A youth and a little wolf appeared from nowhere on the top of a small hill. They were Yale and Wyba who had just left the special realm.
Yale had changed a lot due to the realm’s essence effects, he had grown a lot, and currently, he had the appearance of a fourteen years old youth, but he had used less than a year to absorb the essence. Thus, Yale was only eleven and two months when he appeared at the hill’s top even if he looked older.
It wasn’t that Yale’s body had aged more quickly, it was that his body had developed more quickly due to the essence he absorbed.
That wasn’t that strange as some noble kids also appeared to be older than their real age due having absorbed natural treasures that nourished their bodies.
However, they mostly appeared one or two years older, not three, the quality of the essence was far higher than those natural treasures.
As the nobles used to reach the rank 1 quickly compared with commoners, if their bodies weren’t more grown due to the natural treasures, they would look like kids for a lot of time, and to melee battles having a small body was a huge disadvantage unless the battle style was purely focused on speed and dodging.
Yale was happy that his body had grown, he didn’t think about reaching Rank 1 soon, but as he liked to battle in short range with the sword, his body after absorbing the essence was better than his previous one.
Yale’s appearance wasn’t the only change he had because he had already reached the 6-star mortal rank. Even he himself was surprised by how quick he advanced.
“Name: Yale | Age: 11 | Origin Level: 6 |Origin Points: 57/57”
“Vitality: 58 | Strength: 60 | Agility: 60 | Intelligence: 58 | Wisdom: 58 | Dexterity: 56”
He wasn’t merely at the 6-star mortal realm; he was near the 7-star with already two stats maxed. If he had managed to absorb the realm’s essence before it started to self-destruct, his realm would have increased even more.
The system had said to him that he should reach the 7-star mortal rank before turning thirteen, but given his current stats and age, that wouldn’t be a problem.
Yale’s talents and skills had also improved due to the essence effects. Yale’s time affinity reached the perfect grade, and his space affinity reached the high grade.
Time Healing had reached the twentieth level and thanks to the combination of the level up plus the increase in time affinity decreased by half the cost by second. After leaving the special realm every second of Yale’s Time Healing only needed ten Origin Points.
Auto-regeneration, as was also based in the time element, had leveled up until the thirtieth level, making Yale’s regeneration speed increase a lot.
However, the most valuable upgrade to Yale was in Absolute Protection as the range and duration had doubled. Furthermore, Yale turned able to use it once every three days instead of once in a week like before.
Yale had also received the Appraisal function thanks to completing the sub-quest. Before leaving the realm, he had used it on his own sword.
“Space-time Judgment Sword: Divine weapon created by the user’s past life and Great Forgemaster Tofesh. Affiliated with the Laws of Time, Space, Life and Death. The sword curses the wicked opponents torturing them until their souls become completely dissipated. Those who weren’t wicked would be forcefully reincarnated after being killed with the sword.”
Yale didn’t find anything new in that information besides the name of the sword, but that appraisal triggered the last hidden essence from the special realm which after being absorbed, granted Yale with a new passive skill.
However, the special realm had increased the self-destruction speed just after that as it had lost all the essence. Thus, Yale quickly picked all the possessions of the nobles he had killed before and left the realm without checking the skill he had obtained.
After Yale appeared in the top of the hill, he finally went to check his new Passive Skill
“Smith Mastery: Apprentice Level 1. Increase the chances of successfully forging a weapon. The skill can be leveled up by practicing the art of forging.”
Yale looked at the sky from the top of the hill and smiled as he understood why the most hidden essence of the realm gave him such skill after appraising the sword. That was Tofesh last gift to him before the realm disappeared forever.
Yale guessed that in his past life he shouldn’t have any talent to improve in the art of forging as he had needed to rely upon an external source to make the sword. It made sense that Tofesh knew that and wanted to help his friend’s next life.
The Smith Mastery followed the same format as the Sword Mastery, by having that skill Yale should be able to increase his proficiency in forging as he did with the sword and someday reach the expert stage.
Yale only felt a pity that he hadn’t managed to obtain such type of skill for archery, he also wanted to reach the expert stage with the bow, but the first step was getting the skill and with that entering in the apprentice stage. Without the Passive Skill, he couldn’t even be considered an apprentice in archery.
The truth was that Yale lacked a good master in archery, Nosehawk, and the Nacesai Academy’s instructor wasn’t enough to make Yale’s prowess in his archery turned good enough to trigger the Passive Skill.
The lack of good archers was a fact, and without good archery masters, the younger generation only had a more difficult road. In the past, it was easy for those who trained the Ancient Archery Path to reach the expert stage in archery as their path matched well with the weapon.
However, in exchange, they also forgot almost all the methods to get started in true archery without the path’s support. In Yale’s era, even reaching the apprentice stage in archery was difficult due to the lack of knowledge.
Yale sighed and stopped thinking about archery, and then he looked at Wyba, who was in his arms.
Yale wasn’t the only one who had been strengthened by the special realm’s essence, as Wyba was a beast with a life-bound contract with him, she was also affected by it.
Wyba’s appearance remained the same as before. She still looked like a cute and harmless cub, but the truth was that she was extremely different than before on the inside because she was at the 6-star mortal rank like Yale.
Even fools wouldn’t dare to consider a 6-star mortal rank monster as harmless even if that beast looked like a cub. In fact, looking at a cub with such power was even more scaring.
The only reason she still looked like a cub was that she liked that shape and thus decided to retain it instead of using the realm increase to become bigger as most beasts did.
However, she became able to modify the size of her body with Shape Shift, so if she needed to grow bigger in battle, she could do it without increasing her true size. Furthermore, she was able to hide her realm as long as the other party wasn’t stronger than her by a huge margin.
Yale decided to try the appraisal function on her.
“Name: Wyba | Age: 2 | Origin Monster Level: 6 | Species: Frost Winged Wolf (Mutated Bloodline)”
“Life-bound contract with the user | Potential bound to user’s realm.”
“Vitality: 60 | Strength: 60 | Agility: 60 | Intelligence: 33 | Wisdom: 20 | Dexterity: 46”
“Skills: Frost Claw, Ice Spear, Bloodline Force, Body Illusion, Shape Shift.”
The system wasn’t able to identify the level of Wyba’s skills, but he obtained detailed information from her.
Yale was surprised that Wyba was considered an Origin Monster, he knew that his Origin Qi had affected her, but he didn’t expect that the system didn’t consider her as an ordinary beast due to that.
One of the other two surprising things was that Wyba’s potential was bound to him, which meant that she couldn’t surpass Yale in the realm, but as long as Yale’s realm increased she would be able to improve disregarding the species limitations.
The last point was that Wyba’s physical stats were even a bit better than Yale’s as she had maxed all of them while Yale still had room to improve his vitality. As for the low mental stats, given Wyba’s age and the fact she was a beast they were already very high.
Wyba didn’t need to max all her stats to breakthrough, so there wasn’t any problem even if her mental stats were weaker than the physical ones.
After appraising Wyba, Yale looked at the landscape looking for any place he could recognize even if it were in the distance, but he couldn’t recognize anything.
As he had feared, he didn’t appear in the surroundings of Nacesai City or the Imperial City.
There was something he saw far away that caught his attention, a huge mass of water. That was the first time he saw something like that; Yale had only read about seas and oceans in books.
