The Family

At twenty-six, as a Level 4 Warrior, he had managed to leave the army safely. For a commoner, that was already incredibly fortunate.

During his ten years of military service, Karl Talos had seen far too many geniuses. Some had been only Level 1 Warriors at sixteen, but by the time they left the army, they had already reached Level 5. Still, there was no shortage of geniuses in the military.

These common-born geniuses had started training as Level 1 Warriors, step by step. After earning merit, they received basic Battle Qi Manuals. With an early start, they kept getting ahead, eventually becoming Level 6 Warriors and earning the chance to remain in the army.

Only these geniuses had a chance to advance to Level 7.

And those were only the ones who survived. Many more of their comrades had died in the wars.

Having seen so many comrades survive or die, Karl Talos had finally shed the pride he'd once felt as a transmigrator. After leaving the army, he chose not to go adventuring. Instead, he returned to his hometown in what was now the Anlan Kingdom and dutifully followed his parents' wishes, marrying a woman from the same town.

He married and had children.

After returning home from the army as a Level 4 Warrior, Karl spent decades steadily advancing until he reached the mortal peak: Level 6.

It was only after he became a Level 6 Warrior that the lord selected Karl Talos to become an honored instructor for new recruits.

This seemingly simple position as an instructor actually placed him among the ten most influential people in a town.

Apart from the lord and his family, Karl Talos held the highest status in the entire town.

But however high his status was, all it brought him was some money and a little authority, which wasn't particularly useful.

That was the life of someone with ordinary talent.

Everything changed on Karl Talos's hundredth birthday, when his children and grandchildren gathered to celebrate his long life.

That was the day Karl Talos finally activated the Auto-Cultivation System, which had awakened long ago but had been of no use to him.

It was thanks to the system's automated cultivation that Karl Talos, who had been stuck at the peak of Level 6, managed to break through to Level 7.

Back then, the lord of that small town had been no stronger than a Level 7 Warrior. With the power to rout a thousand soldiers, Karl smoothly became a Baron of the kingdom.

Using the status his strength had earned him, Karl Talos chose not to pursue further training in the kingdom. Instead, he settled in a remote border region—the place now known as Spark Town.

The commoner who once hadn't even held a title founded the Taros Family in Spark Town. Naturally, Karl became its first patriarch.

Over the next century, Karl gradually advanced from a newly minted Level 7 Warrior through automated cultivation, eventually becoming the kingdom's Viscount and a great Level 9 Warrior.

If Karl hadn't been so determined to stay in Spark Town, his strength as a Level 9 Warrior would have been enough to earn him the title of Marquis or even Earl.

Titles and power were merely worldly possessions.

Karl saw through it all. His own strength was the foundation of every position he held.

If he could reach the Saint Realm, he could probably establish a vast Principality, and no one would object.

In a world where power belonged to the individual, obsessing over authority was no different from leaving one's head at the mercy of another's blade.

Karl glanced at the familiar panel. Even though he knew his own details by heart, he still looked them over from time to time. Those brief moments also gave him an excuse to drink tea.

After all, no one else could see the panel, but that didn't mean no one could probe his mind. There were beings like that on the Yulan Continent.

Beings so powerful that Karl didn't even dare to think their names.

He looked over his system again. It had several tabs: [Personal Attributes] [Family] [Automated Cultivation] [Mall] [Territory] [Faith] [Novice Tutorial]

Taken together, they formed a fairly complete status panel.

[Auto-Cultivation System]

[Host: Karl]

[Age: 267]

[Level: 9 (100/100)]

[Family: Taros (Level 1)]

[Territory: Spark Town (Level 1)]

[Faith: None]

[Cultivation: Level 9 (100/100) Attributes (0/1)]

According to the Novice Tutorial, family, territory, and faith could all increase cultivation speed. After learning that, Karl had tried to build a stronger family and territory. But at the level of a Level 9 Warrior, both his family and territory were capped at Level 1, and a Level 1 family or territory only increased cultivation speed by a limited amount: a mere 1%.

Altogether, it was only a 2% cultivation bonus. It might not seem like much, but Karl knew just how powerful that small advantage was.

If an ordinary talent gave someone a cultivation speed of 100%, then their limit would be that of a Level 6 Warrior. Even after a hundred years of effort, they could at best reach the peak of Level 6 and go no further.

But if they could gain even 1% beyond that limit, they would have a chance—however slim—of breaking through to Level 7.

It was thanks to that 2% cultivation bonus that the people in his family and territory had a chance to break through. Otherwise, given Karl's current age of over two hundred, and the fact that he'd married and had children in his twenties, his sons and grandsons would have died long ago.

But that was the limit of a Level 1 territory and a Level 1 family. None of his descendants had managed to reach Level 8 so far, and Karl understood all too well: unless he could break through to the Saint Realm, that 2% cultivation bonus would only let his descendants reach Level 7 at most.

According to the Novice Tutorial, [Faith] would only unlock after he became a god. And though family and territory seemed to do no more than give others the chance to break through to Level 7, the stronger his territory, family, and people became, the more points Karl would earn.

[Points] were the currency used in the Mall.

At present, Karl could only use the Level 1 Mall, but it still contained plenty of good items.

For example, a basic Amulet could withstand an hour of continuous attacks from a Level 6 Warrior. It was one of the things that helped ensure his children and grandchildren could live safely until retirement. Besides Amulets, the Mall also offered powerful weapons and, most importantly, attributes—the key to Karl's breakthrough to the Saint Realm.

To become a Level 9 Warrior, one only needed to master either Weightless as Feather or the art of lifting heavy objects as if they were light. This power allowed them to bring their strength to its full potential, easily killing Level 8 Warriors and lifting objects weighing tens of thousands of pounds. With either technique, a single strike could destroy a wall hundreds of meters long, while their defenses could ignore blows with tens of thousands of pounds of force. That was the difference between a Level 9 Warrior and a Level 8 Warrior.