After a few minutes of deliberation, he decided to bring Lolicon's Fervent Support and Exotic Nervous System up to 300, Permanent Prosperity and Revitalizing Aura up to 400, and throw the 72 extra SP needed to get Vital Being in Recuperation, bringing it up to 255.

As Degritone neared completion of Vital Being, he got an announcement.

Congratulations!

For your first time reaching 10000 in one of the four primary stats, Potent Vitality has been upgraded

For being the first person from your world to reach 10000 in any of the four primary stats, you gain a World Gate Construction Token

For being the first person with a level under 50 to reach 10000 in one of the four primary stats, you gain the Most Dedicated Achievement

He put all 10 free per level stats into Bonus Health Regeneration per level and asked Melena, "Did you know about Most Dedicated? I'm the first, and apparently only, person to get it, and I'm not sure if Achievements are listed before being able to obtain them."

She shook her head. "No, they are not visible before they are obtained. Send me its info, it's always nice to learn something new about the system."

Degritone nodded and did so before finishing off Vital Being.

Vital Being 1200/1200

Congratulations! You have completed the Permanently Thriving Path

Body of Vitality, Spirit of Vitality, and Blood of Vitality merged into Being of Vitality lvX

25% Health Regeneration from stats

25% Stamina Regeneration from stats

25% Mana Regeneration from stats

20 Vitality per level

1 Bonus Health Regeneration per level

1 Bonus Stamina Regeneration per level

Degritone's eyebrows raised at the second half of the second paragraph of Being of Vitality and his eyes grew as wide as he was capable of at the third paragraph.

Being of Vitality

Heavily increase your Health Regeneration; gain a percent of your Health Regeneration as Stamina Regeneration and a smaller percent as Mana Regeneration; and gain 4 times your Vitality as flat Health, 2 times your Vitality as flat Mana, and your Vitality as flat Stamina.

Other, non-hostile creatures that come into contact with your blood gain 20% of these bonuses for 5 seconds. Hostile creatures instead suffer the inverse of these bonuses as negative effects. Skills must have a Skill level higher than 5% of your Vitality in order to cleanse this debuff.

Finally, your Health Regeneration per hour becomes Health Regeneration per minute. Other Skills and effects treat your new per minute value as your per hour value.

log_8(Level)*425 = 726.648...% increased Health Regeneration

log(Level)*log(Vitality)*5000 = 30944.468... flat Health Regeneration

log_8(Level)*10 = 17.098...% Health Regeneration as Stamina Regeneration

log_8(Level)*7 = 11.968...% Health Regeneration as Mana Regeneration

"Wow, this is stupid. I love it. Back up to.. 50k health per second, without Recuperate. I regenerate from 0 to full in... 6 seconds."

Nodding, Melena said, "Yeah, Vital Being is by far the best Path for regenerations. Well, there may be a much higher tier Path that's also good. Paths above tier 10 have not been explored yet, as is was impossible to reach them before the update. With SP allowing you to go over the Skill level cap easily now, I would be quite surprised if tier 11, maybe even tier 12 Paths don't get obtained by some of the Patrons after this tournament.

"Anyway, Most Dedicated is interesting. Its rewards are not worth the cost to normal builds, but it is definitely not terrible. It's a little on the strange side, in terms of what is needed to obtain it, but its requirement is not the least like the average Achievement."

"What's a list of known Achievements? Actually, I don't care about the specifics, now that I think about it. It'd be nice to hear you talk for however long it would take to explain every Achievement, but meh. How many Achievements are known about?"

"With the addition of Most Dedicated, 78."

Degritone nodded. "I assume the other competitors will have similarly powerful Paths completed."

Melena nodded and said, "Correct. The winner of your bracket has almost always had a tier 8 Confluence Path or normal tier 9 Path completed, with the only exception I know of being So'ejan, though there may have been some before then that weren't documented. Granted, most builds take a route with 2 unconnected Confluence Paths, one at tier 6 and one at tier 8, with 3 or 4 required Paths each, which makes each one individually weaker than Vital Being, but still.

"I wouldn't expect your next opponent to have one, though, but starting from round 34, maybe even 33, you should expect each opponent to have done so."

