Chapter 165: Inherent Limits…
After an hour or so, just enough time for him to barely recover from the backlash, he wanted to confront the demon phantom again. He gritted his teeth in frustration. He understood what the bastard meant, but… how could he do that? The moment Axel’s eyes met with that scarlet radiance, 5 seconds at most, and he would lose his mind, and he doubted the demon would remain still in the meantime.
That was the whole fucking reason he even got the skill energy sense, even though he pretty much almost died back then on the fake void, if not for Lucien saving him. But after being killed once in the chaosblood chamber, he couldn’t go back in it, the same day. Well, he could, but he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to handle receiving the backlash twice in the same day. At least that is what his instincts told him.
He sighed and went into his engravement room, he had already received the materials he requested to the valkyrie, that bitch sent it to him by an academy staff member that very day. She really was loaded; the other equipment he requested from her would also arrive soon, as it was noted in a small note written by her attached to the delivery of the materials.
Well, to be honest, he didn’t need any of these now, since his forging ability wasn’t on that level yet, he would have to get it to a high enough level to even think about starting to work on that. However, the other things on the list were pretty much close to finishing.
The spear of Heinz, the necklace of Lumina, and a bow for Vyra were all finished.
He had also managed to develop that function he would incorporate into every single engraved weapon of his; it would remain hidden and would not hamper any activity of the weapon itself.
As for the sword of Lucien, it was almost ready; it only needed some finishing touches, that is all. It all turned out quite well. Much better than what he expected, at least. Of course, he did not give his all to making these weapons, but it was close. He smiled; he couldn’t wait to see the expression on their faces. When they see each of these priceless artifacts of his creation.
Aside from these, he was almost close, close to advancing into the late stage of the 1st phase in his runecaster aspect, that is. Only one more pseudo rune optimization left, just one more rune phantom to defeat. Then he thought about the arsenal of his weapons.
The reserves he had, he apparently had 3 quality of reserved weapons, one was the lowest quality of the weapons, which was for sale, the other was a medium-high quality of the weapons, for those he was close with. He created those to give them in particular.
As for the highest caliber of weapons, they were left for his personal use, but there was one particular problem he found on it, unlike in the trial world where he could almost use an endless number of his own weapons, each weapon gave him a 10-30% boost in certain stats, then just imagine the amount of total boost you would receive when using millions of rune engraved swords at once.
That was precisely how he was able to match against 15 peak 7th circle powerhouses on his own, since he was at that time merely a peak 4th circle runecaster. Otherwise, how could he bridge that gargantuan gap in power?
Yes, he could probably at that time fight against one or two peak 7th circle beings on his own, but 15? Now that was out of the question. But now the problem here was that here in the Eldarion continent, one could not use more than 3 artifacts at once. Except for special cases, for example, Axel himself could use 10 of his own rune-engraved weapons. But that’s it, only 10. Compared to the almost limitless number of swords he could wield on the trial world, this was downright nothing. If not for that, he could have increased his peak battle prowess in a very short time to a very dangerous degree.
But there was one more problem: using 10 swords at once is a theoretical limit; in practicality, no runecaster can wield more than 5 tools of their creation. Well, they can wield more, but the world Will make their mana almost freeze, so they are unable to make it move; it also puts tremendous pressure on their minds. Unless you have an inhumane level of willpower, a normal runecaster cannot wield more than 5 tools, but he was never a normal runecaster.
He could indeed wield 10 swords at once, but again, the restriction of the world Will at that time becomes so strong that he is unable to combat with full efficiency. His mana and mind become sluggish; his strength does increase to a tremendous degree when holding 10 runic swords at once, but his control over various facets of combat becomes disgustingly low. There is a way to bypass it, though, which is by activating his runic eyes.
But when the active state of runic eyes is on, the mana reserves it consumes is just too damn high, not to mention holding 10 runic swords at once is already too costly which is again consumed even more by the world Will.
So, he could barely last a few minutes holding 10 runic swords and his activated runic eyes.
Of course, this limit of using a maximum of 10 tools at once will increase as he ascends to higher stages of power. But he was thoroughly disappointed that he couldn’t use that cheat of his here. He truly had to admit, the more time passed, the more he began to hate the world Will day by day.
He did think about his demon of obsession title, but he didn’t understand how he could use that as he wanted, how he could make it a cheat and bypass the restrictions of the world’s Will. The only conclusion he could come to is that he didn’t understand the sin of obsession well enough. He only knew that he was obsessed with his Sophia even to this very day. He didn’t feel obsessive towards anything else; any process that he worked hard on was simply a means to an end.
He needed to understand what exactly the obsession of his was, which is why he needed to defeat his demon phantom, but again the damn things strength increased far beyond its previous one. There is just no way he could keep his mind sane while keeping his eyes open; he didn’t need to believe the words of the demon. He needed to make his own way; he needed to defeat it just using his energy sense.
Axel sighed to himself in frustration, so many things to do, but perhaps he should advance his runecaster aspect first. Lucien, Heinz, and Valkyrie all had long reached the late stage of the first phase. Almost all the top students did. He was the slow one, you could say. But he had his difficulties as well, for example, his rune optimization procedure, in which he had to fight a replicated phantom of himself while holding the same runic sword as he did. No other runecaster had to do that after all.
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