Unlimited Power - The Arcane Path

While Leon and Crik were convincing the other mithril people to join the fray, he realized that Crik's people didn't grow all that much in those years. In fact, that whole species was in a state of stagnation. They became a warrior race, but thanks to Ilyana, they didn't have to fight anymore, and now that they had a new planet to call home, they lost the sole goal that kept them moving for hundreds of years.

Leon didn't know that before, but the mithril people were near immortal with their new bodies. However, immortality was like a curse to those who couldn't find a new goal and could only feel a limited number of things. They had the chance not only to recover their home planet and to become beings that could feel the taste of a good meal again… with those prospects, every single person on that planet accepted Leon's invitation.

Congratulations! You have become a Level one Diplomat!

Your mana and intelligence will increase by two points, your stamina, health, recovery, and control will increase by one point whenever you level up your class.

Congratulations! You have become a Level one Galactic Diplomat!

Your mana and intelligence will increase by ten points, your stamina, health, recovery, and control will increase by five points whenever you level up your class.

Although Leon didn't interact with them since the last Reset, he had to negotiate with many other species he had interacted with before. Some people refused him blatantly, while others felt the appeal of his words. Literally, everyone who was still alive wanted something that they had lost after all those years of fighting back. Given that Leon also wanted to keep everyone's memories intact, the reasons to refuse were close to none. They would most likely lose their powers, but with their memories, they could recover them eventually and perhaps even surpass beings like Leon, Ilyana, and Tyrselle.

"I can't believe that I'm willing to accept such schemers on our ranks," Leon sighed.

"You are lucky that you didn't find many of them this time," Ilyana shrugged. "All the harvesters that I contacted until now and forced to join us are thinking among those lines."

Tyrselle opened her mouth to say something, but after looking at Leon for a while, she decided to stay quiet. Leon shrugged when he saw that because he could easily imagine what she wanted to say. 'just get rid of them or delete their memories for good. There is no need to merciful with backstabbers.' Tyrselle didn't say that because she once fooled Leon, and it was clear that she was the last person he wanted to hear that from.

After a week of working non-stop, Leon felt that the number of planets under his control was close to five hundred. It was getting harder to find planets on the last stages of the assimilation to use Absolute Mana Link, but that was something that he already had expected. Such thoughts disappeared from his mind when Leon finally obtained control over the 500th planet. For some reason, when that happened, Leon felt his body getting colder. He could tell that his body was fine, and that was just his instincts warning him of something. That feeling of cold was an aura… an aura that belonged to someone and covered the whole universe.

"Leon…" Ilyana said, and for the first time in a long while, she showed an uneasy expression.

"Can you feel that too?" Leon asked.

Ilyana nodded. Leon and Ilyana both returned to the planet where the humans were, and there, they saw many, many humans on their knees trembling like leaves. They could feel that aura, too… it was the aura of the creator of the assimilation system. Just the aura was enough to make most people cower in fear. While Tyrselle was making a look that could make anyone feel shivers, Sylas was sweating bullets.

"This is weird…" Ilyana frowned. "I can understand why we only can feel that presence now. We needed a vast amount of mana to notice something as big as that. However, why that presence is exactly in the center of the universe? There isn't nothing there, just a… black hole."

Now that Leon thought about it, he could feel the mana of that being was like a black hole. It was constantly sucking more mana from all the universe… which was bad. Leon realized that perhaps, the system's creator could grow even stronger than they were already supposed to be. The strength of that being was almost equal to all the mana that could be found in the entire universe. Leon confirmed that when the presence suddenly disappeared and then reappeared when one of his replicas obtained command over the 501st planet.

"It looks like they were hiding somewhere not all that obvious," Leon said. "No,… they weren't hiding. We just didn't have the necessary requirements to find them, but now we know how we can find it."

The final battle was approaching. Those who didn't lose the will to fight to begin to train as much as they could while they could. However, that wasn't helping. Every time someone got stronger, that aura also increased in density. It was just like they had noticed… whoever was inside the black hole was getting stronger at the same pace the mana in the universe was increasing.

"Do you still want to fight after noticing that?" Tyrselle asked.

"Yep," Leon nodded. "It won't be easy, but after noticing this, we confirmed the fact that we can achieve our goals if we win the next fight."

Tyrselle studied Leon for a few seconds and didn't feel any fear in his eyes or in the mana in his body. However, Leon was afraid. He just obtained the power to hide it from everyone. The stakes this time were just too high, and if they fail… there won't be anyone left to do a Reset and save everything.