Book 7: Chapter 3 – Ace’s Progress

Since the day of Lance and Milianna's wedding, five months seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. There were no major incidents that took place, with all the continent's major forces seeming to have gone into hibernation.

Still, this didn't come as much of a surprise. With the opening of the Necropolis of the Gods fast approaching, everyone was without a doubt doing all they could to prepare in advance, and Ace and his group were no exception.

Although he never stopped training hard, after learning that in the ancient ruins was a treasure that could heal his master's dantian, he began to train like a madman, only ever stopping to eat and sleep.

Still, because his comprehension of both the laws and concepts of fire were ridiculously high for his level, his progress when focusing on comprehension had slowed considerably.

It was only after his master temporarily returned from Beirut's side to visit him and Arianna that he was told something that not only he but even Arianna had no idea of.

According to Beirut, although it was true that the earlier one began comprehending the profundities of the various laws, the smoother and easier one would find it later on, there was only so much one could accomplish at each stage.

This was because the souls of mortals, saints, and even lower-level deities had their limits.

If one were to think of the soul as a computer and one's comprehension as data, then the comprehension of profound mysteries was a seriously large amount of data that took up large amounts of the memory that was your soul.

Typically, a peak mortal would at most be able to comprehend a single, complete profound mystery. The average mid-stage saint would usually be able to comprehend the fusion of two profound mysteries or three separate mysteries. Even the average Full God would only be able to comprehend the fusion of four profound mysteries.

Demi-Gods weren't included in the explanation because, unlike mortals and saints whose realms could be split down into various sub-realms, deities were no longer cultivated by absorbing energy into their bodies.

As soon as their comprehension reached a certain level, one would automatically break through, and for Demi-Gods, as soon as they had either comprehended two separate profound mysteries or the fusion of at least two mysteries, they would break through to the Full God realm.

Ordinarily, if one were to go down this path, they would have started as a mortal or, at most, a saint. And since the average saint was capable of fusing two profound mysteries before running out of memory, upon breaking through, they would automatically skip the Demi-God realm and break straight into the Full God realm.

Still, it wasn't impossible for Demi-Gods to go down this path if, like Cesar, they hadn't known about it until it was too late. But even so, they would have to either stop at the bottleneck for the completion of their second profound mystery or the bottleneck for their fusion of two mysteries.

Either way, Demi-Gods could, at most, comprehend the fusion of three mysteries.

Once one reached their limits, unless they were able to find some way to improve the power of their soul drastically, it would be impossible to improve their comprehension any further. But there were exceptions to the rule. Like Ace, Amira, and even Kong, there were those with unique bloodlines or unique bodies whose souls were especially powerful for their realm who could comprehend more at an early stage, but even they had their limits.

It was then that Aiden explained that even though Ace's soul was equivalent to a warrior prime saint and therefore should be able to comprehend the fusion of two profound mysteries, his comprehension of the laws of fire didn't end there.

During his enlightenment, when he first entered the pocket dimension, Ace had not only fused the mysteries of the essence of fire and explosion, but he had also begun to fuse the profound mystery of explosion with the mysteries of flame-body and heat, respectively.

It was clear that whilst his affinity to the laws of fire had surpassed the exceptional grade, his affinity to the profound mystery of explosion individually was unprecedentedly high, allowing him to easily fuse it with other laws.

According to Aiden, his comprehension of the profound mysteries likely brought him to near his limits, but it was his comprehension of the 'Concept of fire' that had likely pushed him to his limits.

This caused Ace to change focus. From that moment, instead of trying to further his comprehension of the laws of fire, he focused on raising his realm, something he had purposefully been neglecting, simply allowing it to progress in a natural but slow manner as time went on.

After only one month, Ace broke through to the late stages of the sixth rank as both a warrior and mage. Two months after that, he achieved another breakthrough, reaching the peak of the sixth rank, at which point he discovered something truly strange.

Before his coma, he had to focus on each individual path to progress, but since awakening, it felt like both paths were slowly merging. By training in one, the other seemed to progress – albeit at a fraction of the pace. Still, it did allow him to increase his training speed significantly. What was more impressive was that with each breakthrough, the fusion of both paths seemed to become much more thorough.

Whether it was Arianna or Aiden, neither of them had heard of such a thing. Neither had Beirut, but he did mention it sounded like he was becoming more and more like a magical beast and less of a human.

Magical beasts didn't have two paths to cultivate; they merely cultivated the energy of their beast core, which could be used to create spell-like attacks similar to a mage or strengthen their bodies like the battle qi of a warrior.

He had never heard of a human being able to traverse this path, but after conversing with Aiden, he guessed it had something to do with the uniqueness of Ace's bloodline and his being continuously healed by the power of Milianna's Edict of Life.

The Edict of Life wasn't simply known for its ability to 'heal' wounds. If that were really the case, it wouldn't be much better than the healing aspects of the law of light. No, the Edict of Life was capable of both healing and nurturing.

Beirut guessed that with Ace being in a coma and his body naturally trying to restore itself to its best state whilst also being aided by the nurturing aspect of the Edict of Life, it allowed Ace's body to begin something of an evolution.

Hearing that, Ace couldn't help but feel a strong sense of excitement and anticipation rise up within him. Unfortunately, aside from cultivating, there was nothing he could do to speed up the process, and as he wasn't willing to skimp out on his comprehension, who knew how long it would take before this evolution was completed?

After reaching the peak of the sixth rank, Ace wasted no time once again utilising his master's technique to once again [Imposing Devourment], but having learnt his lesson after overdoing it last time, Ace immediately stopped after breaking through to the early stage of the seventh rank.

Upon doing so, he was immediately shocked and delighted to discover that not only had the fusion of his warrior and mage paths gotten closer once again, but the quality of his bloodline seemed to have improved as well.

Every time he broke through a major realm, Ace always found that the potential of both his [Armament Haki] and [Observation Haki] had increased, giving him room for improvement, but this time, his [Observation Haki] and, by extension, the power of his soul, improved to its limits without him needing to do anything, allowing him to spread his [Observation] over 8 km in its uncompressed form, and 80 meters when compressed. Right now, the power of his soul had faintly surpassed that of a prime saint mage.

As for his [Armament Haki], as a rank six warrior, Ace was able to coat all of his body at once, but if he were to use it on his weapon, he would need to sacrifice the coating of part of his body. He always knew that it would be when he was a rank seven that he would be able to coat both his body and weapon at the same time, but what he hadn't expected was that, although he could choose still to coat individual parts of his body when coating it all at the same time, he, like Amira, Linley, and the other descendants of the four supreme warriors, his warrior cultivation would increase by an entire realm.

Despite only being at the early stages of the seventh rank, when using his [Armament Haki], his warrior cultivation jumped straight to the eighth rank. And because he still hadn't begun cultivating any form of his battle-qi, his body's natural potential was further improved, making him equal to the average magical beast in the same realm.

Still, the thing Ace was most excited about was the improvement of his soul. Although it wasn't by a heaven-defying amount, it still meant he was able to continue increasing his comprehension of the laws of fire.

If, during his fight with Linley, his power only barely matched that of a peak saint, now he could be considered fully entrenched within that sub-realm.

Overall, Ace felt more confident than ever about his upcoming adventure in the Necropolis of the Gods.

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