The boundless sea of mana showed no sign of slowing its expansion.
Its borders were still growing at an utterly terrifying speed.
And within this entire domain—
Mana, along with nearly all mana-like forms of energy, had been completely disabled.
Anyone who wished to draw upon mana could do so only through the Absolute Mana Sea.
And every single use required Kanzaki Rei's permission.
Kanzaki Rei raised his hand slightly.
A flame ignited in his palm.
The most basic spell of all, passed down from ancient times to the present—
Fireball.
Whoosh—
With a single thought, Kanzaki Rei poured 100 million mana into the spell.
One hundred million.
Under normal circumstances, the maximum amount of additional mana that could be infused into Fireball was only 100 points, even under ideal conditions.
But now, empowered by this Talent, he could inject 100 million mana.
The Fireball rose in his hand like a miniature sun, hanging high above Land of the Moon.
Its power was already comparable to a Sixth-Tier spell.
Even a tiny Fireball could be elevated to such a level…
Snap—
Kanzaki Rei's body flickered.
In the next instant, he appeared over an ocean region several million kilometers away.
Even spatial transposition magic had been dramatically amplified by the reach of the Mana Sea.
…
It could even be said that this entire sea region had become Kanzaki Rei's personal domain.
Previously, when he cast Elemental Kaleidoscope, he could maintain it for only around ten seconds before exhausting his mana reserves.
The cost to sustain the spell after activation was worlds apart from the cost of casting it initially.
The longer it remained active, the more mana it consumed.
But now…
Kanzaki Rei's mana could finally be described as effectively infinite.
Any mana he lost would be restored at ten times the amount.
Unless a single spell instantly consumed all of his mana at once, running out of mana was no longer a possibility.
And considering the sheer size of his mana pool—
What kind of spell could possibly deplete it all in a single instant?
Absolute Mana Sea continued to spread.
It would soon cover a radius more than 20 million kilometers away…
Kanzaki Rei's perception expanded with it, encompassing everything within that range.
The Abyss.
The sea.
The islands.
Kanzaki Rei exhaled slowly and drew his thoughts inward.
At last, he had settled down in Land of the Moon.
For the first time after so much wandering, he felt as if he had found a temporary place to rest.
Although…
The safety of that refuge ultimately depended entirely on his own protection.
Still, there was a sense that his long-drifting soul had finally found a place to pause.
It was a deep mental fatigue.
The exhaustion of reliving the same events over and over through repeated resets of time.
His decision to remain in Land of the Moon served several purposes.
First, to find a gathering place for humanity.
Second, to search for the whereabouts of Iz and the others.
And third, to take some time to restore his own condition.
To convert all the insights he had accumulated into concrete combat power through leveling.
In short—
Level up first.
Now that his advancement was complete, he was a full-fledged Level 6 Mage.
Several more advancements still awaited him.
But Kanzaki Rei did not immediately rush through them all.
Instead, he sat down on the lawn of the manor.
Ten years.
A total of 120 months.
The God-Tier Talent awakened by his Level 4 Warrior class—God-Tier Talent: Enlightenment of Realms and Intent—had granted him 120 different Lunar Domain concepts.
Although he had not personally lived through those ten years,
not a single one of the Lunar Domain concepts had been missed.
January: Forgetting.
February: Birth, Growth.
March: Enlightenment, Comprehension.
April: Chaos, Change.
May: Smelting, Tempering.
He had not worked for Lottie.
He had not transformed the passage to the Falling Abyss into a path leading to the Deep Earth.
That seemed to be the very reason the Moon Sea had now been occupied by the Abyss.
If he had truly opened a route to the Deep Earth,
perhaps the Moon Sea would never have been corrupted and assimilated by the Abyss.
Likewise, because Kanzaki Rei had not helped Lottie, she had not participated in May's Lunar Domain contest.
In the end, a god emerged victorious.
Aromoki, God of Forging and Enhancement, became the Lunar Domain of May.
It was said that during that battle,
Aelthemis, Goddess of Flaying and Transformation, had also been defeated.
And the Rose of Molting had been purged as a consequence of her patron deity's loss.
As a result, Skin-Stealers had become exceedingly rare in the world.
Some, in order to preserve their lives, even abandoned their faith in Aelthemis, placed binding restrictions upon themselves, and joined orthodox religious organizations.
Such as the Church of Life.
The Church of Light.
And others.
In any case, May was no longer a Pure Moon.
It had become a month with its own Lunar Domain.
May—the Month of Forging and Enhancement.
During this month, crafting and enhancing equipment received extraordinary bonuses.
…
That May had not become the Month of Flaying was a blessing amid misfortune.
Kanzaki Rei infused one Lunar Domain concept after another into his martial techniques.
Most of them were added to the first form of his Body Tempering Art—
Origin.
Enhancing his foundational strength and physique directly increased the power of all his martial techniques.
It also improved his resistance to a wider range of attacks.
In particular, the concept granted by May's Lunar Domain—Forging and Enhancement—
elevated the durability of his body to an entirely new level.
For June, the Month of Light and Day, Kanzaki Rei infused Light into the eighth movement technique, allowing him to move even faster.
For July, the concept of Darkness and Night, he applied it to the fourth form, Void.
This made his movements even more elusive and greatly extended the amount of time he could remain within the void.
As for the concepts from August through December, he assigned the more offensively potent ones to his various attack-oriented martial techniques, making each form lethally destructive.
Once he finished evolving all of these techniques, his combat power advanced by another tremendous leap.
Afterward,
Kanzaki Rei turned his consciousness inward and examined his Sea of Consciousness.
Within it, Ansu remained asleep.
Over the past several days, Kanzaki Rei had repeatedly tried to awaken him.
There had been no response.
According to the information returned by Hidden Origin,
Ansu appeared to have been affected by the Blessing of Temporal Immortality as well, reset again and again through time.
Heh…
The being least in need of immortality in the entire world had been granted immortality through time.
And considering how long Ansu had already lived…
If he were to reach the end of his own personal timeline, who knew how long that would take?
Perhaps the duration of his life far exceeded the total time that had passed since the birth of this world.
When ordinary people were struck by the temporal curse, they regressed through a few hundred years over and over again.
Perhaps after millions, or tens of millions, of years, they would eventually reach the end.
But Ansu…
After receiving this blessing—
Kanzaki Rei had no idea whether he would ever see him again in this lifetime.
...
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