Chapter 49: Concept and Cosmic Chat
There was also the mention of the level limit increased at different ranks—you had to start from Level 1 in each rank. This part wasn't mentioned properly because most of the book consisted of sexual scenes and endeavors of Lin Fang about how he got new women.
Previously when he had checked the status screen of his master, which he didn't know he wasn't supposed to do, he now understood the reason behind it.
According to Lin Fang's journey, there were three types of systems. First, the Lesser System for those below Ascendant rank. After reaching Ascendant rank, the system would get upgraded and reach the Ascendant System.
Finally, after reaching the lesser Divine rank, which meant becoming an immortal god-like existence to those below you, you would get another upgrade—a Cosmic System.
It also told about a Realm which was one rank higher than Prime Divinity. In other words, a Realm above the Divine realm. It was known only to those who had access to the Cosmic system, because of the special features like Chat and Shop, as there were entities even more powerful than them in those chats.
Prime Divinity were only ants in front of them.
Leon had some guesses, but knowing this had broadened his horizons.
But for now, he didn't focus on this anymore and recalled the important info that he didn't understand at first.
Concept.
It was also the same thing that had piqued his interest when he had seen it on the information tab of Seraphine.
She had a Level 1 Lightning Aura.
Concepts were divided into three stages.
Form One: Aura (4 Levels) Form Two: Embodiment (3 Levels) Form Three: Domain (3 Levels)
These concepts were the things that held back most of the people in their cultivation journey. Lin Fang mentioned the only reason he was able to become a Lesser Divinity was because he was able to Master a Domain in a secret realm which was only level 1, which enhanced his comprehension capability.
That could only be called a stroke of million-year luck.
He mentioned that even if you consumed hundreds of thousands of monster cores to reach the next ranks, you wouldn't be able to, as these concepts were the things that separated geniuses with high comprehension ability—because of either their bloodline, special physique, or high-affinity rank—from normal folks.
Lin Fang explained how grandiose the thing concept was and how strong it could make a person. He even said that crossing the difference in level of concept in fighting was like facing a huge wall—no matter how much you tried, you couldn't break it.
The idea of the concept fascinated Leon and it also made him see Seraphine in new light now. He had thought with his amount of mana he could defeat her, but now he wasn't too sure about it.
Leon came out of his time dimension and stored the books inside his inventory. After that, he thanked Lin Fang in his heart as the information he had gotten from this book was priceless along with his other questionable things and techniques about pleasure.
'That was money well spent'
"I think I know more about this universe now than ever," Leon contemplated.
Now Leon opened the next section, the [Cosmic Chat]. Its name alone gave him ideas of what he should expect from it.
He was excited to see the chat between powerful entities who might be sharing secrets of the universe. He was too excited, so he opened the chat.
A message popped up in front of him.
[Please choose a name for yourself before entering the chat]
Leon thought for a while and he decided that he would use the name of his class, as he knew from before that everyone's identities were safe in the cosmic system.
So he thought the name Elemental Paragon in his mind as a message popped up once again.
[Are you sure you want to set your username as Elemental Paragon]
[Once selected you will not be able to change your username unless you breakthrough a rank in your cultivation]
Leon didn't see any problem in this as it felt lenient because in the future he could change his user name if he wanted.
However, he understood one thing—for normal people who got the cosmic system in the Divine Realm after entering the ranks of Lesser Divinity, it meant once they decided on their user name, they couldn't change it for thousands of years.
That also explained why most of the people had weird nicknames when he was scrolling through the shop.
'Hmm, it might be for trying to keep their identity hidden so no trouble came their way.'
Leon didn't think he had to worry about that as he was in a realm so below that no one could ever even guess that someone with a Cosmic system would be in there. He still didn't understand properly why he had access to the cosmic system.
But one thing was clear—it must be due to merging with the orb of all elemental affinity.
'Yes'
After choosing yes for his username, a new message popped up.
[Welcome user Elemental Paragon into cosmic chat]
[COSMIC CHAT – THREAD #117]
Topic: The Artifact That Screams at Night
Mode: Private
Participants: @GlassToothNomad, @LibrarianOfWounds, @VelChronEmitter...
