Outside the capital city, Delta.
A man with dark purple hair stood above a mountaintop; his eyes shone with coldness, and the look on his face remained cold.
If someone had been nearby, they would have mistook his intense aura as if he were going to fight something.
However, Jareth is actually feeling quite nervous right now.
He glanced at the gold lottery, and his eyes shook a bit in nervousness.
[3. Gold Lottery: 25000 Cp.]
[Ding! Are you sure you want to buy the gold lottery?]
[Yes or No]
'Yes'
This is the first time that Jareth is trying out the golden lottery, and this is no small matter.
He's using twenty-five thousand credit points for this single lottery; after using this, he won't even have enough points left to buy another 'attack enhancement card'.
So the outcome of this lottery will be critical to his future progress.
If something strange and insignificant emerges from it, Jareth will encounter numerous challenges in the future, and without an attack enhancement card, he might not even be able to survive long enough.
However, a lottery is always about betting on your luck.
Currently, Jareth is gambling his life on this lottery; if he loses, he won't have enough left to buy a new 'attack enhancement card', which would make his survival chances go down a lot in this cruel world.
Although he has 'mana singularity', he can't always rely on just that trick to deal with all of his enemies.
Just like how Zero caused his 'mana' to become ineffective, if something similar happened, he would be left at the mercy of others.
Ever since he was a kid, he has always tried his best to learn from his past mistakes and never repeat those mistakes again.
So, he doesn't want to find himself in a dangerous situation similar to the one he was in with Zero.
And to do that, he must become stronger.
In this world, the person with the biggest fist decides the rules. If you are weak, you can only accept others ruling over you. Only true strength can make the world work the way you want it to.
'Although active heal can help me a lot when injured, that alone can't guarantee my life…'
The best example of why 'Active Heal' is not as powerful as one might expect is that demon incarnations eventual death.
Jareth and others worked together to destroy the space-time fabric itself in order to kill that demon incarnation before it could take a proper shape.
If Jareth had been in the place of that demon incarnation, he would have no doubt died too.
His mana shield is unable to fend off attacks that could disrupt the space-time fabric itself, and his active heal won't be able to heal him if all of his body's atoms are blasted into nothingness, as was the case with that demon incarnation.
Jareth added the attack enhancement card to make that attack so powerful, but it also served as a wake-up call for Jareth.
He was frightened by how powerful his own attack was.
To counter such an attack, he needs to get stronger, or he might not be able to survive past the mid-stage of the game.
'The leader of the false dome cult… That guy is strong enough to influence the space-time fabric, and also, a whole demon god is staring at this world with his eyes wide open.'
Even if Jareth dies, it is very likely that the demon god will find a way to locate his soul, and then his fate will be in the hands of that demon god.
Jareth doesn't want that at all.
There is forbidden magic in this world that can be used to torture the souls of individuals, and if his soul gets caught by that demon god, he will be tortured into nothingness.
'I was involved in the eventual death of that demon incarnation, thus I must have already been marked as an enemy by that demon god… Now I can't even die peacefully anymore…'
Jareth was more and more confused the more he thought about his soul.
'How did my soul even come to this world without getting noticed by that demon god? And will my soul be able to go back if I die?'
Jareth had many questions in his heart, but there was no way to find a proper answer to these questions at all.
Jareth initially had no real motivation to survive and grow stronger; he was simply following the natural course of events.
But now he has a solid reason to survive and a motivation to become stronger.
He wants to find the truth about his existence and the reality of this world, and to do that, he must become stronger.
(No, if you guys think that he will find out that this world is still a game or something, that's not true; this is an actual world of its own; it's not a game…)
Just when Jareth was having a lot of thoughts in his mind, the golden roulette finally stopped spinning, and what Jareth wasn't expecting came as the result.
[Congratulation! You have received the 'Permanent Ability Maximizing Card'!]
Seeing that result, 'black lines' appeared all over Jareth's face as a look of great disappointment appeared in his eyes.
'Scam!! As I thought!!! Gacha is always a scam!!! Ahhhhhh!!!!!!' (Mental damage +999)
Jareth was expecting a new amazing talent, like 'Mana Singularity' or something similar, to emerge again, but instead, this pitiful thing was what came out.
[Item Name: Permanent Ability Maximizing Card]
[Item Description: An ability is only considered supreme once it is enhanced to perfection! Go ahead! Enhance your abilities to perfection with this card!!]
[Effect: Permanently enhances 'one' ability to the state of perfection!]
The description and the effects of this card are simple; you can use it to enhance your 'Abilities' to perfection.
But keep in mind that the card says 'Abilities' not 'Skills', which means Jareth can't use it to enhance his skills like 'Fire Magic', 'Active Heal', 'External Mana Circuit', etc.
This card is only useful against 'Abilities', which are essentially a character's innate abilities to perform tasks such as clothing, laundry, brushing, or other daily life tasks.
They are not 'Skills', they are just 'abilities' that everyone in the world has.
In the game, whenever a player got this card, they knew that it was a total waste as it could not be used for any great purposes at all.
'Ugh… What do I even use this thing for now… If it were in my previous life, I could have just used it on my 'Ability to Flirt' and I would have flirted with Shiina all day long… But this thing is useless to me now…'
Just when Jareth was having a major headache, his eyes suddenly fell on the status panel, and he noticed a detail.
In the game, the player can only improve their mana purity by accumulating experience points or meditating.
'But if I remember correctly…. isn't mana purity an ability too!?'
He suddenly recalled a forum debate where players had argued that mana purity is an ability, and that using a 'perfection card' on it should enhance it.
The game developers said that such a thing would break the game, and they patched the game and made it so that the card doesn't recognize 'Mana purity' as an ability at all.
'But… this is a real world now… what if...'
Jareth immediately tried to confirm his guess.
[Ding! Are you sure you want to use the 'Permanent Ability Maximizing Card' on the ability 'Mana Purity'?]
[Yes or No]
[Warning: This choice is permanent; please choose wisely…]
'Yes'
Jareth had no idea if it would work or not, but he had to try this out. He had already thought that this lottery had ended in failure, so he wasn't worried about taking this risk at all.
Even if it doesn't work, he will only lose a useless card at most, but if it works…
[Ding! Congratulations! You have used a 'Permanent Ability Maximizing Card' on the ability 'Mana Purity'!]
[Ding! Choice successful, upgrading 'Mana Purity' to 'Grade: X'!]
Before Jareth could even react to that message, the sky was covered with dark clouds in an instant.
A massive amount of mana started to flow towards the mountaintop on which Jareth was standing.
That phenomenon instantly affected the mana within a radius of a hundred kilometers, causing it to flow crazily towards Jareth.
The spectacle was so huge that even the sky turned colorful from the glow of the flowing mana, as if the world itself were welcoming something great.
People in the whole capital city stopped whatever they were doing and stared at the sky with shocked looks on their faces.
All of the mages in the area were even more shocked than ordinary people, as they could see the massive flow of mana.
The spectacle was so huge and so tremendously overwhelming that some people even started to scream that it was God's blessing on this world.
At this moment, not even grade-2 mages dared to fly in the sky for fear of coming into contact with that tremendous flow of mana.
A massive cyclone made of condensed mana was slowly forming above a mountaintop near the capital city.
Royal Palace, Rooftop.
*crack!*
Reynald glanced in the direction of the gigantic mana cyclone, and a look of sheer shock appeared on his face.
He was having a drink while looking at the scenery from the rooftop, and then suddenly this strange phenomenon appeared out of nowhere.
Reynald was so bewildered that he didn't even care about the wine glass that had fallen from his hand.
"T-this is!?… someone's ascending to grade 1!?"