Over eight thousand kilometers away from Almond’s location, Neo was leading his army of powerhouses toward Earth, with his device traveling ahead and scanning the battlefield.
Seeing Almond, Neo was surprised, but that just gave him an opportunity. ‘Kexell is also here. Did he join hands with Almond?’
Almond saw the device coming at him before Neo’s voice rang out.
“Have you thought about my proposal? Kexell is also here, let’s finish him off.”
Almond blinked and smiled. “Nope.”
After a second of silence, Neo’s voice rang out, calm. “It looks like you decided to join hands with Kexell instead. I’m surprised you decided to create your downfall like that.”
“We’ll see who will fall down and who will rise,” Almond chuckled.
Afterward, he snapped his finger, teleporting him and Kexell directly back to the Earth’s base.
On the other hand, Neo, who was on his large spacecraft’s top floor, started rubbing his chin.
‘He should not know that three armies are coming at him and his world,’ Neo’s eyes glinted. ‘But he will be prepared nonetheless.’
‘Still, Kexell will be handled by Dragon Emperor and me both, while Zanatheriel said he would handle Almond after knowing Almond is the master of space.’
Neo hadn’t gone all out against Zanathriel, but fighting the Umbral Emperor made him realize that he was a tough one.
‘He controls the Death element, but that’s not all. He has more,’ Neo thought, a cunning flash in his eyes. ‘His fight with Almond should give me insight on how to deal with him later.’
…
After returning, Almond spent an hour using Elemental Imprint to increase his mastery of Lumeir.
He was close to a breakthrough, and he needed to increase it.
All other Arcane Champions had two Elements at Mythical-rank while he only had one.
Although that didn’t determine the outcome of their battle, he wanted to have Lumeir at Mythical-rank as soon as possible.
He was already at Epic-rank mastery in Prism Resonant Lumeir, and if possible, he wanted to make it reach Legendary rank.
But after an hour, Almond felt his progress slowing down, so he stopped and went to Vital Rampage Tower to check on everyone’s training.
Shortly after Almond arrived there and checked everyone, Admiral Rudra’s body flickered with light and a surge of aura.
Almond’s eyes glinted as he scanned him and saw his bone undergoing fundamental changes.
‘Looks like he completely mastered it and is awakening a talent.’ Almond grinned.
A couple of minutes later, more old monsters began shining.
Almond knew they were competing on who would completely master the technique first.
Nobody had a change in expression when Admiral Rudra was done, but Almond saw their expression slightly changing when old monster Victor emerged as the second one to master the technique.
And then Arjun and Silvester simultaneously broke through and began awakening the talent.
But within the next minute, all the remaining old monsters completed the breakthrough.
Afterward, Guild Leader Liam and Damian finished the master.
Ten minutes later, guild master Ruyi of Blackstar Guild and Quinn of League of Firefly guild were done.
And then cutting in was Lily.
Admiral Rudra opened his eyes as he completely stabilized and finished awakening.
Standing up, a sleek jade-green white-ish exoskeleton with neon dimensional blue patterns gleaming on it.
Almond laughed and said, “You already created a skill to work together when you activate the talent.”
“This talent is good,” Admiral Rudra smiled. “Activating it drains my stamina, but it boosts my Strength by 100% directly and gives me this exoskeleton that I can use interestingly. It’s perfectly tailored for my combat style.”
“Yeah. Your strongest punch with this exoskeleton is going to be a nightmare,” Almond grinned. “Gramps, I want you to break all difficulties. Pour your will into your conceptual power and nothing can remain intact before you.”
Admiral Rudra laughed and smashed his fists together as a space cracked like a spider-web briefly before patching up. “That’s the plan.”
“Oldie, my body is itching,” Silvester stood up and cracked his arms before a huge bone-sword with jaw-like blades gleaming dark gray transparent design.
“What kind of monster sword is that?” Victor said as he raised an eyebrow.
“Coming up with ugly shit as always,” Hiroshi fleetingly noted as he held a sleek golden petal pattered on a crimson-bladed Ōdachi, a type of large Katan. The one in Hiroshi’s hand was 2.3 meters long.
“Is that going to be your main weapon now? Haha, we shall see who wins the next fight between us,” Silvester laughed with gusto.
“Might as well go into the field and fight,” Bianca said as a strange bullet danced on her index finger. Clearly, it was a special bullet as it resembled her finger’s bone.
“A new bullet, I suppose,” James chuckled. “I had myself a new gun.”
“This bullet means zero chance of escape from my attacks for the next ten minutes.”
Everyone was raring to fight and break each other’s bones after this intense first exercise in Vital Rampage Towers.
All of their physical stats increased by 300 to 400, so they also needed to fight to solidify their rapid increase in strength.
But their stats were still a far cry from maximizing out. Their physical stats barely crossed 1300-1200 while Mental stats were just close to 1000, but the aim was 10,000 in all stats, so it was going to be a long journey.
…
Arriving on the battlefield, Almond also left a portal door on the floor so that Lily and others could come to fight to solidify their strength once they were done awakening their talent.
