By the time Aki could lift himself from the dirt, a certain tall and pale woman of chinese heritage, vanta black hair, blue irises and dark sclera was already sitting next to him. She wore a more conventional shade of black in a robe that had the depiction of gray fire burning here and there, with feathers seemingly fashioned into her sleeves and waist.

“Lea, and here I thought you’d prefer something with less cleavage.” He snickered before starting to cough hard.

“And whose fault is it that these suddenly got bigger?” She coldly replied, her robe a size too small for her and the middle was revealing plenty of the two mountains it was supposed to conceal, and though the robes still extended to her knees, they also exposed plenty of thigh on the left side as the whole thing seemed to be bursting at the seams.

“Yours. I’m an ass man. The thighs that can pop heads off are definitely my fault though.” He explained with a cheeky smile before getting up with a groan. “Jokes aside, I'm already capped in mana, just mentally wrung out, so just come here and I will loosen the dress while adding some metal threads to make you look less like a matron of some brothel. Congratulations on becoming a draugr by the way.”

“Is that what I currently am? Some of my stats gained a new name and several skills are unrecognizable now, but I guess this is better than if I'd become a vampire or wraith. Quite a few personal paths as well, and for once, I probably have the points.” She sighed, barely reacting as silver treads molded themselves into her robes and allowed her to look more like a battle maiden instead of someone about to star a porn movie.

The process was lengthy, but when she finished dealing with her notifications and paths, it became obvious that her robes had lost some of that indecisiveness in design as the metal was incorporated, making the material become black as it was assimilated and turning the gray flames depicted into shining white ones that seemed to barely iluminate destroyed battlegrounds and other scenes that separated death and life, ending where the feathers begun as if to partition one from the other or show that those would be devoured by a hungry avian.

“Did you use some of those special metals you were reserving for your armor? These look good but you know this thing would eventually grow even if you didn’t feed it.” She questioned, a raised eyebrow turned to the now clean but pale human.

“What can I say? You’re distracting in this form.” He dismissively shrugged, turning towards the direction of the bunker with the children.

Even without their bond telling her, Lea had lived for long enough to note that he had not been lusting after her body. He was just bothered by her being uncomfortable and half naked. Plus, her summoned dress in human form had just gained plenty of upgrades to it’s defence from the compatible resources poured into it, so whether this was also a way to make sure she was okay was rather obvious.

Honestly, she found his reaction rather cute, but ended up just rolling her eyes and following behind in their slow march.

…....

[Congratulations! You have completed the Master path (625/625)! +10 physical stat points and mental stat points. +30 free stat points. +1 Free stat point per level. +25% experience gained.+20% Skill growth.

Congratulations! You have completed the Vivacious path (250/250)! +10 to Vitality. +1 to vitality per level. Health is multiplied by 1.1x. A tenth of the vitality score score now also contributes to your health and stamina regeneration.

Congratulations! You have completed the Sturdy path (250/250)! +10 to Endurance. +1 to endurance per level. Stamina is multiplied by 1.1x. A tenth of the endurance score now also contributes to bone density.]

“Crap. Lea, cover me.” As Aki rapidly said this there was a moment of hesitation as the woman turned her arm into that of a giant bird and covered the small windows that allowed the smaller elven children to see outside with it.

Not an instant later though, he started to growl in pain before he was able to remove his armor as he suddenly grew a couple of centimeters and had his already defined muscles bulk slightly more.

This sudden growth was indeed because of the sudden shift in bone density, not because of his actual strength or endurance score, but because his skills allowed his soul to form a more powerful body, which he did have the energy to sustain, so thanks to the amount of aether coursing through him, growth was forced onto his body.

The same had likely been applied to his brain parts and nervous system, but as their actual size did not change much, it was hard to feel anything similar to the sudden increase in volume, which was surprisingly only slightly disoriented instead of feeling like the proper tearing and molding of bone, nerves and muscles that it actually was, since an increase in bone density allowed for an impact in most other physical stats to be felt through the body, as part of the base had changed to better accommodate them.

Another thing that would not happen when receiving new functions to mental stats was the occurrence of almost bursting through one’s clothes. Seeing as his clothes were about to rip anyway, Aki snorted and forced his whole body to flex by giving himself a shock, actually tearing his garments to shreds and quickly taking out and wearing a set of clothes that would actually fit him and still be a bit loose.

“Did you just… What?” Questioned a confused Lea, who’d been expecting some kind of sequela from their recent fight or something.

“I was distributing some points into my paths and reached a hundred in endurance then finished the sturdy path, which thanks to some aether fuckery got me several more benefits than it normally would." He summarised with a shrug.

"Why would you even put so many points into endurance when you are mainly a mage? Shouldn't you be getting your mental stats up instead?" She asked with clear confusion. He couldn't possibly…

"They're all over a hundred and ten already. I'll at least get my physicality to match before investing in focus and wisdom I guess. Maybe just distribute it equally over all five mental stats? I don't know. I use all kinds of magic in all methods, so all of the latter three are useful, but without the first two there's no base on which to build on. Maybe I can get something to increase the overall effects of intelligence and push all free points into it? That'd be ideal." He mumbled in response, starting to pull the metallic orphan transporter forward. They were already pretty close to Ashe mortem, though he still had a bit of purple on his skin and eyes due to the massive arcane confluence he’d forced into his body.

