Day 16 of the newcomer event.
The Cage Realm.
Atop a towering boulder, Emperor Knight remained seated cross-legged, just as he had been at the start.
By now, he had shed his unadorned appearance from the early days of pioneering, and countless layers of colorful light swirled around him.
Red, blue, cyan, Mo, and silver—streams of light in varying shades intertwined and flowed.
Each halo corresponded to a buff from a different monster.
At this moment, his body formed a world unto itself.
Countless kinds of foreign energy surged within him. With his former life structure, their conflicting attributes would inevitably have unleashed tsunami-like clashes inside him. But with his player body, every buff acquired through Steal was perfectly compatible.
Over ten days of uninterrupted stealing and plundering had transformed his physical attributes.
He had stacked nearly three hundred kinds of sustain buffs alone.
There was the Marsh Spirit's body-moistening trait, the Wood Spirit Cicada's unceasing trait, the Rock Giant Beast's earth nourishment, the Thunder Weasel's spirit healing, the Spirit Salamander's body-refining health regeneration, Xifei's essence condensation, Qinglanbai's spirit recovery-all these varied sustain traits formed a Spirit-Gathering Grand Array within him.
Sustain was also the buff effect he valued most.
His entire system relied on Scattershot to keep his Divine Sense Clones functioning in combat. Coupled with the ongoing cost of maintaining Steal, this caused a terrifying amount of energy to drain away every second.
That required exceptional sustain to support it.
Only with over three hundred sustain buffs running in parallel could he now keep his expenditure at a steady level.
On that foundation, his other types of buffs were even more numerous.
Attack and defense, penetration, stealth, suppression, armor penetration-the stacking temporary buffs improved his capabilities in every dimension.
An individual buff might not amount to much, but