[STT] Chapter 79: Why (Patreon)

Ben scrubbed the last of the tar like black sludge from his skin in the river nearby, and thankfully, the terrible smell was finally starting to fade away too. Sinking a bit in the water, he relaxed, and a notification popped into his vision.

Would you like to allocate essence to a path?

Ben blinked at the text, staring for a second.

Please select your essence path:

- [Strength]

- [Dexterity]

- [Constitution]

- [Mana]

He shoved one hundred percent of his essence straight into mana.

Essence allocation finalized.

Ben gasped as he felt the shift in him the second the notification vanished. His mana was always there in his core, but now it felt different in a way he could barely describe. And suddenly, his entire world just blew wide open as his Tier 2 senses opened up for the first time ever.

Colors looked more vibrant, he could see more clearly, he could focus on more than one thing at a time in his vision. His vision being no longer limited to an extremely narrow point in his entire field of vision was extremely weird! It was as if a new world opened up to him.

Overwhelmed by the rush, he let [Focus] trigger to keep his brain from getting too overwhelmed by the changes to his body.

What is that?

Frowning at the water, he wondered if the physical evolution hadn't actually finished earlier. Or maybe the changes only fully locked in once he spent the essence? Because he could definitely feel a massive upgrade now where he hadn't before!

Reaching inward, he found his mana pool was as deep as it felt thicker and heavier than before. Yet cycling it through his body was a breeze unlike no other, as instead of forcing it through his mana channels like he had to at Tier 1, the mana just ran smoothly with little to no input from his end.

Lifting a dripping hand, he pulled his mana up and effortlessly formed a dense sphere of mana right over his palm. It came to him instantly, way too fast! Why did the mana not fight him? Why did it not resist his control at all?

It feels like breathing.

Yes, it felt as natural as breathing, which was insane!

Ben pinched the bridge of his nose as a question bubbled up in his mind. Last time he advanced, he had to pick his path before the physical evolution started. But this time the system broke his body down, rebuilt it, and only asked for his choice after the fact.

So he had to wonder…

What changed?

The only thing he could think of was that last time, the system hadn't just evolved him normally, it had to fight tooth and nail to push him over the threshold. The local system had failed to adjust him and had to bump the request up to a higher authority just to do it.

And considering there were multiple systems running things, that higher authority was probably a much higher-ranked system.

Which he didn't know before.

This also made him wonder, just what about his advancement from a Tier 0 to Tier 1 was so much for the local system to handle? Could it be related to his reincarnation? That he was originally not the Ben the system thought it was, so it had to look at a higher authority to see what to do.

Ben shivered.

That could have gone so, so badly!

Still, the system probably needed to know his path beforehand so it knew how to build his body at Tier 1. But this time he was just a normal ascender with a properly saturated core. So the standard, normal order of operations ran without a hitch.

Which meant this was how it was actually supposed to work. And that lined up perfectly with what Hannah had told him once: once you officially advance, you have to make a choice. He just completely missed the importance of the word 'once' back then.

Following that logic, he figured the physical rebuild was just a general upgrade where all his baseline stats went up across the board. Then the essence allocation acted as a targeted specialization layered right on top of that new foundation.

That made him wonder though… Last time he allocated his essence, he instantly blacked out and woke up in that weird void staring at a door he couldn't open. But this time, he was just sitting naked in a bathtub. He remembered no door at all.

Wasn't it supposed to show up and tempt him to open it? It was supposedly the biggest danger to ascenders as far as he knew. It couldn't be that he was completely immune to it, that would be an insane advantage to have over everyone else, especially when he advanced to higher tiers.

If that really was the case, no one else had it as easy as him!

Forget that, did I not unlock my soul space? And this was way too easy… what happened to my body not being able to handle this much mana? I feel fine.

He really did feel fine. He wondered if all those physical skills and now [Warforged] helped with that? Since the advancement took his skills into account to mold his body, maybe his body got better too?

That doesn't make sense.

Something else was going on. And he had no idea what it was—

Ben suddenly froze. A blip of presence pinged at the edge of his senses, followed quickly by two more.

Reaching out with his enhanced [Mana Sonar] due to his advancement, he mapped the camp side of the river in a split second. The range on the skill was absolutely massive compared to when he was Tier 1, feeding him a ridiculous amount of detail compared to before, so [Focus] was putting in quite the work now.

Then again, [Focus] also benefited from him advancing to Tier 2, so it wasn't really that hard.

There were three of them walking along the bank. Pacing slowly about ten steps apart, they stopped every few feet like they were hunting for something specific. Ben submerged himself until only his eyes and nose broke the surface. He stayed completely still.

Wandering closer, the three figures eventually stopped right next to his discarded clothes. They were older teenagers, clearly nobles from the camp.

And they hadn't spotted him yet.

Straining his ears, Ben realized he could pick up their voices with crystal clarity despite the distance and the raging water all around him.

Pushing mana into [Warforged], he conceptually reinforced his hearing, layering it over his sonar, because that was something he could do now since advancing to Tier 2.

He had no way of explaining it other than his mind moving from a mundane restricted sense of everything to something more broader and conceptual in nature.

Kicking Ben's shirt, the first noble sneered.

"These are his. He's in the water somewhere."

"He said the twerp's Tier 1. This will take a minute."

Laughing loudly, the third guy shook his head.

"He said the kid didn't even look him in the eye. Theodore's little toy thinks he's untouchable. This is going to be so satisfying."

"Don't kill him, you bastard, or he'll be mad. He wants him to be able to walk back to camp so everyone sees it."

"Fine. Arms and legs, then. He can crawl, right? He should be familiar with it, given who he is."

First, somebody was actively out for his blood. Second, these idiots actually thought Theodore owned him. Third, they fully believed he was still a Tier 1. And fourth, they were planning to break his limbs and drag him back to camp as a warning.

Theodore's toy?

Ben almost snorted.

They were all fresh Tier 2s, at least that's what he thought. If he jumped out and beat these three into the dirt, whoever was pulling their strings would just send a bigger group next time. So he actually needed a name, just who was pulling their strings?

Considering how much these guys liked to run their mouths, they were bound to drop it if he just gave them a minute.

Ben had his suspicions, but it was better to be certain.

Waiting patiently, he sized them up from the water. They were older, and noble families definitely trained their kids to fight from the time they could walk. So they were probably going to be a decent challenge. But strangely enough, [Hunter] was completely quiet in the back of his mind.

Maybe the danger sense didn't trigger because they hadn't actually launched an attack at him yet?

Either way, everything they just said about him would have been dead accurate just a few hours ago. But he wasn't Tier 1 anymore. And they had absolutely no idea.

So surprise was his biggest advantage.

The third noble walked right up to the edge of the water and stared directly at the spot where Ben was hiding, and Ben realized they'd meant for him to hear everything. A nasty smile stretched across the older teen's face.

"Found you. Come out, commoner. We want to have a word."

Ben stared blankly at the smirking noble.

Why does this always happen when I'm naked in a river?

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