Hm, I gotta say...what the fuck is going on?

It's been a month since the raid of that Mantis Dungeon, today's the 25th of July, 2169, and a lot has happened.

I've been on five more raids since then, and none of them deviated from the standard patterns, and as a result, my stats have blown up pretty substantially:

HP: 534 -> 779

MP: 1011 -> 1517

Strength: 539 -> 781

Agility: 720 -> 1072

Vitality: 529 -> 777

Perception: 703 -> 1008

Power Level: 672,700 -> 989,000

I'm slowly but surely closing in on the threshold into X-Ace territory now, the large number of High Level Monsters across my last several raids making for excellent fodder, not to mention a handful of Critical Levels with the Dungeon Bosses.

I've been training hard too, sparing no effort in sharpening my skills and keeping my basics solid, so on that front, things have been progressing nicely over this last month.

That said, I have hit a bit of roadblock, specifically with Drain...the rate of growth of my MP through Drain has reached its second slow-down point, and after I reached that point, my MP has only increased by about four to six points in every raid.

It happened shortly after my MP crossed 1500, which likely means that my physical growth will also reach its second slow-down point when my physical stats get to that number.

As a result, Ai's been able to calculate my approximate upper ceiling and how slow my rate of physical growth will become, based on how much my MP growth has slowed down.

It's looking like I won't be able to raise any of my stats past 3000, that'll be my limit. Well, that's as far as my base stats go, anyway, it doesn't account for any of my buffs.

To break through that limit, I'd have to somehow evolve beyond my current evolutionary potential, which would be impossible naturally, and even Ai doesn't know how I'd go about doing that.

Anyway, with my current rate of MP growth after slowing down, my MP increases by one for every Critical Level I use Drain on, but it takes about a hundred High Levels to gain just one MP point.

My physical rate of growth through Devour will likely reach a similar rate when it slows down, and that point isn't all that far off...my Agility and Perception have already crossed 1000, I'm more than two thirds of the way there.

Still, I can't exactly complain.

I'm pretty much the strongest Ace in Sanctuary Theta now, at least if we're talking base stats, and I've still got a bit of time before the rate of my physical stat growth slows down, so yeah.

It hasn't all been good news though, as far as the current situation goes.

While things have been going great personally, things have gotten pretty messy otherwise...the Archdemon that apparently emerged into the world a month ago, there's still been no sign of it.

And I wasn't able to get any useful information from Charlotte. Not because she refused to tell me, but because she didn't have any to share.

When the Teleporter rushed back to Sanctuary Delta, he was in a pretty hysterical state, and ended up passing out before he could share any details besides the fact that an Archdemon had appeared.

He was given a couple of days to recover, being understandably traumatized by the experience.

And then, he disappeared.

His home was found ransacked, his family brutally murdered, and there was no sign of the young Teleporter whatsoever.

A lot of people came to the conclusion that the Archdemon had attacked, killed his family and then abducted him for some reason, and there was widespread panic in Sanctuary Delta for a while.

But there weren't any such incidents after that, so the panic settled down after a couple of weeks or so...but the Teleporter remained missing, the entire Sanctuary had been searched from top to bottom, but nothing was found.

Based on his social media, he traveled a lot with his family to the other Sanctuaries, and Ace Teleporters are capable of teleporting to any location they've been to before.

Even though he was a student, it's been confirmed that he'd already mastered that Spell, so a lot of people think that he might have teleported far away when whoever killed his family attacked.

But he hasn't been seen in any of the other Sanctuaries either, facial recognition through the public surveillance systems haven't picked him up anywhere.

Oh, and it doesn't end there, it gets worse.

Starting about a week ago, a number of Ace Hunters have gone missing, including Trent Folling, the creep whose ass I'd kicked a month ago.

But unlike with the Teleporter, there were no corpses or crime scenes left behind with these disappearances, it just seemed like the missing Hunters had vanished off the face of the earth.

And the disappearances have been happening across multiple Sanctuaries, so these aren't isolated incidents.

The timing can't be a coincidence, these disappearances must have something to do with the Archdemon that appeared, some kind of Demonic Art.

But nothing that's happened has been ringing any bells for Luxuria, so this Archdemon might be one who was secretive with their powers.

"Yes!! I win, finally!" Exclaimed Aria triumphantly, as she pumped her fist into the air with a grin.

I was currently at my place, hanging out with Aria.

We were playing some video games, and she just beat me at the racing game we played before...I kinda zoned out, but I'm not going to use that as an excuse.

I've got an overwhelming winning record against her, anyway, so one loss is fine.

"Nice, way to go...so, how many more wins do you need to even out our record?" I inquired with a smirk.

"That's, uh...," She averted her gaze sheepishly.

"I think it's around sixty, right?"

"N-No, it's fifty-two! Well, fifty-one now that I finally got a win," She admitted with a wry smile.

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