NOVEL NEXT Chapter422-A New Line of Thought
Should he go ahead and synthesize a batch of God Rank Skills?
Daniel rubbed his chin, thinking it over.
A moment later he dispatched one of his avatars to Winterhold Castle, then had it head straight for his personal vault.
By now, Daniel had amassed a staggering quantity of materials, all neatly stored away in that warehouse.
With the fresh haul of five hundred portions of Demigod-grade Common Materials, his first idea was simple: craft a few God Rank Skills ranked outside the top ninety and see how they performed.
They might not sit near the top of the Compendium, but a God Rank Skill was still a God Rank Skill.
The effects should be decent—and as it happened, Daniel had already picked one that fit his current needs rather well.
[Sonic Annihilation]
[Effect: Your Damage Conversion becomes sonic damage and additionally deals sonic damage equal to ten times the original damage. The higher your mind power, the higher this bonus damage; this damage ignores all shields.]
After reading the entry, Daniel nodded in satisfaction.
What he lacked at the moment wasn't raw offense—he already had an arsenal of straightforward killing moves.
What he needed were specialized attack vectors, ways to reach enemies that conventional force couldn't easily touch.
The effect of Sonic Annihilation plugged that gap rather nicely.
Its only drawback was situational. In near-vacuum environments, sonic attacks were hard to propagate, severely curtailing the skill's impact.
Even so, it was another weapon in his kit. Learned skills were never a loss.
He activated the Sonic Annihilation scroll.
As the knowledge fused into him, he took a quick look around.
His expression shifted—from the wariness he habitually wore in the Backworld to a rising excitement he couldn't quite suppress.
There was no question that the Backworld was perilous.
Yet at the same time, it contained immense opportunity.
For someone like him, it was nothing less than a treasure house.
Daniel held that thought while he kept his mind power spread outward, quietly mapping nearby presences.
He was searching for more Demigods.
What he perceived next was…interesting.
After he had cut down those Ancient-system divinities a short while ago, their divine power had not gone dormant.
Instead, within his perceptual range, that power was already seeking out new bearers—choosing "successor hosts" to inherit the burden and benefits of the fallen.
The successor did not have to be overwhelmingly strong.
Strength wasn't the prerequisite—the level threshold was.
Once the candidate met the level requirement, the wayward divine power would gather itself, coalesce into a godhead, and descend upon the new host.
The pattern felt oddly familiar.
Daniel scratched his head.
Then it struck him: this was similar to what he had seen when he first entered the abyss.
The logic of birth and recycling in the abyss resembled what he was witnessing now in the Backworld.
The difference was the object of the cycle.
In the Backworld the resource that circulated was divine power; in the abyss, it was the life-cycle of abyssal creatures themselves.
Either way, the takeaway was clear: even the Demigods who were slain did not cause any lasting loss to the system's total divine power.
After their fall, that power would simply recycle elsewhere, seeking a new foothold.
This was precisely why the remnants of a Fake God drew such crowds of Demigods the moment they appeared.
What those Demigods sought to consume wasn't merely flesh—it was the divine power sealed within that flesh.
Swallowing it increased their own strength.
As for ascension rituals or some formal ceremony—those had little to do with followers of the Ancient God system.
Daniel had to admit: the Ancient system was truly peculiar.
He also realized something else. In the Backworld, Fake Gods might be hard to find at times, but Demigods were everywhere—so common as to be almost innumerable.
And to Daniel's eyes, those Demigods were beginning to look like exactly what he needed: Common Materials waiting to be harvested.
As a whole, Ancient-system Demigods were weak by his standards.
So his plan was straightforward—capitalize on the opportunity, cull more Demigods, and stockpile more Common Materials.
Ideally, he would learn every God Rank Skill ranked beyond the 90th position.
Now, "beyond ninety" didn't mean there were only ten left he could synthesize.
The God Rank Skill Compendium contained a multitude of entries where several skills shared the same rank by tie.
This was a nuance Daniel had only discovered after stepping into the God Rank field himself. In other words, the total number of God Rank Skills he could eventually master was far greater than one hundred.
Which meant maxing out all the post-90 skills would be time-consuming.
But Daniel was nothing if not practical. He had so many avatars.
All he had to do was assign a handful to farm Demigods nonstop.
With that, learning the whole block of post-90 skills was no great problem—merely a question of how much time he was willing to invest.
Even so, as his plans arranged themselves neatly in his head, a shadow passed through his thoughts.
He could not truly picture what the endgame would look like—what sort of terrifying situation awaited him at the very last moment.
How could the future be so dire that even such a huge collection of God Rank Skills would still prove insufficient to reverse the tide?
The idea was unnerving.
Daniel raked a hand through his hair.
Perhaps the intelligence provided by Puppet Kartora wasn't entirely accurate.
Fate was formidable, yes—but who could say with certainty that what Puppet Kartora had witnessed was the only true outcome?
…
Northern Frontier of the Human Race.
At the site where the abyss used to churn, a pure-black portal suddenly tore itself open like a wound in space.
Moments later, every human received a transmission—a Human Emperor Edict from Daniel himself.
[Human Emperor Edict: Any awakener at Demigod Rank or above may proceed to the Backworld. What you find there may be the key to breaking through to your next stage.]
For those without a godhead, the Backworld was a terrifying and treacherous place.
If you lacked a godhead, the "heavens" here would generously bestow one upon you—all too easily pushing you to the Demigod Rank.
The price for accepting that "gift," however, was steep: from that moment on, your entire life would be spent as a puppet of divine power.
For outsiders, then, coming to the Backworld without already being God Rank was almost certainly a dead end.
Even for Demigods, the risk was immense.
After all, the Backworld was saturated with Demigods—so many that "countless" hardly seemed an exaggeration.
And while Ancient-system Demigods weren't impressive compared to modern standards, they were still far beyond what ordinary Demigods from outside could safely provoke.
Even those lackluster Ancient Demigods could crush a Demigod from the outside like an ant.
Daniel opened the portal anyway, for one important reason: he wanted to observe. He needed to learn whether these newcomers—Demigods who received their godheads upon entering—would remain shackled by the Backworld's rules.
If they could avoid the Ancient system's drawbacks while still receiving godheads, wouldn't that mean that the entire human race could, in theory, acquire godheads?
The thought sent a rush through him.
If that vision proved true, then humanity would become the most formidable species he had ever seen—without exception.
In the space of a short time, large numbers of human Demigods (along with Demigods of friendly races and vassal lines) poured into the Backworld.
Before long, a Demigod named Karami was chosen—a godhead from the Backworld descended upon him.
The instant it happened, Daniel activated the Eye of Insight, fixing his gaze on Karami. He scrutinized the change in intricate detail, intent on seeing everything that was happening to the new host.