To defeat me fair and square...
The way Akira said it actually made Kanzaki Rei feel a little guilty.
After all, he hadn't defeated him through pure martial techniques alone.
He had used his mage abilities as well, along with a vast assortment of other powers.
Although the actual killing blows had still been delivered through close-quarters combat,
the number of support abilities he had employed was impossible to count.
Not to mention that he had really been a Level 6 Mage fighting a Level 5 Warrior...
If one wanted to be strict about it, Rei had even enjoyed a level advantage.
In the end, the one who had not fought on truly equal terms was actually himself.
But Rei didn't care.
When those so-called gods fought him, none of them had ever insisted on battling at the same level.
Rei carefully examined the changes in his body.
The strength of his physical body surged upward once more.
The Warrior advancement was simple and unadorned...
Yet now, with his raw physical power alone, he could lift an entire continent as if it weighed nothing and carry it through the sky.
As for the other changes...
At Level 6, a Warrior began to seek the Dao.
A Warrior who comprehended their own martial path and completed Entry into the Dao would experience a complete sublimation of their class...
At that point, they would become akin to a Sword Saint.
The class itself would rise to a level comparable to a Unique Class.
According to legend, different methods of Entry into the Dao—and different Daos themselves—would grant completely different enhancements to the Warrior class.
In the reset timeline, Akasei had fought him after completing his own Entry into the Dao.
Now that Rei had become a Level 6 Warrior,
it was time for him to find his own path.
And unlike previous Warrior advancements, which had provided virtually no improvement to his Spirituality,
this advancement allowed Rei to sense countless indescribable truths through his Spirituality.
It felt as though he were standing extraordinarily close to the fundamental truths of the world.
A natural resonance with the world echoed within his soul.
"This is... Dao Sense?"
After Level 6, Warriors were no longer simple brutes.
They gradually required insight into both the world and themselves.
A Warrior needed more than combat.
They needed a form of spiritual and physical cultivation, a lifelong discipline aimed at comprehending the legendary Dao.
Though Warriors who truly entered the Dao were exceedingly rare,
simply approaching that threshold was enough to set one apart from ordinary Warriors.
[You have mastered Level 6 Warrior Expertise — Extreme Time (Exclusive): While existing within an abnormal flow of time relative to the present world, you will possess greater speed than under normal time.]
[You have mastered Level 6 Warrior Expertise — Mastery of Ten Thousand Techniques (Exclusive): Learning any combat technique will integrate more of its essence into your self-created martial arts, and you can unleash variations of other techniques with lower requirements.]
One of these Expertises concerned time.
The other concerned the sheer quantity of techniques he had learned.
Though Rei had indeed neglected the Warrior class to some extent, that was only in comparison to his Mage class.
If he truly counted the effort he had invested into being a Warrior, Rei estimated that the overwhelming majority of Warriors in this world had trained less diligently than he had.
Of course, that was also thanks to his rapid growth and high Spirituality.
Spirituality granted him extraordinary self-discipline.
He felt no temptation toward food, pleasure, or idle entertainment.
And because growth yielded immediate rewards, he did not need years of toil to witness progress.
Every gain was positive feedback.
...
That constant reinforcement drove Rei to pursue improvement without end.
Beyond the two Expertises, there was something even more important.
[Level 6 Warrior Talent]
[You have obtained Talent — Crimson Heart (Common) >> God-Tier · Manifestation of Ten Thousand Daos]
This talent...
[Gain Dao Sense, allowing you to comprehend methods of Entry into the Dao more quickly; you may comprehend multiple methods of Entry into the Dao simultaneously; you may perceive the Dao-Transformation Forms of combat techniques and incorporate the world's distorted principles into Dao-Transformation Techniques.]
This really was somewhat similar to Perfect Method.
Perfect Method allowed him to comprehend the Root Magic of others.
And this "Manifestation of Ten Thousand Daos" allowed him to comprehend a greater variety of methods of Entry into the Dao.
The Dao-Transformation Form of combat techniques...
What exactly was that?
There were far too few records regarding the Entry into the Dao of Level 6 Warriors.
Compared to Root Magic, which was known to nearly everyone, the Warrior's path to the Dao was vastly rarer.
After all, it only began at Level 6.
And among Level 6 Warriors, the proportion who could truly enter the Dao was far lower than the proportion of mages who could comprehend Root Magic.
As a result,
the surviving records were extremely fragmented.
"The Dao-Transformation Form of combat techniques..."
With a thought, Rei leveled his spear.
"Firmament Style — Third Form: Phantom Strike."
He constructed the complete execution of the technique in his mind...
Almost immediately, a brilliant insight emerged.
It was as if a phantom version of himself had appeared within his consciousness.
In a single instant, that phantom performed the strike countless times.
This process was not merely repetitive practice.
Each repetition came with profound enlightenment.
These insights were more than thoughts.
They were...
an intimacy with the combat technique itself.
Whoosh—
With a single step, Rei left the battlefield that had just been ravaged by the aftershocks of his fight.
He arrived in another stretch of sea, where monsters still ran rampant.
The sky was filled with flying monsters darting in every direction.
Rei continued forward slowly, his spear held horizontally in his right hand.
"The Azure Dao — Third Form: Rain of Vanishing Phantoms."
His hand did not move.
Not because the strike was too fast to perceive.
It simply did not move.
Rei looked up at the countless monsters in the sky.
With only a thought—without any visible motion from his body—the creatures were pierced through with deep, gaping holes.
Whoosh—
Blood rained from the heavens as countless corpses fell into the sea below.
Only then
did Rei casually sweep his spear.
Pfft!
A storm of spear shadows flashed across the sky and vanished in an instant.
He understood.
"Rain of Vanishing Phantoms."
The moment the strike was conceived in his mind, the spear had already thrust forth within that thought.
The attack had been completed before the motion itself was made.
This strike inverted cause and effect.
Such a thing had previously been impossible.
Even if he possessed the insight and could envision the concept, he could never have actually executed it.
Because...
cause and effect could not be reversed.
Time could not be turned back.
Fantasy could not become reality.
Every insight represented a paradox that should have been impossible to realize.
But at this moment,
within this strike,
it had become real.
He had woven an impossible principle of the world into a single combat technique, transforming it into a Dao Technique—
something no living being could fully comprehend,
and something Rei himself could not explain in words.
Kanzaki Rei walked calmly through the monster horde.
Corpses fell from the sky like rain.
Upon the black sea beneath a blood-red sky, more and more insights approaching the Dao arose endlessly within his mind.
And every experience he had accumulated up to this point became nourishment for his path.
Rei's gaze drifted, but his heart surged with excitement.
He had only just become a Level 6 Warrior.
Yet he already felt that true Entry into the Dao was not far away.
In fact, he seemed to be only a single step from it.
He merely needed...
one final push.
Rei stopped walking.
The instant he halted—
Boom!
Centered on Kanzaki Rei, every monster within a radius of one million kilometers—from Tier 1 to Tier 7—exploded into blood mist.
Rei slowly raised his eyes.
That final push for the Warrior's path...
would likely require him to enter the Dao through battle itself.
Fortunately, the Level 8 monsters he had been watching all this time were about to become very useful.