- Grind

After Zex inspected his explosive growth in level and stats, he checked his secondary attributes closely and discovered that despite his stats seeming to be topping charts in the games he played in his previous life, they only translated to monstrous levels by human standards.

However, when he recalled what his master told him about being powerless against a true dragon, he could only agree.

His base physical attack damage ranged from 4,500 to 7,700. Even if he used all his skills, scored a critical hit, and ignored the target's defenses completely, he would only be able to deal around 34,000 to 38,000 damage. If he fought Drago under [Draconian Manifestation] with his current state, he would still need to land 3 full power blows to kill him.

It would be another story if he could use either [True Name Liberation] or [Draconian Manifestation] himself, but because he could not, the reality of things is that he is overpowered only when compared to normal humans and ordinary heroes like Falna and Brius.

This frustrated him as he used 4 decades worth of experience to reach this power level. If he did not have the [Soul Swap] ability or the timely use of the [Blood Reincarnation] technique on him, he could only imagine how long he would have wasted.

In contrast, his greatest strength lies in his diverse set of skills from all kinds of classes.

Recently, he gained two notable classes from his trip to the castle: The Blood Mage Class from Firr and the Inquisitor Class from Elik.

The Blood Mage class he gained was an advanced class that included two subclasses - Blood Manipulator and Blood Awakener.

From Blood Manipulator, he gained skills related to modifying or controlling the blood of a person to achieve different effects. Most of the skills he learned from the keepers were under this subclass. However, with the level of masteries he gained from the keepers, including Firr, he found out that they were not able to tap into half of the subclass's potential. Thanks to the [Mage of Diversity] subclass bonus, he was able to reach the Advanced level on all of the blood spells available to him, surpassing even Firr's level. As for the blood techniques, he could only study, train, and do some research to increase his mastery.

Only Firr had the Blood Awakener subclass aside from Blood Manipulator. This subclass held a lot of mystery as the techniques it gave were fairly limited. Even Firr had a novice-level mastery, only capable of inspecting a person's bloodline and its purity or extract a person's blood essence and store them into the phylacteries. Zex assumed that this subclass could only be unlocked after the techniques were passed from head keeper to head keeper.

When he maxed out their levels earlier, he gained access to new skills that even the keepers did not have. The most notable one was from the Blood Awakener subclass - [Blood Evolution], a skill that allowed him to evolve a creature by introducing the blood essence of another creature. This was like the [Demonic Reconstruction] skill but without a blueprint of a demon. However, unlike [Demon Reconstruction], if the creature's body is too weak to accept the blood essence, or if the compatibility is too low that rejection would occur, there would be a high chance that the creature will die. With his novice mastery of the technique, it would be dangerous if he used it without further research.

The Inquisitor class, on the other hand, was listed as a special class that enhanced observer subclass bonuses and observation skills but did not have a subclass of its own.

After he gained the class, [Evil Eye] not only absorbed the effects of other observation skills like usual, it evolved into a higher tier, renaming into [Evil Gaze]. Aside from improving its range, a better time dilation ratio, an increased consumption, and more information displayed, he could also use it as an offensive skill by pouring his mana into his eyes, assaulting the target's mind, inflicting shocked, stunned, feared, pacified, or dominated status based on the difference between the user's mental attack and the target's mental defense.

With this new skill, Zex was thankful that he learned a lot of mental protection techniques from Arissef. He believed that if a skill like [Evil Gaze] existed, there were bound to be similar techniques in the hands of others like the ones Elik has.

When he was done familiarizing himself with his new class bonuses, stats, and skills, he moved to inspect the item rewards which were the Trial and Dungeon Crystals.

Materializing them in his Mind Space, they were shaped like thin crystals with the Trial Crystals colored Red and the Dungeon Crystals colored Blue. He could even fit all of them into one hand. However, he could not activate them in his Mind Space so he materialized them once again in the real world.

He then tried pouring mana into them and when he did, they left his hand and turned into screens in front of him, giving brief details regarding what he should expect inside but there was no information about the rewards.

Wanting to give them a go, he chose the Trial Crystal - [Hero Trials 1-50] which then hovered back and turned into a huge door inside his room as the other screens dematerialized into thin air.

Double-checking his condition and preparing himself, he approached the door and was given a prompt asking which difficulty he was going to challenge.

With so little information, he did not overestimate his strength and simply entered at Normal difficulty.

