Draco was naturally floored by this sudden realization. With the Eternal Tree's ability to bypass space and time on a universal scale, it might just be possible to affect Arthur's outcome in that grueling final battle!
Draco would need to find a way to enter Arthur's world first, though. He couldn't just jump in the portal that summoned them as that was meant for one-way travel.
A player by the name of AP_BERZERKER had tried something like that in the previous timeline. His character got lost in an endless sea of stars in the middle of the void and his famous last message before he had restarted his character were: 'I gamed like a gamer, but got gamed by the game.'
Currently, Draco did not have any means to expand his influence and affect certain parts of the game world he had never been able to access before. It would require him to at least possess the actual Orb of World instead of the replica they had won during the Divine Auction back then.
Now that he had checked out his items, both fusion, and external equipment, the only thing left his subjective magic, more specifically his Mage God title.
｢Mage God (Rank 3) – Special Rank
Able to use subjective magic without limits. Opens the willpower and concentration stats. Spells cost 20% -> 30% fewer resources to cast. This Special Rank title is always equipped without occupying a slot.｣
It hadn't increased much in terms of the title's effect, but Draco knew that this Ranked Up title would never disappoint.
At Rank 2 it had granted him the ability to imbue the most basic applications of the pinnacle elements into his spells and techniques! Now at Rank 3, he could use advanced applications of the pinnacle element in various spells and combinations!
(Author's Note: As a reminder, the pinnacle elements include gravity, space, time, order, chaos. The rare elements include lightning, light, dark, and poison. The normal elements were the basic fire, water, wind, and earth.)
Back at Rank 1 of the Mage God title, Draco had only been able to single and double-cast more than 20 offensive spells of the normal elements before running out of willpower.
Of course, once Devil's Guile had entered the picture, Draco had been able to cast hundreds of fireballs, water pistols, wind blades, or earth spikes before tiring out his mind.
If he used advanced spells of the normal element category – like flamepillar, water cannon, wind blast, or earth crush – he wouldn't be able to cast more than 40 of them collectively before tiring out, even with Devil's Guile.
As for the ultimate spells of the normal elements, like the fire element 'Armageddon', the water element 'Tsunami', the wind element 'Tornado', or the earth element 'Earthquake', he had been unable to cast them at the time.
In terms of offensive spells of the rare elements, he could single-cast 5 spells each and double-cast 2 at once before running out of willpower.
Thankfully Devil's Guile allowed him to cast almost 50 of the basic spells of this elemental category, like lightning bolt, searing light, shadow spike, and toxic mist.
As for advanced spells in the rare elements like thunderbolt, light beam, shadow wave, or noxious spear, he hadn't been able to cast them all at back then.
Obviously, this also meant that the ultimate spells of this group, being the lightning element 'Overcharge', the light element 'Arclight', the darkness element 'Shadow Veil', and the poison element 'Debilitating Plague', had been too much for him as well.
Similarly, for the pinnacle elements, he could not hope to cast even the simplest ones, only reaching 65% success in a single casting them before he ran out of willpower fully. After Devil's Guile came in, he could reach about 95% before he had to tap out.
Moving onto defensive spells, Draco could single and double-cast those of the normal elements for 10 minutes under bombardment. After Devil's Guile came in, he could last more than 30 minutes and even spawn multiple barriers over himself.
For defensive spells of the rare elements, he could supply them fully and maintain them for 30 seconds under bombardment. After Devil's Guile came around, this could last a period of 2 minutes before it all came to an end.
Finally, for those pinnacle elements in defensive spells, he could cast one spell for 3 seconds before he would be exhausted in terms of both willpower and concentration.
Once again, after the advent of the Devil's Guile passive skill, this duration increased to 15 seconds at most, which was a generous leap compared to what he could do before.
For support spells, he could mostly maintain buffs of a non-elemental nature for the 2-minute duration. As for elemental buffs, he wasn't quite there yet. After the wonderful passive came in, he could maintain buffs for 5 minutes and could still not perform elemental buffs.
(Author's Note: The above is for Rank 1 Mage God only. Below is for Rank 2 Mage God.)
For Rank 2, all his casting capabilities had literally doubled. If he could cast 500 fireballs before, he could cast 1,000 of them now. This stretched over the entire scope of his subjective magic, from offensive to support.
He had been excited, when he'd regained the ability to use Armageddon's large-scale active spell, however he could only cast it once a day and never do subjective magic at all. The same held true for Tsunami, Tornado, and Earthquake.
He could also cast complex spells of the rare category, though the number was humbling, only about 20 of them at any given time. These were spells like Thunderbolt, Light Beam, Shadow Wave, or Noxious Spear which he had previously been only able to dream of using at Rank 1.
