‘Damn, I’m tired,’ I thought, pushing my body through the thick vegetation of the forest. 

‘Just go down the highway, they said,’ I thought with a grim look on my face. ‘It will take you only a month, they said,’ I thought, forcing my limbs to keep on moving. 

Right now, I was as far from the highway as one could be without risking an instant death. And the reason for such an occurrence was pretty simple. 

I finally decided to stop stalling and go for the breakthrough. But for that, I had to prepare. 

And because of this simple decision, I did nothing but hunt for the past two days of my overall week’s worth of travel.

‘At least my abilities are improving,’ I thought, looking for solace in even the smallest details. 

Both my bolt and my warden abilities reached the ninth level. And while the warden would still take a while to reach the tenth level, I was half a day worth of grinding away from pushing bolt to the tenth level. 

‘I wonder if it will upgrade in any special way,’ I thought, barely able to hold my curiosity back. 

This was the one thing that I learned by spending a week on the road.

In a single second, I could hunt, I could read books to learn more about formations, and keep grinding my skills in both of my hands. All at once, all at the same time. 

This was the only way that I found to save off the one thing that I forgot to prepare for. 

And it was boredom.

‘Just where do you think you are going?’ I thought, sending a flurry of six bolts in a concise formation towards a monster I noticed. 

Before even my spell could strike its target, I had already prepared another volley. Yet, instead of using them like annihilation bombs, I turned them into tiny, nearly surgical needless. 

Even though I was only a week into my travel, I spent the last few months of my life within a forest. And now, a single glance was enough for me to locate all the valuable parts of nearly any monster that I would encounter!

The first flurry of shots hit. 

The front of the volley messed up the terrain before the poor, escaping beast. With its escape route cut off first, it could only dig its legs into the ground in a desperate attempt of not crashing into the abnormal area. 

Then, the middle of the flurry came, enclosing the monster within a barrier of messed-up ground. 

And then, the last two shots exploded right by each of the monster’s ears, whizzing away its entire head. 

‘Go,’ I thought the second the monster ceased to live. A flurry of the small bolts I prepared flew towards the monster’s corpse, shaving away all the meat from the parts that I actually wanted to extract. 

‘That worked out pretty well,’ I thought, landing by the monster’s corpse. By the time I did so, my left hand had returned to the usual task of stacking the progress of my wardens and bolts. 

I used my free hand to extract the core and then break away some of the more mana-filled bones. And then, as if the stop never happened, I continued to rush through the forest, in a route roughly parallel to the highway on my right. 

‘I shouldn’t get any deeper,’ I thought, resisting the temptations. 

With stronger monsters deeper in the forest, my haul would grow at an exponential rate. But it was simply too risky. 

As I was still on the tenth stage, I could imagine a scenario where a monsters’ swarm could overwhelm me. Only by reaching the eleventh stage, I could hope to become strong enough to fully fend for myself. 

Reaching the eleventh stage in itself wasn’t a problem at all. With the massive amount of resources that I had from before, with the addition of what I brought from the Sect and hunted, I could reach the eleventh stage ten times over. 

But I didn’t know what would happen then. 

Would a system come up with another mission to fill my potential?

This was the one worry that pushed me into hunting despite being in a great hurry to reach Mia. 

‘That should be enough,’ I thought after hunting down several more monsters and extracting the valuable parts of them. I then turned my head to the northwest, where I expected to find the highway. 

‘If the info I received is correct, there should be an inn somewhere out there,’ I thought, recalling a discussion with a man that I happened upon on the road. 

“I guess I could try breaking through there,’ I thought, only to laugh out and shake my head. ‘As if I would ever do that,’ I thought before picking up my pace. 

It took me only several minutes before I reached a random clearing. It was just big enough to fit my purposes, surrounded by three sides with a forest and from one side by a massive ridge. 

‘Deploy,’ I thought, sending all my wardens out before pulling out my formation sack. 

Over the course of the last week, it bloated with the influx of more and more formations that I crafted while on the go from the pebbles I picked by the side of the road. 

