The room is left with just ten new B-Class hunters standing in a line, and the Regional Directors stare at the empty spot where Emrie and I just left.
Brutus, the Regional Director of the Vice Region, is the first to break the silence.
"Is this a joke? He may have come in first place in this year's ranking, but to become a Regional Director at such a young age? What kind of demand is this?"
More whispers fill the room.
"Wouldn't he just be happy with the opportunity to become an A-Class hunter? That position is given out once a decade at most, and he's throwing away a priceless position!"
"A backwater Region brat gets a taste of power and thinks he is owed the world..."
"Unacceptable, that position should have been offered to a Vice or Veridian applicant in the first place..."
"What a disgrace..."
The insults and whispers are silenced by Mr. Freeman's next words.
"There is no need to worry, Brutus. It is a preposterous demand, and I will work out a reasonable deal with him once he returns."
The tension in the room dissipates a little, but there is still an air of mystery as the Regional Directors bring their applicants back to their home regions using teleport crystals one by one. Everyone with a golden collar stays in line, preparing to settle into the Apex Region to soon begin their B-Class Elite and A-Class training.
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I materialize onto the transport platform beneath the guildhall in the Crimson City with the Lich King by my side and immediately un-summon him.
Due to the sacrifice of his remains and the contract of the ritual, I feel his presence in my shadow. At any time, I can reactivate my Dark Magic, and he will appear in the same exact condition as before.
I plan on utilizing his knowledge as a Divine Beast in the near future, but I have a few more pressing matters to attend to.
Once I make my way out of the bunker and into the guildhall, I change my appearance to that of an unrecognizable ordinary citizen.
The workers who see me come out of the bunker know that only authorized personnel in my close circle have access to those crystals, and I make sure to alert my nearest body double on duty that I've made it back in one piece.
I do a scan of the city and am happy to see Bri is just one floor above me in a brand-new office inside the guildhall. She's started doing blood-bonded imbuements and special orders for wealthy clients and Crimson Army members.
My body doubles power-leveled her far past level 2000 in the Labyrinth while I was gone, upgrading her craftsmanship skill to mythic grade. While her mana control is not up to par with the level she's grown to, that isn't necessary in this line of work.
Instead of checking on her or any of my teammates, I head straight to the canyon of dungeons to catch up on lost time from the month that I've been gone.
While my doubles have been able to farm new dungeons and acquire new skills for me, they don't have the capabilities to produce skill orbs. Just in case any of these unique dungeons in the Talton Region or Sector 3 break soon, I want to stock up while I can.
Zipping through dungeon after dungeon, making orb copies of these new skills takes about an hour of my time. In the process, I visit other dungeons with more common skills like body hardening, swordsmanship, dagger mastery, and all of the elemental skills to make a small stockpile for a new business venture idea that's been floating around in the back of my mind.
It is a simple process to use my lifesteal skill and activate my mythic grade absorption perk while channeling soul energy into the activation to create an orb. As the process is rather repetitive, I begin to go down my list of new skills to test them now that I have the time and open space to do so.
I open my status to look over the ten newly acquired skills.
[Imbuement][Mythic Grade]
[Barrier Creation][Mythic Grade]
[Flight][Mythic Grade]
[Area Buff][Mythic Grade]
[Mind Palace][Mythic Grade]
[Astral Spears][Mythic Grade]
[Flash Step][Mythic Grade]
[Call of The Void][Mythic Grade]
[Crystal Creation][Mythic Grade]
[Heavy Hand][Mythic Grade]
A few of them are self-explanatory. [Flash Step] is a movement speed buff that works in short bursts, granting up to 255% speed and agility similar to extreme speed.
[Area Buff] is a team buffing skill, giving a 150% all-stat buff to up to 10 teammates within my mana control's aura.
[Barrier Creation] allows me to create far thicker walls of mana shielding, boosting my defensive ability to a high degree. [Crystal Creation] is very similar, allowing me to summon semi-transparent pink gems that increase in hardness depending on how much mana I imbue into them.
[Heavy Hand] and [Astral Spears] work well together as a more offensive combination. While [Heavy Hand] increases the gravity in a small concentrated area of space dependent on my mana imbued into the skill and the cubic space I exert this pressure on, [Astral Spears] allows me to create invisible spears for long range stealth attacks.
