Chapter 265: Tunnel
Remedy had been tracking The Family since Saint Nova's intervention forced them underground.
Across her previous cycles, she had watched them consistently redirect their operations toward the southern hemisphere. She had assumed it was because ruler tombs were concentrated there and that the region was simply rich with trial grounds left behind by past heirs. It had been a reasonable conclusion at the time. Now, sitting with the full picture in front of her, a different explanation fit the evidence far more cleanly.
The Family wasn't hunting trials. They were hunting keys. And releasing an entity capable of wiping out existence entirely was exactly the kind of objective The Family would organise their entire operation around.
"We need to go to the southern hemisphere," Remedy said. "The Family is already there, and now we know why."
Adam studied her for a moment, then nodded. "I don't have an issue with that."
"I do," Ivy said flatly. "Going to the southern hemisphere would drain us of essence and kill us before we got anywhere near The Family."
Felecia leaned back and crossed her arms. "She's right. The negative resonance alone would be too much, even for me."
Scott nodded once. He didn't add anything, but his expression said he agreed completely.
Adam was familiar with the mechanics. Essence flowed into the world from the northern continent, and the further south one travelled, the thinner it became. The southern hemisphere had almost none. For any being that ran on essence, entering that region created a negative resonance effect and the environment actively pulled the essence from the body, accelerating until there was nothing left. The result was death, and it wasn't slow.
But resistance had to be possible. Control had to count for something.
"Can't we just resist the pull?" Adam asked. "With proper essence control?"
Felecia, Scott, and Ivy all looked at him. It was Scott who answered, which was unusual enough to notice.
"We're not all monsters like you."
Felecia and Ivy both made sounds of agreement without hesitation.
Remedy clarified it plainly. "To resist the negative resonance, you need a star power of at least one hundred. That's the threshold."
Adam's expression went flat.
Scott sighed. "My point exactly."
Ivy turned to Adam with a practical look. "By the way, what's your current star power?"
"Just over two hundred."
The room went silent.
Felecia broke it first. "Well." She leaned back and exhaled. "That does explain a few things." The zombie horde cleared with a single word. The fight with the angel, a being equivalent to a Monarch in raw power, taken on directly and won. Two hundred plus star power wasn't just high. It recontextualised everything they had watched Adam do over the past weeks into something that finally added up.
Remedy, though, wasn't reacting the same way as the others. Her expression had shifted into something sharper.
"Were you able to expand your tunnel?" she asked.
Adam blinked. "Expand my what?"
"Your tunnel."
He considered it for a moment. "Rem, I don't know what a tunnel is, but I'm fairly certain I wouldn't want one expanded."
Remedy stared at him with a completely blank expression.
"I'm not talking about that tunnel."
Adam laughed. "Then which tunnel are you talking about?"
Remedy stood up without answering and left the room. She came back less than a minute later carrying a whiteboard and a marker. She set it up facing the group, uncapped the marker, and wrote two words at the top.
Star Power.
Felecia, Ivy, and Scott all shifted in their seats. The whiteboard had appeared. That meant an explanation was coming, and from Remedy, that was worth paying attention to.
Remedy turned to Adam. "You know what star power is?"
"The metric for measuring everything martial artists do," Adam said.
She nodded and wrote five terms beneath the heading: Martial Technique. Martial Spirit. Special Talent. Physique. Bloodline.
"Star power draws from all of these," she said. "But originally, it only drew from martial spirit and techniques, hence the name, since a spirit's tier is measured in stars. The other three came later, awakened during the martial era." She tapped the list. "With those awakenings came a new kind of genius. Bloodline holders for the essential races." She glanced at Scott. "Special talent holders for the non essential races." She glanced at Ivy. "And physique holders, the only category open to everyone regardless of race."
Felecia smiled in the quiet, knowing way of someone being correctly categorised.
"So where does my tunnel come in?" Adam asked.
"Phrasing," Ivy said.
Adam didn't react. Remedy, equally unbothered, continued.
"A tunnel is the natural limit placed on every martial artist," she said. "It's the reason a person cannot hold more than one special talent, more than one bloodline, or more than one physique. The system caps the individual. That's the tunnel."
Every eye in the room moved to Adam.
They already knew something was off about how he accumulated abilities. The theory of mimicry had been the first guess, something that copied and replicated what it encountered. But mimicry didn't explain simultaneous use. Adam didn't echo abilities after the fact. He ran them in parallel, layered, at the same time. That wasn't mimicry. He was actually holding multiple abilities at once.
"From what you're saying," Adam said, "doesn't that mean I've broken the tunnel? Since I can use multiple abilities simultaneously?"
He didn't see any reason to hide it. The team had already pieced it together.
