While Cipher worked hard to roll for cards as quickly as possible before shop resets, he was also paying close attention to his level and most importantly, his stat points. He didn't want his true rank to suddenly increase and reduce the amount of experience he was gaining.

The limit for A rank was 319. Anything above that would push him into S rank.

With the three points he already had, he could only gain 111 more points before his true rank jumped. He needed to pay close attention.

After 56 level ups and shop resets, he had finally gained over 111 points. The total now sat at 115 when adding the initial 3. He quickly distributed them, adding 28 points to each stat and bringing them all to 233. He was left with 3 free points once again.

He realized that keeping them would only decrease the amount of points he could accumulate before officially hitting S rank, since unspent points always got added into his highest stat for calculation purposes. He decided to distribute these points to Strength, Stamina, and Agility, giving one point to each and bringing them to 234.

Now he had a slightly higher cap.

Well, not that much higher. But it was still something.

His next cap was now 85.

After 43 level ups, he hit 86 points. He quickly distributed them, giving 21 points to each stat. The remaining two he put one into Intelligence and the other into Agility. His Intelligence was now 255, as were all his other stats - except for Agility, which was now in the lead with 256 points.

This meant his new limit was 63 points. He just needed 32 more level ups.

He moved quickly to the cards section, buying, opening packs, and rerolling rapidly before he could level up.

But the level up never came.

After the fourth reroll, he noticed he couldn't afford another one. He only had 60 points left.

It made sense. He had been working at a loss every level up. Each level gave 320 points, yet he spent more than that on just the first shop alone. It was bound to happen eventually.

That being said, he wondered what had happened. He should have gained more points by now.

He reached out to Lyra through voice transmission.

"~Are you moving again?"

[That's right. But it's different this time.]

"~Different? How?"

[This will be the final stop. We're going to face the Evil God in the next step. You should prepare.]

"So it's finally time," he thought.

He turned to look at his cards:

[Owned Cards: Commit (40), Optimize (46), Import (45), Exploit (30), Merge (43), Fork (44), Delete (35), Class (30), Patch (50), Mirror (32), Rework (36), Seed (30), Blank (33) & Export (40)]

What a collection.

He scoffed at his earlier estimate of collecting about 5 Optimizes. With this collection, he was bound to be invincible. With these, he might as well just beat the Evil God himself.

Ahem.

He calmed himself.

First, he decided to instantly use 10 Optimizes. Since he was still asleep, he chose to increase the amount of qi he was generating.

After the 10 Optimizes, the numbers had increased from 2.14% to 13.27% while out of combat and from 4.29% to 26.58% while sleeping. In other words, he was generating over 30,000 demonic qi every hour he was asleep.

And this wasn't even his final form.

He used two Forks and two Merges to upgrade his Mana Recovery skill to A rank. Now its percentage of maximum mana cap would rise to 3200. With his current mana being 2550, he was generating almost 50,000 demonic qi every hour he was asleep.

Now that's something.

…

He then used another ten Optimizes to reduce the cost of the Instant Death skill.

After all those Optimizes, the price reduced to 10.73% of the target's total mana.

It was definitely not worth it to use Optimize on skills.

The same advantage that let him compound the increase of the Mana Recovery skill's percentage worked in reverse here. Every new number would become the new 100%, and reducing it only removed 20% of that new number - not the original. It was much better to use those Optimizes to increase the recovery rate of his mana so he could afford the skills in the first place, rather than reduce the mana cost of the skills themselves.

That being said, the reduction would definitely help this time around.

With just 10% of maximum mana needed, the skill was finally usable.

The maximum mana of an S rank was 6400. He should be able to easily kill an S rank with just a strike or two of his greatest attacks. That was approximately 400 mana. With Instant Death, he could achieve the same result with about 600 mana.

He was still running at a loss, but it was much more efficient considering he didn't have to engage in combat and risk getting third-partied or facing other unexpected circumstances.

Besides, the price for his abilities would rise in just a few seconds as he was about to level them up. In the end, it was much cheaper to just use Instant Death.

But before he could level them up, he decided to use up all the other Optimizes on Mana Recovery so he could generate as much qi as possible before the final confrontation.

After spending 20 Optimizes, he had 26 left.

He decided to spend 20 and save the other six. Although he wanted to spend all of them, he still felt a little reluctant. Just spending twenty and leaving some behind allowed his heart to calm.

After those twenty Optimizes, he was now regenerating 508% mana while out of combat and 1,019% while sleeping.

Currently, he was making over 30,000 qi per minute. Over a million per hour.

This was truly infinite qi.

He really needed to gain more Optimizes and put them all into Mana Recovery.

…

Anyway, with that out of the way, it was time to prepare his other skills.

He began with Shadow Assassin, using four Merges and Forks to bring it to A rank.

His current raw damage was 2550, multiplied by 10 from Will of the Absolute. That's 25,500. Then multiplied by four from Aura, and you get 102,000. And since the now A rank Shadow Assassin scaled with his A rank stats, that meant another 4x multiplier from Shadow Assassin, bringing the total damage to over 400,000.

That meant he could one-shot an SSS rank.

If he could touch them, that is.

He sighed. Well, no matter.

Besides, he had leveled up 10 major realms and could roll for cheats. If he managed to make Speed Hack also apply to attack speed, it would mean he had the ultimate combo. Stamina, thanks to his Infinite Stamina cheat. Defense, thanks to his Overkill cheat. Offense, thanks to his modded skills and Will of the Absolute.

And finally, speed - courtesy of Speed Hack.

Well, he'd see.

For now, he needed to mod the skills.

He was about to spend the cards to upgrade the other low-level skills when he suddenly had an idea. He spent a Fork and a Merge to finally take Mana Dominion from A to S rank. He then used four Forks and four Merges to take Mana Dominion to SSS rank.

With this, when he woke up, he should be able to force his other skills to upgrade by recreating them through raw mana circulation - just like he had told Maya to do.

Sometimes, my genius surprises me, he thought smugly.

He then looked at his other skills, wondering which ones needed an upgrade.

Battery, Unwavering Will, Regeneration, and Battle Instinct were the ones that needed upgrading the most and couldn't be brute-forced with Mana Dominion. At least, he didn't think he could.

Looking at the four of them, suddenly 30 Forks felt so little. Taking these to SSS rank would consume over twenty Forks and Merges.

Regeneration and Battle Instinct - he could learn them through battle. He just had to endure a little pain. So he decided to pass on them for now. After all, he had to spare a few Forks to roll for SSS rank skills with Commit cards.

So the remaining ones were Battery and Unwavering Will.

He needed to be able to heal his teammates instantly, so he upgraded Battery. He didn't do much - just spent four Forks and four Merges to take it to A rank. Since none of his teammates were S rank - well, except Maya - he supposed an A rank Battery should be enough to heal them.

He then moved on to Unwavering Will.

Unwavering Will was a skill that had started off as just another random skill, but he had come to find it genuinely useful. Especially after he had gained perception of his spiritual sea. Using this one lifted a heavy load off him.

He used six Forks and Merges to take it straight to SSS rank.

...

A/N: Yes, me also see the exploit. don't worry, let me cook. those who see it, just say "I see it" and don't talk about it. If you don't, well, don't worry about it.

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