As for the pinnacle elements, they were the highlight of his Rank up back then. He was able to cast the base spells of the pinnacle elements, or most importantly, add them to his techniques or sword skills.
The pinnacle element basic spells for offense were – for example – Gravity Crush, Spatial Slash, Time Skip, Reality Crush, and Chaos Blast respectively. Draco had never seen fit to use them thanks to other powers, but he was slightly more interested now that he was Rank 3.
Anyway, for defensive spells at Rank 2, not much had changed back then except for the limit of Draco's multi-casting. He had gained the ability to overlay barriers on himself, casting about 10 of the normal elements at once.
Alternatively, he could spread out the protection between himself and up to 5 other allies. As for rare elements, he could only overlay 2 shields over himself and cast up to 5 over nearby allies.
For pinnacle elements, he couldn't overlay them back then, and he certainly could not double-cast. A bit sad, but this was a past issue.
For the support spells, Draco could buff up to 5 allies for a duration of 10 minutes, which was as long as his Angel's Blessing skill before it got corrupted, though the number of applicable targets was small.
Aside from that, he could cast elemental buffs and most importantly, healing spells! He could now heal any target for up to 30% of their HP in one cast! This was probably his greatest addition upon his second Rank up back then!
On that same topic, he could now cast a plethora of debuffs on his enemies. Simple debuffs included <Starving>, <Thirsty>, <Enraged> etc, while advanced debuffs included <Slowed>, <Stunned>, <Confused>, among others. As for ultimate debuffs, they would be <Decaying>, <Weakened>, <Silenced>.
Draco could cast as many simple debuffs as he wanted, though they would only last 30 minutes.
As for advanced debuffs, he could cast around 10 of them in a single battle for up to 20 minutes.
As for the ultimate debuffs, he could only cast 1 per engagement by his estimation, and it would only last a minute at best.
(Author's Note: This was for Rank 2 Mage God. Down below is Rank 3 changes.)
At Rank 3, Draco's prowess with magic had doubled compared to what he had at Rank 2 and quadrupled from what he had at Rank 1. Using the same example, 1,000 fireballs would become 2,000 fireballs!
But that was just an example. At Rank 3, Draco could now finally say that offensive basic element spells of the bottommost category were practically infinite in his hands even if he didn't add Devil's Guile into the mix.
It didn't matter who or what you were, you would have to cover your head under the endless bombardment of cheap fireballs, water pistols, and the like.
As for the advanced spells of the four basic elements, he could now single-cast at least 200 of them while being able to double-cast 20 times with any combination of elements.
For the ultimate spells of the four basic elements, he previously would be tapped out after casting once, but he could cast any of them 5 times a day and he wouldn't completely shut down depending on the power he placed in the spell.
Moving on to offensive spells of the rare elements, he had graduated from being only able to cast 5 single cast spells and 2 double-cast ones to 20 single-cast spells and 8 double-cast ones.
That was 20 non-stop zaps with a Lightning Bolt, or 8 zaps with a Lightning Bolt along with 8 beams of Searing Light at the same time… not a fun experience.
For the advanced spells of the rare elements, he could now cast 50 single-cast spells of each and 5 double-cast spells. These were stuff like Thunderbolt which were called from the heavens, Light Beam which was basically a Kamehameha but white-colored, and more.
With the kind of power Draco could imbue them with, it was not impossible for them to one-shot same level enemies at this Rank.
For the ultimate spells of the rare elements, which were extremely OP in their own right, more than 10 times stronger than the ultimate spells of the four basic elements, they were now open to him.
He could cast them once a day, and would be completely out of commission magically if he did. However, being able to use something like Overcharge, which would create a giant death ball of condensed electricity, once a day was more than enough.
If done right, that could be a Field Zone wide attack. If pushed to the absolute limit, it might just affect an entire Area Zone, but Draco would need to bring in all the ch.i.p.s for that one.
For the almighty pinnacle elements, he could now single-cast their basic spells 10 times and double-cast twice! In fact, he was interested in seeing what would happen if he double-cast Spatial Blade and Time Skip together, or Destruction Blow and Creation Blast.
With these, he could turn the tide of a battle around, especially with something as nonsensical as Time Skip that practically allowed him to bully any enemy to death as long as he had enough power.
Having this kind of magical power in the wrong hands was absolutely terrible and should never be allowed!
The bad news was that with his Rank Up, Draco now had access to these spells. He couldn't do much yet, just using two of them a day would drain him, though it would not tap him out completely.
However, it gave him far more power than he should be allowed!
Gravity Force alone allowed him to push away or pull targets closer, which could mess with enemies. Space Collapse allowed him to implode a point in, practically killing anything that lay there which wasn't resilient.
