He felt his consciousness being stretched.

No - that wasn't quite right.

It wasn't like when his consciousness had drifted through the void, nor like when it had been stretched thin across his spiritual sea. This was different.

It felt gentle.

Actually, it was more accurate to say his consciousness was expanding rather than being stretched. And it all happened so refreshingly, without any resistance. It was like his mind was growing.

After the process completed, he felt that his consciousness had become extremely sharp. It was as if he had woken up from a deep slumber. All the tiredness was cleared. Everything was focused.

This didn't completely eliminate the strain from perceiving the spiritual sea, but it cleared the strain right after it appeared, making it practically nonexistent.

He exhaled deeply, calming himself.

He then checked the description of the new SSS rank Unwavering Will skill.

Well, nothing much had changed. Except for the price.

He paused.

Before, he was paying 200 mana for the skill every five minutes. Expensive, but still manageable for the benefits it offered. But now that it was SSS rank, he was paying 3200 mana every five minutes.

While he couldn't argue that the benefits weren't worth at least that much, he still couldn't come to terms with paying that much mana. Even though he was earning 150,000 qi every five minutes, his heart still ached.

He suddenly thought of something.

"I could turn this into a sacrifice-type skill and then patch out the negative effect."

Patching sacrifice-type skills always made them free. The Battery and Resurrection skills were proof of that.

But to make this one a sacrifice-type...

He looked at his cards and smiled.

Well, he already had the materials. He had 36 Reworks, 32 Mirrors, and 30 Exploits.

The Exploit card applied the corrupted edition to a skill, making it unstable and adding dangerous side effects. While this seemed like the best card for making sacrificial-type skills, there was still the chance that it wouldn't make the skill free and just cost the sacrifice.

It could instead keep the mana cost while adding a negative effect as a bonus.

That's why he was going to add Mirror and Rework.

Mirror was mostly because the corrupted effect might not be reliable and could make the entire thing negative. Instead of giving good mental fortitude, it could destroy it. So he needed Mirror to correct course in case such a thing happened.

And as a final safety mechanism, he added Rework, which mutated a skill. With these two unstable cards coming together, Rework would stabilize them by taking their draft and advancing it into an actual usable mutation.

With that, he made his decision.

He took a Merge, one Exploit, and one Mirror. He merged the two.

He then looked at the merged card and took out Rework and another Merge card.

He activated it and it... merged?

His eyes widened.

Well, he had theorized this was possible. He just hadn't tested it yet. He had always just merged two cards and never more than that.

Looking at it, it should indeed be possible. After all, after merging two skills into one, the resulting skill could always be merged into another. So he supposed it wasn't that surprising that it worked like this too.

That being said, this was huge.

With this freedom, he could make the exact combos he liked.

But that was for another day.

For now, he decided to deal with Unwavering Will first.

He summoned a Fork card and cloned the Unwavering Will skill. He then used the merged three cards on it.

…

[Skill: Dominion of Will (SSS-Rank)]

[Type: Sacrifice]

[Cost: 0 Mana]

[Description: Passively boosts resistance to mind-related status effects and reflects any mental attack back to the attacker. While active, will becomes absolute - completely immune to all mental disruptions and exerts an intimidation effect on all beings with lower intelligence than the user.]

[Note: Continuous use dulls emotional capacity. Prolonged activation may lead to loss of certain emotions.]

He stared at the ability.

Now that's what I'm talking about, he thought.

He quickly used the Patch card, removing the sacrifice. Now the ability was totally free.

He deactivated the original Unwavering Will and activated this one. The feeling was about the same, but this one had a slight edge. Well, he expected them to be somewhat similar at the same rank. But the true benefit of this new one came in the form of its additional abilities.

The reflecting mental attacks part was self-explanatory.

What he was curious about was the intimidation effect on those with lower intelligence. He wondered what it meant. A skill with similar functionality was Instant Death, but that one used total mana.

But wasn't total mana just intelligence?

Or did it mean he had to be smarter than them?

No, how would it even calculate something like that?

After some thought, he felt he kind of understood it.

Yes, it indeed meant intelligence - but just the stat. It was a mind-related ability, which was why it didn't reference mana. While the intelligence stat was mostly known for determining mana capacity, it also had another added benefit known as mental strength.

