Darius woke up on this day, feeling refreshed and chipper. Gunner was still snoring heavily on the bed beside him, which made the young man shake his head with a sigh.
Darius was now 18 years old, the perfect age he hoped for since it was the moral equilibrium for him to partake in many events. Not only that, his increased height and perfected looks from his prime made him feel truly complete.
He still had light brown skin, slicked-back black hair that reached the nape of his neck, and an angular face that angled into a soft chin. Darius' features were, as before, quite soft and androgynous. He looked more like some pretty boy that needed a beating than an old soul that was enjoying a second life.
His height had gone from barely 5'4 to 6'0, which was enough to make him seem much older than he actually was. Instead of wearing a noble attire, he had learned to just stick with the polymer suit.
As for the armor itself, it had been upgraded to version 6.0 which boasted much better stats than the version 3.0 they had been using as Amateurs.
It was not that Gravitas had made exemplary progress on their best cloth armor type within those short 5 years, but rather Darius had successfully combined two version 3.0 armors with his new skill.
Unfortunately, when he had attempted to further combine two version 6.0 polymer suits, they had disintegrated. Either his skill's level hadn't been high enough to do more than one combination, or it was generally impossible to do more than one.
Darius hadn't found a workaround for this over the years as he had not gained a single AP nor SP since completing his first Quest.
What? Why didn't Darius go out and kill something to raise his levels even just by one?
Sorry, but after the Plains of Death experience, Darius had decided that he wouldn't even risk gaining a SINGLE level until he had built up so solid a foundation that he could tackle the 100x difficulty climbing Quest with ease.
The next Quest to climb to the Adept stage was guaranteed to be even worse than his experience in the Plains of Death, so Darius understood keenly that he absolutely needed to spend as much time as he could gathering power.
This was why he had spent the entirety of his 5 years in the Divine Glade, using all his 100 CP a day to transmute items endlessly. Every day, consistently, he had created many different items that were useful in building a faction, academy, and city.
With 100 CP a day, he had been able to spit out 25 Scrolls of Awakening of perfect quality or Spark Potions of various types. His current Inventory was enough to build up an army.
However, that was just the tip of the iceberg.
His current Inventory had 999x999 stacks.
999 of the same item could be kept in each slot. However, instead of individual items, all of Darius' 999 slots were filled to the brim with Bags of Holding of the highest grade.
What this meant was that, each slot had 999 Bags of Holding, and his entire Inventory had 999 slots in total. This meant he had 998,001 Bags of Holding in his Inventory at the moment!
Yet that wasn't even all of it!
5 years was a long time, and with 100 CP per day, the number of things he had been able to make would not be this small unless she only made costly items at foolishly high CP costs.
Even as an Amateur with access to 10 CP a day, he would have been able to make only slightly less than 1/5th of this in the same amount of time.
The inside of the cottage had turned into a warehouse despite not increasing in size. Hundreds of chests filled all the other rooms except the bedroom, full to the brim with more Bags of Holding.
Darius even squeezed his way out of the house to see that the Divine Glade was neatly packed full with even more chests except for the area around the pool which only contained a single chest with the most valuable items like the ones he could not afford to lose.
Darius saw the Bowl of Nuwa near the pool and checked its contents to see that today's batch of Lunar Dew was ready. Without further ado, he raised it up and poured it into the filled-up pool, which contained solely Lunar Dew.
Its potency was so strong and intense that a slight mist had formed above it. Someway, somehow, various fairies had found their way here and were flying above the Lunar Dew pool, playing with each other and bathing in the mist.
When they saw Darius approach, they stopped what they were doing and lined up neatly, bowing to him in greeting. Darius also bowed back humbly and both parties continued with what they were doing.
Seeing that the pool was now at a suitable level, Darius took the First Resurrection Stone which he had kept on his person at all times. Admiring the flawless grey stone, he tossed it into the Lunar Dew poll, watching it sink to the bottom.
This did not cause any ripples to the pool but the various fairies investigated the item with curiosity. However, Darius had already signed a contract on Soul Paper with these fairies. It was now their job to guard whatever he put in the pool at all times, in exchange for him allowing them to use the pool to bathe and strengthen themselves.
Fairies were much more powerful than humans. Once they investigated the stone, they realized what it was for. Understanding why the Master of the Divine Glade created the pool, they returned to their business shortly after.
Darius himself sighed with mixed emotions as he finally finished his main goal in secluding himself here, to create the Lunar Dew pool and store the Stone within.
That way, the potent essence contained within should allow him to build a perfect body quickly if he ever died. Heck, it might even assist the stone in nourishing his soul, greatly saving the item's energy!
Darius turned around to see that Gunner had also squeezed himself out of the cottage, wiping his eyes with tiredness as he walked over to do the tasks Darius had just done.
