Chapter 356: Powered Up!

[Release Deferred Experience]

Kael confirmed the option. For half a second, nothing happened.

Then the system lost its mind.

[Calculating Deferred Experience...]

[Calculating Deferred Achievements...]

[Calculating Deferred Titles...]

[Calculating Deferred Attribute Rewards...]

Kael blinked when the fourth notification appeared. "Titles?"

A troll roared directly in front of him, reminding him that this was neither the time nor the place to start asking questions.

The creature swung the enormous tree trunk in its hands. Kael stepped backward before the weapon could connect, allowing several tons of wood to crash into the ground where he had been standing. Stone and dirt exploded upward, and Kael turned and ran as more notifications appeared in front of him.

[Deferred Experience has been released.]

[Deferred rewards accumulated during the effects of Only I Don’t Level Up are now being processed.]

[Several Titles could not be fully registered while Experience Gain was deferred.]

[Registering Titles...]

[Registering Achievements...]

[Calculating accumulated attribute changes...]

The windows multiplied fast enough to obstruct his vision. Kael dismissed them with an irritated swipe. "Not now."

A goblin lunged toward him from the side, but Kael caught it by the throat without slowing and threw it behind him. The creature disappeared beneath the feet of the trolls surrounding the gate.

Kael looked toward the wall. Staying outside while the system changed his body would be stupid, especially when he remembered what had happened the last time he received a large number of attributes in quick succession.

His muscles had cramped, his balance had changed, and strength he had spent years understanding had suddenly become slightly unfamiliar. Even a slight increase to Dexterity altered the amount of force required to move, stop, turn, or jump. When several physical attributes increased simultaneously, his body needed time to understand what it had become.

Doing that while surrounded by trolls was asking to be flattened into the ground.

A new notification appeared before him.

[Significant attribute growth detected.]

[Multiple attribute rewards are awaiting integration.]

[Warning: Simultaneous integration may cause temporary physical discomfort and impaired motor control.]

[Would you like to integrate all accumulated attribute rewards simultaneously?]

Kael stared at the warning and immediately answered, "Nope. Not here."

Another troll stepped toward him, and Kael ran straight at it. The creature raised its club, but he changed direction at the final second, planted one foot against the troll’s knee and then another against its chest. He climbed the creature in three quick steps.

The troll looked down in confusion just as Kael kicked away from its shoulder and launched himself toward the fortress wall. His hands caught a seam between two massive stones, but he barely paused before continuing upward.

A year beneath the Fist King had involved far worse climbs than this. Kael had climbed cliffs without ropes, scaled wet stone beside waterfalls and crossed rock faces where the old bastard occasionally threw things at him because apparently climbing safely did not qualify as training.

Compared to those, the fortress wall was practically a staircase.

Kael pushed upward and caught another seam, followed by another. He shifted his weight, planted one foot against a narrow protrusion and launched himself several meters higher.

The goblins climbing nearby barely understood what was happening. One hissed and reached for his ankle, but Kael kicked it in the face and continued climbing as the creature fell toward the battlefield below.

Arrows passed overhead. Several meters to his right, soldiers poured hot sand down the wall, ripping goblins from the stone. One of them noticed Kael approaching and nearly emptied another container directly onto him before someone shouted from farther along the battlement.

"Hold! That’s the climber!"

Kael reached the upper stonework, caught the battlement with one hand and pulled himself over. A soldier stared at him as he rose.

"You climbed that?"

"Yeah."

"We could have thrown a rope."

Kael glanced toward the nearest tower. "Goblins might have scaled it. Not to mention this is faster."

The gate shook beneath them, but he ignored it for the moment. His side was still holding under the burly man’s protection. The other walls were taking far more pressure, but the upgraded defenses Kael had purchased continued thinning the attackers.

That gave him a few minutes. Hopefully.

He moved farther from the edge of the battlement and pointed toward the same soldiers who had protected him while he gathered internal energy. "You three. Shields again."

They immediately moved into position around him, and Kael sat behind them before calling the waiting system window back into view.

[Integrate all accumulated attribute rewards simultaneously?]

Kael hesitated. Out on the battlefield, he would never have considered it. Here, he had soldiers surrounding him, turrets overhead and the burly climber defending his section. More importantly, he needed the power immediately.

Kael selected yes.

[Confirmed.]

The effect was instantaneous.

