Damon's Ascension-Chapter 47: Felicia’s Progress

After eating, Damon chatted with his folks for a bit before heading to his room, closing the door, and frowning deeply. He was just about able to increase his stats one more time, but the food intake issue troubled him, though fortunately it wasn’t like humanity was the first species to face this issue.

Many species had an astonishingly high daily sustenance requirement, even before accounting for their enermous stats, particularly powerful ones like Dragons and Behemoths. Fortunately, the IUAS had long since developed a food pill capable of providing sufficient energy for such beings, making it more than enough to sustain a mere human like himself.

Nevertheless, Damon couldn’t shake his concern when coupled with his eventual forays into the Chaos Realm. Higher stats made him stronger, but they also made him increasingly dependent on logistical factors. Sure, he could stock up on food pills and bring them along, but the Chaos Realm was unpredictable.

If something happened to deprive him of his inventory, it would put him in an extremely bad spot. He had no desire to ’live off the land’, especially since that seemed to only be possible in certain areas of the Chaos Realm. He calculated that by the point he reached Level 50, his caloric needs would be so immense that sustaining himself would mean devastating entire acres of farmland.

Still, just because he had this worry, he couldn’t stop becoming stronger, now could he? He would simply have to find a workaround and also factor in his Avatars, each of whom needed to eat, as energy was not shared between them.

Damon sighed and infused himself with 640 units of Worldly Energy, leveling up to Level 5. Since everyone started at the equivalent of Level 1, this was now the fourth Stat Point he had gained for him to distribute.

In just a day, this was likely breaking many galactic records. After all, putting aside his fast recovery, many people starting out fresh did not have as much Worldly Essence as he did.

Even if they got exemplary results in instances, which was rare as most were directly combat-oriented and hardly as ’simple’ as the one in Fort James, they still would only get about 100 units of Worldly Essence at most for their hard work.

Going by galactic averages, it would take about a week to reach Level 4, even if one had infinite Worldly Essence and had been fighting in instances nonstop. Yet here was Damon, at Level 5 within less than a day of Earth’s instances opening up, and the only thing stopping him was the lack of Worldly Essence. fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm

At a production rate of 1 unit per minute, it would take 1000 minutes for the full 1000 units to be done. This equated to about 16 hours and 40 minutes, and that was too long to continually feed his needs as his next Level Up would require 1280 units of Worldly Essence 8 hours from now.

So no, he couldn’t actually afford to skip Essence instances, if not for the items, skills, and training, then definitely not for the Worldly Essence. It was imperative that he visited them, which was why he intended to travel to Pra River’s instance first thing tomorrow.

With this in mind, Damon placed his new point into Mobility once more, feeling his already loose tendons becoming even more flexible compared to before, able to rapidly switch between active and passive states.

Damon couldn’t help but try out a casual backflip, only to land perfectly on his bed, feeling not at all disoriented or dizzy from the movement. In fact, it felt disgustingly easy to do, and he was sure he was capable of even greater feats of movement compared to this.

The young man sighed and closed his eyes, readying himself for sleep and for the work he would have to put in starting tomorrow to increase his strength while also dealing with the problems the human race would face in the public auction the day after tomorrow.

.......

"This is quite..."

Felicia was troubled by what was before her. She was currently in an underground bunker belonging to the Rothschild family, wearing a skintight polymer suit that displayed her rather supple feminine figure. However, she was more focused on the large screen before her, which displayed the test results from her blood and movements just now.

Felicia had not gone into any Essence AR instances today, simply infusing herself with her own ’Empower’ to generate 1000 units of Worldly Essence.

For that matter, her ability worked quite interestingly. It passively absorbed raw energy from any and all sources, be it heat, light, kinetic, or whatever, and converted it to Worldly Essence that was stored within her, able to be bestowed to anyone she chose.

After testing over the period she had been on Earth while Damon was battling in the IUAS, she had already discovered how it worked. Within a period of about a minute, she produced 1 unit of Worldly Essence from absorbed energy and could store about 100 units before she would feel ’full’ and have to discharge it.

She had already bestowed a full discharge to most of her direct family before Essence even opened, which had the interesting effect of unlocking their character panels ahead of time. So like Damon, Felicia’s discharged energy bypassed the Universe Will’s system, making her equivalent to a small-scale Game Master!

It was only a few hours ago that she finally used her discharge on herself for 1000 units, using only 40 units of Worldly Essence to Level Up, the resulting Stat Point was added to her Mentality straightaway. Felicia naturally thought different from Damon.

She had no interest in being a brute that fought and threw punches, rather opting to join the science team of the IUAS to bring the universe’s scientific level to a higher grade. She felt her choice was affirmed when she added the point, because she had to touch her temples which throbbed painfully, her forehead literally becoming red from heat as her brain was modified into a twice superior organ.

After that, her already intelligent mind had become even faster and more amazing. Various things she had to leave to computers to calculate for her, she could now do herself, while her memory functions also became better.

As such, she immediately added her second Stat Point to Mentality again, after 2 hours passed and she felt her ’fullness’ recede. Felicia was also shocked by her quick recovery and low Worldly Essence consumption, wondering if it was a thing all humans had or it was just her.

But she quickly realized the flaw in her thinking after her brain was upgraded once more, and she became sick with intense headaches. After some tests, she found that the problem was simply that her body could no longer supply enough nutrition to her improved brain, and could also no longer cool it as efficiently as normal.

Upgrading one’s CPU without concurrently upgrading the cooler or the power supply unit was a sure way to not only degrade the CPU but to bottleneck your own processes. Because of this, Felicia had to lay in bed taking nutrient solution for four hours before she could upgrade to Level 4 and use her third Stat Point to invest in Fortitude.

Like Damon, the moment she did so, her face changed as she rushed to the restroom and expelled some vile toxins from her body. While her catered lifestyle meant that she expelled less than Damon, what shocked her was her forced menstruation as her entire set of eggs were bloodily pushed out from her genitals, replaced by a new set of sturdier and stronger eggs that would likely require stronger sperm to fertilize.

Likely every female who increased their Fortitude would be forced to undergo this reproductive upgrade, which posed an interesting problem for the future of humanity.

This was why Felicia was currently troubled, because after increasing Fortitude just once along with direct testing equipment here, she was able to see more than Damon did. Not only did her entire body’s functions double in efficiency and quality, but her body’s requiered consumption of food had sped up to match this.

In other words, any further increase in Fortitude would soon see her - or any human - reach the point where they would be able to mimic fictional characters who could stuff their faces with tables full of food and still have space for more.

After an eight-hour wait, Felicia leveled up to Level 5 and invested another point into Fortitude anyway. Since this was the only thing limiting her Mentality from soaring higher, you could expect that she would definitely put some level of priority on it so that her thinking capacity would not be hindered by a weak body.

Now, her character panel looked like this:

[Name: Felicia Rothschild || Race: Homo Sapien (Pure) || Faction: None]

[POW: 1 || MOB: 1 || FOR: 3 || MEN: 3 || PRO: 5]

[Abilities: Eternal Providence (EX), Empower (EX).]

Her Providence was set to automatically increase with each Level Ups thanks to her Eternal Providence ability, which meant her affinity with the Universe Will was unparalleled in the universe.

Using the earlier example, if one eye of the Universe Will was watching Damon and the human race, then the other eye was dedicated to Felicia alone!

As for the rest... well, find some corner to hide and cry in, because there is no space for you!