Chapter 179: Silver Level!
Creed stood with his hands on his hips, blinking at the towering black-and-silver gates of the Infernal Ice Bastion.
The last thing he remembered was stepping through the portal at Base 7—and poof!
Here he was, standing in an open space right outside a heavily guarded fortress-city like someone had just dropped him from the heavens.
He narrowed his eyes at the shimmering spatial dust vanishing behind him.
"Alright, so teleportation portals can bypass geography," Creed muttered, rubbing his chin. "But... they can’t bypass warded zones. Makes sense. Bastions like this one definitely have anti-teleport barriers. Probably got enough defense arrays to cook an elephant."
He started walking toward the gates, marveling again at their sheer size. They weren’t just big. They were stupid big. Like, "someone-had-an-ego-when-they-designed-this" big.
But then it hit him. Not a thought. Not an insight. Not even a villainous monologue about how he’d take over the world one day. No, what hit him was his stomach. Or more accurately, what was inside it.
Creed’s entire torso clenched as something hot—no, scorching—began writhing in his belly like a vengeful sun trying to escape its prison. He let out a wheeze and staggered, clutching his stomach with wide eyes.
’Oh no. No no no. Old man, you did not!’
The pill! That stupid, innocent-looking pill the panda-eyed monk had shoved down his throat. He had said it was "condensed energy," not energy that wanted to turn him into a human pressure cooker!
"AAAAAH, MY ORGANS!!" Creed wheezed, staggering forward with a wobble like a drunk penguin.
He slapped his bracelet against the scanner on the gate pillar, and after a second, it beeped politely and began to open at the speed of a snail who had just had a heavy lunch.
"You’ve got to be kidding me," Creed whimpered. "Why is this thing opening so slowly?!"
Inside the bastion, a bored-looking young guard was scrolling on his screen when his eyes flicked up and nearly popped out of his head.
"W-Wait a minute. Is that... no way!" He squinted, confirmed the identity reading from the scanner, and his jaw hit the floor.
"It’s him! Creed Walden! The Hope candidate! The first one from Infernal Ice!"
The young man bolted to the gate and practically tripped over himself. "C-Creed! Sir! I’m your biggest fan! Can I get an autograph?! Please?! I’ve been following all your tabs! That battle with Nicholas Grey? Iconic!"
Creed blinked. "Uh—sure, whatever—give me something to write on! I’m in a hurry!"
The officer practically threw a notepad at him, and Creed scribbled his signature mid-run, barely pausing.
"Here. Treasure it. I think my spleen is melting."
But that single act of kindness turned out to be the biggest mistake of his day.
Because from the bastion walls, more guards had noticed the commotion and recognized the teenager with gravity-defying hair and way-too-confident smirk as the bastion’s golden boy.
Within seconds, it was like someone dropped meat into a pool of starving piranhas. ƒrēenovelkiss.com
"CREED?! He’s HERE?"
"Get me something to sign!"
"No, I saw him first!"
A wave of uniformed guards sprinted down from the watchtowers, mobbing the poor autograph-holding officer.
The guy looked like he was being attacked by a swarm of autograph-zombies as they clawed and begged to touch the sacred signature.
"Stop it! This is mine!" the first guard screamed, holding the note above his head like a relic. "I’ll sell it to the Creed Fan Club for triple the market value!"
"Oh hell no, we’re ALL in the Fan Club!"
"That signature belongs to the bastion!"
Just when they were about to tear him in half, a new voice thundered across the plaza like an angry lion on a caffeine high.
"WHAT IN ALL TWELVE DIMENSIONS IS GOING ON HERE?!"
The guards froze. Like statues. The Commander had arrived. And he did not look pleased.
A tall, barrel-chested man with a beard that could deflect arrows marched into the crowd, radiating authority.
His narrowed eyes scanned the mob, then settled on the crumpled notepad. With one swift move, he snatched it from the trembling guard’s hands.
"Mine now," he said flatly.
The guards looked like someone had just canceled Christmas. "Wha—but sir—!"
"No buts. My daughter’s birthday is in three days. She loves Creed. This will make me Dad of the Year." He tucked the notepad into his uniform with a proud smirk. "Dismissed."
Meanwhile, Creed, unaware that he had just caused social chaos, economic scheming, and gift-prep for a teenage girl, had long since vanished into the air.
He had summoned his art, Wings of Freedom, and zipped off as a streak of dazzling rainbow light.
To any onlookers, he looked like a shooting star. To Creed, he felt like a firework about to explode from the inside.
