Martin reached the cave quickly and charged right in.
Kyle and the Captain watched from a distance.
When the cave started to shake, the Captain narrowed his eyes.
“Sven!” the Captain shouted, pointing at the cave.
Selene saw what was going on. “Yes, sir!”
Then, she took out her bow and prepared an arrow.
A second passed.
Suddenly, Martin charged out of the cave.
BOOOM!
A gigantic metallic head came out of the cave.
It looked like the head of a turtle, and its neck was insanely long.
As soon as Kyle saw the Ferocious Beast, he was reminded of the Narvonian Worm.
“Sir?” Selene asked.
If this were a human, she would have already fired her arrow.
But this was a beast.
Selene couldn’t be sure about the local wildlife, and she didn’t know if she was allowed to kill it.
There was a huge gash on the side of the head that was bleeding dramatically.
Martin also wasn’t sure if he was allowed to kill the beast.
“Kill it,” the Captain said.
Even though he hadn’t talked very loudly, his voice reached the distant Martin with clarity.
Martin turned around and charged towards the beast.
Selene fired her arrow.
BANG!
The arrow hit the eye of the gigantic beast and exploded into a weaker version of Skysand.
The beast moved its head around in pain.
Yet, a moment later, Martin arrived and rammed his spear into the beast’s blinded eye.
After that, he danced around the beast, creating holes all over its head.
Its brain was huge, and Martin couldn’t kill it with a single strike.
Three seconds later, the Ferocious Beast collapsed, dead.
“Lily,” the Captain shouted.
“Yes, sir?” Lily asked.
Naturally, Lily was usually not this nice, but she knew that being rebellious in the army would end badly for her.
“Harvest it,” the Captain said. “Skin it, take its tail spikes, and retrieve its gallbladder.”
“Yes, sir,” Lily said.
A bunch of her golems charged over to the corpse and took it apart with practiced ease.
By now, Martin had come back.
“Good job,” the Captain said. “You receive 60% of the reward. Kyle will receive 20%. Sven will receive 10%. Lily will receive 10%.”
“Thank you, sir,” Martin said.
Kyle and Martin looked at each other and shared a quick nod.
Naturally, Martin got the biggest share since he had been in the most danger.
A minute later, the golems returned, carrying several big objects.
“Continue!” the Captain shouted.
Everyone continued traveling across three additional mountains before the Captain told them to stop again.
Kyle didn’t say anything, but his instincts were warning him of extreme danger.
He couldn’t tell where it was coming from, which was strange. He only knew that something extremely powerful was looking at them.
The Captain lifted a medallion for a second.
Shortly after, a small portal opened at the base of one of the mountains.
Everyone ran down to the portal and passed through it.
As soon as Kyle passed through the portal, his eyes widened.
‘What the fuck?!’ he thought as he saw a humongous fortress.
The fortress was almost an entire kilometer high and two kilometers wide!
‘The mountain actually doesn’t exist!’ he thought as he saw a barrier surrounding the fortress. The barrier had the same shape as the mountain.
‘They literally got rid of an entire mountain just to build this gigantic fortress.’
Kyle also saw an incredible number of people in the Third Realm.
There were almost 50!
Grand Sorcerers, Grandmasters, Royal Knights, Beast Masters, Master Artificers, and he even saw a Demon Master.
When Kyle saw the Beast Masters, he looked around for their beasts, but he couldn’t see any.
“Beast Masters carry their beasts in a separate space,” Theodor said, noticing Kyle’s expression.
Kyle remembered that people in the Third Realm received another upgrade in abilities.
‘So, the Soul Space can also be used to store beasts? Crazy,’ Kyle thought.
In order to get the upgraded Aspects of Power for the Second Realm, one needed to use the Tomes.
However, the same thing wasn’t true for the Third Realm.
These abilities just came automatically.
In fact, one didn’t even need to have used the Tomes previously to unlock them.
The new abilities one received in the Third Realm were the actual ones. The abilities the Tomes gave were just simplified versions for the Second Realm.
For example, the Physical Tome allowed one to choose a True Body with a fixed shape.
Yet, that was just a simplified version of Body Shaping, the ability one received in the Third Realm.
Body Shaping allowed one to control the size of their body at will to a certain degree.
The change in size was not as quick as switching between normal and True Body, which made changing size during a battle quite difficult, but it gave far more freedom.
A Grandmaster could transform into a humongous man, almost 50 meters tall. In that state, they could exhibit more power in exchange for speed.
That also made it far easier to fight huge beasts.
While the body received Body Shaping, the Soul gave everyone a Soul Space, a small personal space that could be used to store things.
The Center granted people free transformation of Neutral Ether into Elemental Ether.
It didn’t matter what kind of Affinity one had. Turning Neutral Ether into Elemental Ether was completely free.
The mind granted people a dynamic Time Slow that didn’t cost any Ether to use.
This meant that Kyle would be able to activate it and deactivate it whenever he wanted without wasting any Ether.
Body Shaping, Free Elemental Ether, Passive Time Slow, and Soul Space.
These were the things every person in the Third Realm received.
Yes, everyone.
However, the strengthening of different Aspects had a significant impact on the power of these abilities.
A Grand Sorcerer could control the size of their body only very slowly and minimally.
While a Grandmaster could become 50 meters tall, a Grand Sorcerer could, at most, reach a size of three meters. They also couldn’t shrink a lot. One meter was the general limit.
A Grandmaster only got a discount of 10% while transforming Neutral Ether into Elemental Ether.
A Royal Knight could also use Time Slow, but their perceived time would only speed up by about 10%, compared to the 100% of Grandmasters.
Everyone got a Soul Space, but a Grandmaster’s Soul Space was, at most, a sphere with a diameter of 30 centimeters.
They couldn’t even store their weapons in there.
At most, it was a backpack.
Meanwhile, a Master Artificer or Beast Master had access to a storage space with a diameter of five meters.
Naturally, a huge beast wouldn’t fit in that, but that was also why Kyle had been surprised.
After some more explanations from Theodor, Kyle learned that the Monsters, beasts in the Third Realm, had the ability to control their size, just like Grandmasters and Royal Knights.
However, wild Monsters rarely used that ability.
They assumed a size they were comfortable with and stayed at that size.
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