One Last System

"Oh dear," I muttered, raising my hand and clutching at my chest.

There was a slight tension on Mia's face, making her expression nearly sulky. And yet, despite how she clearly wasn't happy with the situation... She somehow managed to look even more adorable than ever!

"Damn it," I uttered through my tightened lips. "Just how lovely can you get?" I asked out loud, falling down to my knees as I was unable to toughen out the weird feeling expanding in my chest.

"Oh, in that regard," Mia smiled, "I'm quite confident," she added, reaching out with her arms and coiling the around the back of my head only to then pull my face right into her stomach.

"There, there," she then whispered softly while using one of her hands to brush my hair. "I'm not mad, you don't need to worry," she added, her mood from before giving way to a simple bout of happiness that then expressed itself on her smiling lips. "And with how lovely I am," Mia mused while slightly blushing, "it's only a matter of time before I catch up, isn't it?"

There was no falsehood in Mia's words.

Earlier, I was too worried about sleeping with her over how my extremely greater power than hers could affect her through a dual cultivation process.

Thankfully, though, we already tested it out. And the one thing we found out, was that outside of ramping up Mia's pleasure from the intercourse, the difference in our powers wasn't an obstacle we had to worry about.

As such, her loveliness factor could also be taken as Mia's current greatest potential for growth, even when excluding all the cultivation resources I was willing to throw at her the moment she expressed her desire for it.

"Okay, I decided," I then muttered, rubbing my cheek against the thing cloth covering Mia's soft stomach.

"Decided on what?" Mia asked, leaning her head to the side while watching me stand up only to turn her cuddle into a mutual hug.

"I'm not going to raise my cultivation for as long as it will take for you to catch up," I decided, using as much strength for the hug as I could without worrying about potentially hurting the girl.

She could be hundreds of times stronger than a simple mortal... But for me, and with the difference in our cultivation alone, she still remained as frail as she was when we first met.

"Don't say that," Mia then whispered, attempting to lecture me. Yet, no matter how much she tried, she couldn't hide how happy her voice was. "We are not in a situation where we can be satisfied with our level of strength!"

Mia's words were reasonable. In fact, I thought about it myself just a moment earlier.

"Oh, I will make us stronger," I quickly said, not even bothering to hide the cheeky smile that grew up on my lips all on its own. "I'm just not going to do it by cultivating or raising my inner strength."

Mia brought her hands to my chest and pushed herself off, all for the sake of taking a good look at my face.

"Wait, you are serious!" she discovered. Her eyes widened when the weight of those words sank into her soul.

"Why should I rush my cultivation if it would result in your anguish?" I asked, raising my hand and caressing Mia's cheeks with the outer side of my fingers. "And assuming we will have any luck," I turned my eyes in the direction the monsters were coming from, "I should be able to put my plan into use pretty soon."

I shook my head. Then, as heavy as it was on my heart, I pushed Mia aside, properly disengaging from the hug.

"I want to test something out, so do me a favor and stand behind me," I requested, shaking my head before focusing on my mage's tower.

All my formations were in place ever since my duel with Levi started. Yet, they were all positioned in the most optimal way for a duel with someone capable of analyzing the situation. As such, rather than putting the arrays behind my back, I spread them all over the desired influence of my mage's tower to prevent Levi from simply crushing them all with a single attack.

This time, however, I went for a simpler tactic, hiding all my formations behind my back and leaving nothing but a kill zone between me and the wave of approaching monsters.

'Let's test it out a little,' I thought, alternating my eyes between the road below my feet and the nearby cloud of dust that the wave of the monsters kicked up in their frenzy.

The monsters were still too far for me to figure out their type or precise number. Yet, from the fluctuations of the mana that spread out all the way to where the three of us stood, I could tell some details already.

'This should be an easy fight,' I thought, picking up a bunch of pebbles right off the ground before using a tiny bit of my mana to carve out entire formations on each of them.

Yet, rather than producing a mass of formation stones with the same style and formation imprinted on each of them, I allowed my creative side to run free, ready to test out all sorts of designs and purposes.

"Actually, can you guys take ten steps to the back?" I then asked, turning my head over my shoulder right as the monsters got close enough for our group to recognize each of the species at the front of the wave.

There were the usual violet monsters... but they were within the second wave of the monsters rushing toward us. I could see them so soon only due to just how massive and grotesque they were.

​ Yet, in the front wave, I could see all sorts of monsters. From mutated bears that we encountered in the forest before, through triceratops-like mountains of scaled meat all the way to oversized penguins.

In my eyes, however, there were no monsters in the first or the second wave.

In the first wave, I could only see materials that would allow me to upgrade my formations. And in the second wave, I saw nothing but fuel that could allow Levi to enter the realm of true mana!

"We moved!" Mia called out as soon as she noticed how I focused on the monsters ahead to the point of not even daring to move my head to confirm their situation.

"Good," I muttered, a crazed look filling my eyes.

And then, full of curiosity, I picked out one of the simplest formation stones I just carved, and filled it out with enough pure mana to create a bolt before putting it between the nail of my thumb and the arch of my forefinger.

'I wonder if it will work,' I thought, using my cultivation-reinforced muscles to fling the stone forward.

The formation within remained inactive for as long as it was within the sphere of influence of my mage's tower. Yet, as soon as the stone left the zone of my direct control, a single rune on it burned out, closing the circuit and turning it into the very first bolt that I dared to use my pure mana for!