Asher sat at the edge of his bed, eyes scanning the list of wards.
Mori always called them abilities and even compared them to the Nexus Space. In that case, I guess their weird names make sense. Still, it makes me wonder if he came up with them himself or just found them that way. He did mention collecting them, after all.
Lost in thought, Magnus moved down to the descriptions beneath each ability. It didn't take long to realize these weren't just explanations—they read more like Mori talking at him.
[Limitless Workout –]
[Now here's an interesting ability I found while wandering the so-called northern edge of the Grand Array. I'm joking, of course—there's no actual 'north' in the layers of reality. Still, this one caught my attention. Honestly, the universe must have a sense of humor, since this landed in the hands of a gym nut.
When I first detected the anomaly, I didn't think much of it. The guy it was attached to was pretty average—a bit obsessed with working out, sure, but nothing special otherwise. That is, until I noticed everything about him was just... more. And keep in mind, his world was completely ordinary.
Plain, dull humanity—not even half as curious as you are. But in that boring world, this man was superhuman.
He could exercise for days without wearing out. Lifting cars was just another workout, especially at this junkyard he liked to visit. But the most surprising part? His speed. He dodged a bullet, nearly point-blank, just by reflex.
That's when I realized—his body didn't have a growth limiter anymore. Such a simple change, but the effects were almost unbelievable.
See, every living thing has a natural limit—a soft boundary for how much you can grow, no matter the skill or trait. Say you're training to sprint: with good practice, you'll see real progress in the first year. Maybe you keep at it another year and improve again.
But the longer you go, the harder it gets to see real gains. At a certain point, your body just can't handle anything more intense. You might keep up your peak for a while, but eventually, age drags you down, and your limits start shrinking.
But this anomaly? It erased that boundary.
Think of it like a game. Early on, you need to beat five bandits to level up. Soon, it takes twenty, then fifty, and eventually, you're just spinning your wheels unless you fight something much tougher. But with this ability, every five bandits means a guaranteed level up. The rules never change.
Sadly, the man who owned this ability was painfully boring, so I took it from him. I have a feeling you'll put it to much better use.]
By the time Magnus finished reading Mori's log, his expression had shifted. He wasn't frowning because of the ability itself—he understood that part, even with all of Mori's long-winded rambling and extra details.
What really got him thinking was just how ridiculous the potential behind this ability was.
So this is an [Absolute Ability]? It really does remind me of my Nexus Space, the way it completely ignores common sense.
From what Magnus could tell, the ability's logic was simple enough.
Suppose, for argument's sake, someone with this ability could lift a hundred dumbbells every day.
Each time they hit that mark, they'd get just a little bit stronger—let's say, enough to lift one more kilogram.
So, after five days, they'd be able to lift five kilograms more than before. Keep going every day for a year, and they'd end up lifting a total of thirty-six thousand five hundred dumbbells, boosting their strength by three hundred sixty-five kilograms.
But that was just the start.
The real game-changer came after you started getting stronger. If a hundred dumbbells a day was your limit at first, what about after a year? Could you push it to five hundred, or even a thousand a day? And once you could do that, it would only get easier to keep pushing those numbers higher—tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of lifts in a single day.
At some point, you could lift so many times in just an hour that your strength would skyrocket faster than all your earlier progress combined. And since the effect compounded, it only got more absurd from there.
If a hundred dumbbells felt too easy, you could just move on to lifting cars, trucks, maybe even trains, or solid metal blocks. No matter what, you'd keep getting stronger every single time—no plateau, no slowdown. And it wouldn't just be about strength. It could boost your stamina, your reflexes, maybe even your ability to withstand damage.
"I can see why Mori picked such a straightforward name for it," Magnus murmured, still sitting on the edge of his bed. It really was a limitless workout. He could already picture what it would be like to have an ability like that. Compared to this, even the aura that Huntsmen relied on seemed inferior.
