Chapter 30: Grade One

A few more hours had passed before Aleph could lay down in his bed.

His tension from earlier was gone by now. He kept recalling the scenes from earlier.

Aleph conducted regular testing. He wasn't surprised that his running speed could go to one hundred meters in five seconds. He focused more on the sensation of fighting against the armed group.

"That's how it is… It feels like fighting against kids with guns."

He doesn't know whether his body could withstand an explosion. The most he did was to experiment whether he could tank gunshots—he could.

As long as it's not an armor piercing round, he could tank it with ease. If it was the latter, he would be injured, but that was it.

"It's not enough."

Aleph thought of the Hind Chopper. If it straight up fired its missiles at him, how would he fare? How about mechs? Can he fight against them just like honkai beasts?

"I got complacent."

Many things that he overlooked flashed in his mind. After a while, he calmed down. He decided to check the achievements he unlocked during the fight.

[Achievement Unlocked: Predator to Prey]

[Reward: Elemental Sight]

[Predator to Prey: Reverse the situation from being hunted to being the hunter.]

[Achievement Unlocked: Angel's Judgement]

[Reward: Blank Sephira Crystal Fragment]

[Angel's Judgement: Punish an evildoer.]

[Achievement Unlocked: Dashingly Cool]

[Reward: Major Energy Box]

[Dashingly Cool: Avoid a life-threatening situation with a drift.]

[Achievement Unlocked: One Man Army]

[Reward: Cursed Sword]

[One Man Army: Fight against an entire army on your own.]

A total of four rewards were present. Aleph first took care of the [Major Energy Box]

[Cursed Energy (Converted): 930 → 1020]

Click-!

The moment his cursed energy broke through one thousand, a strange sensation swept all over him. His entire body turned numb. Aleph tried to move his arms, only to be met with crackling sounds.

Consequently, pain began to sweep through his body. It was a strange sensation that combined numbness and pain.

"Ugh…"

Aleph grasped the mattress. His fingers tore through the entire foam.

At this moment, he regretted claiming it first. He thought that he wouldn't reach one thousand tonight. Who would've thought that it provided a shocking ninety units of cursed energy?

Aleph nearly blacked out several times. It wasn't until the pain and numbness started fading away did he regain consciousness.

"Ugh…"

The first thing he noticed was the dark red blood stains all over his bed. The mattress was destroyed due to his clawing and grasping. A bloody stench came from his entire body. His pajamas were not spared, either.

Aleph stood up from the bed. 

"Huh..?"

He immediately felt the difference. His current body felt several times lighter compared to the previous him. Crackling sounds came from his muscles as he continued stretching them. Strangely enough, he felt no pain from what was supposed to be a painful process. 

It didn't end there.

"I became taller by… four centimeters? My entire senses are sharper too. Just what the hell..?"

[Cursed Energy (Converted): 1020]

[Estimated Grade: Grade 1]

Once again, Aleph suffered from a huge information gap. 

He didn't know that the strengthening of the body through the cursed technique was originally done through the fine control of cursed energy. The greater one's control, the more the body becomes stronger.

Aleph's situation of his body becoming stronger as the cursed energy progresses is completely unheard of. Even in its origin world, there isn't something that could explain it.

Even his Active Power State in the form of veins was unheard of. It granted Aleph unprecedented control of his cursed energy inwardly. The only thing he needed to practice was the outward expression, which was done through his cursed technique, Juezhao, and Sphere Boundary.

Simply put, he was doing half the effort for double the rewards.

Aleph had to clean up his bed. He threw away the broken mattress and quilts before replacing them with new ones. Before he could come outside, he already took a shower to clean himself off the patch of solidified blood in his body.

It took him another hour to lay down on his bed.

"The transformation took thirty minutes. Should I… that's it. I'll completely settle everything today."

Aleph's eyes came to the [Elemental Sight]. It appeared in his hand in the form of a blue eye-like jewel.

Crack-!

Shatter-!

In an instant, his vision changed into a transparent blue. He saw patches of purple light floating in the air. He also saw through his entire body which was filled with black-purple energy.

Outside his room, he saw several red patches of light that came from the forging furnace of the third institute.

"Energy… I see them?"

Aleph played around with this ability before taking out the [Cursed Sword]. 

A plain silver katana with a black handle appeared out of thin air. He decided to look at it with [Elemental Sight] and saw a huge black-blue energy compressed within the blade itself.

[Cursed Sword: An ordinary cursed tool used by a person with extremely high cursed energy reserves. Using it can improve one's control of cursed energy.]

"Improve the control of cursed energy? Is this just like the [Sphere Boundary]?"

For a time, Aleph experimented with it. Purple lines appeared all over his body. He tried inputting a certain amount of cursed energy inside the blade. 

Much to his surprise, he found out that his control became slightly better.

"What about with [Sphere Boundary]..?"

He tested using the [Sphere Boundary] while he was inputting cursed energy into the blade. 

"Huh?!"

Aleph's guesses were correct. He could use the two of them at the same time. 

His training regime used to be composed of separate sections. It was the first time he did two things that overlapped with the same purpose—that is, to increase the control of his cursed energy.

"My cursed energy couldn't go farther than five centimeters… I need to train it until it goes back to the usual…"

That night, Aleph lost his sleep.