Chapter 128: Eating System Skills

​As Night’s awareness turned inward, he expanded and shifted his focus to become more and more subtle.

​As his awareness grew subtler, his soul became clearer and clearer within his experience.

​He was not a Cultivator in the Nascent Soul Rank. Path-wise, he was barely at the peak of Qi Foundation, and in terms of the Divine Path, he was barely at the peak of Rank 2. Hence it was harder for him to access his soul.

​As he absorbed some of Alze-beus’s records, he also received his memories. But these memories were not like the ones he usually had; they were more like pieces of information, very similar to the way [Dream] had transmitted cultivation techniques to him.

​He guessed the reason he felt this way was because Alze-beus’s memories probably didn’t carry weight. He remembered when the Ghost was using the rune that ate all his past lives’ karmas, which he had received from Levi Rose.

​When those were played in his Soul Space, they had appeared very light. But Levi Rose’s final life memories had been different. When they appeared, they had been incredibly heavy. He noticed that even the Rune had struggled, despite Levi Rose being a mortal, and it had ultimately failed to consume most of them.

​He had even received the rest of the memories in a dream after leaving the inheritance ground.

​Because of his experience with Levi’s memories, he didn’t feel any burden going through Alze-beus’s memories. Compared to Levi, Alze-beus’s memories felt insignificant and light.

​But the insignificance stopped there; the information and knowledge he received from them was another thing altogether.

​From them, he got to know a lot about Hell, Cursed Magic, Cursed Arts, a lot of the skills and techniques the Devil used, and all the knowledge and experience he had gained throughout his long life.

​He got information about all the other powerful Devils in Hell, and also the monstrously talented ruler of Hell: the Devil Sovereign Aathan. He was someone infinitely close to becoming a True Devil (God Rank) and was probably the strongest being Planet Earth had ever produced.

​But all of this was not the most important information. The most valuable information was a secret that Alze-beus would have liked to carry to his grave.

​It was a Talent. Specifically, his own Talent.

​He had not heard Sara or [Dream] mention anything about Talents. This was probably because they were so rare that knowing about them was rather useless for most people.

​It was a common saying across the universe: "Gods are abundant, but a Talent is rare."

​There were various types of Talents. Some were innate, some were passive, some could be inherited and even granted, and some could be taken by force, but one thing was common to all of them.

​A Talent was broken. It was a cheat that allowed its owner to do reality-bending stuff.

​It was like playing a game with admin access; it was truly unfair when compared to someone without a Talent.

​The one Alze-beus was born with was [Infinite Hunger]. As the name implied, it was truly terrifying. It allowed Alze-beus to eat anything and everything, as much as he wanted. Unlike others who had physical limits on how much they could consume, Alze-beus had none.

​Others would have burst like a balloon if they ate as much as Alze-beus did.

​[Infinite Hunger] meant Alze-beus could eat and never feel full. It was the dream Talent for someone who wanted to grow fast and build a very strong foundation on the path of gluttony.

​This Talent was why he pursued the path of Gluttony. He was born for it. The reason Alze-beus hadn’t just eaten [Zethe-thoth]’s tentacle was probably because if he had eaten even a little bit of the Void God, the other party would have found out about it and hunted Alze-beus down for his Talent.

​It was a risk Alze-beus couldn’t take unless he was absolutely sure he could eat [Zethe-thoth] fully.

​As it turned out Alze-beus’s Talent could be inherited and stolen. When Night ate him just now, he had unknowingly stolen a part of it from him.

​It would not have been possible if Night didn’t already possess something similar.

It was not enough to awaken a full Talent in Night, but similar to Alze-beus, Night had never had a physical limit on how much he could devour. At the very least, it was a lot more than what should be possible for someone at his level.

​Alze-beus must not have expected something like this, or else he never would have used the [Sin of Hunger] on Night.

​Alze-beus had shared a part of his Talent with Night, but the memories also let Night know exactly where to find the remaining portion. They already had a death grudge from when the Devil killed Sara; the possibility of acquiring the rest of the Talent was just icing on the cake.

