Inside the dimensional space, colorful energy stretched out like a vast, boundless ocean.
Suddenly, a vortex appeared in the center of the energy ocean, like a bottomless black hole, beginning to devour everything around it.
The energy was sucked into the vortex, heading towards its center, and disappeared into the body of a young man radiating a soft white glow.
This person was Lucas, who was currently holding a spell collection and reading it carefully to pass the boring time of absorbing energy.
Incidentally, he was trying to see if he could draw inferences from other cases and find a way to increase the speed at which his glowing white energy could strengthen others.
"No wonder my glowing white energy strengthens others so slowly. It turns out I wasn't using a ritual to guide a targeted strengthening. It was just passive absorption, allowing life to adaptively evolve."
This spell collection was a gift from the Watcher, and each spell had clear and easy-to-understand detailed annotations.
After reviewing it, Lucas found the reason why his glowing white energy was slower than other dark energies when strengthening others.
Targeted strengthening is quick to take effect, but it makes people adapt to the spell, unable to fully unleash their potential, leading to a relatively lower upper limit.
Adaptive evolution is slow, but it makes the spell adapt to the person, allowing for a solid foundation and full potential, leading to a relatively higher upper limit.
At least, Lucas hadn't found any targeted strengthening spells in the darkhold, the spider totem, or the spell collection gifted by the Watcher that could directly strengthen someone to the Dimensional Lord level.
"Perhaps, I can combine the two. First use targeted strengthening to raise them to a certain level, then go back and fill in the foundation."
"However, would the final effect be inferior to adaptive strengthening from the very beginning?"
"I need to do an experiment and observe."
Lucas took out the replica spider totem, a flicker of hesitation in his eyes.
His original intention for this spider totem was to give it to Erin.
But...
As time passed, energy was absorbed by Lucas, and the surface of the sea gradually receded.
The once boundless and vast energy ocean visibly shrank, gradually becoming a lake.
Finally, the energy ocean completely dried up, and the dimensional space became empty, with only the faint glow emanating from Lucas illuminating this void.
Seeing this, Lucas opened his panel, quickly scanned it, and couldn't help but smile.
[Points: 18,515,574,396]
[Sacred Body: 5133]
He found that 10.5 billion points had been added, not the agreed-upon 10 billion.
The Watcher had given him an extra 500 million.
"These two Watchers are certainly more competent than that Watcher from before."
Muttering to himself, Lucas's thoughts stirred.
In an instant, the Sacred Body stat rapidly changed, increasing from 5133 to 10000.
However, the description bar below the panel still did not indicate that it was upgradeable.
Then, continue adding points.
[Points: 522,174,396]
[Sacred Body: 11111]
The Sacred Body stat exceeded 10,000, more than doubling.
Lucas could feel the divine power within his body becoming even more surging, and the destructive power he could unleash further increased.
But he didn't feel much joy.
This was merely a quantitative change, not a qualitative one.
The Sacred Body was only a part of his combat power, and not even the most important part.
The most crucial part of his combat power was his talent [Energy Absorption].
The fourth stage of [Energy Absorption] was his most important defensive measure, allowing him to achieve damage immunity at the same level. Furthermore, attacking him would result in absorption of energy.
In the battle with Chthon, Chthon was completely helpless against Lucas because of this. He couldn't attack him, nor could he trap him. He could only try his best to avoid him and minimize his losses.
"Sigh, I wonder how high the Sacred Body stat needs to be before I can upgrade again."
Emerging from the dimensional space, Lucas took out his phone, connected to the internet, and recalibrated the time.
It was half past two in the morning.
Lucas decided that at this special time, he would go to the Flickering Realm to test his skills against Chthon, to practically assess the impact of the Sacred Body stat exceeding 10,000 on his combat power.
Of course, part of the reason was that he had told Gwen he wouldn't be returning to the bookstore tonight.
So, Gwen decided to stay at Helen's house for the night and not go back either.
In the Flickering Realm, within a huge cosmic void, a glowing white stream of light was chasing a crimson stream of light.
The glowing white stream of light was Lucas, and the crimson stream of light was Chthon.
As soon as Lucas entered the Flickering Realm, he was discovered by Chthon.
Afterward, Chthon immediately tried his best to clear the surrounding matter and energy around Lucas. But even so, Lucas still unexpectedly devoured a considerable amount of matter and energy from the Flickering Realm.
Chthon was greatly pained, anger welled up in his heart, and he was about to exchange blows with Lucas.
After his last battle with Lucas, in order to counter Lucas's ability to devour energy, he had specifically strengthened his control over energy.
A single finger is easily broken, but five fingers clenched together form a strong fist.
Chthon influenced the viscosity between energies, making the energy almost a single entity, difficult to easily separate, increasing the difficulty of devouring and absorbing.
And so...
Every now and then, Lucas would catch up to Chthon and tear off a piece of "flesh" from him.
The first change manifested from the Sacred Body stat exceeding 10,000 was that he had a speed advantage when facing Chthon.
"Chthon, aren't you an energy body? Why do you act like a flesh and blood body? If an uninformed person saw this, they'd think I like to eat people." Lucas complained.
He didn't know why, but every time he attacked Chthon, using his talent [Energy Absorption] would pull out a large mass of energy, causing greater injury.
This was quite good but looking at this energy that resembled flesh and blood, Lucas found it a bit hard to stomach. He was afraid that after absorbing it, he would lose his appetite for food later.
"Damn it!"
Lucas and Chthon cursed simultaneously in their hearts.
Without prior agreement, they both sped up again.
From a distance, only two streaks of light could be seen traversing and leaping through the void.
...
The next morning, Lucas opened the bookstore door early.
In the early hours, after exchanging a few warm-up blows with Chthon, he left.
With Chthon having no will to fight and only focused on escaping, Lucas couldn't do much to him.
Although he had a slight advantage and could slowly chip away at him, absorbing a bit of Chthon's energy from time to time, this method of acquiring energy was too inefficient.
If he could completely defeat Chthon and annex his Flickering Realm, then it would have some value.
But that was simply unrealistic.
Compared to that, Lucas believed his method of nurturing apostles to find other dimensions was more reliable.
It takes three million points to increase the Sacred Body stat by 1, and a Sacred Body of ten thousand points means thirty billion points, and this still hasn't triggered an upgrade.
Lucas felt that the road ahead was long and arduous.