The extraordinary abilities of High-Level Professionals, and Rule-level and Law Decree-level powers, were not so vastly different in effect as to inspire despair—as long as they did not clash directly.
Lu PingAn had previously been able to use peak Law Decree-level power against Rule-level power because newly ascended Rule-level beings had not yet reached that moment of so-called qualitative change.
But at the eighth tier... an ordinary sixth tier had absolutely no chance of defeating an eighth tier.
"If one can fight ten, how do you fight a hundred? A thousand?"
Lu PingAn truly understood that so-called "qualitative change" was not some mystical concept. It was simply "multiplication."
Veteran seventh- and eighth-tier Rule-level beings had begun to "stack" their abilities. They had enough cards in hand that even a simple basic attack might be a combination of three or four abilities.
This was not simple addition. The most basic stacking might be "triple strength (buff)," "double damage (curse)," "flame enchantment on blade (element)," and "reduced Flame Resistance (curse)." The result could be 3×2×2×2, producing more than twenty times the effect.
That was only a calculation of theoretical values. Actual combat was far more complicated, and boosts could not possibly come in whole numbers. Still, reaching ten times one's former power was nearly effortless. Going head-to-head with lower-tier opponents was simply giving them a free win.
And that was only the stacking of straightforward, one-directional numerical abilities. Most of the time, it was a fusion of abilities from various paths—not just numerical suppression, but rule suppression as well, ultimately forming suppression on the level of concepts or even domains.
In actual combat, stacks of traits like "vision blocked," "intuition misled," "sense of up, down, left, and right reversed," and "pain greatly amplified" were commonplace. Dying without even knowing how was normal.