Chapter 45: Level Up?

Victoria Sinclair, the S-class Ethan had gone out of his way to recruit before the apocalypse.

Now that she had fully awakened, he couldn’t help but sigh in relief.

Although he knew she would awaken, a part of him always worried that his intervention would affect her awakening, maybe even potentially weakening her abilities.

However, feeling the chill she emitted just by standing there, Ethan knew his worries were for nothing.

"Alright, you two, since you’re okay, why don’t you follow me to stretch your arms?"

"Grandpa and the others should recover in a few minutes. In the meantime, why don’t we go test your abilities as well and level up?"

Taking out the Map of Safety, Ethan had a smile on his face.

Looking back on it now, he was extremely glad he got this item.

"Since you guys both awakened, I’ll explain how awakeners get stronger."

"You see, I’m sure that you noticed that in the process of awakening, the mana was gathered and stored in your core, right?"

"You can call that a mana core. Although different from your magic circle, both are similar things."

Saying this, Ethan sighed as he remembered that in his last life, they were called awakener cores.

However, in this life, as the founder of the mage system, shouldn’t it be up to him to slap ’mana’ onto everything?

To transform the world into a true wizarding world, he had to take it one name at a time!

Thinking of this, a chuckle escaped Ethan’s lips as he continued to explain.

"You see, normal awakeners can advance to a higher rank by absorbing the surrounding mana into their cores and developing their abilities themselves."

"Unfortunately, that method is too slow, and for you to promote from F to E would probably take several months."

"And to get to higher ranks, that would take years."

"To avoid this, there’s a readily available, easy solution," Ethan said.

However, when Elena and Victoria heard this solution, they both had a bad feeling in their minds.

After all, nothing in life comes easy.

And sure enough, confirming their thoughts, what Ethan said next made them want to vomit.

"You see, that mana core in your abdomen contains all the mana you can use, as well as your experience in using your abilities."

"Now imagine what happens if someone takes your core and absorbs it?" Ethan asked.

"Wait—! You don’t mean—?" Coming to an understanding, Victoria was the first to react, as her lips frowned in disgust.

"Yes, by killing and taking the core of another awakener, you can absorb the mana they possess and the experience they have in using their abilities, transforming it into your own."

"And although there’s some loss in the process, a rank increase that would have taken months can be achieved in a month with this."

"With such a difference, it makes it hard to understand why anyone would practice the first way."

Nonchalantly talking about killing people and taking their cores, Ethan’s words made them both feel chills run down their spines.

If that was true, wasn’t every awakener threatened by an enemy?

Could they truly trust each other? And even if they could, didn’t that mean that all awakeners outside had to be wary of each other?

Was a war of awakener versus awakener about to ensue?

Lost in thought, worse and worse scenarios about Ethan’s words began to pop up in their minds.

Although the world had changed, and the future was one where the strong ruled, neither of them wanted to become human-hunting psychopaths for it.

Although they wanted to get stronger, and they weren’t afraid to kill, even they had limits.

Fortunately, Ethan wasn’t done talking.

Noticing Elena’s and Victoria’s reaction to that method of getting stronger, he secretly nodded.

While what he said was true, he purposely left out another fact, a more important fact, just to see their reaction.

A test of sorts, and luckily for him, they passed.

"Calm down, both of you, haha!"

"While what I just said is true, you don’t necessarily need to attack other awakeners."

Pointing to some red dots around the camp, Ethan began to explain.

"You see, under the effect of the apocalypse, all beings have some sort of core in their bodies."

"Be it the mutated animals, or even mana zombies at a high enough level."

"Although not necessarily in the same place, they exist."

"Instead of attacking each other, it’s much better for awakeners to attack those monsters to advance."

"Plus, their numbers are far greater than the number of awakeners."

Hearing this explanation, they both looked at each other and sighed in relief.

"Damn, brother, if that was the case, why didn’t you say so at the start! I thought you were telling us to go start killing innocent people!" cursed Elena.

Beside her, Victoria shared a similar sentiment.

"Indeed, Ethan, next time don’t save things like this for last," said Victoria, her eyes flashing with a hint of coldness.

"Haha, alright, alright, I was just playing a joke on you."

"How about we do this: using this map, I can see the location of enemies around us within 5 kilometers."

"While everyone begins to finish their transformation and get up, why don’t we use this to clear our surroundings of monsters and try to get to E-rank?"

"And as a bonus to make it up to you guys, I’m about to break through to the second circle."

"Once I do, I’ll teach you how to do it and you both can grow stronger."

"What do you think? Deal?" said Ethan with a smile.

To which the girls, after glaring at him, both laughed.

"Deal!"

"Deal!"

Reaching an agreement, with the Map of Safety in hand, some firearms in case of an emergency, and a shared resolve Ethan, Victoria, and Elena began to head out of the Smith Shelter taking their first steps into the world now eroded by the apocalypse

"Haha, monsters, just you wait! Elena is coming!" burning with fighting intent, Elena’s laugh for a while echoed throughout the shelter.