Still, it's not like this ability makes you invincible. Anyone who had it could become unbelievably strong in their lifetime. Getting to the point where you're a one-man army probably wouldn't take long at all. But the catch is, it still takes time. I have no idea how much time I have before the cataclysm hits, and this ability only boosts my strength.
What was the point of being able to lift mountains if the world is ending and reality itself is coming apart? Even if someone could leap to another planet, what then? Are they supposed to carry all of humanity on their shoulders? And until they reach that point, there was nothing stopping someone from killing them with the same weaponry that can take down a Huntsman.
Then again, Mori did say these rewards could be given to other people. Maybe I could treat it like an investment? But who would I even trust with something this powerful?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. If you want to control someone with an ability like this, you'd need total loyalty. Either that, or you'd have to make sure you always have leverage—some kind of threat, or a backup plan.
Could I really set up enough safeguards to keep someone like that in line?
Asher thought about it for a while, running his thumb along his upper lip, eyes narrowed, already imagining different futures.
Maybe… It's not impossible. Still, I should see what other options I have first.
He glanced back up at the ceiling as he moved on to the second reward Mori was offering. Just like before, it wasn't so much a description as it was a rant.
[Coincidence Generation –]
[Now this one is really fun. It belonged to an alien race that managed to grow into an interdimensional civilization thanks to this ability.
They were a pretty odd bunch—sort of slime-like creatures who operated mechanical suits by filling up the empty spaces inside. Still, if you ever got a close look, they were actually kind of cute.
Anyway, their Empress ended up with this ability purely by chance, just like you did.
At first, she had no idea what was happening. It was hilarious watching her go through life, making offhand comments and guesses, only for them all to come true. Not long after she took the throne, people started calling her the Blessed Empress. Of course, she was a bit more skeptical of herself and eventually figured out what was going on.
To sum it up, any time she described something as a coincidence—something that could happen—it would become a guarantee.
One time, she glanced at the sky, saw a shadow, and joked that it looked like a storm could be coming. Next thing you know, it started storming across the entire region.
Of course, she almost got herself killed more than once. She had to learn how to control it, to avoid triggering the ability with every passing thought or comment. There was also a cost to using it, which she didn't realize at first. The day she figured it out, her suit was left completely drained of power.
Put simply, the bigger the scale and effects of the coincidence, the more energy it takes to make it real. At first, the energy came from her suit. Then, once that was empty, it started taking from her body. If she'd pushed it too far, it would have killed her.
That's why her empire poured resources into compact energy technology, with a few 'convenient' coincidences to speed up their research.
I'm sure you can imagine how that played out.
The only real limitation was that the coincidence had to be possible in some way, and the less likely it was, the more power it took. But when you have the energy supply of an entire civilization behind you, you can make a lot of things happen very fast.
They cracked the code for scientific longevity, managed to 'coincidentally' remove corruption from their government through executions, survived fatal injuries by sheer luck, and even discovered revolutionary new minerals when an asteroid just happened to land in the right place.
By the time I finished rewatching their history, they had conquered their universe—and every universe adjacent to it. They got so advanced, they actually detected me when I not so subtly entered their reality. It was honestly pretty impressive. Their Empress was happy to give up her ability.
Her people didn't need coincidences to advance anymore, and the discovery of there being potentially more realities became the next big goal.
So, who knows? If you survive, maybe you'll meet them someday.]
"Hmm..." Asher found himself connecting with this ability more than the last one. It might not have the same destructive potential, depending on how much energy it took to create each coincidence, but the fact that someone used it to raise a civilization to an interdimensional power was pretty telling.
In fact, it was similar to what Asher was hoping to do with humanity on Remnant.
Even so, there were clear risks. If Mori's story was completely accurate, then even before the Blessed Empress gained this power, her civilization was already highly advanced—after all, every citizen had a suit just for the convenience of their species.