His back arched as every muscle in his body contracted at once. "Fuck!"

Kael’s fists slammed against the stone beside his legs as his fingers curled involuntarily. His shoulders locked, his legs stiffened beneath him, and for several seconds even breathing became difficult.

The soldiers turned toward him. "You all right?"

"Fine," Kael forced through his clenched jaw. "Just keep the shields up."

He was not fine.

Something was changing inside him, but it was not simple growth. Kael had already pushed his body about as far as ordinary physical development could take it during his training with the Fist King. His frame did not suddenly swell with muscle, nor did his shoulders widen or his arms become thicker.

The change went deeper.

His muscles felt as though every fiber was being pulled apart and rewoven. The sensation moved through his legs first as those fibers tightened, compressed and became denser. What had once felt like flesh began taking on an almost impossible tension, as though steel cables had been threaded through his muscles without sacrificing any flexibility.

Kael’s thigh spasmed, followed by his calf. His abdomen tightened hard enough that he nearly folded forward before the changes reached his back. His spine cracked several times in rapid succession, sending a shudder through his entire body.

"Still fine?" one of the soldiers asked.

"No," Kael admitted.

The man turned slightly, uncertain whether to approach him.

"But don’t do anything."

That seemed to confuse him even more.

Kael’s shoulders convulsed as the transformation reached his arms. Every tendon felt simultaneously tighter and more responsive. His joints loosened without becoming weaker, making his body somehow harder and more flexible at the same time.

Then Dexterity began settling in, and that was worse.

Kael suddenly became aware of everything. He could feel the weight of his fingers resting against his knees, the movement of cloth across his skin and the exact position of every joint in his body. Even the minute shift in his balance caused by breathing became impossible to ignore.

His nervous system seemed to accelerate before his mind had properly adjusted to the additional information. Kael tried moving one finger and watched it respond far faster than expected.

He immediately stopped. "Okay. Breathe slowly and don’t move."

Another wave struck him before he could properly adjust. His senses sharpened, and then his mind followed.

Thoughts that had previously required a moment to connect suddenly arrived together. Distances across the wall became easier to judge. Kael remembered the internal arrangement of the railgun he had inspected earlier with uncomfortable clarity, and details he had barely understood began arranging themselves into recognizable mechanical relationships.

His thoughts jumped from the railgun to the forge, then to runes and finally toward the Realm Gateway.

Kael stopped that final train of thought immediately. "No."

The warning from Vanitas remained very clear. More Intelligence did not mean he was suddenly qualified to read the language of gods without melting his brain.

Probably.

He had no intention of testing it.

Stamina settled through him next. His heartbeat changed, his breathing became easier and the physical fatigue remaining from the battle receded another step. It was not that his lost energy had magically returned. The body consuming that energy had simply become vastly more efficient.

The convulsions continued for several more seconds, and Kael gritted his teeth through them until they finally began to slow. His hands stopped trembling, his breathing steadied and the pressure inside his muscles settled into something dense and controlled.

When Kael opened his eyes, notifications covered his vision.

[You leveled up.]

[You leveled up.]

[You leveled up.]

[You leveled up.]

[You leveled up.]

...

They continued arriving. Kael stared as another appeared, followed immediately by two more.

Experience accumulated over his entire climb was finally being released at once. Every floor, boss and hidden encounter had contributed to it, along with enemies far beyond what a Level One climber should have been able to kill. Everything the Tower had attempted to give him and everything Only I Don’t Level Up had held back was now being processed.

The notifications continued until the titles began appearing among them.

[Title registered.]

[Title registered.]

[Title registered.]

Kael frowned as more followed. Some of the names he recognized, while others he had never seen before. Apparently, the system had been tracking far more than his experience.

His climb through Vanitas had left something behind, as had his obsession with repairing and rebuilding everything himself. It had counted the absurd number of enemies he had killed while underleveled, his training beneath the Fist King and every rune he had used in ways the Tower had clearly never expected. Even the machines he had altered with materials never intended for them had contributed to the growing list.

At last, the notifications slowed enough for Kael to open his status screen. The window expanded far farther than it once had.

[Status Screen]

Name: Kael Ardent

Level: 1

STR: 154

DEX: 167

INT: 158

STM: 159

Unused Stat Points: 61

Experience Gain: Active.

