Damon's Ascension-Chapter 58: Silver Eclipse

When you thought about it, it was actually quite simple. Putting aside this newly introduced use of Worldly Essence to empower Divine items, assuming that one was only factoring in its basic usage of increasing levels, Worldly Essence would still not be enough.

Sure, one could enter Essence Instances freely, grinding them a hundred times per day as long as you found a way to speedrun them.

However, first of all, only localized Essence instances had the benefit of giving Worldly Essence at a fixed rate, and that only lasted during the 20-year grace period. After that, one would either use localized Essence instances of various races to excavate strong items from their history or ’public’ Essence instances copied from known areas of the Chaos Realm to practice ahead of time.

Assuming one understood the value of Worldly Essence and worked hard during the lucrative growth period of the 20 years, farming nonstop, they wouldn’t even earn as much as one thought because they would have a lot of expenses to keep up with.

Since the universal average consumption to reach Level 2 was 100 units of Worldly Essence, and the requirement doubled for each subsequent Level, it meant that one would need 25,600 units to reach Level 10.

This was not cumulative from Level 1 nor the sum of the total required amount since starting out; this was just for Level 9 to Level 10 alone!

Even if you got an EX on completing objectives, you would be rewarded 50 units of Worldly Essence per objective. The lowest rewards were 5 units at the F-rank completion grade and increased by a multiple of 5 per rank until EX.

Damon got 100 units for Fort James because he only had two objectives, which he got an EX for, and he got 200 units in Pra River because he had four objectives, which got an EX. frёewebnoѵēl.com

Currently, the young man had a gross total of 7,340 units of Worldly Essence, not counting the number produced from Devouring, as that was an Ability.

So even though Damon got an EX completion grade after slaughtering almost an entire army on his own by leveraging historical knowledge, he did not even earn 1/3rd of the amount needed for the Level Up from Level 9 to 10, according to the universal average.

And he could only get so many EXs because of a mixture of his knowledge and because his instances were custom-made by the Universe Will for purposes he did not quite know. Was it feeding him? Was it testing him?

Damon had no illusion that he cleared the two previous instances relying on supreme power. He already knew the details for the basic difficulty of the two, and it could be said that his starting point was far higher than other Ghanaians who entered these instances.

So in all, it was a bit of a stretch to expect one to burn so much Worldly Essence on a Divine Item unless its effects were transcendent. For example, the Heroic Ascension was definitely worth the cost since it temporarily buffed their wielder by 10 Levels, which guaranteed an increase in your abilities.

Abilities only grew by a Grade when you increased your Level by a factor of ten. So for Devour, Probability Manipulation, and Avatar, they would go from the F-Stage to the E-Stage when Damon hit Level 10. If Damon was already Level 10 and used this skill from the Golden Stool, he would instantly benefit from another 10 stat points and all three Abilities would be further upgraded to their D-Stage.

Unfortunately, this skill’s increase was temporary, but at least, it was not one-time use and it was not limited to him alone. He could very well buff his allies or anyone who he considered it necessary to benefit from this.

Damon then thought about the Akan pantheon and their roster of deities, as well as their authorities based on his memory. To his surprise, the item’s tooltip provided him with a list of deities, as well as their specific authorities/abilities.

1. Nyame – Supreme Creator

[Divine Authority: Cosmic Will]

[Effect: Bring something into creation.]

2. Asase Yaa – Earth Mother

[Divine Authority: Boundless Fertility]

[Effect:

1. Increase the overall efficiency of the reproductive process of a select female of a species.

2. Bless a piece of land measuring 100 acres, causing it to be fertile.]

3. Tano – God of War and Rivers

[Divine Authority: Bloodied Currents]

[Effect:

1. Empowers any chosen warrior with increased strength and tactical genius.

2. Control sea and river water freely.]

4. Anansi – Trickster God of Wisdom and Stories

[Divine Authority: Weaver of Fate]

[Effect:

1. Entrap a target in a very powerful illusion based on their Mentality.

2. Reverse the outcome of action by snapping the threads of fate.]

5. Bia – God of the Wilderness and Hunt

[Divine Authority: Apex Instinct]

[Effect:

1. Grant heightened senses, unmatched tracking ability, and the ability to traverse nature with ease.

2. Grants a person aura suppression upon all predator-type beasts and creatures.]

6. Esi Ketewaa – Lunar Goddess

[Divine Authority: Silver Eclipse]

[Effect:

1. Slow, accelerate, or obscure the passage of time.

2. Turn day into an eternal night.]

The six main Gods of the Akan pantheon were rather strong in their own rights, with abilities that could serve Damon well if used properly. Although the words on the items were powerful and seemed overpowered, the basic requirement was for there to be enough Worldly Essence imbued.

For example, Nyame’s creation ability could not generate a planet with teeming life if you only invested the base summoning amount of 1,000 units of Worldly Essence. This rule held true for the other abilities, the scale of them and the final outcome depended on how much was invested.

Damon decided that he would draw a skill first. As for summoning the deities, he would save that for situations where it was necessary, or he might just sell this Divine Item in the auction tomorrow.

Damon activated the first skill of the item, Divine Imbuement, and paid 5,000 units of Worldly Essence at once, hoping to draw a good skill and have it possess significant strength to empower him in further activities.

Either Damon’s luck was good, or the fabled EX Providence of the human race came into play with the Universe Will interfering somehow, because the skill he drew was actually the one he secretly wanted.

[Silver Eclipse - Mentality-Based Skill]

[Rank: EX || Stage: F]

[Effect: The user is able to control moonlight, achieving the following effects:

- Create a time domain that reaches up to 50 meters, slowing, accelerating, or stopping time for all creatures within per the user’s will.

- Darken an area with lunar power and cause all targets in a range of 200 meters to lose their sight, hearing, and smell.

- Perform minor healing.

- Gain minor ice elemental abilities.]

[Remarks: A bargain! For just 5,000 units of Worldly Essence, you have gained a skill akin to an Ability on its own! Now, shouldn’t you be grateful for the EX Providence? Invest more into that stat and see where it takes you!]

Damon’s heart began to thump with excitement when he saw the abilities, but it was all washed away by the remarks. There was likely no other direct way to tell him that he only got a skill this good not because of his personal luck or because he deserved it, but because of pure nepotism.

No, this was not even nepotism. If it were nepotism, Damon would still be excited, because as the son of a politician, he had enjoyed benefits that many people who grew up in normal homes would never understand.

This could only be described with one word... bribe.

And it wasn’t just a bribe for any purpose, but to get Damon to invest more stat points into the so-far untouched Providence.

Damon recounted the explanation he received for the Providence stat.

’Providence denotes your spiritual luck and works a bit differently from the other stats since ’luck’ is not really something quantifiable. Rather, Providence dictates the amount of ’investment’ the Universe Will will put into your survival and benefit, though an important thing to note is that it can even follow you to the Chaos Realm.’

Damon’s eyes narrowed. His earlier aversion towards Providence was precisely due to the important thing to note at the end. How he understood it was that the more one invested into Providence, the closer the relationship they had with the Universe Will, even allowing it to directly cut a portion of its awareness to follow you to the Chaos Realm.

Obviously, if this were normal, the Universe Will would not need organic creatures to spelunk the Chaos Realm for Chaos Essence, it would just cut a portion of itself to head there.

More importantly, why did one need to use the Providence stat for this? If the Universe Will was all-powerful, shouldn’t it be able to do this by default?

Why did it seem like the Universe Will was bound by rules, akin to the stories about vampires needing one’s permission to enter their homes?

In this case, the Universe Will appeared to be bound by some laws that required it to gain an organism’s permission before further integrating itself with them.