"OPEN. OPEN. OPEN!" he yelled as he landed in front of his apartment door. His legs were shaking. His stomach was a warzone. His eyes were wild.
His hands moved in frantic patterns as he punched his security code and slammed the door open.
He kicked off his boots and stormed into his apartment like a man possessed, the door barely sliding shut behind him before he was already halfway to the training chamber.
The rooms had been neatly restored after the absolute chaos of that assassination ambush—the shattered furniture replaced, the walls spotless, not a single bloodstain or cracked tile in sight.
Even the air smelled suspiciously like lemon-scented peace.
But Creed wasn’t here to question interior design hacks, he had a dragon of a pellet in his gut, and it was time to tame it!
Without bothering to stretch or prepare, he dashed into the training chamber, slammed the door behind him, and flopped down into a lotus position like a good little cultivator.
Five seconds later, he scowled, grunted, and threw his legs out with a loud sigh before lying flat on his back like a man who’d just been told taxes were real in cultivation.
"Why is lotus so uncomfortable? Who decided that folding yourself like a paperclip helps enlightenment?" he grumbled to no one.
But even as he whined, the truth was that a roaring storm was beginning to rise inside him.
The white pellet that he had swallowed before was no joke. It was pure, raw dimensional energy compressed into a dense form, so potent that even tiny fluctuations in his control could have made it detonate like a spirit bomb in his stomach.
Now that he’d digested it just enough to stop it from exploding, he was finally ready to absorb it. Slowly, with practiced mental discipline, he guided its wild energy through his body.
Energy surged into his first meridian like molten lava, humming along the lines of his body, and then began to spread.
He could feel the power rushing along all nine meridians, pushing into every one of his 729 internal pathways, spreading warmth, pressure, and strength in equal measure.
This was no ordinary training session, this was like supercharging a race car with a thunderstorm.
His cultivation began to climb so fast, he could almost hear his stats going up in real time.
Normally, absorbing dimensional energy was like trying to drink from a very long straw stuck in cold syrup.
But this? This was like someone had switched on a firehose and pointed it straight into his veins!
And then Creed smirked, because of course, he had a cheat code.
With a single mental command, he activated one of the Primordial Essences from his system.
The moment it kicked in, everything changed. A wave of calm yet sharp insight filled his mind, and it was like the universe itself had slowed down to show him its secrets.
His breathing stilled. His thoughts became clearer. Every meridian, every energy flow, every barrier became as obvious to him as roads on a map.
He had entered the state of deep enlightenment, and with it, his cultivation speed exploded.
From 100 times faster than normal... to 500 times faster!
If this was a game, his level-up bar would’ve gone from "meh" to "ridiculous" in a blink. Creed could feel himself sprinting toward the peak of Stage 4 like a rabid beast.
Pressure built in his chest and limbs, swelling like he was about to burst.
And then, crack—a real sound echoed through the room as if something ancient and solid had shattered inside him. Despite his closed eyes, he flinched in surprise.
He had done it. He had just broken through to Stage 5!
In. Mere. Minutes!
"Okay, that’s definitely sick," Creed whispered to himself with a chuckle, not daring to move as the energy continued to rush through him like a tide that refused to recede.
But he didn’t stop there. The pellet still had energy. More than enough.
And although his first Primordial Essence was spent, he wasn’t in danger anymore, so he chose to slowly digest the rest over time.
One hour turned into three. Then six. Then twelve.
He stayed lying down, eyes closed, body perfectly still, except for the occasional twitch of his fingers or the glow that would pulse under his skin.
His veins lit up like little rivers of light. His body soaked up energy like a sponge in the desert, and every moment brought him closer and closer to Silver Level.
By the end of the full day, Creed had hit the absolute peak of Stage 5, and the borders of Silver cultivation were trembling under the weight of his potential.
The energy inside his body was getting too thick, too unstable to hold back. He gritted his teeth, circulated the energy faster, tighter, stronger, like pumping more and more water through a hose until it couldn’t take the pressure anymore.
And just as he felt the dam about to burst...
He used his second Primordial Essence!
BOOM!
The breakthrough wasn’t quiet or polite. It was explosive. His energy erupted, then calmed, then flared again as everything aligned. His spirit. His essence. His cultivation base!
Creed Walden had officially stepped into the Silver Level!
Immediately, he felt something shift—not just in his body but in the very air around him. His SSS-rank talent, Primordial Summoning, began to stir.
The familiar tingle of possibility danced across his spine.
He could feel it now. A new presence. Distant, slumbering... but ready to be called!
"A new summon..." Creed whispered, eyes opening slowly, a wild smile pulling at his lips. "And I haven’t even started school yet."