “Radiant Echo”

  [750.3k Hp 323.6k Str]

  [252k% AtkSp 860k Mana 276.6k Dur 312.9k Dex]

  [100k% AuraMP 10% SwrdAff 8% TotalManaRegen]

  [3 Int]

  I’d spent a month of my life grinding for my first hundred thousand stats. I spent about a month after that trying to use my suppressed power in the second area.

  And now…I’d finally reached the point where my stats were no longer suppressed.

  After all the time and effort I’d put into improving myself, I had effortlessly ranked up three times in less than twenty-four hours.

  It felt disappointing.

  Almost like cheating, which, in all honestly, I sort of had.

  Worse, I know that the moment I step into the second area, all those beautiful stats are going to come crashing down, all over again.

  So I’d have to go find and beat more of the same monsters all over again.

  This game was starting to become a chore.

  I let out a breath, adjusting my hold on Grey. “Hey Master, do you know what she is?”

  He was already by her side, poking her blurred and flickering fingers.

  Finally, he raised an eyebrow.

  “Nope.”

  “Well, whatever’s going on, she needs to see a doctor,” I said. “Something’s wrong.”

  He took her from my arms, emitting a potent, almost sulfurous mana.

  There was a flash, when he teleported back, she was gone. “The girl’s stable. You can pick her up in the infirmary whenever you get back.”

  I let out a sigh of relief. No matter what happened next, I had to keep her screen frozen. We’d find a better long-term solution to keep her alive sometime in the future.

  Master Fred cleared his throat. “Now…you gonna explain where the young miss came from?”

  Oh, that.

  I shrugged. “I think an ability of mine created her? I guess manifestations are supposed to be technically alive, since they hunt down their target, but I never considered that they’d actually—I mean it’s ridiculous to think a person could—” I swallowed. “An ability like that couldn’t possibly exist, right?”

  “Sounds like…summoning magic,” Master Fred huffed. “I’ve…never seen a summon who looks anything like that. Maybe you didn’t summon her right?”

  Summoning Magic.

  He tensed his hands, preparing an ability. “Ready to go?”

  “No,” I started. “Not quite yet. There’s a new…technique. I’ve got to try it.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  [112 new abilities]

  ~

  {WindUp IV}

  [Lead]

  [Form a [Time] pact, locking a given percentage of power [Min : 1 statistic] [Min : 5%] for a twenty-four hour time period. This portion of the statistic is weakened by a factor of [10] during WindUp, then increased by a factor of [14] for one minute. Once a stat is wound, using this ability, it may then be unwound within twenty four hours.]

  ~

  [This ability has a fixed twenty four hour cooldown rather than a cost in mana.]

  I frowned.

  “This is useless.”

  Oh, the buffs would be insane once they stacked ontop of one another, but when would I ever have an hour before any fight? Maybe if I just had one ability, it could be usable, but since I—

  No, hang on a moment. Maybe this could be handy before I raided a dungeon or something. It was at least worth trying out.

  Besides, all this ability needs is a stat I never use. There’s the five hundred percent shovel infinity I’d been building up onto Crapshoveler—mostly through my own enchanting. It wasn’t bad, just outclassed.

  “WindUp : Shovel affinity!” I called, triggering a hundred and twelve complete reductions of my shovel’s power.

  {Error}

  [Stacks of Shovel Affinity are located on {Crapshoveler} while directory {Player} is currently in use]

  “Oh pipe down,” I grumbled, smacking and freezing the screen.

  Another screen opened, glitching and sparking, which meant whatever I was doing, it was working.

  Hey, this could actually be fun.

  [Do you : {Crapshoveler} accept 112x instances of [WindUp IV]]

  [y/n]

  I grabbed Crapshoveler and smacked the big [y] button.

  The ability successfully activated, crackling within my shovel in a glimmer of blue energy.

  And…nothing.

  I felt totally normal.

  “Well that was a bust,” I muttered, tossing Crapshoveler from one hand to the next. Maybe it just took a second to activate—

  {ERROR.{Grind/Crapshoveler} : Shovel Affinity.Error.SignType -56000%}

  My wrist shattered, dropping Crapshoveler like a wet rag.

  “GAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!”

  Master Fred blinked.

  “Kid, your technique sucks.”

  Quick update, I'll be taking tomorrow off in preparation for the writathon.

  Also, it's kind of funny. We're already approaching a thousand pages, likely reaching it before the end of the writathon. Not only that, but recent chapters are averaging a consistent (and rising) forty to sixty views, which is nuts.

  Folks, this project is less than a half-year old.

  // {Notice} //

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