Chapter 751: Getting Stronger.

Several days passed since Moon and his companions had set out to hunt across the floating island.

The journey had been both fun and boring in turns, and through all of it they’d shared moments none of them would forget.

Boring, because strong opponents were rare, and long stretches passed with nothing but middling beasts to cut down. Fun, because they were in each other’s company, Honeybun solemnly announcing its time had come at the most random moments, Mirage insisting it was the original, Moon laughing at both.

Moon had also taught the two a few other phrases of greeting that he was excited to see in use with Selene, Yara, Kael, Tom and others.

Throughout it all, Moon grew increasingly pleased with Honeybun’s progression. The little turtle was getting stronger fast, not so much in raw power, which had somewhat plateaued at Surpasser tier for now, but in versatility.

Honeybun learned at a frightening pace, combat seemingly written into its very instincts, and it absorbed every lesson from every fight, adding new tricks, new adaptations, new creative uses for its crystals with each battle.

That growing mastery was something that would only complement his strength greatly.

Mirage had grown too. From steady feeding of Surpasser-rank corpses every day, the white steed had crossed from the peak of Four-Star into the low stage of Five-Star Evolver, a meaningful climb for a beast whose path to power was so much harder than Honeybun’s.

And Moon hadn’t been idle either.

While his priority had been strengthening his companions, he hadn’t neglected himself. He’d claimed a substantial share of the Lives, experience, and spiritual energy from every kill Honeybun and Mirage made, and it had added up.

Enough that he’d finally, completely filled his twelfth acupoint, Ice-Assimilation set firmly as its foundation and made considerable progress on the thirteenth acupoint.

But that wasn’t the achievement that mattered most.

Something he’d been working toward for weeks had finally come to fruition.

[Lightning-Assimilation]?[Order: Second]?[Rank: Epic]?[Details: You can assimilate the lightning element into objects, threading the element through their structure as a continuous field rather than coating their surface. Assimilated items carry the full force of the element from release to impact, with no mid-use decay. The technique integrates lightning at the deeper physical level, temporarily transforming the object itself into a conduit of the lightning giving it the element’s effect.]

Moon stared at the fruits of his labor, and couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

The sound caught his two companions off guard, and both Honeybun and Mirage looked up from their meals to stare at him curiously, wondering what had made him laugh like a madman. After a moment, deciding there was nothing actually wrong with him, they went back to eating.

"Finally," Moon breathed, still grinning. "Lightning-Assimilation is mine. And I learned an Epic skill without copying it directly. Through my own understanding and work."

To Moon, this was a massive achievement, one he was deeply proud of, and a stepping stone toward something far greater. He’d paved the road to this moment slowly, deliberately, ever since he’d first realized that skills could be acquired not only by maxing the proficiency of a copied class skill, but through understanding, practice, and dedication.

This was the proof of that principle, realized in full.

Yes, Ice-Assimilation had helped enormously, giving him the structural foundation to understand the mechanism behind assimilation in the first place. But in the end, his own hard work had carried him across the finish line.

The breakthroughs in understanding lightning’s volatile nature, the circuit, the saturation field, all of it had been his, earned through hours of focused struggle.

And privately, he believed something more. He believed he would have reached this point eventually regardless of whether he’d ever copied Elsa’s elemental archer class. The copy had accelerated the journey, but the destination had always been within his reach.

He was still savoring the accomplishment when a new notification flashed across his vision.

[Merging Opportunity!]

Moon’s laughter died in his throat, and he went still.

His laughter died in his throat, replaced by anticipation.

This was it.

The possibility he had been chasing since he acquired Ice-assimilation. Both advanced-element assimilations complete, Ice and Lightning, and now the system was offering him exactly what he’d dreamed might happen.

A merging that would lead his skills to a greater class path, and just like he predicted there was such a path and such a skill.

His heart hammered as he stared at the prompt, his two companions forgotten, every scrap of his attention fixed on the two words glowing before his eyes and the enormous potential they represented.

"...Let’s see what you become," he murmured, and reached for the opportunity.

[Merging Opportunity Detected. Skills from the same pathway have the opportunity to be merged. Upon merging, the resulting skill might favor one skill more than the other. Skills are not lost upon failing the merging opportunity.]

[Merging Success Rate: 15%]

[Cost: 1,000 Lives]

[Merge?] [Yes | No]

Moon stared at the notification, and his heartbeat quickened.

The success rate was abysmal for a merging chance. Fifteen percent. The lowest he had ever seen on a merge. His previous merges had always carried far better odds, nothing close to numbers this grim. And the cost matched the difficulty, a thousand Lives per attempt, when his old merges had cost a fraction of that.

He did the math, and it was sobering.

At a fifteen percent success rate, reaching a successful merge could easily cost him over fifty thousand Lives across repeated attempts. That was almost enough to fully evolve a Level 10 Epic skill all the way to Level 20.

An enormous expenditure for a single, uncertain outcome.

This is a serious risk. One that could drain my reserves for one skill that might not even be better than what I already have.

But the risk was precisely why he wanted it.

Moon understood that the steep price and the terrible odds weren’t just deterrents but also signals. The system didn’t gate trivial rewards behind fifteen percent success rates and thousand-Life costs. The difficulty of this merge implied the value of what lay on the other side. The harder the climb, the greater the prize at the summit.