The instant that he entered, his vision blurred as the scenery in front of him changed into that of a stadium exactly like the one in Drago's memories when he took the trials himself except that there was nobody around, not even the king.

Being familiar with the trials, Zex began to challenge the first one by touching the orb in front of him. Just like in the trials in Drago's memories, Zex was transported into a pocket dimension with a monster as his opponent. The first 10 trials were called 'Subdue! 30!' with the task to subdue, disable, or kill the target or targets. Each trial would increase in difficulty by either having more opponents or a stronger opponent.

Of course, with Zex's [Black Flame Armor] taking any weapon form he needed and packed with a vast arsenal of skills, he was able to clear the first 10 trials at record-breaking speed.

Moving on to the next trials, he was given phantom soldiers to command, ordering them to perform maneuvers, defeat opposing soldiers, and capturing targets among other things.

The trials were divided among combat, strategy, tactics leadership, resourcefulness, initiative, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, agility, raw strength, and other aspects determining the capabilities of a hero.

Zex cleared all 50 trials with ease as a system notification sounded:

System: Congratulations! Trial Crystal - [Hero Trials 1-50] - Normal Difficulty - Completed. Awarding 1 level. (One-time reward per challenger)

"Wait! Others can do the challenges as well?" Zex was surprised. This meant that he can use these trials as training grounds for future allies.

Excited, Zex decided to clear the Hard, Hell, and Abyss difficulties which gave him the following rewards:

Hard - 2 levels

Hell - 3 levels

Abyss - 5 levels

He also tried failing Abyss once and found out that in the event of failure, the trial only starts a cooldown of 1 day. To test out what happens if he dies inside the trial, he used Arissef's [Mana Life] during his second Hell challenge and used [Unholy Offering] on himself to commit suicide. With the challenge failing instantly and [Mana Life] not being used up, he confirmed that the challenges were safe from permadeath. [1]

After confirming everything, he cleared all the Crystals in all difficulties and gained a whopping total of 129 levels, making him reach level 279. Because of his OCD, he decided to level up some of his other subclasses to allow him to reach level 300, effectively pumping his stats to around the level to when he used [True Name Liberation].

With this, he had confidence that no human in Grimley could pose a threat against him. He even believed that he could easily defeat the four kingsguards.

"This is it." Zex smiled as he basked in the feeling of fulfillment after grinding. [2]

However, during the challenges, he discovered that his [Black Flame Armor] wasn't an optimal choice especially during the Abyss runs. The consumption was too high and facing large opponents like the gigantic demon in the final Abyss challenge proved to be dangerous without a weapon and armor.

The challenges not only grew harder with each increase in difficulty but also drastically changed some factors. For example, the Abyss hero trials required lesser time to complete and even had environments that hindered movement or illusions that confused the challenger. In the final dungeon crystal, the Abyss difficulty removed the heroes and soldiers altogether, making the challenger fight the gigantic demon one on one.

Zex was only able to clear the final Abyss challenge by performing every step the heroes took with his version. He restrained the gigantic demon by mixing light magic and spacetime magic; he destroyed the demon's eyes and ears with weapons he formed with his [Black Flame Armor] and started ripping off the chest of the demon layer after layer until he reached the heart. Zex ended it by infusing the demon's heart with his black flames and burning it entirely.

Although it sounded like a brutal one-sided battle, Zex used up a ton of mana, stamina, and concentration to pull it off. With the [Unstable Mana] debuff, his control was being hindered time and time again, causing him to fumble with his spells and his [Black Flame Armor] dissipating mid-battle.

Whether it was if his mana becomes unusable for some reason or continues to be unreliable thanks to his blood, he concluded that he needed other ways to fight.

However, when he looked at Avegar which was sheathed on the weapon rack in his room, he frowned and said: "But I don't want to end up yelling 'GRIMLEEEEY!' in battle." [3]

[1] Permadeath is a gaming slang for permanent death referring to instances where if you die, you will experience a game-over or you will lose everything and have to start over from scratch.

[2] Grinding is a gaming slang that refers to performing repetitive and sometimes inefficient actions to gain levels, items, or currency to provide an advantage when facing the next boss or entering a new area.

[3] This is a reference to Garen, The Might of Demacia. Garen is a champion in League of Legends who has a bulky build and wields a broadsword. One of his famous lines is when he yells "Demacia!" which is the name of the kingdom he serves.