There was no way to know what kind of technology they had, or what kind of energy sources were available to them. Did they have Dust, like people did here? Were things like semblances or aura a factor? Too many unknowns could turn this seemingly unstoppable ability into something completely useless in his own hands.
Still, out of the two so far, this one definitely feels a bit more appealing.
"There's still one left, though," he muttered, eyes shifting to the last ability Mori had listed on the ceiling.
[100% Physical Skill –]
[If I'm being honest, I doubt this one will really grab you, even after you read about it.
I picked up this ability from a human who could travel between realities. Yes, a human. Surprised? I was, too. Naturally, I wanted to see how he did it, so I watched him for a while until I discovered the little trinket he'd tied into his own existence.
It was as if his whole world had become a game. Honestly, it was fascinating—everything about him had been turned into a system. That's actually where I got the idea to offer you a quest. Of course, I figured a full system would just get boring, so I left that part out.
Anyway, just like in a game, he'd hop between realities, looting what he could, picking up different powers and abilities from local realities. Most of it was pretty standard, nothing special, until I finally tracked down the anomaly I'd been sensing.
Every time he finished a main quest, the system would give him an [Absolute Ability], or rather, it would generate one on the spot. That caused a lot of consequences in every reality he visited, but he never seemed to notice. Typical of living creatures, they rarely think about the fallout from their gifts.
Each ability was tailored to the quest and the world he was in. The one he picked up after clearing his latest challenge was… well, from a world that was basically all about fighting. Not exactly my kind of place—a bunch of muscleheads beating each other up isn't exactly entertaining.
Still, the reward was this ability.
It's simple, really. Just like the name says: 100% Physical Skill. Each time you use it, you get to use a random physical skill at its absolute peak.
Maybe you'll throw something. Maybe you'll dodge an attack or land the perfect punch. Most of them are meant for combat, but not all. The thing that makes it special is the outcome.
'100%' means it's guaranteed. A dodge that works no matter what you're avoiding. A counter that lets you block any single attack, even if it shouldn't be possible. Or a throw that, at least in theory, could let you toss planets around like they were toys.
Isn't that hilarious? I couldn't help but laugh just imagining something so ludicrous.
Anyway, right before he was supposed to get the reward, I snatched it from his system because it was so interesting. Of course, the drawback is obvious: you never know what skill you'll get, so there's no guarantee it'll be the right one at the right moment.
Still, it's absolute power, right in the palm of your hand.]
After Asher finished reading, his expression wasn't nearly as thoughtful as it had been with the first two potential rewards Mori offered.
Well, Mori's not wrong. This is definitely a strong ability. Even with the random factor, it's almost like a guaranteed version of [Coincidence Generation], no matter what the physical skill ends up being. But I can see why he thought I wouldn't be interested.
When it came to practicality, unless he was ready to abandon his plans for humanity and go it alone, Asher couldn't think of a single reason to pick this over the other two options. In his eyes, strength for its own sake was pointless.
Strength only mattered if it could actually be put to use. If it was random, you couldn't count on it—except maybe if you got lucky.
Maybe if there were a way to combine [Coincidence Generation] with [100% Physical Skill], then it'd be worth considering. If he could pull off guaranteed physical feats whenever he wanted, as long as he had enough energy, maybe he really could carry humanity on his shoulders. But as Mori said, he could only choose one.
There was no sense in daydreaming about what-ifs.
He let out a short sigh and stretched, getting up from his bed. He crossed the room to the panel that controlled the lights and dialed up the brightness, making the message on the ceiling fade out like it was never there. He'd already memorized everything anyway.
I'm pretty sure I know which one I'll pick… but I need to keep an open mind. I don't even have any of these for certain yet—not until I deal with the Maron Family. For now, I just have to stay on track. Speaking of which… I've also learned some things about the Nexus Space.
He hadn't had a chance to look earlier, but he knew the Nexus Space changed every time he took a life. Now that he finally had a moment, he wanted to see just how much it had evolved.