Chapter 399 Increasing My Stats

[ CHARACTER STATUS ]

? Name: [Ryan]

? Level: 165 — Rank: SSS

? Class: Transcendent Templar

? Title: Transcendent Sovereign of Dominion

? Strength: 45,670 | Magic: 25,233 | Agility: 35,820 | Psyche: 58,100 | Defense: 38,109 |

Available Points: [11,250]

Ryan carefully looked at the translucent status window floating in front of his eyes, completely ignoring the dust cloud still dissipating on the horizon after the mountain’s disappearance.

The points earned thanks to the new oath of loyalty ritual had been far too many. So many, in fact, that up until this very moment, he hadn’t even wanted to open the menu to look at them closely.

The memory of how the system had resonated inside his skull that day was still fresh. One notice after another, dozens of metallic bells ringing relentlessly every time a new subordinate sealed the pact. It had truly been an unbearable headache.

’At least it was worth enduring all that noise,’ Ryan thought, scanning the accumulated figure in the bottom corner of the panel.

The calculation behind that absurd increase was quite simple. Out of the three hundred and seventy-seven inhabitants that made up Kowarre’s current population, at least one hundred and fifty were adult women who had fallen directly under the effect of his skill during the ceremony.

Ryan had received every last point generated by all of them. And the best part was that, thanks to his luck attribute, the duplication bonus had triggered in at least half the cases, handing him a considerable sum on a silver platter to distribute all at once.

He stood motionless for a couple of seconds at the edge of the parapet, calmly thinking about where it would be best to apply them now.

With the recent leap in power he had just experienced upon erasing the summit with a single slash, the most logical thing was to round out his main pillars and, while he was at it, increase his speed so his body wouldn’t fall behind the sheer power of his strikes.

So he did.

First, he brought his finger to the Strength section. He allocated four thousand three hundred and thirty points all at once; the digits blinked and shot up until they settled at exactly fifty thousand.

A warm sensation ran through the muscles in his arms and lower back, adapting to the increased muscle density without his posture changing a single millimeter.

Next, he moved to Psyche. He used one thousand nine hundred points to push the figure to an exact sixty thousand, and immediately after, he invested another one thousand eight hundred and ninety-one in Defense to leave it at a round forty thousand.

With the remaining three thousand one hundred and twenty-nine points in his account, he didn’t overcomplicate things and applied absolutely all of them to Agility, watching as the counter climbed until it stopped at thirty-eight thousand nine hundred and forty-nine.

[ CHARACTER STATUS ]

? Name: [Ryan]

? Level: 165 — Rank: SSS

? Class: Transcendent Templar

? Title: Transcendent Sovereign of Dominion

? Strength: 50,000 | Magic: 25,233 | Agility: 38,949 | Psyche: 60,000 | Defense: 40,000 |

Available Points: [0]

’Much cleaner this way,’ he evaluated to himself, feeling how the air around him seemed to grow lighter as his body assimilated the final adjustment.

However, while Ryan remained locked in his own thoughts and numerical calculations, the rest of the courtyard was dealing with the real aftermath of what he had just done.

A few steps away from him, Elric simply couldn’t take it anymore.

The leader of the elven builders had his eyes rolled back as he stared at the gigantic empty trench where, seconds before, a three-thousand-five-hundred-meter mountain had stood. His legs trembled one last time like dry branches and, without letting out a single groan, his body collapsed face-first onto the snowy flagstones.

He was completely unconscious. The residual pressure of the attack, coupled with the mental impact of seeing a month’s worth of geomantic work reduced to nothing in a second, had short-circuited his senses.

"E-Elric?! Hey, Elric, wake up!" Chloe exclaimed, rushing over and kneeling by his side.

The young woman extended both hands over the elf’s back, but quickly pulled them back, not really knowing how to help him; the man didn’t have a single physical scratch, he had simply fainted from sheer terror.

And he wasn’t the only one at his limit. Just like Elric, everyone else present in the courtyard had been left utterly astonished, rooted to their spots with bated breath.

If William, Alina, Delia, and the other girls in the group hadn’t possessed such high ranks, they surely would have collapsed to the ground as well in the face of such a display of magical power.

As was to be expected after a roar that had shaken the entire mountain range, the courtyard didn’t take long to fill with noise and hurried footsteps.

Dozens of curious demons who were working or standing guard inside the castle rushed out in droves through the stone arches, leaning over the railings and broken balconies to try and understand what kind of cataclysm had just occurred outside.

And in the midst of that commotion, the double doors of the main keep flew wide open with a bang.

It didn’t even take half a minute for Helen and Mirian to come running into the courtyard, convinced by the structure’s trembling that the castle was under a large-scale enemy attack.

The problem was that they had both just gotten out of bed.

Helen was in the lead, gripping the hilt of her sword with both hands in a high guard, but she was very poorly dressed: she wore only a baggy sleep shirt slipping off one shoulder and untied boots pulled over her bare legs.

Beside her, Mirian aimed toward the sky with her bow drawn, sporting a similar getup with her blonde hair noticeably disheveled in messy strands crossing her face.

"Where are they?! Who is attacking us?!" Helen shouted, her voice still hoarse from sleep, whipping her head from side to side searching for some invading army.

No one answered her.

’So they finally decided to wake up. If they didn’t wake up with all that racket, I would have fired them for being slackers.’

Wherever the two heroines looked, they only found rows of mute demons, broken glass scattered across the snow, an elf lying on the ground, and faces filled with a surprise so profound it bordered on panic.

Meanwhile, the cause of all the uproar kept his back to them by the edge of the wall, calmly focused on closing his status window.

Even for Ryan himself, it had been surprising to unleash such a ridiculous amount of power with a single swing of the boomerang, even more so knowing that when he executed that strike, he still had over eleven thousand points saved up and undistributed.

Helen lowered the tip of her sword slightly, blinking in confusion at the lack of enemies, while Mirian relaxed the string of her bow, trying to understand what the hell was going on out there.

But before either of them could ask another question, someone else broke the silence.

Lise could no longer stay still.

The girl had been staring at Ryan’s back ever since the black and violet glow of the Heavy Symbol had faded. Now her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were shining, and she was almost on the verge of losing control from excitement.

She was so mesmerized and intoxicated by the torrent of power her master had just unleashed into the open air that her hands were trembling against her own chest.

"Young master... I can’t... I can’t hold back anymore," Lise blurted out, her voice cracking with a wet gasp that was heard amidst the silence of the courtyard.

She took two staggering steps toward him, looking at him with dilated pupils.

"With all that energy floating in the air... I need to feed right now or I feel like I’m going to go crazy right here..." she pleaded, biting her lower lip.