Chapter 24: Innate Ability
The Supreme Pontiff was still playing tour guide up ahead, his voice resonating through the wide hall as he described each mural and the story behind it. His tone was devout and measured, carrying the unhurried cadence of old age.
Lucian's thoughts had long since drifted elsewhere.
Martial Arts?
These were the special techniques available to human warriors in this world, a means of drawing out power beyond one's ordinary limits. In the original work, Gazef Stronoff had used the Martial Art [Sixfold Slash of Light] to step into the Hero-Level, becoming the Kingdom's strongest warrior.
But where did Martial Arts come from?
Were they something the natives had reverse-engineered from players' skills, simplified and adapted into a degraded version suited to New World humans?
If so, then Martial Arts had a ceiling baked in from the start. No matter how much training went into them, they could never exceed the scope of a player's skills.
Lucian's gaze settled on several weapons displayed along one side of the hall — relics left behind by the Six Great Gods, each one stored with care in a specially-made glass case, surrounded by barriers against desecration. A faint light moved along the sword blades. Faint runes drifted across the surface of the armor. The gem set into the staff's crown was generating its own glow.
All YGGDRASIL gear.
Lucian recognized a few of them. That sword looked like a reward from some high-difficulty raid. That armor he remembered too — a limited drop from a time-limited event. The whole guild had ground it for a week straight.
Now they were sacred relics.
The gap between players and natives wasn't just in levels and skills. It was a complete mismatch at every level of the system.
Magic?
Tiered magic was out of the question.
New World human natives could learn tiered magic up to Tier 6. A cleric who had entered the Hero-Level could cast up to Tier 5.
But players could cast up to Tier 10. And beyond that: super-tier magic, special skills, World Items.
The gap was too large.
Wild Magic?
Powerful enough, certainly. But there were very few dragons left who could still use it. Nothing that could stand against Nazarick's forces.
Lucian let out a quiet breath.
So in the end, it really did come down to his own Innate Ability.
Lucian's Innate Ability was a peculiar one. Its formal name was [Blessing]. He preferred the one he had given it himself: [Wish Upon a Star — Isekai Edition].
It did nothing at all for Lucian himself. What it could do was grant any innate ability to anyone who didn't have one.
In theory, Lucian could grant the Supreme Pontiff an innate ability to call down a nuclear warhead and flatten Nazarick in one warm, decisive strike — if using [Blessing] didn't consume experience points.
Unfortunately, it did. Same as the super-tier spell [Wish Upon a Star], [Blessing] required experience points to activate.
Lucian had run tests. Granting a servant the minor ability of "waking up early without feeling tired" had consumed a negligible amount, barely perceptible.
But when he had tried to grant Lakyus an innate ability capable of breaking through the native human ceiling, the violent lurch in his chest had stopped him cold.
Like an invisible hand seizing his heart and squeezing with everything it had. As though his life itself were being pulled out of his body in that instant.
In that moment, Lucian had understood with perfect clarity that even spending every last point of his vitality would not be enough to make it work.
The more powerful the innate ability granted, the more experience points it consumed.
This world was not a game. Once those experience points ran out, Lucian died. Completely and permanently — because Tier 5 Faith-Based Magic [Resurrection] could not revive someone whose experience had dropped too low.
Restrictions could be added to reduce the cost. But Lucian's own future ceiling was Hero-Level. No matter how many restrictions he stacked, he could never grant an ability with any hope of defeating Nazarick.
But that didn't mean [Blessing] was useless.
Like pieces on a chess board.
An arrangement that looks random and purposeless — but that might need only a few inconsequential moves to bring the whole board down around the opponent.
[Blessing] was what Lucian thought of as the key.
* * *
The light in the hall was soft, the faint rays coming through a few stained-glass windows casting broken patches of color across the floor below. Those colors fell on the ancient stone paving like scattered fragments of something divine. The air carried a faint natural scent, mixed with the clean, cold smell particular to old stone and passing years, the kind that made you unconsciously hold your breath.
The Supreme Pontiff was still explaining. Every few steps he would stop, raise one thin, dry finger toward some detail in the murals, and begin recounting the myths and legends connected to it.
Lucian had already read all of those stories countless times.
But the Supreme Pontiff seemed to have a particular affection for these ancient tales. His face carried the expression of a pilgrim in the presence of something sacred. In his voice there was a subtle, involuntary excitement he couldn't quite contain.
As though telling the stories of the other gods to the God of Judgment, King of Gods, was itself a source of happiness.
Lucian couldn't bring himself to interrupt the old man's enthusiasm. That would have been a little cruel.
The Six Great Gods in the murals wore solemn expressions, their bearing divine, every line of the paintings conveying something not to be profaned. Those companions who had once laughed and joked in the game had been polished by years and legend into flawless divine images, so thoroughly that even Lucian, who had once fought alongside them, found them slightly unrecognizable.
As a substitute for paying attention to the ongoing lecture, he redirected his attention entirely toward internally roasting the Six Great Gods.
This group of former associates was way too in love with themselves. Look at all these myths they'd accumulated.
If Lucian hadn't known their actual behavior in YGGDRASIL — every incident, every embarrassing moment — he might have been fooled into believing the divine image himself.
His internal commentary was just getting to the good part when, suddenly —
A cold sensation touched the back of his neck.
Cold and sharp, pressed against his skin.
Lucian's body went rigid in an instant.
It was the blade of a scythe.
A large scythe, its edge carrying a faint, pale glow, settled squarely against his neck. Between the blade and his skin there was almost no gap. One light pull and Lucian would find himself departing this world by the same method as Louis XVI.
You've got to be kidding me. Are Theocracy standards really this strict?
He had only drifted off during a tour. Was this the appropriate disciplinary response? Unless this person had some kind of mind-reading Innate Ability and had picked up on the Six Great Gods getting roasted.
"Well now. When did a child get into the sacred ground?"
The voice came from behind him — lazy, faintly curious, with the unhurried quality of someone still not quite awake after an afternoon nap.
It was very close. Close enough that Lucian could feel the breath that came with the words brush across the back of his neck.
The Supreme Pontiff's voice stopped dead.
***
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