[COSMIC CHAT – THREAD #129]
Topic: How to Store a Star Without Breaking Causality
Mode: Private
Participants: @InkSleepsSoftly, @VaultNanny.exe, @TimeLoopGambler...
[COSMIC CHAT – THREAD #166]
Topic: Romantic Problems (With Eldritch Entities)
Mode: Private
Participants: @BleedsInSonatas, @HeartsEatenSoftly, @MirrorKeepsSecrets...
[COSMIC CHAT – THREAD #173]
Topic: Forbidden Cultivation Recipes (Definitely Illegal)
Mode: Private
Participants: @PanSoupOracle, @ScaldingInkChef, @WormwoodSommelier...
[COSMIC CHAT – THREAD #204]
Topic: Please Stop Resurrecting Me
Mode: Private
Participants: @DustCycleRefund, @RespawnTaxAgent, @CoffinHasWiFi...
[COSMIC CHAT – THREAD #222]
Topic: Ranking Dungeon Bosses by Dateability
Mode: Private
Participants: @LichAndLetCry, @BlushOfTheBeholder, @SwipeRightOnDOOM...
Leon looked at the different threads, but all of them were private. He couldn't join them and see what the people were talking about inside.
He scrolled for a while trying to find if there were any chats that weren't private. He found one—there was a search bar at the left corner too, but he had no idea what to search for, so he only scrolled.
_____
[COSMIC CHAT – THREAD #145]
Topic: Elira's New Concert
Mode: Public
______
After finding the chat, he opened it and the name of the topic was Elira's new concert.
'Hmm, I don't know there are things like concerts in this magical world.'
____
LimbDealer:
Why is every show sold out? The arena is floating in the sky.
EmberStillAlive:
Because it's Elira. She shows up, sparkles, sings one sad song, and people lose their minds.
BoneCollector69:
I died during the second song. Not even mad.
MoonWhoEatsHerself:
You always die. Get a better body already.
MirrorJunkie:
She hit that high note and cracked all seven of my mirrors.
I'm keeping the cracks. They look nice. (｡•́︿•̀｡)
CausalityTaxDept:
Her voice made a group of elders younger.
They're toddlers now. One bit me.
VortexGuy:
Okay but was she singing live?
Sounded like playback to me.
EmberStillAlive:
Don't start that again.
Her fan club will set your realm on fire. ( ͡ಠ ʖ̯ ͡ಠ)
LimbDealer:
I still forget she's just a Lesser Divinity.
She acts like she rules the whole divine realm.
MoonWhoEatsHerself:
That's the brand.
She sells illusions and good lighting.
BoneCollector69:
Some guy exploded just clapping too hard.
I saw it. Very shiny way to go. ✨
MirrorJunkie:
Does she even sing?
Or just stand there glowing while everyone screams? 〵(☉⌓☉)〴
[USER DivineEcho_Elira JOINED THREAD]
DivineEcho_Elira:
"new song next week ✨ it's called Love me after the collapse 💋"
"and no, the sparkles aren't for sale 💅"
EmberStillAlive:
Oh stars she's here. Be cool.
MoonWhoEatsHerself:
You cried last time she waved. (¬‿¬)
LimbDealer:
I'm not gonna lie.
I'm buying three posters this time.
Chapter 50: Leveling Up
Leon read the chat for a while, and it looked like a bunch of high schoolers talking about their favorite idol.
He couldn't lie—he was disappointed and found it amusing how immortal beings talked like fans.
He closed the chat as he didn't think he had anything interesting to see here, especially when most of the chats were private. Quite a few topics in the description of the chat were interesting, but he had no way to join them, so he stopped for now.
Now that he had found everything about his cosmic system and learned valuable information due to the help of the book he bought, he focused on the most important task. He had killed so many monsters inside the dungeon but hadn't absorbed a single core. He was excited to level up and become stronger.
There were skill runes too that he had to learn.
"Let's get started," he murmured with excitement. With just a thought, he took out a core from his inventory—the core of one of the blue electric wolves.
Holding the blue mana core in his hand, he could feel the mana radiating from it.
He started by trying to absorb mana from the core. The mana moved inside his body, and it didn't even take a second before the stone dispersed and was absorbed by him.
Leon felt the change and a feeling of euphoria when he absorbed the core, but no message of leveling up appeared from the system.
