Degritone woke up to Melena looking off in the distance worriedly with a large pressure on his hand. His anger immediately flared and he sat up, before he forgot what he was angry about. Melena hugged Degritone's back. "Good to have you back."

"What happened? Did I lose?"

"No. You won. Adjantha is going to be executed once they leave the tournament grounds. They used a copious amount of illegal drug to try to win the Clash of Wills you had. It temporarily makes you hyper focused, which is great for Clashes, effectively increasing your willpower. You normally can't Clash with someone whose willpower is significantly lower than yours, making it a pretty safe way to end conflicts without loss of Health.

"However, using it in conjunction with a Clash is illegal because when you lose to someone with significantly more willpower than you and they purposefully bring the entirety of their will to bear at once, it causes major, system-ignoring damage to the loser's mind. Plus, you had never done one, and you are unable to issue one for another 5 levels. You get a Token to use for a tutorial when you reach level 40, as well as the ability to issue Clashes.

"You could have been turned into a vegetable..."

Degritone placed his hand on her head. "Don't cry, or even be sad. When it comes to willpower, nothing will beat me. I don't care if someone has infinite willpower, I will not lose. When I say something is or will be some way and it's not a physical impossibility, it will be that way."

"You know you don't have to win, right?"

"Don't say that. Do not. Say that. You told me to win, right? I won. It is not a possibility for me to lose, as long as I have your order. Do you want to learn about the existence of a base energy or not?"

"I do, but not at the cost of my only protege in centuries!"

"I have an order to not die. I had an order to win. You will never lose me, understand? I am Degritone, THE Lolicoknight. When a loli gives me an order, I will fulfill it. I have an order to not die, so I will never die. I don't care if God himself came down and tried to smite me, I will never fail to follow a loli's order. Now," he moved Melena's face to look directly at his, "do you want to learn about the existence of a base energy?"

Melena nodded.

"Then I will win this, and nothing will stand in my way. Now, where is Adjantha? I have to go punish him for making you sad."

Sighing and squeezing Degritone, Melena said, "He's already going to be executed and you can't damage him. But yes, you will win." She smirked weakly. "You're the Lolicoknight, after all."

"You don't have to make fun of me," he said, smiling. "And I don't care that I can't damage him. I'll just plant an image inside of him that permanently sets every single nerve ending in his body to experience maximum pain possible, while making sure he's unable to fall unconscious." Degritone's arm not attached to the hand on Melena's head began to flex as he began to imagine things. "For the rest of his life, he will be utterly incapable of coherent thought as the pain forces him to descend into madness.

"He will experience the pain of having his flesh torn off and sewn back on again, his tendons pulled out and played like a fiddle, his balls turned to paste, his-" He felt Melena squeeze him again and he released the tension in his arm, which was now throbbing with pain from how tense he had been. He turned his head to look at her and her face was pressed against his belly. He tiled his head, played with her hair a bit, and asked, "Hm?"

After a few seconds, Melena responded, "You were releasing an image. It made me... highly uncomfortable to see."

His heart sank and he deflated as he hugged her. "Sorry. When someone makes a loli feel negative emotions, I... well, overreact, in the eyes of other people, as you saw with the first round and now."

"You didn't cause Mellisa to feel a negative emotion."

"Sure, but I didn't know that at the time. At the time, I thought I'd caused her pain, possibly anger, and possibly sadness."

"Well, I'm fine now, and I'm telling you not to go after him."

Sighing, Degritone said, "Fine. How long until the next round?"

"Should be an-"

Degritone arrived in the clearing to see a black dude with dreadlocks standing on the opposite side of the clearing from him. He recognized his clothing as Goku's gi. Before the announcement appeared, he flexed his arms and his hair turned golden and stood up. Degritone smiled.

Round 29 begin!

His opponent crashed into Degritone the instant his armor fully formed and the world slowed as Degritone activated everything. "Dude, nice. How many of the transformations do you have?"

His opponent stopped a punch before it got half way to Degritone. "You like Dragon Ball?"

"Heck yeah, I doubt many people don't. The Universe Survival arc was a little long for me, but it was still fun to watch."