They have very high potential to be useful tools once I practice strengthening them with Divine Threads.
[Flight] makes my feet surge with magic, making it far easier to mana-step through the air. While it isn't necessary when I already use wind magic to fly, it makes the lift-off much faster and mana efficient.
[Imbuement] is a skill I've seen used before in Valor City, when the owner of the Moon Bar I visited after arena nights would craft mana-rich items and increase the potency of mana inside food. I'm excited to see what perks this will add to my [Craftsmanship] skill because it appears to be a very profitable addition.
[Call of The Void] is a very unique skill I obtained from a dungeon full of slow moving creatures living in a dark cave-like dungeon. Their auras send out waves of energy that appeal to the psyche of lower level creatures in the area.
I activate it a few times while monsters are nearby, but in these dungeons, regular mobs are already programmed to be attracted to humans that enter their domain. I don't see any major differences in their behaviors with or without the skill activated.
It is rather underwhelming, but my curiosity is piqued to see how it will work on other humans.
Lastly, I activate a skill called [Mind Palace].
There is a condition on it, showing that it can only be activated one time every 24 hours.
This only grows my curiosity about it further.
While in the middle of a dungeon, farming Turtle Monsters in a swamp dungeon to stack up on their legendary body hardening skills, I feel as though half of my mind is transported to another world.
I'm less than 20 meters from a swamp turtle charging my way as this ability fully consumes my thoughts.
If I wasn't already familiar with the feeling of splitting my consciousness with body doubles and long-range communication recently, the sensation would be very disturbing.
One half of my conscious mind feels as though it's moving at a far quicker rate than reality outside.
I can picture a version of myself sitting on a pure white throne in my inner mind.
Around it are empty bookshelves that go on further than I can see, and there are endless rows in every direction.
The more I focus on it, and the more mana I push from my body to use this skill, the slower reality around me seems to move in relation to my mind within this construct.
The image of the swamp turtle getting closer to me is visible like a whisper in the back of my consciousness, but it looks like it is frozen in time. My full conscious mind is here inside my mind palace.
I stand up from the throne and walk over to one of the empty bookshelves.
My mind is not very focused on anything at first, but then memories, facts, dungeon data, status sheets, and various snippets of information I haven't thought of in ages all begin to stream into the center of my thoughts.
A book materializes on the shelf at eye level, and as I turn to the row behind me, more and more books start to manifest on the shelves in organized patterns the more mana I imbue into this skill and concentrate on past events in my life.
Everything is scattered and fuzzy at first, but the more I think, the more I can recall in perfect memory.
From my first day awakening my skill in a goblin dungeon, to joining a guild, and being contracted with the Association, then my adventures through the Dark Continent.
The most vivid memories are from building up Crimson City these past months and passing the B-Class exams.
It feels like hours are passing as I think back to all of these events, and the rows and rows of bookshelves around me grow with more books and align themselves in a more organized manner.
As I walk down the white halls and let my finger tips glide across the new books that act as manifestations of my memories, it makes it far easier to process my thoughts with newfound clarity.
I start to formulate a perfect plan for what I need to do to expand the city in response to the blatant failed attack from the Association. While the public opinion is still negative of them, it's time to use this to my advantage.
Next, I create a crystal-clear mental list of countless ways I can gain more power in the next five days in order to bring myself to a level where I'd be comfortable confronting the Sun God alone, unaided by any external forces.
Smiling, ready to take on the world with a whole new vision, I walk back through the white bookshelves full of brown and black books to the throne and sit down.
Once I do, this palace in my mind dissipates, and all I have left in front of me is a charging swamp turtle just over ten meters away.
Only a second at most has passed in the outside world, yet what felt like hours passed in my mind.
I stop the turtle with a single finger against its forehead, draining its HP with lifesteal while it flails around, then take its skill orb.
Next, I summon a new body double that already knows exactly what to do.
I give it all of the excess common and elemental skill orbs that I've farmed today, and it uses one of my transport crystals to head back to see Bri in her new 2nd floor workshop at the guildhall.
Meanwhile, I crush a teleport crystal to Valor City, looking forward to seeing my teammates who saved our growing empire from destruction while I was gone.
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Author's Note:
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