“Did you…” Lea tried to ask something, but she was suddenly assaulted by a white pain that did not allow her to even fall to the ground.

“I know about Images, ok? Or are they called Daos? I don’t exactly have anyone to explain that stuff without the system trying to interfere, but I can certainly notice the world itself helping me cast one spell or another through the higher requirement of mental energy, as if I'm tapping into something greater than what I'm trying to do.” Aki did not even turn around, but his words quickly released her from the bindings trying to punish her for the slip up. “What I'm trying to make isn’t related to stars or anything, but the concepts align and it’s not like I don't have my own understanding about reality, so the necessity of the situation was enough for me to reinforce that mashed up spell.” He explained with a sigh, noting the relief on his companion.

They'd kept talking to a minimum since defeating the monster, the reward for which had actually been just more village resource upgrades, which would be implemented in small parcels because the upgrade was simply too far above anything they could or should use at this point in time, but the silence was mostly because they were both very, very tired despite his filled mana pool having allowed them to be at full health.

Really, it hadn't been that he had regenerated it after the starburst attack, but that he'd still been unable to push the whole of the extra mana from his system and it had never gone beneath 100%. He was actually under a debuff for regenerating mana at a very reduced rate for several more hours actually.

The debuff itself was gradually weakening with time as well, so it was clear that some well deserved rest would fix the problem. Unfortunately however, he had made it in time to help with the night's beast horde.

The wave attacks would only last as long as this phase of the integration, so besides this one, there would only be six more if they properly cleaned the zone of raid bosses.

Then again, after joining the wider world there would be little the reduced population could do about monster nests forming over in the barren territory of several world's land even if everyone became capable of killing hordes of monsters by themselves, which was very unlikely even if all those brought together were been from societies already marked by this level of combat like in the orc's case.

More importantly than these long term considerations however, was that there was no imminent threat for him to worry about suddenly popping up nor was he so fearful that people would suddenly fuck themselves over if he didn't watch over them all the time anymore.

That meant he was going to enter 'secluded cultivation' and take the elites from his town and the other villages with himself.

………..

Thirty hours. That's how long they took to determine the best ten fighters and supporters of all ten villages. Convincing everyone that it was OK for him to just kidnap said people for the next ten or so hours took even less effort.

When he punted each and everyone into the town's newly opened level 50 challenge dungeon, obvious exceptions apart, and proceeded to enter himself, a lot of panic ensued the moment the people hit the ground arse first.

There was apparently some time fuckery involved, but each instance of a dungeon only really begun when the last person of a group, word which had a rather strange denomination which no one could properly recite as far as the system was concerned, entered, so despite the difference in time being around 1000:1, everyone was still shitting their pants when they read the notification that with the name of the place even as Aki himself entered.

Not that he’d give them much time to reflect about the trees surrounding them and the faint sound of howls and other predatory noises.

“ATTENTION!” His words laced with mana and stamina, crossing the air with the help of a couple spells and several levels in social and physical skills, his shout could probably make the laziest of punks, emos and rebels fall into position as if they were in the military. As he walked out of the crows of a hundred people, none moved.

Though Lea was also raising a brown at him, clearly unaffected, so there was that.

“As you have noticed, we are in a dungeon none of you are ready for. Fortunately for all of you, you have me, who will make your life hell until each person here can clear this whole thing by themselves and a whole fucking year to have that become reality!” He exclaimed, shocking everyone as he flexed his intimidation and royalty skills hard so as to not be interrupted. “As a courtesy to those that do not know of me, allow me to explain why I even think it possible to just pick a hundred random people and make them into unstoppable elites.”

Snapping his fingers, Aki summoned several exploding pits of magma in increasing circumferences all around them, quickly increasing the size of the clearing they currently stood at by having the trees, animals, monsters and ground simply recoil or burn until they had several times more space them when he started, blood and bone have flown with wood as the corpses of many monsters fell to the ground after a brief flight caused by his magical mines.

"Keep in mind that I have no class, so this is all done with my own spells fueled by the stats I cultivated. By the time I'm done with you, the weakest of you will receive a cyan grade class after getting out or reaching level 50, the latter of which you are prohibited from achieving until you leave. For the benefit of those with less prepared minds however, allow me to explain that yes, all of this is mandatory and that you have no choice but to reach a point far above the curve of growth expected by the system. Now, follow me, vanguard on the front, scouts on the back, mages form a line close to the warriors, crafters to the middle, Robert you command the middle, Karta supervises the scouts and Septima is with me at the front." As he commanded, it was not just certainty that he radiated, but also minimal suggestions on how to achieve what he’d told them to do, all the while intimidating the people around him and offering them safety.

He was going to like this. The others, not so much.