Even if it did survive, it could end up like Eva in the previous timeline and be shunted to a random area in the main plane depending on various factors.
Time Control allowed Draco to slow down or speed up time for himself or those around him. It was one of the reasons time was a feared and hard to use element, because this was just too broken for combat.
As for Reality Warp, it was basically similar to using Izanagi from that old anime about a gay blond dude who wanted to become a village leader despite being a ninja and his edgy best-friend/love-interest whose clan tattooed their eyes.
It would allow Draco to reset anything that occurred in the span of a second. If he got slashed in half, one cast would return everything to how it was. The more he bent reality to change the outcome, the more it would cost.
For Chaos Spear, it was basically a concentrated lance of Chaos Energy that could be used to attack anyone. Since anything Chaos touched would be randomly warped or bent into something else, this could either turn an enemy into a 3-year-old baby or into a muscular vampire that could stop time and liked throwing road rollers on people.
As for the ultimate spells of the pinnacle elements, which were Universal Force, Space Destruction, Time Stop, Divine Order, and Chaos Control, they were out of the question altogether. Gauging the difficulty for them Draco could say that he would not even unlock them if he reached Rank 4, which made him tsk.
The AI was damn lucky, otherwise… hehehe, the things he would do.
The AI itself shivered, feeling as if it had narrowly avoided a great calamity.
Seeing his changes for subjective magic were so extensive, Draco was satisfied. He was partly curious about what changes Eva had gone through, but he would have to wait for her return.
Of course, Draco didn't think it would take long. Sublime Notion was great, but how would it be possible for the despair-inducing loli to hide from her life sister who knew her over two timelines?
Draco even began counting down silently and right when he reached zero, a despair-filled shriek sounded out over the entire core and inner area of the city, making many jump in fear.
"NOOOO, SAVE ME! SAVE MEEE, AAHHHH!!"
Many heard this and quaked in their boots. What was going on in this city? Wasn't Vita Kingdom supposed to be a haven of p.l.e.a.s.u.r.e and benefits? How come they could hear such a bone-chilling cry, like someone had met an incomprehensible fate?
Members of Umbra in the core section were also shocked, recognizing the voice of their second Vice-Guildmaster, Sublime Notion. However, by this time, everyone knew and understood how evil that shorty was.
They also knew that she never ate a loss in her life and all who made her unhappy would suffer terribly, so they treated her like an ancestor.
However… what was this? Had someone finally managed to do in the tiny dictator? Had someone finally taught her a lesson on behalf of all peace-loving and kind-hearted sapient species in the world?
And more importantly… should they help? Was it wise to interfere?
Many expressions flickered. Even the Three Pinnacles who were friends with Sublime in real-life hesitated. Not because of anything, but they more than other members of Umbra could guess what was happening, and were not sure they wanted to get involved.
As such, many adopted serious expressions as they decided… to do nothing!
After all, they were busy uh… setting up… erm important operations from Umbra, yes!
It was a crucial mission from their beloved Guildmaster that they couldn't ignore, so they simply could not leave their comfortable beds in their lavish manors to help!
Draco used the time Riveting Night was teaching Sublime a lesson to activate his Scrivener Tradeskill. He then began to record all the new spells he could this time, also paying for their instant conversion despite prices reaching almost 67,000 top-grade Aether Crystals overall.
After all, apart from recording the raw spells, he also mixed them with his second level of the Paragon Sword Technique that was now at 50% grand completion, as well as his Star Shot Technique.
Draco was even contemplating whether he should start working on his lance technique and what to name it, but ultimately left the dojo and then moved on to check his Privateering.
During the three months of his seclusion, he had spent time memorizing the details of his various sh.i.p.s so he could technically refine them too. However, the energy consumption was so great he would need to use his Inner Universe to keep up with it.
Trying it in Vita would just be harming his own kingdom's foundation. As such, Draco could only wait for later. However, his Shipwright Assistants were perpetually hard at work making more and more sh.i.p.s.
He had already set them down in the Cario Continent Coastal Towns to work there, and he had gotten more players of Umbra to take on Privateering with extremely lucrative pay.
After all, he alone could not hold up the demand for sh.i.p.s needed by his guild members in order to increase the quality and quantity of their sea trade.
Finally, Draco focused on his beloved Refinement. His proficiency was still around less than 1%, but he now had a huge database of items in his mind. It was extremely necessary so he could mass-produce stuff later on.
After all, his current stage required three main things, proficiency, energy, and knowledge. Energy was not a problem with the Inner Universe and the Eternal Tree, and proficiency could simply be grinded with time.
Knowledge though, was what required the most effort and time, so he had invested in it first.
