A Level 6 SSS Card
[Name: Little Drill Wind] [Rank: SS] [Level: 6] [HP: 54000/54000] [Attack: 4520] [Defense: 2668] [Speed: 4080] Combat index: 60164 [Skills: Intelligence Perception, Mountain-Patrolling Steps, Lion Camel Ridge Glory, Call for Aid]
SS rank.
Su Mu's gaze lingered on the panel for a moment.
His HP had doubled, and his attack, defense, and speed had all doubled as well.
A level 6 SS card with base stats like these would leave the admissions officers of the top universities collectively speechless.
But Su Mu knew he was still a long way from the ceiling.
He looked up at Little Drill Wind. The demon seemed to have noticed the changes in his own body as well.
He looked down at his hands, then gripped his command flag. Finally, he raised his face and bared his teeth at Su Mu, a spark of life in his tiny eyes that had never been there before.
"Wait," Su Mu told him. "We're not done yet."
He withdrew his consciousness and settled back into place in the meditation room.
He had fewer than twenty points of Soul Power left. Under his original plan, the chances of getting outside the city today were already looking slim. But he wasn't discouraged.
There was something he needed to test.
Su Mu entered meditation again.
This time, he slipped into the state faster than before.
The points of light in his Soul Space still shone like stars, seemingly inexhaustible. He carefully drew them in, gathering them into the space by the handful.
[Soul Power +50]
Fifty points.
Su Mu's heart stirred, but he didn't stop.
He continued.
[Soul Power +10]
Su Mu opened his eyes.
The light in the meditation room was soft and faintly pale. He stared at the patterns on the talisman panels on the ceiling, while his mind churned like rivers overturning and seas roiling.
"Does my Soul Power recover... based on a percentage of my maximum Soul Power?" he murmured.
The total Soul Power he had recovered today, added up from beginning to end, was exactly equal to his Soul Power limit.
The discovery made his heart race.
According to the information his older female cousin had given him and the official materials, the rate of Soul Power recovery was related to personal talent, soul quality, and maximum Soul Power. An ordinary dungeon master's daily recovery through meditation was roughly 10% to 20% of their maximum Soul Power. Anyone who could reach 20% was already called a "meditation genius."
His was 100%.
And most importantly, he spent so little time meditating that he could recover to full in just a minute or two.
Normally, even those geniuses needed several hours or more.
"If this is a fixed mechanic..." Su Mu murmured, "then however much Soul Power I spend, I can recover it all the next day."
He knew all too well what that meant.
Soul Power was the first bottleneck in a dungeon master's development. Other dungeon masters had to budget every bit of Soul Power they spent, because it recovered too slowly. Using too much meant being unable to make a move for days or even weeks afterward. But he didn't have to worry about that.
He could burn through all his Soul Power every day, then come back to life at full health the next.
This was "cheating."
He did his best to suppress his excitement.
Su Mu didn't dwell on the matter any further.
He closed his eyes again and sank his consciousness back into the dungeon.
Now that his Soul Power had recovered, he had to continue what he'd been doing.
Little Drill Wind was still waiting at the mountain pass.
Su Mu returned to the sky above Lion Camel Ridge and gazed calmly at the little demon below, whose face he had just reshaped.
"Continue."
[Soul Power -1] [Soul Power -1] [Soul Power -1]
Soul Power poured out again like a tide.
This time, he didn't alter his face or build. Instead, he focused on finer details.
He changed the texture of Little Drill Wind's skin from ordinary bluish-black scale patterns into darker, finer demon scales.
Each scale was the size of a fingernail, growing along the lines of his muscles and fitting together without a gap, as though shaped by heaven and earth.
His finger joints were lengthened further. All ten fingers were like iron hooks, with a layer of bluish-black hide covering their backs. His nails had a metallic sheen and flashed with cold light.
The muscles in his legs were rearranged. His shins jutted forward, and his knees bent backward at a sharper angle, like bows ready to be loosed. This structure could bring a terrifying increase in explosive power and jumping ability.
The old battle skirt at his hips was reshaped by demonic qi. It was no longer cloth, but a layer of semi-solid black demonic qi clinging to his lower body, like smoke and armor at once. It didn't hinder his movements, yet its defense was astonishing.
Last came the short saber.
Su Mu infused part of his Soul Power directly into the blade. Its edge lengthened by an inch, its spine thickened, and a dark red blood groove emerged along the blade.
The saber no longer looked as though it had been forged from ordinary iron. It was more like something born from demonic qi, its blade constantly wreathed in a thin layer of bluish-black mist.
[Soul Power -10]
Su Mu didn't have a single point left.
And when he looked at Little Drill Wind's panel again, even he couldn't help holding his breath.
[Name: Little Drill Wind] [Rank: SSS] [Level: 6] [HP: 162000/162000] [Attack: 13560] [Defense: 8004] [Speed: 12240] Combat index: 174492 [Skills: Intelligence Perception, Mountain-Patrolling Steps, Lion Camel Ridge Glory, Call for Aid]
SSS rank.
162,000 HP, 13,560 attack, 8,004 defense, and 12,240 speed.
Su Mu stared at the string of numbers for a long time.
A level 6 SSS card.
What did that mean? He had looked through his textbooks before. A standard level 10 SS creature card had a base attack of only four to six thousand. Little Drill Wind's attack was already over thirteen thousand.
Combat index: 174492
What did that mean? An ordinary level 10 F-rank dungeon master had a combat index of only around 3,000. Even an S-rank dungeon master had only thirty to forty thousand.
And that was for the entire dungeon, not a single card.
Even some exceptionally powerful level 10 bosses would never have a combat index above 50,000.
And these were only Little Drill Wind's base stats.
With Lion Camel Ridge Glory's 150% bonus within its range, his actual combat stats in Lion Camel Ridge's territory would be another one and a half times higher.
That was what made the Journey to the West theme so terrifying.
Su Mu slowly let out a breath.
Outside the meditation room, the sky had gone completely dark.
The digital clock on the wall ticked over to midnight.
He had already spent nine or ten hours in the meditation room today.
"Still not enough," Su Mu said to himself.
He looked out the window.
The lights in West Gate Square had already come on, but the sky beyond the city was a mass of heavy darkness.
In the distance, the glow of the runes on the city wall stretched out like a long dragon, exceptionally clear against the night.
Su Mu stood up, pushed open the door, and returned to the service hall.
He knew it was time to head into the wilderness.
Little Drill Wind's improvement had reached the ceiling of the current stage.
Three rounds of conceptual anchoring and two major reshaping sessions had forcibly raised him from an E-rank little demon to SSS rank. To go any further, he would have to raise his level, switch to a better base card, or complete the structure of Lion Camel Ridge itself.
And none of those three paths could bypass the wilderness.
Raising levels required killing monsters, better base materials had to drop from wilderness nests, and expanding Lion Camel Ridge further required a vast amount of Soul Power. Accumulating Soul Power likewise depended on its natural growth after leveling up and on meditation.
More important still was Sun Wukong.
Su Mu had never forgotten that his core card was the Stone Left Over from Mending Heaven.
That stone was the true root of the entire dungeon. Every day Sun Wukong remained unborn was another day his dungeon lacked a true "core."