Chapter 258: Mastering the Divine
"Stop staring, I want to test my skill out." Mirabella added, her voice echoing over the bubbling lakes of magma. Her golden eyes were entirely focused, the weight of the Third World’s terrifying hierarchy pushing her to immediately solidify her new arsenal.
"Um... Master, my fastest skill?" Adira asked again, still confused, her tiny wings fluttering erratically while Mirabella nodded her head with absolute certainty. The Divine Fairy possessed a attack speed that broke the conventional laws of the System; to ask for her fastest attack was to invite instant death for any normal mortal.
"Ok, Master." Adira finally relented, trusting the absolute authority of her sovereign.
She raised one tiny, glowing finger, and pointed it at Mirabella. Without any words, chant, or any telegraphing sign, the ambient energy violently compressed. A needle made of pure, concentrated spirit energy shot out of her fingertip with incredible speed, moving in nanoseconds. It was an attack designed to bypass physical armor and directly puncture the soul.
Mirabella, who had already activated the skill before even asking, watched the world fundamentally alter. She stared at the needle moving towards her. To anyone else, it was an invisible blur of death. But through the lens of The Almighty, the attack crawled through the air, dragging ribbons of distorted light behind it. She simply, almost lazily, tilted her head to the side.
WHOOSH!
It flew past her ear, close enough to sever a single strand of her hair, heading towards a distant, volcanic mountain, and smashed into it. The sheer force created massive, spiderweb cracks on the obsidian surface. But the next moment, the laws of the supreme artifact intervened, and the mountain miraculously molded itself back together, erasing the damage entirely.
’Indeed that attack was even faster than a Lv500 Assassin’s attack...’ Mirabella thought, calculating the terrifying velocity as she looked over her shoulder at the self-repairing mountain.
’We are in the golden palace so it was completely suppressed, if we were outside, that volcano mountain would be destroyed.’ She turned her head to Adira, who had a profound look of surprise frozen on her delicate face.
Her agility stats were monumentally higher than Mirabella’s; mathematically, there was no way Mirabella could easily dodge her attack without actively triggering an evasion skill. Yet, she had moved with the casual grace of someone who had practiced the dodge a hundred times.
"Good, it seems this skill isn’t a waste... The description shows I can see ten seconds ahead of time, but it didn’t show I can slow down time for ten seconds too." She held her jaw, analyzing the hidden mechanics of her new divine law. True precognition wasn’t just knowing what would happen; it was having the temporal bandwidth to react to it.
"Is this the upgraded version? It seems I will have to upgrade this skill without the imperial Bloodline help." She murmured. The realization that she had to forge her own path of mastery, only hardened her resolve. She turned her head to the remaining skill scrolls floating in the ashen air.
"Let’s check another."
She stretched forth her hand towards the second skill scroll. It shattered into a brilliant silver light, defying the oppressive red gloom of the Fire Zone, and flew into her body, sinking directly into her soul with a comforting warmth.
{Congratulations, Host gained a new skill.}
{Sun Family Absorption Technique.}
"Huh? This even has the sun family name on this skill... Don’t tell me Mom planned this." Mirabella muttered, a rare look of astonishment crossing her face as the profound information decoded itself into her mind. Her mother’s shadow stretched far beyond simple inheritance; she had laid out the exact stepping stones to conquer the higher realms.
{Sun family absorption technique: Can Absorb 100% of User’s full spirit energy from heaven and Earth, can also absorb energy directly from any target, which is equal to 100% of User’s full health point.}
{Skill can’t be maxed.}
"This is crazy! If blood sucker can absorb health from enemies, this skill can directly absorb their spirit energy... My health stat is abnormally high... Even a Lv500 fighter won’t have that much spirit energy, if I absorb everything, they will simply be drained." She nodded her head in deep, predatory satisfaction. In a battle of attrition, she was now virtually invincible. To drain an opponent’s spirit energy was to strip them of their ability to use skills, rendering even the most powerful mages powerless.
"Not only that, I can also absorb spirit energy directly from Heaven and Earth... This is a Cultivator’s Ability? Isn’t this God rank skill too overpowered?" She nodded her head, piecing the puzzle together. This was the bridge between the LitRPG System of Galaxy Fall and the raw, atmospheric power-scaling of the Third World that Luigi had described. She turned to Adira.
She knew she couldn’t test the ability on her, mainly because Adira possessed infinite spirit energy due to her divine nature.
’I wonder how powerful this fairy will get once we enter the Third World? Cultivators need to absorb spirit energy to advance to the next stage, while she already has endless spirit energy in her... I am still curious about this fairy’s origin.’ She thought, her gaze lingering on the tiny entity before she turned to the third floating skill scroll and repeated her action. The silver light fragmented and merged with her consciousness, but this time, the system interface practically exploded with data.
{Congratulations, Host gained passive and active skill: Mental Overlord: automatically MAXED! Three stages have all been unlocked.}
"What? A skill which maxed itself?! And even has three stages! Show me!"
{Mental Overlord First stage: Host can hear the thoughts of any target and can differential truth from lies. Passive.}
{Mental Overlord Second stage: Gain 100% protection to all soul and Mental attack making you completely immune to soul and mental attacks. Passive.}
{Mental Overlord Third stage: Can Manipulate the mind of any target lower than User in rank, and can explode the body from inside out, the explosion damage is calculated with the target’s vitality; and the explosion is an AOE damage, which can affect multiple targets. (It doesn’t matter if the target is alive or dead). Active.}
Mirabella almost jumped up in sheer joy, her usual icy composure cracking under the sheer weight of her newfound authority. If the other two skills were just building her up for defense and sustainment, this skill was something else entirely. It was the absolute tool of an Empress.
It not only gave her absolute soul and mental defense—a critical necessity when facing beings like Lamashtu who dealt in curses and psychic domination—but it also gave her the terrifying political advantage of hearing thoughts and knowing if someone was being truthful. Adding to it... she gained a profoundly lethal, crowd-control offensive skill that weaponized her enemies’ own vitality against them. Turning corpses into biological bombs was a terrifying tactical asset.
"I will need to experiment." She muttered to herself, her mind already running simulations of mass combat and interrogations. She sat down cross-legged on the smooth, obsidian safe spot in the center of the raging fire zone. The heat washed over her like a gentle breeze.
"I should start cultivating... Let’s wait for that egg." She said, closing her eyes and breathing in deeply, actively triggering the Sun Family Absorption Technique for the first time.
Adira watched in silent surprise as the atmospheric laws of the Golden Palace visibly shifted. All the dense spirit energy in the air, violently swirled and flew towards Mirabella, funneling directly into her body like a vortex.
The System, interpreting the raw, heavenly cultivation through its own interface, began to chime rhythmically in her mind.
{Host gain +100 Exp.}
{Host gain +100 Exp.}
{Host gain +100 Exp.}
{Host gain +100 Exp.}
{Host gain +500 Exp.}