Young Master's PoV: Woke Up As A Villain In A Game One Day

Chapter 405: You’re Telling Me Love Is War?!

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Name: Samael Kaizer Theosbane

Spirit Essence: 49,200/50,000

Soul Rank: B 『Absorb 800 Essence to level up』

Soul Potential: SS

Origin Card: Matterweave

Acquire Cards: —

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I was looking at my stats, regretting how close I was to ranking up. I was so close that I had even started feeling a bit of Spirit Force.

Killing that A-ranker spy had given me a little over 300 Essence. It would’ve given me a lot more under normal circumstances, but ascension doesn’t work that way.

Let me explain.

To rank up (or ascend, in traditional terms) you need to fill your Essence pool to the absolute brim, then absorb even more Essence while compressing your core at the same time.

This is the main reason why you don’t see many ascensions in the middle of an ongoing battle, because you would already be spending your Essence at that time.

When I killed that spy, my core was more or less half depleted due to the surgical process I’d just undergone.

The graft needed to be attuned to both my soul and my Essence, after all. So while I got a massive boost from the kill, most of it went toward refilling my fuel tank instead of expanding it.

Such a missed opportunity. I didn’t think I was going to come across another chance like that anytime soon.

There’s a reason Great Houses don’t just hand their children thousands of Essence Stones for easy rank-ups.

First, Essence Stones are rare. Extremely rare.

Second, the higher you climb the ranks, the higher the grade of the Essence Stone needs to be to provide any significant increase in your Essence pool. After a certain point, they stop mattering at all.

For example, C-rankers can’t feel Essence, so Essence Stones are practically useless to them.

And once an A-ranker reaches the midpoint of their rank, even the highest-grade Essence Stones start feeling like pouring a cup of water into an ocean.

At that point, it’s better to just hunt down stronger entities and absorb their Essence directly.

But even when you are capable, it is still strongly advised against heavily relying on Essence Stones to rank up.

That’s because the time you spend in C- and B-rank is the most valuable time of your life.

This is when you need to experience and experiment with your own power to gain a full understanding of it and get used to fighting in real-world situations.

This is also where you get a taste of using Essence and incorporating it into martial techniques.

If you skip all that work, you end up with a bloated core but retain the combat instincts of a headless chicken.

Which, as it turns out, is a very fast way to die.

Power isn’t just about quantity. It’s about familiarity and control, and that only comes from experience — from fights and mistakes, from nearly dying and figuring out how not to do that next time.

This is why most high-rankers can tell almost instantly when someone has climbed the ladder the easy way.

Those people move and react in a way that can only be described as wrong, fighting like they’ve only read about combat rather than lived it.

As such, the nobles preferred their descendants to die in battle against other Hunters and monsters rather than take a shortcut.

And I... didn’t share that mindset at all!

No, really! Fuck that!

I was not about to romanticize suffering just because a bunch of old fossils with too much power and too little common sense thought "struggle builds character."

You know what else struggle builds? Corpses. And I, very importantly, was not interested in becoming one.

Look, I understood the logic. I really did.

Experience mattered. Control mattered. Knowing your power like it’s an extension of your body mattered. Using it to develop your own unique fighting style mattered as well.

But you know what mattered more? Not dying before you got the chance to learn all that!

If I had the option to get stronger faster, I was going to take it. Then I would force myself to catch up in control. Not the other way around.

Because at the end of the day, a slightly unstable powerhouse still beats a perfectly balanced corpse.

...Usually.

Arghh!

If there hadn’t been the threat of the Reflection Beast in the Noctveil Wilds, I would’ve used every single one of those precious Essence Stones on myself instead of wasting them on my companions.

"Haa," I let out a slow breath, watching my hands and the way the air slightly distorted at my fingertips, like heat shimmering over asphalt on a hot summer afternoon.

It was faint, barely even there. But it was there.

I flexed my fingers slowly, watching as the subtle distortion rippled and faded, then returned again in weak, inconsistent pulses.

That was Spirit Force.

Or at least... the very first whispers of it. It was useless for now, but it was a sign that my soul was so incredibly close to ascending.

So. Close!

"I’ll see if I can buy some Stones at the Academy," I mumbled. "Even boost potions would do."

Though I knew how unlikely that scenario was. It was November, and the end of the academic year was just a month away.

If my batchmates hadn’t been slacking, if they were grinding half as much as I was suffering in a Death Zone, then they must all be either nearing ascension or had already reached B-rank.

In either case, there was going to be a massive shortage of resources.

Because, yes, using Essence Stones to rank up was advised against, but only if you lacked experience.

If you had already acquired the experience you felt was necessary and were only short of ascension by 1,000 or 2,000 Essence, then Essence Stones became less of a crutch and more of a practical decision.

I sighed, crestfallen.

Hmm... I could just use my Vampiric Arm to kill someone.

That would be the fastest way.

The problem, however, would be hiding the body.

Heh.

I’m kidding! I’m kidding!

I promise I haven’t been infected by the Juli-virus.

Oh, and speaking of Juliana...

I lifted my gaze to see her comfortably lounging on a couch on the other side of the cabin. She was showing Michael something on her phone, though the boy seemed to have retreated back into his gloomy shell.

His face was half-buried in his shirt, radiating depressed vibes while his dead eyes remained fixated on the screen in Juliana’s hand.

We were soaring through the skies, thousands of feet above the ground, heading toward the Central Safe-Zone at supersonic speed in my family’s private jet.

I must’ve been staring at her face without meaning to, because when Juliana lifted her head, our eyes met. She looked directly at me and held my gaze for a quick second before looking away without a word.

...Damn it!

I turned my head toward the window, watching the clouds tear past the reinforced glass in a white-and-gray blur.

There was a sharp twitch in my chest, like someone was trying to wrench my heart out.

Why?! Why was I feeling this way?

Just when had I grown so attached to her? I needed to get a grip.

Up until a few months ago, I wouldn’t have cared much about her acting distant.

She was like a cat, after all. One moment she was fine with your presence, and the next, you were the most annoying person in the world to her.

But now that she was treating me so coldly, especially after everything we had been through, I thought... I don’t know.

I thought we had grown a bit closer, at least.

It was genuinely painful when she acted like I was little more than a stranger again.

I looked back at her. She was still leaning toward Michael, her silhouette framed by the golden afternoon light. She looked serene, almost soft, in a way that felt—

W-Wait...

Hey, wait a fucking second!

Did I... did I just say it was painful?

I blinked, my eyes going wide as my heartbeat picked up the pace.

An unexpected realization fell on me like a mountain, more jarring and visceral than a literal punch to the gut.

I looked at her again, at the sharp line of her jaw and the way her hair fell over her shoulder, and felt that same treacherous tug in my chest once again.

A sudden, chilling clarity washed over me, cooling the frantic heat of my own thoughts.

Oh...

Ohhh!

Oh, this bitch!

A whisper of a laugh escaped my lips. "Haah!"

I saw it now. I realized exactly what she was doing.

And my god... she was a genius.