One common boost everyone had with the Bone Tethering Technique was that upon activation of their Innate Talent, their Physical Stats gained a 100% boost of foundational value.
Pairing that with their Mana techniques, class perks, Almond’s Spirit Items, and other boosts from skills, they could easily reach 5k+ stats in all easily.
Once everyone was done consolidating their bodies, they returned to the Vital Rampage Tower. The intensity level also increased to 4000.
Although there were still roughly twenty people who had yet to finish mastering the Bone Tethering Technique, they were close and were done fast when the intensity increased to 4000.
However they also had to wear more pain, and a senior adventurer who was vice-leader of Lightstrike Guild even gave up. But his failure became fuel for others because that was extremely embarrassing. Nobody wanted to lose face and respect by giving up here.
Although their stubbornness worked in the wrong place, it worked in fasting their progress.
Meanwhile, Almond decided to get onto finishing solid Spirit item sets for old monsters, Lily, and other top powerhouses.
For Grimbreakers, he could upgrade the existing ones that he had given them before he left. Since they were familiarized with it, that was a better option.
‘Once Roken finishes digesting all the new stuff he got, he might be able to give a brand new addition to the items,’ Almond thought.
He felt that the blacksmithing power of that forgotten god was highly unique and powerful, and it was actually his main legacy because his other powers were all tailored for blacksmithing.
Almond looked forward to that, but for now, he was cooking up Mythical-rank sets, High-Mortal, and Immortal-rank sets (restricted by Grimworld to Mythical).
Two hours passed by when ALmond was done with 18 Immortal-rank sets, 23 High-mortal rank sets, and 56 Mythical-rank sets.
He was still making weapons at the Earth’s base, but a sudden visit from a Legendary-rank King of Baza Kingdom interrupted him.
“What?” Almond’s pupils shrank.
“Yes. We have a detected a huge army with big spacecraft coming at our Kingdom. They have already detected us and started attacking. I immediately came here.”
Suddenly, Almond’s eyes flickered as he sensed the destruction of his teleport circle.
“The teleport circle in your Kingdom just got destroyed. The army…Neo is bringing the whole army of his world at my way?” Almond frowned as he already used his All-Seeing Eyes on this Legendary-rank King and scanned his memories forcefully.
The spacecrafts he saw definitly belonged to Neo!
“What?! But my people are there!” The King panicked, his eyes trembling.
Almond frowned. “You stay here.”
Teleporting beside Kexell, he jolted Kexell’s conciousness before initiating a long-distance teleport directly at his destroyed teleport circle’s location.
*BOOM!*
*Crash!*
Almond’s fist clenched before his arms blurred as he clapped loudly, sending out a buzzing pulse that bend space all around like flowing water.
Instantly, all 50-kilometer radius around him completely froze. All energy, all explosions, all debris. Everything and everyone that was in motion completely froze.
“Yo, what’s going on?” Kexell woke up in a stupor and looked around. “Are they attacking? Fuckers!”
Almond arrived before Neo who was from ten kilometers away, floating high.
*Crack…*
A rapid crackle of lightning surged around Neo, breaking Almond’s space as he freed himself, wrapped within a strange small sphere akin to a mini-domain.
“You are exhausting a lot of your power right now to delay the inevitable, Almond.”
Neo’s aura increasingly surged as his cyber arm morphed into a long, sharp black blade with crimson-yellow neon patterns while his other human arm flickered with an orb of blue-purple lightning in the palm, its tendrils dancing with translucent internals of his arms that synergized, turning semi-elemental.
Kexell immediatly attacked Neo, turning into a streak of darkness with a claw sweeping at Neo.
Neo instantly vanished at the speed of light, dodging the attack while launching his blade at Almond.
*Clash!*
Almond’s sword clashed, raging fury in his eyes as he held nothing back. Spirals flickered in his eyes before he blurred, ten after-images of his attacking Neo with terrifyingly flaring Voidrift blades.
Kexell also used one of his strongest skills, enchanting Almond with a defensive curse, causing whoever injured him next to immobilize their Mana circulations, disrupting all skills.
Neo’s mini-domain suddenly pulsed brightly, oozing blinding light before he appeared a kilometer high in the sky.
“I don’t need to entagle with you two myself,” Neo calmly spoke. “You are wasting your time.”
“Almond, let’s fucking kill him!” Kexell roared. “And stop scaring about these people! We can’t stop them from dying!”
Almond knew that keeping his current domain that was stopping destruction of this Kingdom was taking a lot of his process and power.
But he didn’t want to get them killed when he could save them.
Without hesitation, Almond’s eyes intensely glimmered deep within as he executed a series of applications.
Kexell’s attack reached Neo meanwhile as both clashed, but only for one second before Almond made his move.
In the next instant, everyone except for Neo’s people and property vanished.
Almond, Kexell, and all people of the Kingdom arrived outside Earth’s base.
“Fuck,” Almond cursed.
“They are attacking us. And he is not the only one who is coming here,” Kexell somberly said.