"Are normal tier 9 paths really on par with tier 8 confluence paths? Of the few confluence paths I've gotten, it seems like they're multiple tiers ahead of normal paths."

"Which is correct. Tier 9 Paths are not on the same level as a tier 8 Confluence Path, but if you have enough PP to get 3 tier 8 Paths and a tier 9 Path, your Skill levels alone were enough to overcome the advantage of a tier 8 Confluence Path. Skill levels used to be much harder to get and Paths used to have much lower PP costs, not even taking into account the lower Skill level cap being a hard cap, rather than a soft cap. Only really Patrons and a handful of others had the drive to reach their cap.

"Now someone can go from 0 to capped in a matter of days, if not hours. I definitely prefer it this way, I just don't think the compensation we were given was enough."

Degritone shrugged. "That's always how it is when an easier method of doing something comes around. People who did it the old way are upset they wasted so much time. Only, the system doesn't have to care if we get mad, since we can't quit to go play a different game. The fact we're compensated at all is already generous."

"I know, but like you said, it's frustrating."

Degritone went to pat her head, but overshot and slapped her head. "HOLY COW I'M SORRY!" He activated his upped Exotic Nervous System and tried to slowly move his arm. Even with the world seeming to have slowed by a factor of over 17, it was very fast. After a few seconds of relative time, he was able to move it so slow as to not be visible, and he slowly brought his perception back to real time as he adjusted to his speed.

Half way through the process, he heard a slow, "It's ok. It didn't hurt, or even deal damage, and I'm pretty certain you didn't mean to. You just got the upgraded Potent Vitality, right? What's your Agility?"

Now almost done, Degritone opened his status.

Name Degritone Race Human Resources 362953.255.../362953.255... (+3494177.584...) 70435.442.../70435.442... (+4729933.507...) 149231.555.../149231.555... (+2540281.882...) Class Lolicoknight lv35 Experience 42028/63000 Strength 1435 Endurance 1035 Vitality 10225 Agility 287 Physical 3030 Magic 2833

"287," he said.

"And with the flat 25% increase and the insane jump in your Vitality, it's at least an effective 4787, which would be significantly higher than last time you moved any real distance. Your base speed should now be roughly thrice what it was before. Anyone would have trouble performing fine movement without any warning if they suddenly tripled in speed."

"Still, I hit you..."

Melena poked her finger between Degritone's eyes. "And I told you it's fine. No pain, no damage, no hard feelings. It was an accident. While a huge storm would be useful for your upcoming fights, I'm not putting you through that."

Finally done with his basic adjustments, Degritone overly slowly went to pat her head, right where he hit her. After a few seconds of gently rubbing where he'd hit, he said, "Wait," and squinted for a few seconds before continuing. "How much- do I have the same effective Agility as someone who splits all four stats evenly now?"

"To a degree. Haste is still less effective, as it cares about your actual Agility, and most people only get around 1000 Vitality before putting everything else in other stats, but generally, yes. You will move about the same speed as someone who isn't using a movement-enhancing Skill or going an Agility-based build. Add either of those in and you'll be slower, even with Haste, Guard, and Lolicon's Fervent Support all at once."

"Why 1000 Vitality?"

"It's a nice round number near the actual conventionally-optimal amount of Vitality of 989, which typically gets enough Mana and Stamina Regeneration to let everyone, even a Patron, use their Skills without restraint. The only time having only 38555 of each Regeneration becomes a real problem is when you're a burst mage and your opponent survives the first 10 volleys, which only really happens in very specific Dungeons that they already know to stay away from or a very tanky variant of a level 30 invasion's boss."

After Degritone's nod, they went back to their normal activities between fights.

As Degritone arrived in the clearing and time slowed, he saw yet another mage. This one's legs were soon wrapped by dirt and rock.

Round 32 begin!

As the announcement appeared, his opponent began to slowly sink into the ground. Unluckily for his opponent, however, Degritone was experiencing over 18 and a half seconds for each real second that passed and with his increased speed, though having a slightly rocky first few steps, he was able to get in range of his Omens before his opponent was even half way underground.

He began rapidly casting each one multiple times as he closed the gap to get in range of his Bloody Aura and Vital Presence. Accompanying each cast was a brief shimmer of Mana around his opponent. Before he could get in range of his auras, however, his opponent disappeared underground, with the ground around where they were being completely smooth, as if nothing had happened.

