Aki was insanely happy when he finally collapsed after his five day long training marathon.
Turns out, he could not open his status page or properly interact with the system except for the timer he had on his mission, so he didn't know how much he had grown exactly, but after some time of fighting and feasting in everything within the natural formation, all his attributes had naturally broken through the 'character limit'.
Reaching SS- rank was... different. More like he broke something stopping him from actually using his full strength rather then allowing for further accumulation at the moment the notification momentarily flashed in his face. Maybe it could be described as more of a sincronasition stage?
Anyways, SS rank was pretty much the same on that part too, though his raw power had certainly increased to a point. Since the next small rank didn't provide anything of the sort, he guessed the real change would be at SSS rank and maybe Z-.
His improvements through the ridiculous routine were more than just stats though. His magical abilities had all improved, though not because of proficiency level, but rather because he'd consolidated several of his cantrips into the school of blood magic (Life and death) and arcane, the first ones to actually be just what the name suggested, represented by a bland skill named 'arcane magic'.
After the first one formed, it allowed for something to inately change inside his mana 'circuitry', because there was nothing much better to use as a reference to describe the maze like pathways that kept expanding and rearranging, making his elemental balance skill evolve to include more concepts and become something named 'mandala of thirty six something', which then prompted his body to apparently pass the minimum requirement for the magic school he'd been guning for since forever and allowed the skill to form, his intent coming more powerful into reality as the sheer volume of energy and emotion increased at least two fold.
Translating, he could now probably punch as high as someone with Z rank stats if given the right conditions.
The best part was that despite the lack of diversity in gerenal, this realm seemed to have an infinite amount of individuals that could help him better his own essence through becoming his food!
Oh, an he'd recovered his bloodline skill back after two days of killing cultists attracted by the giant blood orgy he'd started by challenging and hypnotising more and more beast. They all had partaken of HIS blood and essence, so of course they would be going to constant spirit tests because of the mood swings and bloodlust. He didn't much expect to find someone crazy enough to mingle with void magic after only so few dungeon dives though, but one guy that seemed specially unwilling to die ended up abusing the power of borrowed vitality and opening an initial rend in reality, allowing for something that seemed to have been stalking him to cross over and take control of the fragilised man before roaring a call for reinforcements and teleporting all over opening more portals left and right.
He knew for a fact that there was no way people would not come at one point of another, though he didn't expect it to take four whole days and change. His growth was much bigger than he'd expected, but it was also very mentally tiring. On the other hand, his state had also made the doctors and city lord vouch for him on considerations of how pitiful he looked, though they seemed quite shocked that he would so easily accept having several body parts cut off because of voidic corruption and then just grow them back minutes later.
Luckily cultivators may ask about how you are actually doing stuff, but they are never serious about actually expecting you to answer unless it's a death treath or something.
The role of being a tragic hero without memory but how to fight and having just survived the persecution of a cult/demonic sect while repelling the forces of the void did not, in fact, grant him free time however. Nobles, merchants and cultivators wanted to make connections with him, some even wanted to be adopted as disciples. While he was on a sick bed.
Flat out having the later kind leave, Aki made sure to try and be polite with the former, getting better and better at explaining that he was not actually listening to anything either of them would be saying even if they wanted to give him a gold coin for every breath he took while fighting the void.
Most of the creatures in the plane were gross, sure, but he honestly didn't have much of the same feeling about their sheer existence being something 'wrong'. Sure, it was wrong from even a biological stand point that a bottomless pit of hunger taken shape should be allowed to exist in a reality that was technically finite, but he was just so used to ignoring most of his instincts ever since he was a child that it wasn't that big a deal to be face to face with the ugly fucks, nevermind that a lot of them were actually quite beautiful from his point of view. Wolves with penetrating eyes and extremely glossy fur, ebon arachne goddesses and even a few tipes of scaled fish with silver and purple paterns.
If they were not trying to kill him and revealing their innards so easily he'd even stop and just admire the beauty most of the time. Despite some obvious exceptions in between, he could still say they were beautiful in the inside, as they all dropped loot up to a certain point. So much loot he couldn't even carry everything and had to break or use a few during the fight to open up space after he got enough ground to do so. Luckily a behemot droped another bag that was even better than the one he currently used, being of rare grade despite having a rather small weight reduction because it contained a space ten meters in each direction and an extreme level of defense.
