Damon's Ascension-Chapter 46: Rapid Level Ups

Damon absorbed the converted Worldly Essence into his body, his total Worldly Essence count rising to 1420 units. Interestingly, his first stomach was not yet emptied, so a new batch was pushed into his second stomach for processing since what was already ’choked’ in the second stomach was pushed out into the third stomach.

Damon counted and found that the exact amount pushed out was 100 units, so the second stomach could only hold 100 units of Worldly Essence at a time before pushing it to the final storage room.

Well, the young man was done with the numbers, so it was time to power up!

He immediately initiated another ’level up,’ the same feeling as the previous time coursing through him as the units of Worldly Essence he possessed dropped drastically. While infusing into his flesh, spirit, and soul, he felt that he was being filled up rather quickly, but not at the same pace as before.

This was another limitation of leveling up. Your container had been expanded, but the mouth of it had not widened, so the same amount of Worldly Essence flowed in at a time, meaning that it would take longer to fill the container up.

In this case, Damon took about two minutes to reach the max, and he felt sublimation occur once more. Another attribute point could be allocated, and he naturally invested it in Fortitude.

What, expecting him to double down and min-max? Maybe in a video game where there were no penalties, but this was real life. If you had 10 points of Power and 1 point of Fortitude, don’t be surprised when your superhuman punch shatters all your bones in your body.

Likewise, if you had 10 points in Mobility and 1 point in Fortitude, don’t be surprised when you enter flash speed for 1 second and are forced out, panting like a dead dog.

Most creatures in the universe adopted the balanced strategy of investing stats because that was optimal. Anyway, depending on your racial advantages, it wouldn’t make a difference in the long run.

Damon breathed out as he felt his entire bone and skeletal structure squirm, even his marrow shifting and being replaced.

No, wait!!

The young man’s face changed as he stood up and rushed to the bathroom, immediately vomiting out three mouthfuls of a rancid black substance that made him feel endless disgust.

Had that filth always been in his body?

Washing his mouth, he immediately sucked in a deep breath and felt much younger than he was, like he was 13 years old again and could run up and down the P.E. field in school for two school periods without losing energy.

And he was only 21 years old. Damon wondered how those who were in their thirties and beyond must feel, and if they increased their Fortitude, what kind of crap would their bodies expel?

Damon’s expression was gloomy because he had underestimated the value of Fortitude. Everyone had an idea that there were toxins in their bodies from leftover food, medication, and the like taken over the years, but until it was actually forced out would you realize how horrible these things were.

Damon sucked a breath and felt his body. His fullness was rapidly abating, but it looked like it would take twice the time it took previously, which was in line with galactic knowledge and theory. On top of that, his Worldly Essence had been deducted by 160 units, which set the trend for his consumption henceforth.

Well, since he was in the gym, time to measure the increase once more.

First criteria, his Stamina.

Damon set the treadmill to walking speed and began trodding along, not feeling any joint pains or tiredness in his muscles for a whole two hours. Even when he got down from the treadmill, he barely broke a sweat and felt like he could still go jogging afterward.

The second criteria was Toughness.

Damon was not the type to increase his constitution and then stab himself with a sword to see how fast he healed, but he did not really have a choice. As such, he decided to test his toughness through impact resistance, by basically running headlong into a wall to gauge how much it hurt now compared to before.

Thank God he was the only one here. Seeing your entire race’s Prime Representative running into a wall like a Neanderthal would completely crush one’s hope in humanity.

One could only wonder how the Universe Will was feeling at this time, peeping on all of this.

The result surprised Damon, because he was running into the wall at a considerable speed, but he was being bounced back with minimal dizziness and pain.

The third and final area was Recovery.

Here, he chose the obvious option and slashed his wrist, grimacing the entire time. Bright red beads of blood formed and seemed to sizzle on his skin before falling to the ground, shocking Damon because his blood was actually quite hot!

He did not need a microscope to tell that the activity of his blood was far greater than normal. If a vampire like Ambrose were to see this, he would likely tremble with excitement, but that was mostly based on humankind’s understanding of vampires.

If the blood of a normal healthy adult male was like petrol, then Damon’s current blood was like jet fuel!

No wonder he felt so much more energized, as if he were a kid again with tireless stamina. The quality of nutrients his blood carried to each of his cells had increased by one grade, so their endurance had naturally increased in tandem.

The healing was rather slow. It took about ten minutes before the bleeding stopped and a bright red line formed, the stinging pain still there but not as terrible as it usually was.

Damon casually opened a first aid kit and bandaged the wound before thinking carefully. He would have to increase his Power next to see what effects it brought, and if there was something about it that was not stated in the Galactic Union archives.

In fact, this should be the case. The situation for humans was different from other species. Our history, evolution, and growth were unique compared to other species, so what happened to them when they increased their stats would naturally be different from what was in the archives.

Anyway, today was a day of rapid level-ups, not only because he was quick to recover, but because he could autonomously produce his own Worldly Essence without even a need to enter Essence instances.

The only reason to enter them was to get used to the nature of the Chaos Realm and experience history directly. Inasmuch as Damon didn’t like his hometown’s bleak history, it was always better to see it firsthand to see what had been blocked from entering the history books by the victors.

Two hours had passed, so Damon leveled up once more, consuming 320 units of Worldly Essence. This time, he allocated the new point to his Power, and the change was direct as his muscles began to stretch and then tighten, becoming harder and more tensile.

He naturally tested this too, with three criteria as usual.

The first was his Lifting Capacity. Damon knew that his previous limit before the advent of the IUAS was 120kg deadlift and 45kg overhead press. However, when he tried again, he was able to peak at 240kg for the deadlift and 90kg for the overhead press.

The second was his Grip/Hand Strength. This one was not something he usually trained, so he was not aware of its limitations, but when he tested it, Damon found that his grip strength had hit 100kg!

The third criteria was Impact Force. This one was simple, his punch force and kicking force measured. Damon knew his previous punching force was around 750 Newtons but not how much his kick force was since he wasn’t a professional fighter.

Now though, he could average around 1500 Newtons for his punching power and 9000 Newtons for his kicking power.

This was a solid and tangible increase that did not necessarily make him Superman, but he was now somewhat of a lethal force to other normal humans. This was also only the beginning, and in four hours, Damon would soon welcome his next increase. But as it were, it was almost evening, so he left the gym to head home.

When he got home to see his mother serving dishes on the table with the help of his dad, the two of them chatting and laughing about something, Damon felt a great weight lift off his heart. The pressure of carrying an entire race’s future on his back seemed less difficult to carry because of these two.

However, the young man’s face soon changed into an ugly one when he realized that all was not cherries and roses. The increase in his stats had also generated a new problem he was aware of but underestimated: the need for increased energy supply!

Humans sourced energy from food, so this naturally meant that to sustain Damon’s current physical state, he had to consume more than twice the food he did usually before he even felt full!