Chapter 661: Peak Performance (1/2)

Gaining levels was usually the easiest part for geniuses, with Daos and Achievements causing the biggest delays. However, Zac had long heard about how many people got stuck in the middle of the E-Grade, bottlenecked to never reach the peak. At first, he had trouble understanding why some people would rather dissipate their energy than keep pushing forward, but Zac had been given a rude awakening the moment he hit level 100.

It was the peak of Low E-grade and the first node that wasn’t placed in one of his limbs. It was rather placed at his shoulder. It was still at the edge of his body, but still on his proper torso. Zac read about the increasing difficulties of breaking open nodes on his torso and later his head, but nothing could have prepared him for the fallout.

The fleshy explosion that almost made him lose his whole right arm was bad enough, but the true threat was the invisible wounds that impacted his pathways and his whole body. His very foundations had taken a massive hit by cracking the node open, and he had been forced to spend three months in recuperation where he barely circulated any Cosmic Energy at all.

Even his lethal cocktail of Berserking methods during the final battle against Adcarkas had only required two months of bed rest, but this single node was even worse.

Healing pills hadn’t worked, and neither had [Surging Vitality]. Redrawing his pathways with [Spiritual Anchor] did help a bit, but he was still extremely weakened, like his body had sprung a leak or something. It looked like only his body’s natural recuperation was able to heal the weird state of weakness. His Void Emperor Bloodline didn't really help either, except by providing an unusually sturdy body. After all, his situation wasn't caused by impurities, so [Purity of the Void] did nothing in this situation.

He had somewhat looked down at Galvarion, the maritime mortal that he read about in Thea’s library, for taking over a century to reach Peak E-Grade. But he understood all-too-well by now. Zac had expected things to get gradually worse, but this was too much. His attribute gains doubled at Middle E-Grade while the difficulty rather increased tenfold. He had gathered as much information as he could though, and he made some discoveries.

First of all, this wasn’t only a problem that affected Mortals. Even cultivators were impacted by this change. Low E-Grade was essentially risk-free to boost, but even cultivators would be hurt when grinding open nodes with the help of their Cultivation Manuals in the Middle and High E-Grade. Of course, the threat to them was only a tenth compared to mortals who forcibly blew their nodes wide open.

Secondly, one’s foundation made things more dangerous. This wasn’t a surprise to Zac considering what he had learned so far, but it was still important to remember. The higher your attribute pool was, the bigger your energy reserves were. That also meant that you needed to fill each node with more energy before it burst, which unsurprisingly made the fallout worse.

Someone like himself probably took a hit many times more dangerous than a Mortal like Galvarion, who only was an Uncommon E-Grade mortal.

Third, you could minimize the damage to your body by improving your control of Cosmic Energy. This was unfortunately easier said than done for Zac. His energy control wasn’t completely wretched like his Dao Control, but it was still not something to write home about. Add that to the previous point, and him breaking open nodes was far more dangerous compared to the situation for normal mortals.

Luckily, there were some solutions to his predicament. First of all, breaking open nodes with the help of pills or treasures was equivalent to Cultivators' situation. The damage he would receive leveling with the help of pills would be negligible. His sister had already added a simple purification array to his cultivation cave that would help shed Pill Toxicity and slowly reduce his resistance to those types of pills. Furthermore, his Hidden Node sped up his natural detoxifying process ten times compared to normal warriors.

He was already at a state that he could do a level rush as he did back when evolving to E-Grade, but he was still holding off as he wanted to deal with his undead Race. There was also the issue of getting top-tier pills. Last time he wasted his potential a bit by just taking random pills he got in the Base Town, but now he wanted to make the most of it, only eating the best of the best as to not waste any time.

There were also arrays specifically designed to decrease the danger for mortals when bursting nodes. Unfortunately, those arrays weren’t all that popular since very few Formation Clans felt it worthwhile to study those types of arrays and improve them. The array he had got his hands on was called [Shedding Mortal Coil-Array], but it didn’t even slightly live up to its name.

It did at least lessen the damage by up to 10% by somewhat containing the outburst, and that was after Kenzie's improvements. But Zac couldn't complain, he needed every advantage he could get. Furthermore, it was engraved on an array disk, so he could always bring it with him in case he wanted to break open a node on the go.

Zac was convinced there were far better arrays out there, perhaps even some supreme arrays that could allay the dangers for mortals completely, but that wasn’t something he could get his hands on Earth, probably not anywhere in the whole sector.

His best solution right now was to slowly improve his control and work on his soul. He hoped that evolving his soul would come with all kinds of benefits, including improved control over his Daos and Cosmic Energy. In the meantime, he might get his hands on better supportive tools for mortals. But for now, he had decided to slow down his leveling drastically and instead focus on other things.

And there was a lot to do.

Grinding his skills to peak mastery was his first goal, and the next step was to start fusing his abilities. Some of the F-grade skills were barely useful any longer, utterly incapable to bring out the power contained in his body. He was better off simply fighting head-on than using skills like [Chop]. Even his skills from his undead Epic class had fallen behind by this point, and skills like [Immutable Bulwark] had long stopped scaling with his Endurance.

That was why Zac nowadays spent around ten hours a day pouring over hundreds of missives on shoring up his theoretical foundations. Pathways, Fractals, Attuned Energies, Dao, the Soul, and the relationship between all these components. Zac had studied it all to better grasp his situation and what steps he needed to take toward the future.

His improved constitution was proving invaluable during his studies. He no longer had any issues maintaining complete focus for days on end, and his memory was near eidetic as well, allowing him to remember pretty much everything he had read. Just one month of studying now allowed him to learn far more than he did during his years in college.

But the more he learned the more he also understood just how shallow his foundation was. Unfortunately, it was either extremely expensive or even impossible to buy detailed information about most subjects, making advanced knowledge scarce. It was no wonder so many wandering cultivators eventually chose to join a sect.