novelraw Chapter 361: Full Second-Tier Awakening
Chapter 361: Full Second-Tier Awakening
[You have obtained one True Particle, but your Scout Destiny Grid is below 50 and cannot sustain it. It is falling. Dissipating.]
[Your Woodcutter Destiny Grid attempts to sustain this True Particle — insufficient. It continues to fall and dissipate, but conditions are improving.]
[Your Hunter Destiny Grid attempts to sustain this True Particle — still insufficient to provide the necessary conditions, but conditions have improved significantly.]
[Your Farmer Destiny Grid has successfully sustained this True Particle and nurtured it within the Farmer Destiny Grid. Perhaps one day, it will sprout and grow.]
—
After reading through the notifications, Li Wei was silent for a long time. He finally let out a helpless sigh.
So insufficient Destiny Grid meant the drawbacks of force-upgrading were this severe.
He had nearly missed an opportunity entirely.
Yes — he had to admit it. He'd let those Neanderthals get into his head recently, and that was why he'd rushed to upgrade the Scout Card.
An ordinary card might need to reach five-star or even six-star before generating a Source Particle. But his was a rare Scout Card — double-rare, in fact. So the moment it hit four-star, the first Source Particle had appeared.Damn it.
Fortunately, his primary profession was Farmer. And fortunately, the defining characteristic of the Farmer Destiny Grid was sustaining and nurturing.
Otherwise, this would have been a complete disaster.
Due to the Source Particle's descent, his Scout Destiny Grid had dropped by 3 — back to 28. His Woodcutter Destiny Grid had dropped by 5 — falling to 60. His Hunter Destiny Grid had dropped by 9 — also falling to 60.
None of that was particularly troubling, because his Farmer Destiny Grid had surged from 23 to 40 — all 17 points that had fallen from above had been added directly to the Farmer Destiny Grid.
That was remarkable. It felt like there was always a reliable safety net quietly watching over him.
Deeply reassuring.
Overall — not bad. A scare, but no real harm done.
Next, Li Wei spent three free attribute points to push his Defense attribute to 40 in one go, immediately triggering the second-tier awakening of the Defense attribute.
Then — the earth shook, lightning cracked. In that moment, Li Wei felt as if he'd been kicked into an abyss. A gaping maw had opened inside his body, roaring and raging. Hunger?
No — it felt like his very life was being incinerated.
Every strand of his DNA was going haywire. The blood in his veins was screaming at the heavens —
No wonder Defense was the most brutal of the five attributes. Li Wei's will and Perception remained perfectly clear, but his body was on the edge of collapse.
He'd been sitting on the ground. Within seconds, he was convulsing like a boiled lobster.
Fortunately, he'd come prepared. Right beside him was the three-star grape wine, laced with ten doses of Stamina Elixir and ten doses of Life Elixir. He downed the whole bottle in one go — like seeing a ray of light, a lifeline.
But even that specially prepared concoction only held for a few seconds before the storm erupted again — eight hundred and eighty-eight rebellious armies charging at once.
Li Wei grabbed the mushroom broth made from three-star mushrooms and three-star fish, didn't bother with a bowl, and drank straight from the pot.
He drained it, then began eating frantically, consuming Stamina Elixirs at a furious pace. The sight was so alarming that Adai flew far away and began seriously considering whether to put down this thing that looked like a magic zombie — maybe that was what freedom felt like.
In just a few minutes, over fifty kilograms of high-quality food had been consumed entirely. Even the elixirs in the Resource Card were swept clean. Finally, just as Li Wei was on the verge of eating the magical materials, everything stopped.
The terrifying hunger vanished. He lay on the ground, burning with fever, scorching the grass around him into withered shapes.
But he'd held on. Though there were still occasional cracking sounds from his body — his bones reinforcing themselves.
By evening, the fever had broken. He didn't feel energized — he felt so drained that the slightest movement drenched him in sweat, and a gust of wind could have knocked him over.
A dull ache began spreading through his entire body. At first it was mild. Then it gradually became a bone-deep, heart-carving agony.
The things he had to endure.
All for one second-tier awakening of Defense?
He kept suffering through the night. Only the next morning did he finally return to normal — clear-headed and refreshed, with nothing wrong except a bit of hunger. Oh — and his height had increased slightly. He'd been 185 centimeters; now he was 186. His weight was uncertain before, but now Li Wei was confident it was no less than 100 kilograms.
Yet he hadn't gotten fat. Viewed through Adai's eyes, he looked perfectly proportioned — tall and lean. Increased density?
He casually punched a small tree nearby, about ten centimeters in diameter. Crack — the tree snapped. His fist barely reddened. And crucially — it didn't hurt.
Every movement carried a sense of dense, solid power.
Like iron.
He picked up a fist-sized rock, placed it on a larger stone, and punched down. The small rock shattered.
"Damn — that's absurd."
Li Wei was genuinely startled. Was this the result of adding three points to Defense?
That wasn't it.