There were about a dozen skill books of uncommon rarity too, but he couldn't actually guess at their worth since they were all spells with rather costly requirements. There was even a dark kind of blink that'd damage the surroundings after your arrival, but he didn't much want to learn something like that before figuring out proper space magic himself, though he'd still not sell the thing or anything stupid like that.
The cultists also dropped some rather ominous things, but only their leader had a legendary item, a rather good sacrificial dagger that inflicted extra poison and bleeding damage and didn't produce sound. There were actually a few consumables that could produce some decent defence or attack even, but out of the other ninety eight guys he'd downed none were very capable, so everything from them was going to be sold as they were redundant anyway.
Something he'd noticed was that apparently the rate of drop items depended on the dungeon level of difficulty, his own level and the enemy's power related to the other two. Mostly a conclusion based on hearsay and forum analisys rather than experience, but it'd proven completely correct till now since so fucking many uncommon items were dropping! There was almost a fucking hundred of them! Any regrets from remaining level 2 simply vanished every time Aki looked at his loaded inventory.
Maybe someone else would have great difficulty with this dungeon considering all the sudden demerits and the crazy cultists basically hounding you, but it could hardly be easier for him.
Sealed ability and weakened magic? My transcendent skills will help me get them back!
Hunted down by a hundred enemies of rather good strength right after the sick bed? My fighting stile is mostly made exactly for that!
Being made a social pariah because of my unknown status? Let me just make a problem and have someone reliable be my witness as i heroically solve it!
On all seriousness though, two days was the most Aki could stay on the border town as he was then brought to the capital by a whole militia of men, only one woman in the group of immortals, to be held in domiciliar arrest as the country investigated his identity.
He was honestly not that worried though. Even if these guys had Z or ZZ rank attributes, he'd been able to figure out that no, none of them had any idea what they were doing with their energy. Like they had simply followed a manual that never explicitly said why or how something worked but that it'd bring you to a certain power level.
That was sarcasm, yes.
Looking through the town had been more than enough to figure out that it was highly unlikely he'd find someone with rank V attributes, nevermind someone with a properly balanced build. If he had to guess at the system distribution for the natives, he'd say that most cultivators had either invested heavily in their STR, DEX and VIT or into their INT and SPR, with a few in between that remembered how important it was to perceive an attack if you wanted to dodge shit.
It'd been rather strange how most cultists died so easily under his grasp, their leader seeming too confident for someone that did not in fact even dodge his first attack, ending up with an impaled anus, but after he properly understood the cultivator world to this extent, he guessed that the man simply didn't have perception to notice that rapid pacing while his spirit was being suppressed by the formation that he had somehow formed. It'd also explained why he didn't get any bullshity manual or skill book from all those men though.
The system wouldn't be so easily offering something that damaged the player's potential without giving extreme returns, and those guys were simply too weak to give something like that.
While he reviewed his thoughts, Aki may or may not have looked like a profound master contemplating the dao and impressed every immortal in the group though, seeing as he was a serious man who literally had not moved or spoken until spoken to. When he realised that, he really wanted to guffaw and see their faces if he broke that impression, but to begin with, the missunderstanding was because none of the fuckers talked much or in long sentences unless they were spouting flowery bullshit, like characters from a bad novel or something.
He didn't have much to do during the trip either, so he just tried to look dashing as he lazily gazed out of the carriage, observing the blurring scenario as he thought up formulae to reduce the cost of life and death spells.
It was only a day, but he was a really talented sorcerer, bullshiting a spell into existing with a much lesser cost than originally without much trouble, despite there being no combat at all for him. It was simply natural to improve during battles at this point really, since his magic was mostly based on will and only then reinforced by properly using strict geometry, path optimization and maybe even a bit of perfecting the area manipulation that would allow for the use of ionised beams of energy or to more easily propagate substances through the air.
In other words not from jackass, he spent the whole trip gloating in his own world and ended up forgetting something, noticeable by the princess screaming with such a shrill voice several guards passed out. After the young woman drowned the whole throne room with her voice for a minute of unabated, chill inducing pain representing her primordial fear, she then proceeded to pass out.
"WHAT THE FUCK!?" Was Aki's first and only reaction before several guards body slammed him into the ground and half as many practicioners pierced his mind with bolts and spears of psionic power.