"Dinner is ready. We have tacos," Dylan said.

"Really?" I asked in surprise.

"We have the right spice, bread, and chopped up chicken. No ground beef unfortunately," he told me. I had been sitting at the front of the airship looking over everything that had been handed over. I packed it all back up in the chest and went inside the cabin to have dinner.

I had spent all day reviewing everything that was left behind and it was frustrating for a couple of reasons. The primary reason, was the difficulty in getting back. The idea being to cross over to another layer where the sphere had been before, and then get back the same way.

There was nothing to breathe on the other side, which meant the mask would have to do. If it got damaged for suffered an issue, I would be in a big trouble. My body was a lot tougher than the mask. Also, if the enchantments broke on it, then that would be bad. While there were instructions to make more, enchanting required too many steps that I didn't want to go through.

Final bit of frustration was that Jacob's data had a high chance of being right. I had noted that the higher level monsters becoming slightly more sluggish during the grinding sessions. I had thought it was improvement on my end, but that might not be the case.

I could also ignore the sphere and keep grinding. Since I had damaged it before, and I had a lot more energy saved up now with my Spirit stat. I would be able to unleash six times as many attacks, compared to before. It was just a matter of getting close to the sphere and unleashing on it. While it might shield and attempt to stop me, a larger energy reserve was exactly why I had kept picking the Spirit stat. If I faced a threat, I wanted to be sure to win.

Enjoying the chicken tacos Dylan made, I thought about what I should do. The simple and correct answer was to keep grinding. The sphere had not come back yet. When it did come back, I would take it out then. Until that happened, it wasn't worth the risk to try and track it down on its home turf.

"What are you thinking? You have been fairly quiet since you got that chest," Dylan said.

"Thinking about responsibility and risks. Clarissa sent a message to me," I replied and pulled out the letter and handed it over. Dylan read it and then handed it back to me.

"So, you are going to ignore this sphere?" he asked me.

"Not ignore, merely leave it alone. I damaged it before when I was weaker, if it returns, I will destroy it, or banish it again. Going off on what amounts to a suicide mission is foolishness. Even if everything was accurate there are too many uncertainties," I explained.

While it would be nice to be on the attack, it was too impractical. I would pay attention if the sphere came back again, but I didn't plan on interfering for now. Maybe in the future, the far future I would, but the risk was just too great.

One wrong move, and there would be no way to return. I would run out of air and then die. That would be a joke for someone of my power, but one of the only ways to assure my death. While I was confident Clarissa wasn't trying to kill me, there was just an unacceptable level of risk attached to the entire plan.

"If you want to go, test things out, you can," I said to Dylan.

"I am good, thanks," he said. I let out a half scoff, half laugh at that statement. No one would want to go on a suicide mission. "Any idea what stat you are going to focus on next?"

"Either Mind or Perception most likely. I will need trillions of points regardless. Probably Mind, bring it up to three hundred thousand, and then Body up to a million, perhaps three million. I am curious to see if there is another benchmark at a million points and if my meta-point takes that into account," I said.

"Not Spirit?" he asked me and I shook my head, glad to be talking about a subject I enjoyed far more than suicide missions.

"I have more than enough at the moment. Well, you can never have enough, but you know what I mean. Bringing Mind up and then Body, will let me react far more quickly and survive counter attacks more easily. I also want to know if there is a bonus or something at a million stat points. If there is, that will impact how I work on improving my remaining stats. Better to focus on them one at a time, rather than spreading the points out."

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"You talked about imbalance before. Bringing your Body stat that high by itself, might create issues," he replied.

"True. Very true. But only the Mind stat is linked. That is why I am leaning towards bringing up my Mind stat, and then focusing back on the Body stat. Being able to deliver massive force based attacks is very important to my fighting style at close range."

"I thought you used your skills?" Dylan said and waved my hand in a see sawing motion.

"I do. But being able to unleash physical attacks is very useful to put pressure on an enemy. Forcing them to defend at a high cost, to a relatively low cost from myself. I learned that from the Divine Empress and that has held true going forward. Also, when I can kill level 7 monsters with just my Body stat, then it will be a qualitative change in my ability to grind," I replied.

Even with her son being a complete asshole, her evil Empire, her crippling me, I still respected the Divine Empress as a melee fighter. There is nothing scarier than someone with her Body stat, knowing how to use it, and rushing at you with the intent to rip your head clean off your body. I hated fighting like that, since it was a huge risk in my mind, getting up close to an enemy instead of fighting them at a distance.

But it gave huge advantages to individual fighting like that in closer quarters. I couldn't afford to have obvious weaknesses. I was on my own in terms of fighting. There would be no assistance from any team in the future. Sure I could call on help for a larger operation, but in terms of a high level battle, there was no one who could stand at my side.

Michelle was good, but there was no way she could match me now. While it was tempting to rest and say I didn't need to improve while grinding away, melee fighting was a huge weakness of mine that I needed to overcome. It wasn't enough to have system skills, but one had to have combat skills as well. Too many people made that mistake, which was why they would never be great. They thought of either one or the other. That you either used skills or you fought with a weapon.

It wasn't the fault of any one person, just human nature wanting to categorize things and specialization. There was an argument to be made that I was also sub-par with summons, but they just weren't interesting to me as a combat method. More a liability with how distracting they could be by getting other sensory inputs.

That was why I needed to work on my close combat skills and the Body stat was important. On top of speed and being able to survive better were other factors with wanting to see what happened once the Body stat reached a million stat points.

The first benchmark of 1,000 points allowed conscious control of how the stat interacted with a human body. While the stat did use up Energy beyond that, I was quite proficient in using the Body stat in bursts to limit energy expenditure. Also my Spirit stat had been increased by quite a bit.

Careful management of my energy was something I had worked out long ago. A highly useful skill that I had used against Qi Ji Long. While it might seem simple, it was the kind of skill that was under appreciated. Like seeing a master artisan or gamer at work. A layman could tell they were impressive, but not all the minor abilities that created that level of combat ability.

Like how the Divine Empress had no fear in her heart. She was confident in her ability to survive. She had just rushed in. Confident she would survive and beat down her enemy without too much difficulty. It made her entire fighting style that much more deadly. Her use of energy as part of her physical attacks was also impressive. Many minor sub-skills or passives that stacked up on each other, creating a legend. That was the kind of thing Qi Ji Long didn't have and why he lost.

For all his knowledge, System blessed talent, and other advantages, he wasn't experienced in fighting, while I had crawled my way up, combat level after combat level. That difference in experience was huge and allowed me to pace our battle perfectly. It was also the same reason why I was looking to improve my Body stat in the future.

I needed to get better at close combat, since I still considered it a glaring weakness of mine. I was better than 99% of all other people from my fighting and stats, but I didn't have that edge. I could throw out a punch, but they were lackluster in my mind.

There was no way I would be replicating the Divine Empress' method of fearless fighting anytime soon. Which was where a higher Body stat would come into play. A higher stat would offset fear and power. That was what was so good about stats. With enough of them, any combat style could be overcome, and they were fairly comprehensive as well.

So, for now, I would work on getting stronger. As my Mind stat increased, I would be able to better control my Body stat and resistance to mental effects. While the first was an immediate concern, I was always concerned about mental effects. Those kinds of things tended to be either work or not work with very little in between. And if they worked, I would be dead.

With my Spirit stat, I felt confident attacking, but now I needed to shore up my weak points as much as possible going forward. It would be far too easy to think I was doing alright, and then succumb to some sort of stupid attack at the last moment that managed to bypass my defenses.

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