He took out the biggest core—the red and blackish core he had gotten from the throne monster. He could feel the amount of mana inside this core was hundreds of times higher than the previous one.
Without a second thought, he started absorbing the core like before. It only took him a few seconds before his body devoured the mana core like a black hole.
While absorbing the core, not just one but three messages popped up before his eyes.
[You have reached Level 2]
[You have reached Level 3]
[You have reached Level 4]
The messages weren't the only thing that came—he also felt that his strength had increased along with the mana reserve in his core.
He felt like he could do anything right now.
He opened the status screen with curiosity to see how much stronger he had become.
[Character Information]
[Name: Leon]
[Level: 4]
[Class: Elemental Paragon(SSS)]
[Age: 10 (Soul Age: 26)]
[Race: Human]
[Cultivation: Apprentice Rank]
[Affinity: All (Rank 7)]
[Strength: 23]
[Agility: 24]
[Stamina: 24]
[Mana: 1150]
[Intelligence: 130]
[Skills: None]
[Technique: Mana Body Enhancement(Adept Rank)]
First and foremost, seeing his rank 7 affinity with every element, a smile appeared on his face. He had forgotten that his passive ability was being used.
'Even in the divine realm, people with rank 7 affinity are considered geniuses. So me with rank 7 affinity with every element—how overpowered might that be considered?'
Leon couldn't help but feel like he had hit the jackpot in the spin with that entity. Even more important was his own class, which had one passive ability to increase the rank of all his affinities.
He didn't even feel a thing as his passive ability was active all the time, other than the fact he felt much closer to every element. His connection felt stronger than before.
He could see his strength had become 23—an increase of 15 stats, making his raw strength three times as strong as before. The same could be said for his agility and stamina; both had increased by 15 stats.
This meant five stat increases with every level up.
He remembered the strength stat of his beautiful master—it was 28 at level 10, which meant her strength increased by about 2 every rank. He understood how overpowered his class was even more now.
He was close to her stats at level 4 only.
This was especially impressive when he didn't even think his class's main focus was stats like strength, stamina, and agility.
He then looked at his mana, which had a massive increase of 150, meaning a 50 mana increase with every level up.
'Holy shit.'
'150 mana was more than how much total his master even had.'
And lastly, he looked at his intelligence stat, which was the lowest stat in his master's information. This meant it might be quite hard to improve. It had also made a big jump of 30 stats.
This meant 10 stat increases with every level up.
He knew that stat was important. He had realized one thing—he felt like if he tried to cast the same spell, he would be able to do it more easily. He had a feeling about this, and also his memory had become sharp.
He still remembered every little detail from the time he had merged with the orb.
He still remembered which turn he had taken to reach the boss. He even remembered that he had killed 34 small blue wolves, 39 small red wolves, 5 big red, and 7 big blue. He even remembered which area he hit to finish them off.
His memory had reached another level. He remembered word-for-word conversations with his master. It might be presumptuous, but he felt he could plagiarize the book written by Lin Fang without even looking at it—the content was etched in his memory.
'I had become a human computer.'
He had a high desire to go to his time realm and see how strong he had become. At the same time, he wanted to practice a bit so he would be able to control his strength.
But he held off his excitement as he had more cores to absorb along with skill runes. Only then would he enter his seclusion to train his strength and try to learn concepts that his master had. Lin Fang said only one thing about it—that they were trying to learn the truth of the element.
He didn't understand right now, but he hoped soon he would also have at least level 1 Aura like his master. Only then would he be able to call himself her equal?
If Seraphine was here to see his new strength, even now she would have been shocked to her core. His thoughts about trying to learn Level 1 Aura, which was her secret—she would have fainted in all honesty.
Leon took out all the cores at the same time, along with the boss monster core, which was around the same size as the throne monster core but with a faint color difference. He could feel the mana in this core was quite less than the previous core.
He floated all cores using his wind magic as he didn't think he could hold them at the same time. He didn't want to waste time absorbing one by one, and it only took him about a few seconds before they got absorbed, so he thought why not do it all at the same time.
There were more than a hundred mana cores floating in the air around him using his magic: 1 boss wolf core, 12 bigger elemental wolf cores, 73 small elemental wolf cores, and lastly 24 non-elemental small wolf cores.