"How the hell did I accumulate this much XP…?" Staring at the sky with a blank gaze for quite some time, Valyr was forced to sit upright after the two boars came closer to him, their expressions showing their concern for his wellbeing.
Assuring the two massive boars that he was fine, the young man soon asked the two boars to give some time to think, taking in a few deep breaths to calm down his mind once more as the Arx'has Boars distanced themselves from him.
'So… how did the amount of unused XP I used to have eventually snowball to this amount?' Seeing that the two boars had made sure that their presence wouldn't distract him, Valyr focused all of his attention inward, the gears in his mind starting to turn as he retraced all of the things he had done in the past that gave him XP.
Unsurprisingly, it did not take long for him to recall that almost all of the XP he had gained as of recent were obtained from slaying monsters. However, after pondering over it for a bit more, he soon came to think that he might have slain a far larger number of monsters than he had initially expected, considering that the amount of unused XP he had right now was absurdly large.
Thankfully, the answer started to unfold in his mind once he recalled the notification he had just seen earlier, eliciting a bitter smile to gradually creep up onto his lips as he muttered a few words to himself. "I guess I've been punching above my weight a little bit too much, huh."
Though he had gotten used to fighting against monsters that were a few levels above him, even monsters over ten levels above him such as the Shadow Lions and Shadow Tigers he had just faced off, as well as the Skeleton Archmages he had fought back in the Lesser Meltierre Mountain dungeons, it was only at this moment did it dawn upon him how absurd his strength had become.
"Setting aside all of the skills, titles, and equipment I have at the moment, the root of my absurd strength all boils down to the Mythic class I have," said Valyr to himself, letting out a low sigh after being reminded how he wouldn't be able to achieve what he had achieved so far if not for the class. "All of what I have only augments that strength even further, allowing me to do what I do today."
"In any case, since I have more than enough XP to do so, I should probably do that, considering it affects the strength of my summons." Closing his eyes for a bit, a calm expression eventually returned on Valyr's face as he opened his eyes, coming to terms with the reality check the amount of unused XP he currently owned had given him. "Aside from that, I wouldn't be able to improve past that point because of the inheritance anyway."
Feeling that it was a waste for him to not use even a bit of the unused XP he left untouched all this time, Valyr went ahead and sent a command to the system, only for a notification screen to appear before him not long after that notified him…
…of his successful level up.
Ding!
[13,790,287 XP has been allocated.]
[Your level has increased by 7 levels.]
[You are now Level 40.]
[You have gained the following stats from your class: +28 VIT, +28 STR, +28 AGI, +49 DEX, +49 INT, +14 WIS, +21 PER, and +7 LUK.]
[You have gained the following stats from your subclass: +14 VIT, +7 STR, +21 AGI, and +28 DEX.]
[You have gained 28 unassigned stat points.]
[You have reached the level limit of your current class. To increase this limit, it is highly advised for you to ascend to a higher class.]
[Would you like to ascend?]
Whoosh!
"To think reaching the peak of Rank 2 didn't even consume even a tenth of the XP I currently have." Feeling a strong surge of strength wash over his body as he read through the series of notifications he had received, Valyr found the current situation somewhat amusing, with his actions reminding him once more how much XP he still had left to allocate.
Doing a few basic movements to acclimate to his newfound strength, slowly pushing his body closer and closer to the increased limits his body could handle, Valyr eventually let out a satisfied sigh, allocating his unassigned stat points evenly between his DEX and INT as he pondered to himself whether or not to spend some more of his unused XP on leveling up all of his unleveled skills to their maximum level.
However, rather than make a decision now, he decided that he would make the decision after fighting against the Shadow Tigers some more, calling the Arx'has Boars through the connection they had to his soul to head to where he was.
"Gork." As the two boars did not go too far from where Valyr was, it did not take long for them to appear before him, the expressions they had while staring at the young man being that of curiosity, wondering as to why they had been called.
"It's time for us to continue our combat testing." Responding to their expressions, an excited grin appeared on Valyr's face as he thought about his chances of winning against the Shadow Tigers with his newly improved stats.
With how they were under the young man's control, as well as the fact that they had undergone a great level of improvement from just running around to taunt the Shadow Tigers, it went without saying that the boars had become excited at Valyr's words as well.
And thus, they began their onslaught once more.
…
Similar to the amount of time Valyr had spent fighting against the previous creatures, only stopping once [Shadow Energy Mark] had informed him that he had reached a bottleneck, Valyr and the two boars spent over a couple of hours wrangling all of the Shadow Tigers into one spot before proceeding to eliminate all of them with a single swift yet incredibly destructive move.
Though the number of Shadow Tigers they were able to wrangle up was far lesser than the number of Shadow Tigers they had wrangled during the first bout, each group of Shadow Tigers they eliminated still hovered around the 30 to 40 range, allowing Valyr and the boars to still obtain a large amount of XP with every bout.
Of course, wanting to maximize the amount of XP he had been obtaining from killing the Shadow Tigers, he had summoned three more Arx'has Boars through the growth summoning method, all of which had better base stats than the first two due to Valyr leveling up. Then again, with how much XP the first two Arx'has Boars had amassed throughout their fights so far, the two boars were still far stronger than the three that had been summoned.
Nevertheless, with five boars now working together to congregate the Shadow Tigers into one spot, the efficiency of Valyr's attacks had increased significantly, with most of the groups they were creating now numbering around 80 to 90.
By the time they had killed around 400 Shadow Tigers, Valyr found out that he could change the ratio of gained XP that was shared between him and the Arx'has Boars. Seeing that the amount of unused XP he had at that moment had already surpassed how much he had before he chose to level up, he unhesitatingly changed the allocation ratio…
…to where all of it went towards his summons.
Unsurprisingly, the decision drastically improved the leveling speed of the five Arx'has Boars, especially the three boars that were trying to catch up as much as possible to reach the same level of strength the first two had.
Sadly, all good things had to come to an end as by the time Valyr had killed over 900 Shadow Tigers, a string of notifications had appeared in front of his field of vision.
Ding!
[Your Shadow Energy has improved by 0.03 points.]
[Your Shadow Energy has reached a bottleneck. From now onwards, killing Shadow Tigers and lesser entities shall not net you any increase in Shadow Energy.]
[You have completed part of the requirements for the quest: Returning to One's Roots.]
[Improve your Shadow Energy Mark to contain 10 points of Shadow Energy (10/10)]