But Remedy shook her head. "Your tunnel wouldn't be broken just because of that. Here's why." She turned back to the whiteboard and wrote something beneath the rest. "If you had genuinely broken the tunnel, the intensity from holding that many abilities would have been catastrophically greater. Far beyond what you've shown." She stepped back and let them read what she'd written.
All of them stared at the board.
Remedy had filled the board with clean, structured data. The team studied it in silence.
―――――――――――――――――
SPECIAL TALENT
G — 7 stars / F — 8 stars / E — 14 stars
D — 16 stars / C — 18 stars / B — 21 stars
A — 24 stars / S — 32 stars
SS — 40 stars / SSS — 48 stars
MARTIAL SPIRIT
Regular: 1–9 stars / Profound: 2–18 stars
Earthly: 3–27 stars / Heavenly: 4–36 stars
Holy: 5–45 stars / Supreme: 6–54 stars
BLOODLINE (max level 5 per grade)
Established: 5–25 stars / Noble: 7–35 stars
Royal: 9–45 stars / Divine: 11–55 stars
PHYSIQUE
Blessed: 30 stars / Sacred: 40 stars
Exalted: 50 stars / Transcendent: 60 stars
RANKS
Apprentice: 1 star / Warrior: 2 stars
Expert: 3 stars / Master: 4 stars
ASCENDANT RANKS
Lord (Ultimate Technique): 10 stars
Monarch (Domain): 100 stars
Saint (Miracle): 1,000 stars
Sovereign (Decree): 5,000 stars
Demi-God: 10,000 stars
―――――――――――――――――
"This is the maximum star power contribution from every source," Remedy said, stepping back from the board. "Combined, it gives you the theoretical ceiling for any martial artist at a given level."
The team studied it carefully. Ivy was already running calculations behind her eyes. Scott traced the bloodline section with a quiet recognition. Felecia found her own category without any trouble.
Adam's expression was flat.
He pulled up his panel without a word.
―――――――――――――――――
〖Name: Adam〗
〖Rank: Supreme Master〗
〖Cultivation Talent: G〗
〖Special Talent: Equip ❖ Connect ❖ Analyze ❖ Fuse ❖ Origin〗
〖Affinity: Wind ❖ Death+〗
〖SLOT〗
↳ SOUL (8): Rapid Charge D ❖ Cryogen D ❖ Cultivation SSS ❖ Mind Control E ❖ Bone Generation D ❖ Undead SS
↳ BODY (9): Judgement
↳ GENE (4): Chaos ❖ Famine ❖ War ❖ Conquest
↳ Blessing: +5 Star Power
〖Star Power: 220 ±〗
〖Existence: 300,000〗
〖Martial Spirit: Supreme 5★〗
〖Enlightenment: 2,500,000〗
―――――――――――――――――
He ran the numbers against what was on the board. Five special talents alone should have contributed far beyond what his panel was showing. Add the supreme spirit, the three bloodlines, the physique, the blessing, the total should have been sitting at a completely different figure. The gap between what he was reading and what he should have been reading was significant.
"This should be a lot higher than what's showing," he said.
Remedy looked at his expression and nodded slowly, like she had been waiting for exactly that reaction.
"It seems," she said, "that you haven't expanded your tunnel yet."
Remedy had assumed the tunnel expansion had already happened.
Two hundred plus star power from someone carrying that many abilities, it had seemed like the only logical explanation. But looking at Adam's perplexed expression, the picture was different. The abilities weren't giving him what they should have been giving him. The tunnel was still capped, and the sheer volume of what he was carrying had simply made the number look bigger than it was.
She handed him the marker without ceremony. "Let's calculate it properly. Write out everything."
Adam took it and turned to the board. He glanced back at the rest of the team. "Can I erase this? Are you done copying?"
Four blank stares.
Adam erased the board and started writing.
―――――――――――――――――
Master Rank: +4 stars
Supreme Spirit (5 star): +30 stars
Judgement: +30 stars
Special Talents (×5): +102 stars
Bloodlines (×3 @ 60 stars each): +180 stars
Blessing: +5 stars
Awakened Primary Affinities (Death + Holy Light): +2 stars
Chaos: +5 stars
Death Key Fragment: +???
―――――――――――――――――
The team read through it in silence.
Remedy was the first to react, and her expression showed it. Several of Adam's entries hadn't appeared anywhere on her breakdown. Judgement contributing star power directly. Awakened primary affinities as a separate variable. Chaos as its own category. She hadn't accounted for any of those. And the bloodlines, each sat at sixty stars individually and were far beyond the ceiling for even a level five Divine grade bloodline. The standard framework didn't have a slot for what Adam was carrying.
These were Adam's own estimates, built from his panel and the framework Remedy had just provided. And even working conservatively, the numbers added up to one figure.
Three hundred and fifty-eight star power.
Not counting the Death Key fragment, which had no assigned value on any chart that existed.
Adam stared at the board for a moment, then turned around.
"How do I expand my tunnel?"