One hour.
The absolute limit of mental meditation for a first-rank mage!
Two hours.
That was the ceiling for a second-rank mage!
…
…
Seven hours.
My God!
Even a ninth-rank mage could only meditate for seven hours a day at most.
True, ninth-rank mages consumed only one-third of their mental power during meditation, but seven hours was still insane.
Ninth-rank—that was the absolute limit of secular martial power.
Niu Niu nearly lost her mind.
“If this freak keeps going like this, my revenge will be sweet,” she muttered, her thoughts drifting back to the distant past.
Back then, Niu Niu was still a fresh, newly hatched egg.
She carried the highest bloodline of all Diamond Angels, because her father had been the chief of the Angel clan, ruling over countless planes and serving as the main god of the Light system.
The god realm was not peaceful, though.
A rival plane of equal strength to the god realm sent out its own main god every ten thousand years to watch the great temporal rift between them.
It was during her father’s turn that a group of mysterious, extraordinarily powerful assailants struck without warning.
Her father had the strength to escape—he was carrying Niu Niu with him, sealed in a beautiful pouch that still held only an egg.
In the end, he detonated his main divine artifact, hurling the egg into the temporal rift created by the explosion.
The last thing Niu Niu remembered was that she had already begun to perceive the outside world.
The passage through the temporal rift had traumatized her soul.
It had also been hungry and needed energy.
This was why the energy radiating from Kent drew in the still-egg-bound Niu Niu.
Upon hatching, she was originally zero-rank, but after consuming the eggshell her rank immediately surged to seven.
Of course, that was only theory.
The real advantage was that, at the exact moment of her soul contract with Kent, she had accidentally absorbed a vast amount of soul fragments, allowing her soul to be repaired in full.
As far as she could guess, the god realm was probably still searching for her and her father.
On the surface they would be looking for a lost orphan, but there was no doubt that some of her own clan members were behind the ambush—otherwise her father could never have been located with such precision.
So Niu Niu had decided to cultivate until she could return to the god realm and expose the evil!
But first, she needed to stay low-key.
She dyed her hair green, and because her Diamond Angel wings were transparent, just like grass spirits, she avoided much extra effort.
In truth, every species began life at zero-rank.
Just think—if Niu Niu had been born in the god realm, would there have been fewer resources for her to level up?
That was exactly why eggs and newborn magical beasts formed contracts so easily.
“Father…
are you still out there?” Niu Niu’s voice trembled as tears rolled down her face.
Temporal rifts were nothing like ordinary spatial ones.
They could fling someone into distant unknown lands…
or straight back through time.
Nothing was certain.
“Be good!
Dad is right here!”
The moment Kent woke, he saw Niu Niu crying and calling for her father.
He turned and looked around.
There was no one else.
She must be calling for me.
Thinking of her orphaned and the loneliness of his own parents’ divorce, Kent’s heart softened.
In a burst of emotion, he grabbed the little beauty and pressed her against his cheek, speaking tenderly.
“Eh?!
Get lost, you pervert!” Niu Niu was still lost in her memories when a hand suddenly seized her.
The next instant, her beautiful body collided with a pitch-black face coming straight at her.
Her little fist exploded in fury, slamming into that scoundrel’s cheek.
I’m hitting your face!
“Ow!
Ow!” Kent had been lost in reminiscence, feeling the ache of growing up without parental love, when suddenly the world spun.
He crashed to the ground, and only then did the sharp pain finally register in his mind.
“…Tell me, how did you manage to cast over a hundred fireballs?” Niu Niu pretended not to notice Kent’s battered face.
After all, back when she was still an egg, she had watched her father beat her mother every night until the poor woman screamed until her voice gave out.
From that day on, Niu Niu had decided men were the worst creatures alive—they only knew how to bully women.
(Low-rank angels were still minors, after all, and hadn’t reached sexual maturity.)
“I-I’ll tell you…” Kent had been planning to ignore her, but when she asked about his greatest pleasure, he couldn’t help it.
Still cradling his swollen cheek, he gave a quick, blurted explanation.
“Wh-what?
You can cast them silently now?” Niu Niu’s eyes widened.
“And…
and you can store mana in your body?
And it’s five times more than normal?!”