With Swordsman's Territory, he saw that the ground around him would begin opening up, and he got out of the area of effect. The area that would be affected began to follow him, but lagged behind as he could predict its exact location. Degritone himself managed to make it to above where the mage had entered the ground with maybe 15 subjective seconds before the ground would open up.

With Aura Manipulation, he extended his auras down as far as it would go while still remaining wide enough to catch if they'd moved a few feet. The prediction for when the ground would open got delayed by about 2 seconds. With Being of Vitality's debuff applied, even at 10% power, his opponent's regenerations would have been decreased by more than what Melena had said was a normal regeneration at full build, on top of Acidic Blood's damage per second.

As the time for the enemy attack approached, Degritone materialized two 6 foot by 6 foot plates of steel and held them out to his sides at arms' length as he saw that, after he fell, the fissure would try to close on him. He'd decided to bet on two "shields" combined with Knockback Resistance being able to protect him from the crushing force, and the prediction agreed. The fissure would have revealed his opponent, during which time, he would be able to cast multiple Omens again, and potentially even get in range for an attack, if he fell far enough.

He sped up time slightly so he didn't have to wait so long for the attack to finally come, then slowed it back down just before it happened. As soon as he got sight of his opponent, he struck, sending more and more Omens at his opponent, each one accompanied by another brief shimmer of Mana around his opponent.

After his hundredth cast since the start of the fight, he was confused about how his opponent had survived multiple hundreds of thousands of damage, and the fissure's closing had reached his "shields." It stopped closing, and Degritone created a Condensed rod to take his place before letting go and falling at his opponent. A pillar of stone would have been about to erupt from the side of the fissure and hit Degritone in the head in an attempt to push him into the wall, but with Knockback Resistance, he knew he would have been able to not be deflected from his course.

So, he accelerated time to reach his opponent in a timely fashion, and more and more pillars entered his prediction. A few of them would have been below him, and stopped his fall in the same way the ground would. He hit the wall with his sword once to move out of the way of those pillars as the first pillar began to emerge from the wall. As he approached, his opponent began smirking, but Degritone didn't see an attack that would mean anything, so he kept falling and the pillars all either missed or hit him and failed to move him at all.

As he reached optimal stabbing range, he let loose. As his sword came into contact with his opponent, a shimmer of Mana appeared around his opponent and his sword got sucked into the barrier around his opponent. Before his armor could come into contact with his opponent, he pulled his arms up, brought out his Condensed sword, and stabbed with it. It connected and Degritone was met with an explosion of raw Mana that sent rock all around him flying. He, himself, began flying back, as well.

The amount of light produced in the explosion left him temporarily blind. This did not prevent him from looking at his status, however, and he found his Health was visibly dropping. He began casting Revitalize and a 1-Stamina Bastion on him self over and over to try to keep up with the damage in the most resource-efficient way, but the damage still overtook the speed at which he could heal. His saving grace was Adaptive Palisade, which was rapidly ticking its damage reduction up.

After he'd flown a few hundred feet away, the light began to dim and he was capable of keeping up with the damage. By the time he reached the ground, his sight had fully returned and he could see that where he had struck the made looked like the impact site of a meteor: Knocked down trees for hundreds of feet and a huge crater. However, in the center was no meteor, simply a man with a stab wound through his stomach.

From where he was, Degritone wasn't sure, but it looked like his legs were still surrounded by rock. Why he wasn't sinking back into the earth, Degritone could only guess as he began running with as low a time acceleration as possible. By the time he'd arrived at his opponent, who was looking around himself, pale face and concerned look on his face, Degritone had regenerated to full.

His opponent opened his mouth to speak, but Degritone's time dilation was too high, causing him to not be able to understand the normal-speed human, and with one more strike, he was back in his and Melena's room. "So that's how he's been winning those fights," she said.

"Hm?" Degritone asked, tilting his head and looking down at the loli on his stomach.

"He has an interesting combination of Skills that makes him basically immune to Mana-based damage, and also creates a massive explosion based on how much damage was negated when he gets hit by a physical attack. It's a highly frowned upon build because it's highly destructive to its surroundings. It's also just not viewed as conventionally effective because it's useless against pure physical combatants."