The hotel room on the seventh floor became the site of their most significant transformation since the Immortal Crystal Core.
First, Essim duplicated the Silver Badges — ten thousand copies, stored instantly. Then he opened the promotion panel and confirmed.
The sensation was deeply strange — something foreign threading through his veins, reconfiguring him at a cellular level. His bones hummed. His muscles tightened and released. His mind sharpened like a lens coming into focus. Then warmth flooded through him.
[STATUS — Post Tier-2 Promotion] Name: Essim Level: 20 (1%) Attributes: Str 1,732 | Agi 1,580 | Int 1,338 | Res 1,691 Class: Swordsman (Sacred Human, +90% EXP) Skills: Divine Slash Shadow, Sky Shattering Slash, Area of Light Sub-Skills: — Equipment: Divine Sword +10, Two-Step Shoes +10, Night Splitting Cloak +10, Fierce Fighting Gloves +10, Durable Helmet +10
Five hundred bonus points across all attributes. Equipment upgraded to +10. Total stats exceeding six thousand. Aisha promoted next, gripping Essim's hand through the strange sensation, emerging with stats to match.
Sub-skills — the new Tier-2 feature — allowed learning additional abilities from skill books. They returned to the Tou Pavilion's fifth floor, where Su Gohu, a Nascent Soul elder, attended them personally. Hundreds of skill books lay spread before them.
Aisha chose Fatal Shot: a rare-tier ability targeting weak points. Essim selected Double Slash for burst damage and Sword Aura for sustained enhancement. Universal skills rounded out their loadouts: Light Barrier for defence, Fast Jump for mobility.
The currency system expanded at Tier-2. Energy Crystals came in tiers — low, medium, high — with thousand-to-one conversion ratios. Essim exchanged for high-tier crystals, knowing a single duplication cycle could produce ten thousand of them.
Ten skill books each. Dozens more for distribution to alliance members. A hundred and twenty-eight million crystals spent in a single shopping trip.
They left armed, promoted, and ready. The event leaderboard showed Laras at rank 8, climbing fast. Essim wasn't ranked. This time, he didn't care.
Aisha punched him when he started to comment on it. "Don't even think about complaining," she said. He didn't. -e • • •
The warship was a kilometre long — a floating fortress of black metal, bristling with cannons and sheathed in a translucent energy shield. Hundreds of fighters from a dozen races travelled aboard, all heading to the frontier.
Essim and Aisha sat in one of the ship's restaurants, eating noodles while the void drifted past. They'd accepted the patrol mission — ten contribution points, low risk, a chance to observe the war zone.
A young man approached their table. "Excuse me — is this seat taken?" His name was Grey Sol. Beside him stood Eliane. Both were Sky Elves — a race Essim had never encountered — and both were Faithwardens at Blessed Initiate level.
Grey was humble and genuine. Over the next hour, an unexpected friendship formed. He explained the Faithwarden power system: strength drawn from followers' belief, with powerful Faithwardens achieving functional immortality through worship. The concept was alien to Essim's framework but fascinating.
In exchange, Essim shared a carefully edited version of the Player system. He omitted his talent entirely.
They patrolled together from Fortress Island #13 — a spartan military outpost on the conflict's periphery. For four hours, they drifted through the void aboard a smaller ship, playing an alien chess variant and deepening their friendship.
Then a magic projectile screamed toward their ship. Grey summoned a ten-metre portal that swallowed it whole — spatial manipulation, his core ability.
The source: a hidden Beast Master fleet, ten ships, the smallest a hundred metres long. Their patrol had flushed out an enemy position hidden for months.
Essim assessed the situation in seconds. He reached into his storage ring and began pulling out cannons.
"What are those?" Grey asked.
"Defence cannons," Essim said.
"You have twenty?"
Essim didn't answer. He was already pulling out the Sky Punishment Mortars.
The sub-skill system opened an entirely new dimension of character development. Where the main skills — Divine Slash Shadow, Sky Shattering Slash, Area of Light — were tied to class and Crystal Core, sub-skills could be learned from any compatible skill book. This meant Essim could build a loadout tailored to specific situations: burst damage for duels, area control for sieges, mobility for retreats.
More importantly, the skill books were physical items. Duplicable items. A single rare-tier book purchased for a million crystals could become ten thousand copies — enough to equip an army.
Essim and Aisha left the pavilion carrying not just their own new abilities, but the seeds of a revolution in the WMA's military capability. When they returned to the City of Life, every core member and every squad leader would receive personalised skill book packages.
The economics of war had just tilted decisively in their favour.
As they walked back to the inn through Heavenly News City's lamplit streets, Aisha bumped her shoulder against his.
"You didn't check the leaderboard once today," she said.
"I know."
"Progress."
He laughed — a real laugh, the kind that came from somewhere deeper than amusement. Two weeks ago, he'd have been refreshing the rankings obsessively. Now he understood something that no leaderboard could capture: the strongest position wasn't at the top of a kill chart. It was at the centre of a network that multiplied everyone's power.
They reached the inn and climbed to the seventh floor. Tomorrow, they'd return to the City of Life with skill books, high-tier crystals, and the blueprints for an economic expansion that would make the WMA untouchable. The day after, they'd re-enter the Guandu Realm for more missions, more connections, more resources.
The grind never stopped. But it had become something more than survival. It had become purpose.