Usurper.
Phantom Form.
Core.
In other words... Fourth Energy Level.
On the Terra Continent, every rise in Energy Level was not simply an increase in strength or status—each Energy Level represented a different social class, a different world.
Even a different form of life.
Mortals were the countless masses. The outstanding and fortunate among them gained the right to become First Energy Level, becoming the Central Nexus of villages, towns, and small cities, the core of an adventuring party, the leader of a tribal hunting band, respected elites within their clans. Though they were fundamentally different from ordinary people, there was not much distinction in status—merely the difference between common folk and elites.
Spirit Awakening and "warriors" were their formal and common names.
But upon reaching Second Energy Level, one became a true member of the ruling class. This had nothing to do with any other factor, only strength.
Second Energy Level was the dividing line of nobility, the smallest unit capable of resisting natural disasters. They were barons and viscounts, lords of cities, rulers of a region. They were the elite among elites, philosophers who led the people.
Back when the nations were still in their savage pioneering age, it was Second Energy Level Ascendants who led the people following them to establish humanity's first settlements in the Wilderness—the prototype of Terra's present-day "noble class."
Third Energy Level, meanwhile, meant foundations and heroes.
In the distant past, human settlements often encountered countless hardships. Floods, torrential rain, heavy snow, and Magic Beast attacks all plagued the still-incomplete human towns of that era.
Second Energy Level Ascendants might have been able to defend their homes, but they could not delve deep into the mountains and slay the source of every disturbance.
Those capable of doing all this—withstanding torrential rain, dispersing heavy