He offered a handshake, and Degritone took it, though it was one of those forearm handshakes. "My man. I got up to Super Saiyan 3."

"Nice. You have the Zenkai Boost? Did you have a race change?"

"Nah, man. I'm still human. I've got a feeling that Zenkai Boost is race-locked, though, as I've tried so long to get it to work."

"From what my Patron tells me, you need to be able to rapidly call the image to the front of your mind for it to work, rather than have a highly detailed image. Details just increase the potency of the image, not make it more possible."

"Thanks, man. We gonna fight now?"

"Sure. Go easy on me, now." Degritone continued with a laugh, "I've never fought a Saiyan."

His opponent nodded and jumped back to his starting position. Degritone checked his Health and found it missing a sizable chunk, enough to warrant a Revitalize to get back to full health. "Ready when you are!" He heard his opponent say. He gave a thumbs up and when his hand returned to his sword, his opponent launched toward him.

With the slowed time and Swordsman's Territory, he was able to react in time and brought his sword up to intercept his opponent, putting his hand on the opposite side of the blade to have better leverage when the impact happened, except it never came. Swordsman's Territory told him that, as soon as he got his sword into place, the most likely outcome was instead his opponent stopping just short and firing a Kamehameha at him.

He tried to get out of the way, but it slammed into his left shoulder. With Guard active, it was only doing a few thousand damage per second, rather than immediately cooking him alive, but the few fractions of a second he spent in its beam still removed over 2500 health. Having escaped the beam's trajectory, he cast Omen of Pestilence and Omen of Famine on the guy, then began a slash toward where he was going to move next.

But once again, just before impact should have happened, Swordsman's Territory's prediction changed. Instead of dashing to keep in front of Degritone, he would dash straight at him, then send a kick upward, in a vain attempt to send him flying. Degritone created spikes on his armor where the kick would land, and for once, Swordsman's Territory was not circumvented. The damage done was not enough to pierce skin yet, but it had done some, as Empower took a sizable chunk of Mana.

Only now did Degritone realize that he had a full on conversation with a man standing in his Vital Presence. That momentary slip of his mind allowed another kick to hit unmolested. He checked his Health and decided a Bastion was in order before casting his ghouls again, their first attacks having just hit. From his sword's current position, he was incapable of reaching the prediction with it, so he let go of it and went for a grab.

It worked, and he brought his sword down with his other hand. His opponent tried to dodge, but Degritone's grip was steel and the sword came crashing down upon his head. His opponent looked at him with a serious expression on his face and flexed once more, blue lightning coming to life around him.

The prediction's "tail" effectively doubled in length as his opponent sped up significantly, ripping his gi to get out of Degritone's grip. Another unmolested upward kick sent Degritone a few inches into the air. Following the prediction, Degritone sent a stab straight downward, into the leg of his opponent, and the two connected, stabbing through his opponent's tibia.

His opponent retracted his leg before Degritone could do anything more devastating, flexing once more. His hair grew in length and volume significantly, no longer defying gravity. A punch shattered Degritone's sword and sent him flying into a nearby tree. Degritone cast Pestilence between them to buy him time to reforge his sword, Famine on his opponent to regain some of his significantly damaged health pool, Bastion to give him a small buffer between the damage and him, and Energize to slightly help with his reduced Mana pool.

His opponent charged through his ghoul, dispatching it in the process, as Degritone slowly fell to the ground. He stopped forming his sword to reinforce the section of his armor that was about to get hit, and he remembered Condensing existed. He'd lose out on almost 1000 damage each hit, but he needed an unbreakable weapon, so he summoned his soul sword in the path of the incoming fist, already bracing it for impact.

His opponent's arm was split up the middle as the soul stuff ripped right through the damaged flesh and bone of his opponent, coming out about 3 inches short of the elbow. With a swift motion, he repeated the feat for the follow up punch, and he found himself back in his and Melena's room as soon as sword made contact with skin.

"Why are so many people humans?" Degritone asked. "Out of the 29 people I've fought, only 8 haven't been human." He sat down next to Melena, who pulled him down to lay his head in her lap.