Titles:

[Legend]

[Chaos Bringer]

[Murderer]

[Exterminator]

[Artisan]

[Craftsman]

[Magic Maker]

[Runeweaver]

[I’ll Do it Myself]

[Overgeared]

[Disciple]

[Cliff Walker]

[Burden Bearer]

[Iron Frame]

[Drowned Survivor]

[Pressure Tempered]

[Threshold Breaker]

[Improviser]

[Unorthodox Channel]

[Self-Sufficient]

[Relentless Hunter]

[Race Ender]

[One Punch Man]

[Getava’s Nightmare]

***

Newly Added Titles.

[Bloodhound]

[Rift Hunter]

[Trialbreaker]

[First Among the Dead]

[Rune Heretic]

[Siege Engineer]

[Monster Mechanic]

Achievements:

[Only I Don’t Level Up]

[Ain’t Nobody Got time for this]

Newly Added Achievements:

[Returner]

[Record Collector]

Kael stared at the list. "That’s gotten long."

He barely remembered earning some of them.

The new ones like [Rune Heretic] was probably not intended as praise, but Kael liked it anyway. [Siege Engineer] and [Monster Mechanic] were also fresh, though he did not need long to understand where the latter had come from.

He glanced toward the slowly recovering puddle of Reclaimer metal. "Definitely fair."

Another notification appeared.

[You leveled up.]

Kael stared at it. "Still going?"

Apparently, it was. The system had finished integrating his immediate attribute rewards, but the enormous pool of deferred experience was still being processed in the background.

Kael dismissed the notification and continued examining his status until his attention caught on something else.

Internal Energy.

He froze. Before releasing the experience, his reserve had recovered to barely a third of its total capacity. Now, it was well beyond halfway full.

Kael frowned and focused on the sensation. The energy had not suddenly regenerated. His pool had grown.

The amount of energy he possessed increased but not because he leveled up, but because his body was now capable of containing far more than before as it became of a higher quality. At the same time, the integration of his attributes had stabilized and redistributed the energy already inside him, leaving his functional reserve significantly higher than it had been moments earlier.

It made sense. Internal energy was cultivated through the body, and a stronger vessel could hold more. His meridians had become tougher, his muscles denser and his organs more resilient. The entire framework supporting his internal energy had just undergone a massive improvement.

Kael slowly stood, only to discover that his balance felt wrong. It was not bad. If anything, it felt too good.

He shifted one foot, and the movement happened faster than expected. Kael immediately stopped himself before attempting another step.

"Right. I remember this part."

New attributes required adjustment. His body knew what it could do before his habits did.

Kael bent his knees slightly, moved one shoulder and rotated his wrist. His gauntlet felt lighter than it had before. Far lighter.

He looked down at his hand and closed his fist. Leather creaked around his fingers, while the metal plates across his knuckles groaned faintly beneath the pressure.

Kael loosened his grip immediately. "Oh."

One of the soldiers beside him glanced over. "What?"

"Nothing."

Kael walked toward the edge and looked down from the wall. The battlefield waited beneath him.

The trolls had returned to his gate. Several hammered the reinforced doors with clubs while goblins climbed around them. Orcs moved among the smaller creatures, shouting commands and pushing the next ranks forward. The burly climber was already fighting along the ramparts, and farther away, the other gates were beginning to crack again.

Kael rolled his shoulders and felt no pain or fatigue in the movement. When he checked his internal energy once more, it remained above half. That was more than enough to begin using his runes again.

Fire, Frost, Heft and Anchor were all available. Beneath them sat a body that had become absurdly stronger without Kael spending a single one of the sixty-one unused stat points waiting on his screen.

A troll raised its tree trunk and struck Kael’s gate.

BOOM.

The wall trembled beneath his feet, and Kael smiled as he stepped onto the battlement.

The nearest soldier looked toward him. "You recovered?"

Kael stared down at the monsters gathering beneath the wall. "Something like that."

He jumped before the soldier could respond. The man rushed toward the edge and watched as Kael dropped toward the battlefield below.

This time, there was no strain involved in controlling the fall. His body adjusted automatically as he twisted through the air.

A troll looked up, and Kael drew one fist back.

The first round had been fought by a Level One climber surviving on training, titles, equipment and stubbornness. That version of Kael had already been strong enough to crush trolls with his bare hands.

Now, the experience accumulated across his entire climb was finally being allowed to matter.

Kael’s fist descended.

"Round two."