Ancient rank. EX. One full tier above SSS-rank/Supreme, the level used by Solarion gods, though he doesn't know that realm yet. He had created this in a library private room on the afternoon of the day after his awakening ceremony, as a seventeen-year-old with an energy stat that hadn't officially entered Tier 1.
He saved it to his personal files, encrypted it, and did not upload it for sale. Some things were not for the market.
By the time he stood up to leave, the first few techniques were already selling.
He checked the account balance as he walked out of the private room.
Then he checked it again because the number seemed incorrect.
It was not incorrect.
He had been in the library for approximately five hours. His account contained more money than his father earned in twenty years of border wall service. The techniques were still selling — leaderboard placement driving traffic, price positioning converting that traffic into purchases at a rate the transaction log updated faster than he could comfortably read.
He stopped in the middle of the library corridor.
I'm rich, he thought, with the specific disorientation of someone whose financial reality has just changed faster than their emotional reality can follow. I've been poor my entire life and it took five hours.
A passing library patron gave him a curious look. He was standing in the middle of a corridor staring at his watch with an expression of mild shock.
He put the watch away and kept walking.
One regret followed him out the door. There was no advanced spirit refining technique anywhere in the public library — not in the free section, not in the purchasable section, not even an incomplete fragment in the rare uploads. The most advanced spirit refining method available to the general public was the basic academy-issue booklet he had already achieved perfect mastery of. Everything above that tier was held privately by major families, locked behind institutional membership, or simply not in circulation anywhere accessible to him. And there was none in his sealed memories that he had already unlocked. It will likely be in those part of his soul that was greyed out.
The spirit refining technique was the most important item on his acquisition list. His spirit stat was the foundation of Absolute Insight's sustained operation, and keeping Absolute Insight active permanently was the difference between his current comprehension speed and something that had no adequate comparison. That level of technique existed only behind the walls of first-rate academies, which gave him one more reason on top of the many he already had to get into one of the Four Supreme Combat Universities.
Sigh, I originally wanted to lay low. Looks like I don't have that chance anymore.
The cultivation market was two districts from the library. Nova walked through it with a space ring on his finger and an account balance still updating in real time.
The combat suit came first — a full-body cultivator's suit rated for continuous use through Tier 9, built from materials that adapted to the user's power level as they advanced rather than needing replacement at each tier. The price was significant. He paid it without the eye twitch that had accompanied the 3,902 currency food order two days ago, which felt like meaningful personal growth.
The space ring came next — larger capacity, higher quality, a spatial compression ratio that made the current one his father gave him on his birthday look like a grocery bag. He transferred everything from the old ring into the new one while walking through the market without breaking stride.
Then beast meat.
He spent longer than he intended to in the premium section, moving through it with the growing realization that he had strong opinions about quality differences between various types of high-grade beast meat, and that these opinions had apparently been waiting years for the financial freedom to express themselves. Shadowfeather chicken. Moonshadow rhino. Crystalline deep-sea fish from the Silverpeak Ocean that cost more per kilogram than some equipment.
He paused at the checkout and had a thought. The Ancient Immortal Ascension Method was designed to pull primordial Qi from ambient air and convert it to Ancient Immortal Qi continuously to refine his body and form his core. In practical terms, this meant his body was now largely self-sufficient for cultivation purposes. He didn't need beast meat for Qi anymore. The technique had made food as a cultivation resource functionally unnecessary.
He looked at the Crystalline deep-sea fish sitting in his space ring.
He bought more anyway. He had spent seventeen years too poor to discover that he was a foodie, and he was not going to let a cultivation technique take that from him now that he had finally figured it out.
He skipped the weapons section entirely — the Sovereign Spiralblade and Void Jian were already in his ring and they were more than sufficient for where he currently was.
He left the market carrying nothing visible, everything stored, the space ring quiet on his finger.
On the way home he thought about his aunt's family. About his father on the outer wall with blood on his hands and a cigarette and "survived another day." About Lyanna and her food-sharing agreement negotiations. About Aunt Mira's covered meals and microwave instructions and patient silence.
He wasn't going to show up tomorrow with a credit transfer and try to explain everything. He would do it gradually — better food in the house quietly, an envelope with a plausible explanation, improvements that appeared slowly enough not to raise questions he couldn't answer yet. They had carried him for seventeen years. He could start returning that without making it dramatic. For example, "BAAM I have 300 Billion Points and still counting in my account". That would most definitely freak them out
Across the city, Tory Ashford was horizontal in her bathtub with a virtual screen projected above the water because she had genuinely earned this and was not letting anything interrupt it. She had connected to the guild channel and was delivering her report with the tone of someone presenting information they found both exciting and faintly unbelievable even after sitting with it for several hours.
The face on the screen belonged to a woman with long crimson hair and an expression of permanent cold authority — Scarlet Ashcroft, President of the Crimson Rose Guild, Tier 5 warrior, support-class profession, a woman who had built her guild from nothing through a combination of strategic intelligence and an inflexibility that her enemies found infuriating and her allies found reassuring.
"A high school student," Scarlet said. "Not yet Tier 1. Displaying over sixty thousand damage on the analyzer."
"Over a million on the second test," Tory said. "With intent integration."
The silence on Scarlet's end lasted slightly longer than her usual processing pauses. "Intent integration. At that level."
"At that level."
"And he hasn't killed a beast yet."
"He told me himself. His energy stat hasn't officially entered Tier 1."
Another pause. Scarlet touched her chin with one finger, which was the closest she came to visibly showing that she was thinking hard about something. "Every major guild in this city is going to move on him the moment his results become known. Some of them already have people watching the academy awakening lists."
"He doesn't seem interested in drawing attention to himself."
"Good. We don't need him public. We need him on our roster before someone else gets there first." Scarlet's voice settled into its decision-made register. "Maintain contact. Build the relationship properly. If another guild moves before he hits Tier 1, offer a preliminary contract immediately — terms generous enough that he has no practical reason to look elsewhere."
"Understood."
"And Tory." Scarlet's expression stayed the same but something shifted in her tone, a quality that in anyone else might have passed for genuine curiosity. "The million damage reading. You're certain the machine was functioning correctly."
Tory thought about the spatial distortion around Nova's fist. The cooling system overworking audible from the street outside. The hairline fractures spreading across the crystalline impact surface before he even struck it. Sitting on her own practice floor staring at a number that the machine's engineers had probably never seriously expected to see from their equipment.
"The machine was fine," she said. "The number was real. And I even felt I would most definitely have died if that attack landed on me instead of the machine."
Scarlet looked at her for a moment longer than the conversation required. Then she nodded once and ended the call.
Tory put the screen away and sank a little deeper into the water and thought about a seventeen-year-old with golden amber eyes and a combat power reading that had no business existing at his level, who had promised to contact her after reaching Tier 1 and walked out of her hall like he was running an ordinary errand.
She hoped he would keep that promise.
She had a feeling that whoever got to him first was going to spend a long time being very glad they did. [AN: Oh girl, how very much correct you are.]