Chapter 90: Point Decay
[System Notification: Inventory Status Synchronized]
Name: Luciassax
Biological Classification: Ancient Dragon (Royal Lineage)
Sovereign Combat Tier (Level): 152
Available Rune Points: 0
[Current Attribute Distribution]
Vigor: 40 (+10) | Mind: 30 | Endurance: 15 (+15)
Strength: 31 (+15) | Dexterity: 25 (+5) | Intelligence: 30
Faith: 30 | Arcane: 30
[Active Methodology Nodes]
- Ancient Dragon Combat Techniques (Beginner Grade)
- Storm Swordsmanship (Intermediate Grade)
- Dragon King's Body (Secondary Phase)
- Claw of Ruin (Secondary Phase)
- Dragon Lightning Incantation (Intermediate Grade)
- Erdtree Liturgy (Intermediate Grade)
- Golden Order Fundamentalism (Beginner Grade)
- Eternal Swordsmanship (Introductory Grade)
- Tibian Swordsmanship (Dormant)
[Special Attribute Node]
- Cradle Blessing (Active / Full Metabolic Compliance)
[Legendary Capabilities]
- Dragon Bloodline Inheritance (Unlocked)
- Memory Battlefield (Unlocked)
- ??? (Unlocked)
Unlike the standard architectural acquisition of the Erdtree Heal miracle, which had been directly integrated into his pathways as a fully compiled, executable incantation, the newly harvested Tibian Swordsmanship comprised an exceptionally complex, multi-tiered martial system. Consequently, the interface had merely cataloged the data parameters inside the Memory Battlefield as raw knowledge files. To transmute those abstract blueprints into functional muscle memory, Lucia's framework would be conformed to execute grueling, long-term physical drills across the training squares.
As for his current Introductory Grade mastery over the fabled Eternal Swordsmanship, the achievement was mathematically a direct byproduct of his Intermediate Grade proficiency within the Storm Style.
Auditing the updated parameters formatting his status panel, and following a brief watch of careful calculation, Lucia initial invested 5 points each into his relatively weak Endurance and Dexterity slots. Under the permanent biological enhancement driven by the Dragon King's Body, both of these baseline indicators successfully scaled to level 35.
However, the exact microsecond his mental focus prepared to dump the remaining 10 points entirely into his Vigor track—desperately attempting to force the metric to an even level 50—an unexpected structural irregularity locked his command.
[System Alert: Allocation Refused — Insufficient Currency Points]
Lucia stared blankly at the text block hovering beneath the starry sky, his focus freezing for a long watch.
A minute later, his mind tentatively projected a secondary thought command, attempting to raise Vigor by a solitary increment to level 41. This turn the data cleared the interface, but the available Rune Point treasury violently dropped its balance by an immediate 2 points.
"So... the exact watch a baseline attribute breaks through the level 40 threshold, the alchemical capital required to force a secondary progression step doubles its metrics?" Lucia muttered to the void, his brow knitting into a sharp scowl.
Naturally, his analytical engine mapped a secondary logical explanation: it was entirely possible that because his baseline health parameters, when fused with the permanent stat premium of the Dragon King's Body, had made Vigor the absolute initial attribute within his inventory to clear the level 50 mark, the interface's internal math had triggered a regional Hard-Cap Decay loop.
To thoroughly verify the arithmetic of the sandbox, he redirected his focus, throwing 4 points into his Strength track to force the indicator to 35 (+15). Yet, when his mind attempted to press Strength a step further, the required cost failed to execute a duplicate spike—the system demanded strictly a solitary point to clear the level 36 marker.
"The calculation is locked. The microsecond an independent, un-buffed attribute exceeds a specific threshold, the resource metrics required to purchase advancement suffer a violent surge. Level 40 comprises the initial threshold... and the architecture will likely hand-deliver an even more severe efficiency degradation further down the line. Tsk... this cheat code is precisely as unscrupulous and predatory as the analysis progress trackers!"
Following a brief watch of internal court complaints targeting his interface, Lucia had zero alternative but to reluctantly abandon his childhood speedrunner dream of leveling his Vigor to an un-assailable 80 or 90 in a single run. He dumped his remaining 3 precious points directly into his Strength track to close the ledger.
After all, the attribute enhancement mechanics governing the Memory Battlefield were exceptionally obvious across his files. Before the un-buffed base value of his commonly utilized attributes broke past the level 40 boundary, a perfectly balanced, horizontal allocation of points comprised the single most optimized, high-yield methodology to scale his aggregate combat voltage.
