68 - demon lord part 3

First thing's first, I was probably lazing around in the previous loop. Knowing myself, I stopped at level 3000 and only waited until the demon lord arrived. It wasn't natural to be level 6000 since my skills haven't changed from last time, they were completely the same. That was strange, but it seems now I cannot neglect training anymore. Going through the new memories, the demon lord was definitely toying with me and a hero will definitely get defeated before they can fuse their class back into one to match the demon lord's power.

A few months from now, there will be a camp raid by the human enemy kingdom's to take my power for themselves. They seem to realise that the demon lord was reviving as well and planned to gather as much as they can before them. Too bad, sin, commandment, heroes, everything was useless before [death]. It wasn't natural either, I could speed up the aging of enemies and send them to a natural death, it was why I could tell it was completely abnormal. Of course it was other than the fact [death] could be used on inanimate objects, it was a completely artificial form of death.

Things were erased from existence, my memories themselves, unknown corpses the covered the ground, and lastly the most outrageous of all. [Death] could be casted on attacks themself to render them harmless. My scythe wasn't missing any hits at all given my speed, it was being erased by the demon lord and subconciously being restored, it burned through my mana because the scythe was always made out me compressing as much 'darkness' as I can into one space. It was less of 'darkness' and more of mana absorbing so much light and energy it became super dense. It could easily penetrate any normal forms of matter and would require spatial distortion or magic to repel. Yes, magic, it was actually the most versatile thing in this world.

When people are born, everyone comes with an intelligence stat. That stat represented how much mana they can absorb from the atmosphere and store and when taken to the extremes, it could represent how much mana they can control outside their body as well. At the end of the path was the ability to use up the whole 'tank' of mana at once and replenish in an instant, or constantly use mana from the atmosphere, using the 'tank' only for emergencies.

Magic wasn't limited to the intelligence stat, when you gain a class, learn skills from said class or knowledge or practice, it would be forever etched into your status screen unless removed by the owner or forgotten. Skills, something that could range from being useless to something that could transcend stats, and to the extremes become something similar to the demon lord's [death], where it reached the realm of the gods. How did he gain [death]? But I haven't learn [Conquest]. Well skills, are just macros that form magic circles in an instant, it was why learn magic transform into the form of skills, this world was probably ruled by magic.

It was simple, taking the class as a reference of being tied to an 'authority' or 'sin', [Conquest] had to be locked by levels. I needed to reach level 6000 naturally. In the last battle the demon king probably interfered with something to make me level 6000 artificially, to make me unable to gain [conquest] and render me practically harmless. Yes, that was why he could stand so confidently without batting an eyelash, even as I showed superior speed that surpassed his by a few digits.

By that logic, the previous owner had [Conquest], but I killed him before he could react, leaving his partner to fend for himself and an inferior clone of himself to be produced. That clone is probably dead by now, I noticed it immediately and rendered it immobile, since it was a clone it would just die out from its short life span, to make sure the job was done, I sped up the time in the area by a few thousand times.

But how... How the hell do these people get to level 6000? I was under the impression that I could use soul manipulation from wielding the authority alone but I was instinctively using my other abilities like [reality displacement] and [fate lock]. Was there some sort of secret that I wasn't in on? When the king died he left a 'corpse' back in the castle, Houzo left one as well. So they were presumably just on vacation, no one bothered checking, but I guess it was normal to not analyse a corpse. Those people were probably just on vacation, sorry to disappoint them but they have to cut it short. Damn old-timers skipping out on work for 2 years.

Right now I had a little over 1000 levels and I desperately need it to go up. But how do I find these guys? I had roughly 6 months to do so before the camp raid. This continent was roughly as large as 3 chinas, even if I did scan through it without getting attacked randomly, those 2 would probably have a meaninglessly excessive amount of counter measures to save guard their vacation.

A third of the continent was rendered useless by ancient battles that destroyed the environment, causing the surrounding land to be infertile and sea life to vanish. Our kingdom was around the centre and would be the first human kingdom to be attacked. Informing Kurisu to plan for the events, I thought to get those 4 to help as well.

Training as hard as I could, I managed to get to level 1200 before the camp raid. It was early in the night, so it was time to counter their ambush. Setting up some traps, I decided to head back for the night. The 6 months went as normal, unless I sparred with Fez and James, it would be grinding away in the dungeon. And it only awarded a meagre 200 levels, how disappointing.

Alerted by my spell I placed early in the morning, I suspected that it would be destroyed so it was design to activate on destruction. The moment the erased a single layer, the 999 other layers will restore it and activate its effect. [Shadow step] was engraved and teleported shadow stakes into their head, it was a thousand of them for each person to try their best to dodge. Needless to say, 4 of the underlings were mercilessly skewered to death.

All that remained was to deal with 'lust' and 'truth'. 'lust' had probably created a barrier that could block spacial distortion, physical attacks and magical attacks. 'Truth' 's ability was to set a event and 'bind it to fate'. It was a somewhat potent and more versatile version of [fate lock] that only prevents evasion and actions. Guess it was time to deal with them.