Chapter 2012: Blueprints

The commotion this caused was hard to describe. It felt as though Leonel palm had suddenly descended from the skies, casting a shadow over all and gripping each one of their hearts one by one.

Life Grade Crafters were simply impossibly rare. In the whole of the Human Domain, the number of them weren't even close to four digits. In fact, they weren't even half way there. The difficulty of crossing that final step was one that had stalled many for far too long.

To put this matter into perspective, there were easily millions upon millions of Gold Grade Crafters, and yet not even 500 Life Grade Crafters. This was how solid this bottleneck was.

There were some exceptionally rare geniuses who could cross this step while in the Seventh Dimension. But it was more accurate to say that this was just a painting of how difficult it was to step into the Eighth Dimension rather than a function of how difficult it was to become a Life Grade Crafter. It was simply impossible for a person to focus on both unless you were on the level of Cynthia and Velasco, or had many, many years of experience like the Omann and Morales Ancestors.

And yet, here was an absolute genius with the strength of a Seventh Dimensional existence at the Sixth Dimension who had already crossed this threshold. In fact, it seemed that he had crossed it long ago, so much so that he could create a million of them right before their eyes.

Cynthia gripped the railing of the Omann family flagship. Her pupils couldn't seem to stop trembling even when she tried to stabilize herself.

She had realized something from the beginning that everyone else was only now realizing.

This stingrays... Leonel had no way of knowing they would be the oceanic beast he would receive, he hadn't even known what reward his subordinates would be able to bring back ahead of time. That meant that Leonel had casually drawn up a blueprint for a Life Grade treasure in a few minutes before executing it right before all of their eyes.

Blueprinting was a process that should have taken years alone. Cynthia had spent an entire decade on the blueprint she was most proud of, she hadn't even gotten around to Crafting it yet. The essence of the Life Grade made the blueprint more important than almost the entire rest of the process.

To be in the "Life Grade" only meant that you had created at least one blueprint of that level and had succeeded in Crafting it. Many of the not even 500 Life Grade Crafters in existence in the Human Domain only had one or two Life Grade blueprints to their name and they were greatly praised for it.

These one or two blueprints would be entirely unique to these Crafters and often powerful families and experts would be exorbitant prices just to have one of these unique treasures under their possession.

There was a very good reason why the White Lion Bow was such a big deal despite only having been at the Quasi Life Grade for most of its life until recently. Life Grade treasures were impossible rare, so impossibly rare that it was difficult to put into words.

The best of the Life Grade Crafters had one or two dozen blueprints under their wings, including Cynthia. Only Ancestor Hito of the Morales and the oldest Omann were speculated to have hundreds, maybe even thousands of such blueprints.

However, there was a vast difference between having thousands of such blueprints... and casually creating one after a few minutes of thought.

Of course, there was also a difference between creating Life Grade Crafts using Sixth Dimensional materials and Eighth Dimensional materials like the ones Cynthia and the other Crafters of her level used. But Cynthia wasn't a fool, the gate of the Life Grade had little to do with Dimension, that was something only laymen believed.

Fundamentally, a Life Grade Crafter, regardless of the base materials used, was still the Life Grade. It was several orders of magnitude more valuable than the basic materials used.

The more Cynthia thought about it, the harder she squeezed. This was the first time she had been so agitated, even Leonel's combat strength hadn't done this. Not his Scarlet Star Force, not his Void Star Force, not his Vital Star Force, not even his powerful Dream Force.

The weight of a Life Grade Crafter who could do such things was too much.

But what Cynthia didn't know was that the weight was about to become much, much heavier than she could have ever expected.

...

Leonel's eyes snapped open, breathing heavily three times before his beating heart calmed. He had really pushed it this time, but the Life Grade was a very finicky realm to enter. If he had taken a break in the middle minute changes could have occurred that would have caused him to have to recalculate all over again, that would only make his situation even worse and extend the time he needed to take.

Leonel pushed his way out and stepped out of the pod. Judging by the skies above, he had managed to recover in just 45 minutes, this was good. There was no time to waste.

With a wave of his hand, the skies were suddenly filled with armors, shimmering like sapphires and emeralds.

The ground shook and Leonel took a leap to the city walls.

The armors shot down under his control, slipping onto the bodies of the stingrays below. The sound of clicking resounded before the blue waters suddenly began to glow.

Suddenly, the stingrays seemed to naturally be formed into groups, a radiant aura coming from them.

Leonel checked a new spatial ring that had appeared on his hand and nodded to himself. In the three days he had been focused on Crafting, the others had already succeeded in finding what he needed.

Without hesitation, Leonel executed several actions in a row, upgrading his cities to the Gold-Grade one after another and then fusing them.

The sea began to churn wildly.

In another insane feat, Leonel had activated the Heir-Grade upgrade challenge without even waiting for the others to return.