As for Intelligence—a useless, non-responsive attribute that historically registered as entirely worthless to his active inventory in the short term—he chose to leave the data blank. Lucia's center had firmly resolved that until his treasury recorded an infinite volume of surplus currency points that he lacked the options to spend, his shield would continue to execute the role of that classic, single-digit warrior. Who could blame his choice when the ambient mana of the continent was so thoroughly uncooperative against his draconic genome?
Clearing his administrative adjustments, Lucia evaluated his brand-new status readouts, a deep, weary sigh escaping his teeth.
The premium dividend was that for a vast season down the timeline, his physical capabilities would develop along a beautifully balanced, comprehensive horizontal track, leaving his frame entirely devoid of a structural blind spot across a melee—deleting the sector of sorcery.
The negative variable was that for an identical season of the clock, his mass would remain that same restricted water cup.
"My engine desists from spending further focus on this useless data—"
Allowing his ego a briefwatch of localized depression, he suddenly exhaled a long cloud of mist, his hand sweeping through the starlight to shut down the interface.
The final sun of his official holiday before the gates of the Royal Private School clicked open was already half-spent across the clock. His tactical plan had initial dictated a brief rest watch through the afternoon, before ordering his outriders to clear the paths to the Haligtree Palace to harvest Shirley from the girls' blankets. However, the exact watch his boots cleared his inner porch, a secondary idea wove into his calculations. He issued a flat executive command to his coachman, directing the carriage to swing its axis away from the eastern road, turning west toward the perimeter of the Dark Moon Palace.
The silver-and-blue Carian Royal Knights enforcing the quarantine checkpoints before the grand gates of the Dark Moon Palace recognized the heraldry emblazoned across Lucia's carriage plates instantly. Although their vanguard had logged an exceptionally tight timeline inside the capital walls, every operator attached to the Carian diplomatic delegation processed the data stating that this Ancient Dragon Prince clutched an exceptional, un-broken relationship with their three royal heirs.
When Lucia's horses dropped anchor before the masonry, the sentinels treated the presence with a relaxed courtly familiarity. They smashed their gauntlets against their breastplates to execute a crisp knightly salutation, completely bypassing the standard administrative protocol of dispatching a herald to announce his arrival, permitting his boots to clear the perimeter on his own signature.
Deep within the inner courtyards of the estate, the palace stewards led Lucia's outriders and personal guard detail to separate rooms to execute a rest watch, while his own boots tracked the center line of the marble promenade, heading directly toward the private inner sanctuary where Princess Ranni maintained her vigil.
Tracing the path, Lucia's tracking network isolated the data entry indicating that massive sectors of the Dark Moon Palace were currently operating under a state of aggressive construction and structural renovation. Originally, the interior layout and geometric design of this specific estate had shared an almost identical blueprint with his own grounds at Valeria Hall. But the current files proved that Ranni had issued a sweeping executive mandate to completely re-engineer the masonry.
The Carian masons had systematically demolished dozens of useless reception galleries, outer courts, and formal guest apartments, exploiting the cleared open space to erect a series of soaring structures that carried the distinct, unmistakable architectural signatures of high-level astrology.
Restricted by his single-digit magical knowledge files, Lucia's intellect lacked the capacity to immediately compute the specific operational purpose driving these newly raised stone structures. His mind could merely forge a rough baseline evaluation based on the gargantuan, uncut magic crystals scattered across the courtyards and the brilliant networks of glowing runic circuits etched into the limestone faces of the pavilion towers—it appeared Princess Ranni had resolved to transmute her imperial residence into a vast, macro-scale sorcery research facility.
Clearing a sequence of long, stone-vaulted colonnades to breach the threshold of the primary inner hall, the aesthetic parameters of the estate finally shifted back to a domestic cadence.
At this current chronological stage of the world, the Moon Princess had not yet descended into that bitter, apocalyptic isolation that would characterize her future path after the Shattering War—the dark era where her spirit would live inside a cramped, chaotic chamber at the apex of a desolate mage tower, where an visiting Tarnished champion would be conformed to utilize a literal stack of dusty reference books as a makeshift cushion simply to hold an audience at her table. When Lucia's boots cleared the final archway, the layout he audited was entirely un-aligned with that future misery.
