Unable to accept the outcome, that subordinate chose never to advance again, remaining at Half-step Sequence 4 until she eventually withered away.
That example remained fresh in Lilith's memory. Smiling, she said what had truly stuck with her was not that the witch had given up on advancing, but that after hesitating for a long time and finally deciding to advance with the support of her beloved, she discovered that no matter what she did, she could not make her beloved forget her. One did not want to, and the other could not. That was why she chose to give up.
After hearing that, Rimuru's mind had been filled with question marks. He had desperately wanted to ask why there was a pathway with such a brain-dead advancement ritual, and what a breakthrough in one's life level had to do with a ritual. But Lilith's answer was that advancement, when stripped down to its essence, was merely using power to reshape oneself, or using higher-level power to forcibly change oneself.
But great power had never been easy to subdue. The very essence of controlling power was a two-way compromise.
Whether it was the world's recognition or the influence of people under idealism, it all ultimately existed to ensure the stability of power and increase the chances of success.
Ascending one's life level had always been extraordinarily difficult. In the earliest barbaric systems, advancement was like a traditional heavenly tribulation—perhaps only one out of ten thousand people would succeed.
But the civilizations of the long void had developed several advancement systems. The most widely known and commonly used was the Sequence system. Through Sequence pathways, one could choose the path closest to one's own power and best suited to oneself, maximizing the success rate of advancement. Moreover, with the aid of