And right now, all thirty formations that I now bore flew out from the sack, arranging themselves in a perfect shape around me. 

The entire clearing that I found was erased from existence in an instant. 

Its magical footprint was just so damn small that the stray monsters would abhor the idea of stepping on it. 

‘Now that everything is said and done,’ I thought, pulling out all the treasures in my possession before inserting them in the middle of my arrays. 

Instead of just infusing their energy into the array, I prepared a special formation only aimed at improving the efficiency of that task. 

‘As great as my growth is, I think I’m slowly hitting a wall of creativity,’ I thought as I took a glance around at my perfect set of formations. 

Sure, they worked insanely well for something that I made while on the move… But I could hardly come up with any ideas for other, useful formations!

In a sense, I reached the end in terms of my formations. This was the top complexity of the craft that I could partake in right now. 

‘Well, let’s hope it will be enough,’ I thought, infusing my will into the formation and starting the entire process. 

No monster would come to bother me here, now that I was so cleanly cut from the rest of the world. And more importantly, no other human would likely encounter me here!

In an instant, the energy-filled my body to the brim. 

But instead of overflowing as it would usually do, it stopped, flowing at a constant rate instead. 

Another perk of a math-oriented gamer putting his skills into creating formations. 

‘Status,’ I thought, glancing over at the windows that appeared. 

And just as I expected, the numbers quickly rocketed up, propelled by the energy gushing into my flesh. 

‘This is for the best,’ I thought while watching how countless cores and other resources started to disappear, sucked dry of their mana by the formation. 

But soon, this pain of a hoarder paid off when all my gauges filled up, allowing me to advance. 

”TIC”

This time, the feel of the system growing was different. It struck me on a deeper level.

If the normal tic of the system was like a gentle rubbing on my soul, this tic felt like a sledgehammer striking my mind down!

‘Woah,’ I thought when I realized just what kind of insane amount of energy I now had under my control. 

Yet, my joy lasted only for the briefest of moments. Because before I could get enough of my newfound power, I noticed what changes happened to my system. 

BODY STATUS WINDOW

***

– Name: Arthur (Fian) Pendragon

– Age: 17

– Status: Filled with Energy

– Hidden Status: Warmed-up

– Body Status: Enlightened

– Hidden Body Status: Apostle

***

The first part was nice and soothing to my soul. Because there was a single change on it that reaffirmed to me the idea of what just happened. 

By breaking through to the eleventh stage, I finally left the initial stage of being that I was born with, advancing my entire self to the fully-fledged state of enlightenment!

But as I looked further down into the system, I couldn’t help but freeze.

PROGRESS STATUS WINDOW

***

– Body status: Enlightened

– Growth status: Mature Enlightenment

– Body status modifier: 

– Endurance: 7 411/10 000

– Willpower: 8 203/10 000

***

Mature Enlightenment (1 795 887/300 000 000 000)

{

Enlightenment: 769 516/100 000 000 000

Potential: 628 497/100 000 000 000

Drive: 397 874/100 000 000 000

}

***

Just like in the first part, my advancement to a higher state of being was confirmed. 

‘To think that the gap between the adolescent and then the mature enlightened would actually mean reaching a higher stage of existence!’ I thought, surprised by the notion. 

And then I realized the one thing that instantly killed my mood. 

All my stats progressed pretty nicely. Just the momentum of all my formations allowed me to reach from half a million to nearly a million points of progress in the three statistics I had for the level. 

‘While it’s surprising enough to see that they didn’t change…’ I thought before gulping down my saliva. ‘Just what the fuck is wrong with the requirements for the progress for this level?’

‘I guess it won’t matter if I use up all the resources now,’ I thought, fighting to keep my mental state from feeling down. 

It was surely the first time the progress bars were that insanely high.

‘But whining about it won’t help at all,’ I thought, forcing my salvia down my throat as I calmed down. ‘If I ever want to conquer this stage, I have no other choice but to work even harder than before!”

‘And for that, I need to keep going!’ So I thought before starting all my formations again.