The space was framed by exquisitely carved, white marble fountain pools venting clean mountain water, lush arrays of high-altitude greenery, and simple, incredibly elegant starlight pavilions, every corner of the stonework meticulously softened by precisely placed floral arrangements. The terrifying computational and manual resources clutched by Leyndell's domestic ministries had enabled this entire aesthetic conversion to finalize within the span of a handful of suns. Every microsecond of detail exuded a quiet, un-bracketed elegance and a grand sovereign dignity that perfectly mirrored the high courts of Liurnia.
The massive, white-furred wolf that Ranni routinely deployed as her personal saddle beast was lounging lazily across the lawn. Catching the flash of Lucia's silver hair, the apex predator merely executed a slow, indifferent flick of its plumaged tail to acknowledge his presence. Tracking the path a dozen paces further, a sequence of deep, earth-vibrating, primal growls violently filtered through the masonry ahead.
Directly fronting the entrance of the grand hall where Ranni held her watches, the half-wolf youth, Blaidd, was aggressively conditioning his physical attributes, his clawed gauntlets locking the mass of an immense iron training sphere that easily out-registered his own physical volume.
The exact watch Lucia's boots cleared the pillars, his vision caught the wolf boy standing with his back to the path, his massive shoulder groups straining with an intense effort as his chassis executed a sequence of heavy physical squats, his jaws grinding together to growl a count of the repetitions. Even the thick black wolf fur mapping the base of his skull was completely saturated with steaming sheets of sweat.
"Three hundred and seventy-one—" Blaidd roared through his filters, his muscle rows bulging to their absolute biological limit as his spine straightened to hoist the iron sphere through the air once more, his features twisted into a fierce mask of martial exertion. "Three hundred and seventy-two!"
Hearing the steady, un-hurried crunch of approaching boots against the flagstones, the half-wolf boy—whose vision remained locked onto the masonry fronting his center—furrowed his dark brow. By what manual of palace protocol had an outland operator cleared the security gate without a formal heraldic page announcing their signature across the yard? Furthermore, the precise cadence of the footsteps shared zero acoustic data with the heavy, thunderous stride characterizing Prince Radahn or the long, measured transit of Prince Rykard.
He forced his aching spine upright, throwing the massive iron sphere over his shoulder to hit the grass behind his back with an immense effort, his neck cracking as he pivoted his skull to audit the line. The exact watch his pupils registered Lucia's face, his expression initial shifted to broadcast a tracking recognition, before his entire facial symmetry suffered a violent, terrified distortion—the massive iron training sphere had executed three erratic, hyper-velocity bounds across the turf, rolling with a fierce, whistling wind directly toward the dragon prince's boots!
"Your Royal Highness! Execute a strategic retreat! Clear the line!" Blaidd bellowed, his gauntlet stretching out in a frantic panic.
Lucia, whose consciousness had been deeply immersed in cross-referencing his new Tibian files, casually lifted his silver eyelashes. Guided strictly by his instinctual tracking networks, his right boot lazily cleared his traveling mantle, effortlessly tapping the absolute kinitic apex of the rushing iron sphere to freeze its velocity instantly against the grass. A microsecond later, a light flick of his toe propelled the massive iron mass several meters straight into the empty air, his right gauntlet casually reaching out to catch the iron shell with absolute, weightless stability!
"Huh... the indicators do not lie. My physical attributes have undeniably registered a minor progression premium across the watch," Lucia murmured to himself, coming back into full room awareness as his palm weighed the iron sphere up and down with a relaxed cadence. "The mass remains entirely nominal."
As he spoke, his fingers executed a casual toss, releasing the sphere to drop with a dull, heavy crunch back onto the turf directly beside Blaidd's boots.
The half-wolf boy stared with wide, un-blinking, gargantuan eyes at the display unfolding before his face, his jaw completely un-latched in a petrified stasis lock. It was only after Lucia's silver-haired silhouette had entirely dissolved through the grand entry archway of the main hall that he walked with slow, bewildered steps back toward the iron sphere, dropping his knees into the grass to extend a hesitant hand, attempting to replicate the prince's relaxed, weightless lifting gesture.
"Agh—! My lower thoracic lumbar structure—!!!!"
Deep within the cavernous layout of the grand inner hall, Lucia's ears suddenly caught the distant, agonized shriek of a highly irregular wolf howl tearing through the courtyard wind.
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