Chapter 11: Successive Breakthroughs  

This chapter is basically a more or less detailed explanation of power systems, planes, laws, and humanity history. It doesn't really make the plot advance, but it makes Dawn of Gods universe more developed. If descriptions aren't your cup of tea, feel free to skip; it won't change much. Have a good day.

A spatial rift opened, and Liam arrived in his room. 

He had just merged the golden pearl of the ecosystem and didn't want to waste any time. 

He sat down cross-legged, the original stone in his hands. 

As the deputy director had said, Liam followed the cultivation system. He had also become a lance lord. 

As humanity expanded into the universe, it encountered many power systems: machinists, spiritualists, beast tamers, lineage sorcerers... 

Humanity discovered several million different power systems, and except for a few, none could match gods' power. 

Of course, humans weren't the only ones to discover faith energy and thousands of other civilizations had such a system. 

The federal government didn't destroy every civilization encounter, only those whose ethics didn't align at all with human were annihilated. 

It wasn't that humans were merciful. Once strength reached a certain threshold, it became almost impossible to kill some powerhouses unless someone much stronger was brought in, which humanity couldn't afford to do every day. 

It was easy to destroy a civilization. Even gods could be slaughtered by thousands. 

However, for a few hidden powerhouses, they could manage to flee. As a result, humans just won few resources and end up creating a very powerful and uncatchable enemy. 

Humanity learned this lesson through many lives. 

Now, these millions of races created a huge alliance that had long buried the hatchet and united around common benefits. 

As long as a civilization was protected by a god-king level powerhouse, it was qualified to join the alliance. 

Each member of every race had to sign a contract with their true name, forbidding them from committing bloodshed among alliance members. 

This also applied for humans, even though they led the alliance. After all, no one would join an organization where the leader could kill everyone if they wanted to. 

The solar system was now considered as the best student system. All humans would go through their education on Earth. 

From university onwards, members of other races could also join the Earth's educational system. 

At the same time, the earth was the capital of human kind and every force would have a head-quarter here.

With the support of billions of human gods, the planet continued to expand every day. 

The planet was now so vast that it could accommodate billions of billions of people and most of its surface was still wild, full of extremely powerful beasts and monsters.

On the other hand, gods' power system was very powerful, but it had a fatal flaw: before reaching demigod level, there was nothing. 

People like Liam were not demigods, but divine beings. They used the power of faith to engrave divine runes in their spiritual sea, and from there, they would choose a priesthood to become demigods.

Even so, their bodies had to be strong enough to support divine runes. So, they had to choose a path to follow until rank 9. 

[EXPLANATIONS HERE]

Among the most powerful were mages, cultivators, arcanists, and experts. 

An important point was that many of these power systems did not conflict, although that wasn't the case for all: cultivators and experts could go together, but not cultivators and mages. 

Even if most gods abandoned those power system after reaching rank 9, some experts were both god and immortal, or both god and archmage. 

At the same level, they were almost invincible, but it took a lot of time and required a great talent. 

Liam was a divine creature with one rune, which he obtained when he opened the divine realm, a transcendent realm cultivator (rank 7), and an expert specialized in spear arts at the spear overlord realm (rank 7). 

On the path of cultivation, he learned the rules of the four elements. 

His rules had reached the peak of the initial stage of understanding, but he had reached a bottleneck.

Understanding the rules had four stages: beginner, confirmed, advanced and pinnacle, corresponding to ranks 7, 8, 9, and 10. 

After that, they made a qualitative leap and became laws. 

The lower planes had yet condensed none of the rules he was training, so their original stones wouldn't either, but they contained the origin of the planes. 

Using it in his divine realm would directly enhance the rules while increasing its spiritual energy. 

With the current state of his divine realm, if Liam used the origin stone on it, he would only enlarge it, essentially wasting this precious resource. 

Origin energy was unique and can only be found in original stones. It was a medium between the plane and the universe. 

That's why even if the plane had not yet generated them, laws were present in divine realms: planes "borrowed" the laws of the universe. 

Liam closed his eyes and used his spiritual energy to slowly enter the stone. Gradually, he extracted the origin energy and guided it into his body. 

Quickly, he felt his understanding of the rules accelerate. 

He was stuck in a bottleneck and couldn't perceive anything anymore. Every time he thought discovering new things, he realized he already knew this under another form.

He was like a hiker lost in the mountain. Suddenly, the fog lifted, and the road reappeared in front of his eyes. 

As he unveiled the secrets of the universe, his understanding of the rules grew by leaps and bounds. 

Liam was truly ambitious. Most people didn't dare touch the elementary rules. They focused on their derivatives, like the rules of tides, storms, tremors, or burning. 

Not only was Liam learning the elemental rules, but he was learning all four at the same time. 

If others knew, they would surely call him crazy. 

Liam had always been hardworking and could easily focus.

It might probably be a side effect of having the original seed in his spirit sea since birth, but his understanding of the rules was rather fast. 

He first focused on the rules of water. 

After a few minutes, his understanding began to slow down. The path ahead became blurry, and if he wasn't careful, he might get lost between rules. 

It was very dangerous. 

Only one misunderstanding could easily make him insane, or worse, make him lose all his cultivation or explode on the spot. 

Liam started to slow down and took his time to analyze the rules carefully. 

Finally, his fast speed became as slow as a snail's. 

Liam knew it was time to change rules. Even if he could progress a little bit more, it would be much less significant than the progress he could make in other rules. 

Origin energy made it easier to access the world's secrets, but it was based on some accumulation. 

If a mortal used the stone, he would not become a higher existence. At best, they would increase their rank and become a high-level lower existence. 

In Liam's case, that was as far as his accumulation on water rules could take him. 