"Every single world that the system has incorporated has had humans on it. Most also have other races, but there has never been a world added to the system that didn't have humans on it. One theory is that the system is looking for its creators, who were humans. The significantly more popular theory is just that humans are an inevitable consequence of evolution on a planetary scale."

"Neither of those sound good to me."

Melena shrugged. "There aren't any testable theories, at least none that can be carried out in a reasonable time frame."

Degritone nodded. "Oh, hey, I never did ask how your chat with So'ejan went."

"It went well. He's not got much to do beyond be a Patron, but for most, simply doing their job brings many interesting stories, though few as interesting as you. I'd say none, but there's septillions of people under the system, so I can say 'none' with confidence."

"Holy cow that's a lot of people. Oh, how many people were in my bracket this year?"

"A little more than 2.4 quintillion. You've already made it to the top 4.2 million."

"Hoooolyyyy cow. That's a lot of people. And a small portion of the population, though I guess there are other brackets."

Melena nodded. "True on all three accounts. Roughly two ten thousandths of a percent of the population signs up, usually, with roughly half that being in your bracket."

Degritone took a few seconds to process that. "Wow. This is such a huge event, and yet it's so... small."

"Yeah. Most people understand they have no chance of winning and don't even sign up. Those with little chance of winning that do sign up usually don't take it too seriously, just treating it as a source of SP, and as such, PP, if they even try. Speaking of, how are you doing on that front?"

"Permanently Thriving at 164 and 2077 SP. Vital Being is going to be 1200, right?"

"Correct. A confluence Path's PP cost is either equal to its highest tier Path's cost, or equal to one tier higher than all Paths inside it, if those Paths are all the same tier."

"And I've got... Oh no, mental math..." Melena silently waited for her protege to figure it out on his own. "2241 effective progress toward the 2400 I need."

"Which means you need to beat 2 or 3 more opponents. I was off by one round in my prediction if you get it in 2."

"I can't even rig it to make you correct, either, since my SP gain is completely unrelated to anything I do."

"I wouldn't be worried about that. I'd be thinking about how I'm going to beat estimated numbers 1 through 18 in a row."

Degritone shrugged. "The young Immortal Troll can be brought to the front of my mind in slightly more than a second. I'm not sure by how much."

"Which is?"

"Oh, right. I never explained the Immortal Troll. So, the Immortal Troll is a character from a game I ran... made, since I don't feel like explaining how DnD works right now. They were a troll that had overcome their fire weakness, and could regenerate in seconds. The players of the game had to incapacitate the troll long enough to get in to his house, steal stuff, and get away. Anyway, he was basically the only thing keeping this near-omnipotent lich... basically an undead that is magical, from completing something, which the players never got to learn about because the game fizzled out.

"Why didn't the lich just take it himself? Because the lich was so old that the only enjoyment he could get out of anything was from watching others struggle to do what he'd be able to do with a single thought. He wasn't evil, though no one else could really see that, since he often sent people to their deaths for quests he could do without any effort, and noticed when killing people as much as any human would when stepping on a trail of ants hidden under the grass. Anyway, I got off the Immortal Troll. He was originally just like any other troll.

"Well, he thought that, anyway. Truth is, he was always immune to the troll's natural weakness to fire and, unlike other trolls, his regeneration was so fast that it could cause imperfections to become a permanent part of him. This usually resulted in gaining new body parts from things he'd defeated if they were hard battles. A crocodile tail, a few sharper teeth from a lion or similar large cat, his blood fused with the ingredients needed to make healing potions after defeating a particularly hard party of adventurers, etc..

"I figure it would be easiest to just use an image of when he was young to get the base image and Skills first, then work on getting the," long pause, "then get," short pause, "upgrades to those Skills as I rework him to be more and more like how he would eventually become after thousands of years. Start with just his regeneration, then work on incorporating," long pause, "stuff like his electrifying skin, mega acid spit, or tons of other, little things that might actually become Skills."

"You should probably just choose 5 aspects of his to create Skills around. Maybe 6, maybe 7, if you really want to push it. I'd be surprised if even you could make 8 Skills from a single image, since no one has ever accomplished that, and only 18 people have ever created an image with 7 Skills."

Degritone nodded. "I'll think about it. For now, it's not relevant, as I just need to make him materializeable, and add more over time."