The passive technique increased all growth by five times, and it never needed to be reactivated.
As long as Intent flowed through his body, it would stay active.
For others, that would be a problem. Keeping Intent flowing continuously wasn’t easy. It required awareness, focus, and it usually drained people quickly.
But not him.
Maintaining Intent was second nature to him. He didn’t even have to try. It ran through his body on its own. Always had.
He exhaled and closed his eyes.
It was time to activate the technique fully.
Activating EverGrowth Soul was more complex than it sounded.
It involved setting up a system where one let the soul absorb five streams of experience instead of just one.
He reviewed the process in his head again.
The soul absorbed a person’s experiences, what they’d seen, felt, feared, achieved.
All of that naturally affected how a person grew.
Their weaknesses, their ambitions, their doubts, their beliefs, they all shaped the path of evolution.
This technique built on that.
It let the user create five different strands of Intent, each carrying the same mix of emotions, experiences, and goals.
Once those strands were ready, they were fed into the soul, all at once.
That way, instead of getting a single stream of experience, the soul received five.
It would treat them all as real, as if the user had lived through five sets of memories instead of one.
Nameless Death had to agree that it was a simple idea, yet it had a complex execution.
Only a genius could come up with such a technique, and create it.
Nameless Death activated the EverGrowth Soul.
He immediately felt different. The experience was hard to describe but it was novel nonetheless.
“Now that I have done this-“
[Quest ‘Brotherhood’ received.]
[Quest 1: Defeat Queen of Sanguiscreech Ants.]
[Reward: Quest 2, Location of a possible ally who could help you escape the Voraka Site, Recover your Mind Invasion Trait.]
[Failure: Chances of your possible ally dying would sharply increase.]
[Time Limit: 24 hours]
[Extra Note: The ‘possible ally’ has entered Voraka Site due to his Shadow Trial. He has been in this Site for nearly four centuries and he has important information of powerful monsters that when devoured can help you grow quickly.]
[Extra Note: The ‘possible ally’ is a volatile person and there is a high chance you can antagonize him for no reason at all. It is recommended that you approach this person cautiously.]
“So someone has entered this place due to their Shadow Trial.
“Hmm, this quest makes it look like that if this guy fails his Shadow Trial, it would be my loss.”
Nameless Death attention shifted to more important aspect of the quest.
“He has information of powerful monsters? If I can recover my Darkness Concept, then these monsters would be tremendously useful to me.
“Also, I can recover one of my traits, if I complete this quest. So all in all, it’s a good deal for me.”
Nameless Death did not know what his Concept was, but he had an inkling of what it could do.
Moreover, it wouldn’t take long before he recovered his Concept.
He was already at Adept mastery in Darkness thanks to his knowledge of Darkness and the EverGrowth Soul boosting the growth and learning speed.
After deciding on his object, Nameless Death quickly set out on searching for the monsters.
His aim was simple. He would search for weak monsters while he recovered his Darkness Concept. As soon as he got his Concept back, he would defeat and devour monsters until he was strong enough to defeat the target of his Quest – Sanguiscreech Ants.
“I need to be strong enough to fight the Berserker when he comes, so this plan is the best to deal with all my problems.”
He quickly set out on searching for monsters.
The forest was filled with them, so locating them was no problem.
However, a complication quickly arose.
“Even the weakest of the monster is early Stage-4. They are all far stronger than me.”
The gap in strength between him, who was Pseudo Stage-4 (stronger than Stage-3 but weaker than Stage 4), and the monsters was far too large.
“Dammit, is there not a single Stage-3 monster?”
Twelve hours passed, but he did not find a single Stage-3 monster.
Worst, the monsters had realized something was wrong.
They had found the traces of Nameless Death sneaking in and out of their territories despite him doing his best to hide his tracks.
It forced Nameless Death to move slowly and cautiously.
By the thirteenth hour, several powerful Stage-4 monsters were chasing his tracks.
While sneaking away from them, he found Sanguiscreech Ants. Three of them were standing guards at the entrance of the burrow.
“Ants live in colonies, so there must be hundreds, if not thousands of them beneath the ground. Moreover, if the guards at the entrance are at Stage-4, the one’s below must be stronger.”
Nameless Death frowned.
There was no way he could defeat their Queen within the remaining eleven hours unless he took a gamble.
“Dammit.”
He clicked his tongue and retracted his steps.
While all monsters were Stage-4 inside this forest, not all of them were equal in strength. One of them in particular was a good match for Nameless Death.
The monster used illusions to distract, chronomancy to speed itself, and physically-reinforced attacks to attack.
It was stronger than average monsters, but for Nameless Death who was immune to illusions due to his title, it was the only monster he had any chance at fighting.
“I can’t believe I’m fucking thinking of fighting a Stage-4 monster after cursing at my past self for doing crazy things.”
Nameless Death clicked his tongue and hid behind a tree.
From his current location, he could ‘see’ a monster several hundred kilometers away.
It had two hands, no legs, and it floated above the ground. It’s head was a sphere lit on black flames and it had no eyes.
The monster was the same size as his body, but it was dangerously fast even without using chronomancy, not to mention it was impossibly strong.
Nameless Death had seen it blow a mountain away with a simple punch.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
Nameless Death took a deep breath, and used Gap Movement technique to appear behind the monster.