He then moved on to the rules of fire, earth, and air. 

When he encountered a bottleneck in the rules of air, the stone still had about 12% of origin energy remaining.

Liam didn't hesitate and began to understand the laws of the lance. 

A few moments later, as his understanding speed began to slow, he felt that the path, which had seemed clear and obstacle-free, was filled with a thick fog. 

No matter how he tried, he couldn't move forward as fast. 

Liam sighed, casting a sad look at the disintegrating original stone in his hands. 

His elementary rules had reached the intermediate-tier of confirmed-rules, while the spear rules were at the initial-tier of confirmed-rules. 

Now that rules had broken through, the hardest part was done. It could be said that he was already halfway into rank 8. He just had to officially promote himself, and his power would undergo a huge qualitative leap. 

However, he wouldn't break through at home. Even with Earth's extremely resilient laws, he might seriously damage the apartment, or even the building. 

He then quickly teleported to school. 

After completing a holographic form, he entered a small room with only a bathroom and a floor mat. 

He took off his clothes, stored them in his spatial ring, and sat naked on the mat. 

"Well, let's start with cultivation. It's finally time to reach the condensation realm." 

After his dantian formed its golden core and divine soul, it became a vast sea of liquid spiritual energy. 

The pressure deformed the space inside his body, creating a huge ball of liquid spiritual energy, several tens of kilometers radius that slowly rotated. 

The closer one got to the center, the higher the pressure. 

The core of his dantian was a solid ball of extraordinarily pure spiritual energy measuring several hundred meters. 

Inside, thousands of small runes were engraved in golden ink. It represented all of Liam's understanding. 

At the transcendent realm, one had to condense the rules into their dantian, engraving the core with runes embodying the rules. 

Generally, the number of runes directly represented the progress. Liam already had about 40,000 beginner-runes, which is the pinnacle of beginner-rules. 

[EXPLANATION HERE]

To breakthrough the condensation realm, he had to condense all the energy of his dantian into crystals, and then slowly engrave confirmed-rules runes on them. Everything had to be done in one go, and he had to engrave at least ten confirmed-runes of each rule. 

Otherwise, his spiritual energy would become unstable and collapse on itself. At that time he would have to restart all over again from rank 6, even if his understanding remained, it would take several decades just to recover. 

He took a deep breath and began to rotate the energy in his dantian faster and faster. 

He then used his will to compress the spiritual energy. 

In the center of his dantian, the crystal of spiritual energy grew slowly, while the liquid layer decreased rapidly. 

At the same time, he used his will to directly engrave the runes of the elementary rules with solid energy. 

One, two, three... The runes appeared one after another, and the process accelerated. 

He soon engraved the forty runes needed to breakthrough but acted as if he did no see anything and continued to engrave. 

Eighty, a hundred, two hundred... 

He only stopped at the 943th, out of breath. 

238 runes for water, 235 for fire, 233 for air, and 237 for earth. 

For runes, between 10 and 100 represented the initial-tier, between 100 and 1000 represented the intermediate-tier, between 1000 and 9000 represented the advance-tier, and up to 10000, it was the pinnacle. 

BOOOMMM 

As soon as he stopped, a huge wave of spiritual energy rushed into Liam's body. 

He let out a grunt but forced himself to keep focusing under the pain while spiritual energy poured into his meridians. 

The power was several hundred times stronger than before. His body was absolutely unprepared for such an energetic shock.

His skin cracked, and blood flowed, but the wounds healed immediately, reopening a few moments later. 

Bones, meridians, veins, organs, muscles, skin... his whole body kept breaking and rebuilding. 

Even on a macroscopic view, cell membranes shattered, letting spiritual energy scourge the cytoplasm and nucleus, which reformed immediately, only to be destroyed again shortly after. 

As Liam get under an incredible pain, the waves of power he released hit the walls head-on but were stopped by a formation. 

The mat under Liam wailed as well, absorbing the blood and pieces of flesh that was leaving his body. 

This cycle continued for a long time before Liam gradually regained control of his body. 

He quickly dragged his exhausted body to the shower, which cleaned the flesh, blood, and awful black grime emitting a disgusting smell. 

After some time under the scalding water, Liam left the room and sat cross-legged again. This time, it was time to become a spear king. 

He immersed himself in his spiritual sea, appearing before a gigantic spear several hundred meters high. 

It was pitch black, emitting a suffocating aura. It seemed both new and ancient. The long handle was nearly three-quarters of the weapon, while the blade fitted at the end. 

Nearly ten thousand small golden runes covered the spear, giving it a divine appearance.

It was the spear spirit Liam awakened when he became a spear grandmaster. 

When he became a spear lord, he added his understanding of the rules and had since reached the pinnacle of rank 7 in spear expertise. 

As for cultivation, he now had to engrave confirmed runes. Although he didn't have to manage his dantian, he couldn't use spiritual energy to engrave the runes either. 

He had to use his mind to engrave his own sea of consciousness. The process itself was very painful, and the difficulty was even a bit higher than reaching the condensation realm. 

Armed with his previous experience, Liam soon engraved 87 confirmed-runes on his spear spirit, which grew to nearly five hundred meters. 

Immediately, he left his sea of consciousness as his soul and body underwent another strengthening process. 

His body still roughly held up. Even as it continued to strengthen, the scene was much less spectacular. 

After all, he was already a confirmed-tier rank 8 existence. 

On the other hand, he felt like his soul was pierced by thousands of needles probing his brain. 

He couldn't help but grunt in pain. 

A few minutes later, the pain stopped. 

He took a quick shower, got dressed, and teleported home. 

As soon as he arrived, he collapsed onto the bed, exhausted.