He remembered when Elaine had explained that he could be immune to her charm as long as he had higher intelligence. It made sense since intelligence was also linked to mental strength.

The reason the skill didn't say mana and said intelligence directly was probably because it was referencing this hidden mental strength stat.

That being said, he felt quite disappointed.

If it was mana, it meant he could use his demonic qi - which was off the charts - to intimidate anyone at SSS level and below. But since it didn't count that, he could only intimidate those at the same level as him or lower.

With his skills, why would he need this to intimidate those weaker than him?

He sighed.

Well, he supposed it was a cool add-on.

He then glanced toward the original Unwavering Will, wondering what to do with it.

Should I just delete it?

But he quickly dismissed the idea. This was a free SSS rank skill with Commit. How could he be so stupid?

At that moment, a message came through transmission.

[We're here. How is your preparation coming along?]

"~Umm, I'm still not ready yet. Can you buy me some time?"

…

On the outside world, Lyra sighed.

She looked at the creature before her.

It was an eight-foot bare-chested monster with an ugly appearance, runes drawn all over its body. And adorned with some weird decorations. It looked more like an idol of an evil god than an actual evil god, to be honest.

The monster let out a grunt and an aura spread from it, pushing the others back a few paces. Lyra stood her ground, tanking the aura without moving an inch.

The monster let out another grunt. Nine more monsters appeared beside it - five to the right and four to the left.

Lyra looked around. "Any thoughts?"

The Moonlight Maiden turned toward her. "We're not strong enough."

"I thought so too," the Moonlight Maiden said with a sigh.

At that same moment, the other sects began arriving, guiding their own groups.

Jiang Qing of Azure Cloud Peak. Chen Feng of the Jade Peak Sect. Zhao Long of Dragon Cloud Mountain. Li Baiyuan of Whispering Pines Valley. Wen Rouyuan of Flowing Stream Sect.

Each of them came with their people.

Maya, who stood beside Lyra, noticed familiar faces among the crowd. "It's Dante and the others," she said, pointing.

Lyra noticed them too.

At that moment, Jiang Qing spotted her and flew toward them.

When Maya saw this, she immediately hid behind Lyra, clinging to her robes. "Sister Lyra!" she shouted.

"This girl..." Lyra just sighed.

She then faced Jiang Qing directly. "Why are you after my disciple's people?"

The moment she spoke, a golden halo appeared above her head.

A wave of intimidation washed over the entire crowd.

The flying sect masters felt as though they would fall out of the air. They gritted their teeth - if they were to fall, they would lose face in front of their disciples. They absolutely must not.

Jiang Qing was struggling just to look up. Just what was this creature? They already had their plates full with the Evil God. Who was this other person?

The Moonlight Maiden, who wasn't affected - intentionally left out by Lyra - looked on in shock. Just who was this master of the disciple she was supposed to take in? It seemed she had been spared because she never actually accepted him, and they could be considered acquainted now.

That being said, if they started infighting now, their world wouldn't last long.

She cupped her fists and bowed deeply toward Lyra.

"Daoist Lyra, please forgive them. They acted out of desperation, not malice. The calamity pushed us all to extremes we are not proud of. On behalf of my fellow sect masters, I humbly ask that you find it in your heart to show mercy. We meant no true harm to your people."

Lyra glanced at the Moonlight Maiden.

The Moonlight Maiden almost fell, taking a step back involuntarily.

The look Lyra gave her - it wasn't the look of a human.

Then Lyra sighed, and her aura released.

The sect masters could finally move freely once again.

Lyra waved her hand, causing Selene, Dante, Ryker, and Li Chen - who were scattered among the groups of the newcomers - to float toward her.

"Hmph. This matter is still not settled. I expect an explanation from each of you later," she said as her halo slowly receded.

Using her mind realm to intimidate in this body was quite costly.

Still, Cipher was her partner. She couldn't let him lose face in front of others.

…

A/N: When I say the evil god looks like an idol, I mean like a ceremonial statue that people go to worship and place decorations on. Like it looks somewhat artificial. Like a stereotypical rendition of an evil god. Basically, he's trying too much.

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