— — — — — —
To keep things as they were, and since Kaguya had brought up her so-called "substitute," Veyron decided to honor their unspoken agreement.
So, before heading to Yagokoro Eirin, he made a detour to one of the Moon Palace's side halls to check on Tsukuyomi.
---
After a few hours...
Veyron confirmed Tsukuyomi was still resting as peacefully as ever. Only then did he make his way to the old building deep in the bamboo forest, where he greeted Eirin with a guilty look.
"Eirin, sorry. Not only did you miss the first batch, but I couldn't save you any from the second one either."
Eirin blinked, then realized exactly what he meant. Her silver brows lifted ever so slightly, though she wasn't surprised. She knew what kind of man Veyron was.
"So, you must have made some serious progress? I felt something different in the time law a while ago—that must be the space-time gap feature you mentioned before, right?"
"That's right," he said lightly, confirming her guess.
"If it weren't for the chat group still linking me to several beyond-spec worlds, I'd almost think I'd reached the peak long ago."
"I'd like to see that peak for myself," she said with a faint smirk.
Veyron blinked, then decided to show her his big large… uh gains.
...
A few hours later—
"...Ah~ that felt good. Yup, definitely a lot better—but just a few hours? Is that all you've got?"
Okay, those are the magical words that'll set any man on fire… or stick them on the wall of shame.
Luckily, Veyron was the first—at least in that area. But if you look at everything he did before, he's not just on the wall of shame… he is the wall. Scratch that, he is the shame itself.
...
Several hours later—
"So your chat group connects to worlds with beings even you don't feel confident taking on?" she asked, surprised after experiencing the new effect of the Almighty Serum he now produced.
"Yep."
Veyron nodded. "And there are quite a few of them."
The stronger he became, the sharper his awareness of power scales grew, and the more he understood just how vast the gap could be between one level and the next.
No matter how much skill or technique a being below the cosmic level possessed, it would hardly help them against the sheer crushing force of someone at the cosmic scale.
And from the perspective of an even higher existence, ten, a hundred, or even thousands of universes weren't much different from just one. So even if all those universes banded together to fight a being at that level, it wouldn't matter.
"Of course," he added, "I'm not confident I could take them down right now—but it's not like they could easily take me down either. And with another advantage I've picked up, I might be able to stand on equal footing with some of them after a bit more quiet growth."
A thousand universes might be nothing at the multiversal level—but what about a hundred billion billion billion universes?
Right now, he had what it took to add another billion to that number. Yeah, Veyron was all about quantity at the moment—that was his only option. His Divine Ki's quality couldn't improve for now, so he had to focus on increasing its quantity.
Still, each strand could be converted into the energy his Soul Light needed to reach even greater heights.
It's like this:
In the Marvel world, the Sorcerer Supreme—still shy of cosmic-level power—could defend Earth under the greedy gaze of countless dimensional rulers. Even Dormammu, one of the stronger rulers of a single dimension, couldn't trap a prepared Ancient One in his own Dark Dimension.
By comparison, Veyron now stood much like the Ancient One did in her own domain—never the biggest fish, but far from easy prey.
"I see..."
"What about that 'other advantage' you mentioned—the one that might let you stand on equal footing with some of them?" Eirin asked, curious.
"Spirit Rank."
Yes, that was what might put him on par with multiversal beings—well, that was the blank Soul Frame he'd obtained from the Central Core during his visit to Little Garden, right after stacking multipliers on his Divine Ki.
When he first got it, it was white-grade—about the scale of an ordinary human. But with the help of [Limiter Removal (Gold)], it had already transformed into a [Spirit Rank (Purple)].
From his own sensing, that put it on the level of a five-digit being in Little Garden—and not even a weak one at that.
At this rate, it was easy to imagine that given some more time, his Spirit Rank would naturally expand to the four-digit category, maybe even three-digit… and eventually hit the two-digit domain, which was already the ceiling in Little Garden.
From what he'd seen, three-digits started at the single universe level.
As for the two-digits… judging by Shiroyasha, maybe multiversal.
The only thing that really made him uneasy was that in both Marvel and DC, beings like Shuma-Gorath, the "Lord of Chaos," or Cyttorak, the "Lord of Oblivion," still didn't count as the true top of the multiversal food chain. And they should be a two-digit.
Thankfully, the Spirit Rank system in Little Garden still had the one-digit class above that.
And his own Gene Lock pathway, at least in theory, also had a road leading straight to multiversal power once he surpassed the peak of Fourth Tier.
"As long as you're confident, that's what matters."
Eirin gave a small nod. Veyron didn't look like someone bluffing just to comfort himself, so her expression softened—though there was a trace of melancholy there.
"What's wrong?"
He tilted his head.
"Just realizing we're probably looking at the last of the stock."
She gestured toward the cabinet holding the newly renamed "Almighty World Source" all-purpose panacea. Of course, still the semen.
"The last stock? How's that possible?" That made him frown.
"With me around, it's not like you can't have as much of this stuff as you want. Use it for everything."
"…So you think it's fine if someone comes to me with a cold or a headache, and I hand them a bottle that boosts them to universe-level power?" she shot back.
"…Right."
Yeah… when she put it that way.
With Eirin's pharmacology skills, no one would waste something laced with his semen on curing the sniffles. And now that her own base power had just been boosted to a level she herself said could match a universe, a little time to settle that power and she'd probably be able to brew her own limited-version universal panacea without relying on the Source at all.
Of course, Veyron would be the only one to drink hers—and different places, different tastes. He really was looking forward to it.
Wait.
An idea hit him—one tied to a certain world that was, technically speaking, the first beta tester of the Almighty Source.
He'd been holed up in the Lunar Capital for nearly two months, which meant the new World Tree in the Treeborn World was still filled with the same batch of Almighty Serum he'd refreshed right after first igniting his Soul Light.
And even though he was the only one with unrestricted access to the Treeborn World in the chat group, he'd already been thinking ahead. If that place ever opened to others who had used the Almighty Serum before, it could get… messy.
After all, he told the other members of the chat group it came from the World Tree in that world—not "Hey, drink my cum here to get stronger."
So when the spring refreshed, he'd had Larentia, Celestine, Olga, and the others—whose daily baths were taken there—move to a new pool just below, one that conveniently caught the overflow from the World Tree's water, and that water was produced after the tree consumed his Almighty Serum.
Which meant no awkward situations, a perfect excuse, and Eirin could even use the World Tree's water for her experiments.
"Eirin, remember the Treeborn world."
"Yeah, just swap the 'b' with a 'P'. It fits that world better," Eirin shot him a disgusted glance, making Veyron awkward.
Still, he began explaining things to her...
.
.
.