Level

When Ivan woke up again, it was already the next day and the sun shone softly inside the room.

Unlike yesterday, his body now felt a lot better. Although he still felt powerless, it wasn't to the point that he was unable to move. Even the pain had gone down and was now only a slight sting throughout his whole body.

He carefully lifted up his upper body into a sitting position. When he was able to do this without the pain getting worse or feeling exhausted, he was relieved and delighted.

"Seems like the short term problems aren't bad. As for the long term problems...", he didn't continue but instead checked his character info.

Before the character screen opened another message popped up.

<< Info:

Your strength has derivated to much from your highest attribute. As such your level will now be calculated based on your combat strength instead of the highest attribute.

It will now also be displayed on your character screen.

Remark:

While the attributes are capped at 1000 in the Realm of Mythelem, the level isn't.

>>

This info solved some questions Ivan had. Now that his stats were capped at 50, his combat strength would be much higher than that, since all his shadow stats, which weren't influenced had at least the same value, if not twice as much. Having level 50 would make all dungeons that had a difficulty, that was level based, very easy to him.

And then there was the question with the training dungeon. If his level fell, then wouldn't they be unable to do it in nightmare mode. Not that he knew whether he was still able to do it, now that he was weaker than before.

<<

Name: Ivan Hope

Age: 16

Level: 200

Family:

- Lara von Berg (1. wife)

- Tang Lin (2. wife)

- Tanya Sun (Fiance)

- Jane von Berg (daughter)

Stats:

Strength: 50 (+90)

Endurance: 50 (+93)

Agility: 50 (+64)

Magic power: 50 (+92)

Defense: 1

Hidden stats:

Luck: 3

Charisma: 1

Inventory Space: 1

Bloodline:

Chaos Dragon God Bloodline (Initial - Low)

Skills:

- Inspect (E) Lvl. 4

- Mana Manipulation (E) Lvl. 12

- Slave Space (D) Lvl. 1

- Tame (D) Lvl. 1

- Evolution (SS) Lvl. 1

- Reincarnation (F) Lvl. 6

- Shadow stats (E)

- Blood is Power (S) Lvl. 1

- Burning Blood (S) Lvl. 1

- Soul Division (Unique) Lvl. 1

- Soul Absorb (SS) Lvl. 1

- Qi Exchange (F) Lvl. 1

- Dragon Claw (Undetermined)

- Magic Edge (F) Lvl. 2

- Mana Strengthening (E) Lvl. 3

- World Awareness (C) Lvl. 1

- World Awareness (passive) (C) Lvl. 1

- Battle Trance (C) Lvl. 1

- Superspeed calculations (Servant)(A) Lvl. 1

- Mind communications (Servant)(D) Lvl. 1

Titles:

- Son of Chaos (SS)

- Slayer of slightly bigger things (D)

- Dungeon Diver (F)

- Honorable Man (SS) Lvl. 1

- Founder (F)

- Unique (Legendary)

- Monster Tamer (D)

- Mushroom Farmer (F)

- Slayer of Wolves (F)

- Early believer (S)

Achievements:

none

Slaves:

- Vlada (Evolved Vampiric Bat)

Servants:

- Celine Lefair (Warrior, Manager, Relief)

Status:

- Heavily wounded (All attributes capped at 50) (1y)

>>

After he had finished reading his character screen, it was as he expected. Although his attributes were now at 50 his shadow stats were still there and with their value and his skills pulled up his level to 200. Although it was lower, it was still quite high.

The question was how he could get stronger now. The shadow stat gain from 'Shadow Stats' ' required him to increase his attributes first. Then he would usually reduce them again with 'Reincarnation'.

And this was something that would work if the attributes weren't capped at 50. 50 was a threshold, which meant that he couldn't reduce them further. Although he hadn't run into this situation before, since he never had 50 in all attributes, from what he had read it wasn't possible to go back to 49 if an attribute was at 50 before. This meant that he was unable to reduce them and then regain them in order to get shadow stats.

This left him with only 'Blood is Power' as a means of increasing his shadow stats. But he felt that this was even harder since it not only required him to get Blood Essence Crystal, but it had a channeling time of five hours and a cooldown of 24 hours, which made it hard to use it productively.

It would only be worth it if he could get his hands on some high-level Blood Essence Crystals. He would need a 100 stat points in Blood Essence Crystals to gain one shadow stat.

All that wouldn't be that much of a problem if he could get the crystals in dungeons, but that was impossible. And to make matters worse: These crystals couldn't be traded with others. He could only use the ones he had gotten himself directly from his foes.

"I guess I'll have to ask Carl then.", he decided, when he was unable to come up with a good solution. At least his mentor should know where he could find monsters of an appropriate level out in the wilderness.

Ivan slowly stood up completely. He then left the room and went over to his own.

After a long shower, he then chose something comfortable to wear and went downstairs. Not unexpectedly, Celine was sitting on the sofa and was reading something. When she heard his footsteps, she looked up from her book and turned towards the stairs.

When she saw him slowly making his way downwards, she smiled at him.

"Morning.", she then greeted him and looked him up and down carefully.

"Morning.", he responded and naturally made his way over to her. He lifted her legs and sat down beside her, depositing the legs on his own. Every move of his was fluent and without any awkwardness.

Neither of them registered that this action of his was something that he wouldn't have done before. Before he had always kept his distance and he would surely not have just touched her naked legs.

"I already informed the school that you wouldn't be able to come today.", Celine then informed him, after setting down the book.

"Thank you."

"So how are you feeling now?"

"Better. There is just a slight pain. And I feel kind of powerless.", Ivan explained.

"That's normal. After all, you lost a lot of stats at the same time. To be honest. The more strength you lose the worse it is. The important thing is to get use to it. After a while, you won't even notice it anymore. Instead, it will once again feel normal to have the strength you have."

When she said that, Ivan knew that she spoke out of her experience. After all, she too should have gone through this. But her situation should have been even worse since the difference had been much larger.

Celine then continued. "I would suggest that you try some light combat to acclimate to your new strength."

Ivan nodded. Her suggestion was good. After all the best way to determine one's, strength was to fight. Of course, the opponent shouldn't be too strong or it would be completely pointless. What was there to learn if you fought against something that would one hit you?

Better to start with something easy and then work the way up, while trying to stress one's prowess as much as possible.

"Have you thought about what you are going to do for the next year?", Celine then asked him with a slight worry in her eyes. She feared that he would be discouraged by his inability to increase his stats.

"Not yet. But I have a few plans, which I can check out.", he answered, before explaining them to her. "First of all, I thought I would use the opportunity to increase my control over my skills, as well as their level."

When he had checked out his character screen before, he had realized that besides 'Mana Manipulation' his other skills all had a very low level. Most of them were only level 1 and he hadn't even used some of them. Sure it would be nearly impossible to increase the level of some of them anytime soon. They either had too long cooldowns or he wasn't able to use them freely.

"Sounds like a good idea. In this realm, most people will have a solid foundation in skills, since it is harder to increase one's stats here. But in the upper realms, it is common to just ignore the skills available during Body Refining. Something that is a large oversight if you ask me."

"Body Refining?", Ivan hadn't heard of this term before, so he asked.

"Yeah. It is what we call the first three steps of cultivation. And the first realm of it is what is available in this realm.", she explained readily. "During Body Refining one increases the strength of one's body and thus lays a foundation."

"So what is trained later?", he asked curiously, but was blocked by her. "You'll know later on when you go to a higher realm. For now, that knowledge wouldn't help you and may even be bad for you."