Kent kept rambling through the whole story: the qigong posture, the mental energy flow, the silent casting, the body storing mana…
everything.
He didn’t realize that his every gesture landed in Niu Niu’s eyes like the single word deserving a beating.
If he had known how she saw him, he would have kept his mouth shut.
“Spill it.
What else?” Niu Niu pressed on, her voice stern.
What Kent had just said had already given her a new perspective.
If a mage’s mana reserves were over five times normal, then the lower ranks were nothing.
Ninth-rank…
tenth-rank…
even higher, the Upper Gods, the Divine Kings…
what if his father had been blessed with power like that?
The thought sent a jolt through Niu Niu.
If Father had that kind of power…
maybe he really was the Lord of the God Realm.
“And…
and…
I don’t know either,” Kent stammered, trying to dodge the question.
“How could qigong help with meditation?
Even a Lord of the God Realm couldn’t figure it out.
It’s like asking a Western doctor to explain traditional Chinese medicine’s yin-yang five-element theory.
He wouldn’t know, would he?”
“Enough of this nonsense.
Go wash up.
You still haven’t bathed after the fire last night.”
“Mmm…
it’s just he constitution.” Niu Niu rummaged through the inherited memories but found nothing unusual about Kent.
She could only attribute it to his body.
“Oh, by the way, Niu Niu…
I get the feeling that during meditation I sense other elements too—black, white, purple, green, blue, gold, even a couple transparent ones, and some gray!” Kent had just stepped into the wooden tub when he remembered his earlier meditations and asked loudly.
“What?
All-attribute constitution…” Niu Niu was on the verge of screaming.
To break through the Saint Realm and reach Legendary status, a tenth-rank mage needed to be dual-cultivating a second non-conflicting element.
To reach the God Realm and become a Lord of the God Realm, full-system cultivation was mandatory.
In combat, mages always relied on their strongest attribute, using others only for support—like a warrior who only used the weapon he was most skilled with.
“Er…
I don’t know how to cultivate the other attributes.” Niu Niu had no idea and could only stall.
“Niu Niu, I’m asking you!”
“Niu Niu…”
“Niu Niu…
Niu Niu…”
Niu Niu was fuming.
“Niu…
Niu…” Kent stretched the words out into a long, drawn-out cry.
“Hmph!
If you have the ability, cultivate all the elements.
Once you master them all, there will be no bottlenecks.
As long as your mana is sufficient, you’ll naturally advance to the next level.” With that, Niu Niu flew off, muttering, “You’d need multiple times the mana to advance if you’re multi-attributed…
but that’s a future worry.
The real bottleneck here is the Saint Realm and above, not small plateaus.
Kent only wants to rule the world—the mention of planes would probably scare him senseless!” She also forgot to tell him that his mental strength was fixed and could not be increased.
“No bottlenecks means I can jump straight to tenth rank—the highest mage on the continent!” Kent danced with joy, coins jingling in both hands.
“Beauty in the left leg, beauty in the right leg!
Hahahaha!”
“This guy really intends to practice it, doesn’t he?
If he burns out his mana core, what then?
Maybe he should switch to a warrior path…
not bad.” Niu Niu, in a huff, was flying toward Harri City while her mind wandered.
But she had forgotten that her inherited memories might not suit Kent’s bloodline or species.
“What’s the matter?
Just after absorbing a bit of the other elements, my brain feels like it’s exploding.
If I take more, I’ll blow my head off!” Kent decided to act.
The moment he reached out, a surge of foreign elements slammed into his skull like a thunderbolt.
He was in agony.
“Idiot!
Earth civilization has made you lose face completely!
Dumbass!
You should have been the one transmigrated, not me!” Kent stared at the campfire for a long while, then suddenly jumped up and began dancing wildly, laughing and cursing himself.
Had he finally gone mad?
The truth was, Niu Niu hadn’t left in a huff—she simply wanted to check the guild archives and figure out exactly what kind of body Kent possessed.
Harri City was home to a small mage guild.
A single third-rank earth mage and three apprentices held the fort.
The building was even grander than the constable’s manor, dazzling to behold.
In truth, the mage guild, mercenary guild, and warrior guild all shared the same magnificent structure—though the place was surprisingly quiet.