He opened the System panel with shaking hands.
[DUAL BREAKTHROUGH COMPLETE]
[Talent: Shadow Walker (F-rank) → Shadow Sovereign's Step (E-rank)]
[Ability Unlock — F-rank potential: Shadow Fade]
[Ability Unlock — E-rank potential: Void Step | Umbral Sense]
[Cultivation: Mortal Realm Layer 1 → Layer 2]
[Dantian Capacity Expanded | Mana Density Elevated]
[Simultaneous Breakthrough Bonus: Peak Foundation Multiplier Applied]
[All stats +15% permanent bonus from dual breakthrough synergy]
[Stats — Post Breakthrough:]
STR: 54 | AGI: 58 | END: 50 | MAN: 59/72 | VIT: 49 | INT: 53 | PER: 55 | LUK: 8
[Assignable Points: 12]
[Creation Authority Update: E-rank creation tier unlocked.]
He read through it slowly. Twice. Then stopped at the ability section and read it a third time.
Three abilities total. One from F-rank. Two new ones from E-rank.
That's how it works, he realized. Abilities don't unlock based on how strong you get personally. They unlock based on how high your Talent's potential rank is.
Shadow Walker at F-rank potential had always been a one-ability Talent. No matter how much he trained, no matter how high his stats climbed — Shadow Fade was all it would ever give him. A weak blur that fizzled after seconds. The ceiling wasn't his effort. It was the Talent's rank.
The moment the Talent evolved to E-rank potential — became Shadow Sovereign's Step — the ceiling lifted. Two new abilities dropped into existence that simply hadn't been accessible before regardless of anything else he'd done.
Which means—
He sat with the implication for a moment.
Every Awakener in Neo-Eden was locked inside their Talent's potential rank. An F-rank Talent stayed F-rank forever. One ability. A weak one. No matter how hard they trained, no matter how many beast cores they absorbed — the Talent itself never grew. Only the person's stats and cultivation did.
The Mana Baptism and breakthrough process elevated personal rank — how strong the user was — but not the Talent's potential ceiling. Those were two different things. A person could become D-rank strong while still wielding an F-rank Talent. Strong enough to use that one weak ability more powerfully. But still only one ability. Still the same ceiling.
The only way to raise the Talent's potential rank — to unlock more abilities, to deepen the Talent's fundamental nature — was Talent Evolution.
Something that had never been done artificially in Neo-Eden's history.
Until now.
He looked at his own situation clearly. His Shadow Sovereign's Step was E-rank potential. Three abilities. When he eventually pushed himself to D-rank through stat grinding and another breakthrough — the personal rank advancement — the Talent's potential would stay at E-rank unless he used an Evolution Potion on himself. Stayed at three abilities.
But if he created a D-rank Evolution Potion and used it on his own Talent before that breakthrough?
[Projected: Shadow Sovereign's Step (D-rank potential)]
[Abilities: Shadow Fade | Void Step | Umbral Sense | +3 New Abilities at D-rank]
Six abilities. On a Talent that the Awakening Ceremony had classified as F-rank trash.
He breathed slowly.
And that's just for myself.
For everyone else in Neo-Eden — every Awakened person walking around with an F-rank or E-rank Talent they'd been born into and couldn't change — the Evolution Potion wasn't a convenience. It wasn't an upgrade.
It was the one thing they'd been told their entire lives didn't exist.
He reached for his design materials.
The Ghost Alchemist's second act wasn't about himself.
It was about producing something for a market of millions of people who'd accepted their ceilings as permanent.
The potion design took three hours of pure thought before he created a single thing.
He sat with his eyes closed and held the concept in his mind the way he'd hold a blueprint — turning it slowly, examining every angle. What was a Talent Evolution Potion at its core? Not the ingredients. Not the appearance. The function.
Simple, when he finally saw it.
Every Awakened person's Talent sat inside a framework — like a flame inside a lantern. The lantern was built at the moment of awakening and never changed. F-rank lantern, F-rank flame forever. The breakthrough process made the flame hotter, more controlled, more powerful. But the lantern stayed the same size.
The potion needed to replace the lantern. While the flame was still burning inside it.
That's why nobody's ever done it, he realized. It's not that the concept is unknown. It's that the execution is nearly impossible with standard alchemy. You'd need to restructure the Mana framework around a live Talent without disrupting it.
He thought about it from every angle his INT could find.
And then he started building.
Dark amber formed in the vial slowly. Silver threads appeared through it — not decoration, not aesthetic — the active component, the part that would find the edges of an existing Talent framework and carefully, precisely expand them outward to the next rank's dimensions.
It was warm before it finished forming.
[E-rank Talent Evolution Potion — Prototype]
[Function: Evolves target Talent from F-rank potential to E-rank potential]
[Unlocks additional abilities tied to E-rank potential ceiling]
[Mana Cost: 41]
[Current Mana: 18/72]
He held it up to the lamplight.
The silver threads moved through the amber like something searching.
Every F-rank Awakened person in Neo-Eden, he thought. Every person who stood on a platform and heard laughter when the crystal showed them a low rank. Every person who accepted one weak ability as their permanent ceiling.
This changes that.
He set it down.
The otaku part of his brain — the part that had grown up analyzing overpowered protagonists and the moments their power became truly undeniable — was very quiet for once.
Because this wasn't a fantasy anymore.
This was a vial sitting on a bedroom floor in the lower district of Tier-7.
And it was real.
To Be Continued —