​As his awareness reached deeper into his soul, he sensed many things he was usually not aware of.

​He sensed the place where [Dream] and System Girl hid, and he also sensed where the bonds that connected him to his friends began.

​He also noticed that the connection he had with Sage was a lot deeper than the others.

​Maybe that’s why I have so much synchronicity with her.

​Afterward, when I have time, I should try to see if I can move them even deeper. Maybe I will finally reach 100% synchronicity with them.

​For now, he had something more important to do. He ignored the bonds and moved his awareness even deeper.

​At the subtlest part he could reach within his soul, just before he hit his limit, he found runes.

​There were tons of them. Thousands of them.

​When his awareness brushed past them, he realized they were his skills.

​After the unknowing massacre he committed with his main body, he had acquired more skills than he could ever use. Most of them were basic skills like Ice Slash, Fireball, Mud Ball, Dark Sword, and so on, which were just basic manifestations of particular Aspects.

​Now, with all the information he got from Alze-beus, the knowledge [Dream] had transmitted, and his own deductions, he realized that while these skills allowed him to use Aspects without naturally possessing them, they also limited him in many ways.

​And the most troublesome limitation was that the more skills he had of a particular element, the more difficult it would be for him to naturally acquire their Aspect in the future.

​Unlike others, to Night, who had devoured skills from almost all the elements, it would become practically impossible to awaken a new Aspect.

​Probably even [Dream] and [Blaze], with all their vast knowledge, didn’t know about this.

​It was understandable. Only a Unique Being like him, combined with the memories and records of an Enlightened Being, had the competence to reach this deep into the soul.

​He realized that if he had found out about this later in the future, the damage would have already been permanent.

​The more Mastery one had on a skill, the more it became a fundamental part of their being. After reaching high Mastery, using a skill was easier than breathing.

​Which meant it would become infinitely more difficult, or probably impossible, to do what he was about to do right now.

​He spread his awareness and noticed that skills like [Wind Overdrive] and [Wind Dash], which he repeatedly used, had already become much more attached to his soul than the newer skills, which barely had much connection yet.

​After confirming that what he was doing was not stupid but in fact a good thing, he commanded his Nightmare Mist to spread and eat his own skills.

​He had never tried eating a skill from his own soul, so he didn’t know what to expect, but even he was not ready for what happened next.

​Holy mother of...

​He cursed as he felt his soul being ripped apart. This pain was a lot worse than the time [Dream] had forced his transformation.

​But surprisingly, he didn’t feel like he would pass out.

When he tried to find the reason, he realized that while the pain was mind-breaking, the bliss of eating something as taboo as a System skill, which was supposed to be omnipotent, was keeping him afloat and preventing his mind from breaking.

​The pain at the beginning was a lot more intense, but as the Nightmare Mist spread and started eating the skill runes with its tiny mouths, the bliss became intense as well. After some time, they both reached an equilibrium.

​"Is this how masochists feel? This feeling of pain and pleasure together is tripping... it’s totally different from just feeling pure bliss."

​"This suffering and bliss is like flying but also standing firmly on the ground. It feels like utter madness, yet full of balance and clarity."

​Night didn’t know that at some point during all of this, he had stopped monologuing internally and had started speaking his thoughts out loud. So the others in his Soul Space heard him loud and clear.

​The others looked at the walls of the Soul Space, where cracks were appearing and repairing themselves at the same time. They were stunned when they heard Night’s voice casually pondering the philosophical meaning of pain and pleasure, suffering and bliss.

​The one most embarrassed was System Girl, who had initially been crying when she saw the cracks appear in their home.

​System Girl stomped her foot on the ground and muttered, "So shameless."

​She was sure he had finally gone nuts after seeing Sara and Blade die.

​Beside her, Vivianne, who could finally move her facial muscles again, twitched violently every time Night moaned in pleasure or cursed loudly in pain.