Yesterday, Li Wei felt he could have done something like this, but nowhere near this easily — and it would have hurt. Not numbness. It would have hurt.
He was about to check his attributes when a string of notifications finally arrived, fashionably late.
[Congratulations — your Defense attribute has completed its second-tier awakening.]
[Congratulations — all five of your basic attributes have completed their second-tier awakening. From this moment, you have stepped into the realm of the extraordinary. Note: this is not tied to the Defense attribute specifically — whichever basic attribute is the last to reach second-tier awakening will trigger this.]
[Your estimated lifespan has reached 165 years.]
[Your vitality has grown more enduring. Life +50 bonus. Current: 380+100.]
[Your stamina has grown more robust. Stamina +50 bonus. Current: 520+100.]
[Your strength has grown more powerful. Strength +3 bonus. Current: 43+5.]
[Your agility has grown more fluid. Agility +2 bonus. Current: 47+4+5.]
[Your defense has passively improved. Defense +1 bonus. Current: 41+5+18.]
—
"If this is what full second-tier awakening looks like, how terrifying must full third-tier awakening be? No wonder full fourth-tier awakening is already considered legendary."
Li Wei was deeply moved — and filled with a profound sense of awe.
Because earlier notifications had described the corresponding tiers: full third-tier awakening was Master; fourth-tier was Legendary; fifth-tier was Epic; sixth-tier was Immortal; seventh-tier was Demigod.
So he had only just crawled out of the beginner's village?
No wonder Li Yue said they were all small players. No wonder she considered full third-tier awakening to be genuinely difficult.
Because attribute growth wasn't linear, and it wasn't as simple as adding points. It required progressively higher-quality food and elixirs — otherwise it was practically suicidal.
To say nothing of the fact that the All-Heavens Lord Alliance certainly had individuals with full seventh-tier awakening — the so-called Demigods.
Night Owl had certainly reached full third-tier awakening. Weir Duke — fourth-tier? And the great six-star lord, the King of Locke Kingdom — fifth-tier?
Never mind. No point dwelling on that.
This wasn't a middle schooler fantasizing about getting into a top university anymore. This was fantasizing about becoming a professor or an academician.
Next, Li Wei put his remaining two free attribute points into Perception. His Perception was now +7.
Interestingly, nothing went wrong.
"Looks like my earlier targets were a bit too ambitious. There's no way I'll achieve full third-tier awakening in three years. At best I'll awaken one or two more attributes. Going forward, I still need to focus heavily on grinding Destiny Grids and developing the territory. As for the Farmer Card — I won't upgrade it until the Destiny Grid hits 60."
Li Wei reset his goals, tidied up the mess around him, called Adai, and headed southwest. Earlier, he'd spotted what appeared to be a scavenger camp built by a pioneer team — but it seemed to have never developed.
At noon, Li Wei arrived at a ruined town. Nothing particularly notable — a standard flat-terrain town, population of five or six thousand at its peak, covering a large area, roads crisscrossing everywhere. Nine out of ten buildings had been destroyed, but three or five still stood.
From a distance, Adai began circling the sky excitedly, as if he'd spotted prey.
Li Wei also sensed something different. He looked around, sniffed the air, then glanced east. A mental map was already forming in his mind. After some rough but reasonably accurate calculations, he reached several conclusions.
This location was no more than 300 kilometers from Riverside Fortress — exactly matching his earlier guess.
Second, the position of this place relative to Riverside Fortress was interesting.
If he connected the territory's main base, Riverside Fortress, and this location with straight lines, the result was an arc.
His circle theory was proving true. So Frost Duke's domain really was at the center — roughly 750 to 800 kilometers from every pioneering camp?
That was a substantial area.
With these thoughts in mind, Li Wei walked into the ruined town and immediately noticed obvious signs of clearing work. Someone had once tried to clean up the ruins here. He quickly found signs of habitation in a six-story building — someone had moved concrete blocks to seal the doors, windows, and stairwells, and had even fashioned a rope ladder to climb directly to the third floor.
Ah. This felt familiar.
But unfortunately, this pioneer team had clearly not even survived the first month before calling it quits.
Li Wei felt a pang of something. He thought back to those early days — his second uncle, his former second aunt, his cousin, his little sister. The people he'd loved.
Hmm.
While he was lost in thought, Adai suddenly dove, unleashing dozens of terrifying ice arrows. The next second, a large frozen block appeared on the ground.
A mutant rat that had apparently reached Level 5 had been flash-frozen.
That weak?
Li Wei sighed, drew his enchanted dagger, and walked over with a grin.
Half an hour later, the Level 5 mutant rat had been reduced to a pile of high-quality magical materials. Its three life cores had dissolved into ash, but no Universal Gold Card had dropped.
Then two lines of text appeared silently.
[You have successfully hunted a five-star beast and performed a perfect breakdown and material processing. Your related codename mission completion has reached 20%.]
[Due to accumulated hunting and breakdown of sufficient prey over this period, your Hunter Destiny Grid +1. Current: 61.]