Chapter 457: Ninety-Fifth Floor, The Phantom of the Predecessor (4)
I had first stumbled upon this skill in the training room while researching mana exhaustion. I hadn’t even given it a name yet. Training felt far more worthwhile than wasting time trying to come up with one.
As a general concept, enemies became increasingly formidable the higher I climbed—and that was especially the case after the ninetieth floor. After killing Eternal Feast, I had already anticipated even stronger opponents to emerge. That had generated a desire to test my limits.
How far can I push myself? How long can I last after running out of energy?
It was crucial to determine to what extent I could deplete my mana. Although, to be precise, calling it “mana exhaustion” wasn’t entirely accurate. Even without mana, I could keep myself operating with divinity or causality.
Regardless, an experiment to see how far I could draw out my power before true exhaustion set in had birthed this skill.
An accident, really.
When I had gathered my energy to its absolute limit, I panicked once I realized that releasing it could genuinely destroy the training room. Therefore, I directed that force into the circuits within my body, partly to test my durability as well.
Divinity. Mana. Causality.
The immense volume made my circuits feel as if they would rupture. To compensate, I transmuted the energy into lightning, amplifying its speed. The result was astonishing. Unfortunately for me, it left scars on the circuits. Wounds caused by the fusion of causality, divinity, and mana healed agonizingly slowly, and some didn’t heal at all.
Additionally, the rest of me suffered under the same strain. It felt as if my overall physical capability had diminished, and that, too, refused to recover. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the technique also put a noticeable dent into my mental state. I remained in a haze for quite some time.
I had hoped to never use it again, but it was undeniably a powerful skill. After all, if I ever found myself forced to rely on it in actual combat, that would mean I had no other path forward, that my life was at stake.
Survival by mortgaging my future is still survival. I would be grateful to just be alive.