Infinite Potential System

Riyald gave William a few more bits of knowledge before returning to one of his many unfinished experiments in the laboratory. Since his visit to the Mysterious Realm, Riyald's interest in unique mechanisms only increased and he hardly had time to be chatting with his Disciple.

William returned to his room to drop off a few interesting items he had collected during his travels, also taking the time to appraise the Starmetal Safe he had forgotten about. The System had completed the evaluation a long time ago, but he was outside the Ruins and didn't have a chance to check until now.

———

Starmetal Safe (Mythic Storage Artifact): A spacious safe forged of Starmetal by a Master Blacksmith and improved by a powerful Array Master. Created to store great quantities of items, this storage item may one day be comparable to a Royal Treasury.

Storage Space: 4.5 trillion cubic meters

Durability: 800,000/800,000

———

Still only Mythic, even after all that work? What a shame, I thought it would be Celestial... William was a bit disappointed, but he was happy to see the incredible storage and durability of the Artifact.

Someone knocked on his door the moment William exited the Starmetal Safe, "William? It's Yuming. I just wanted to return the Intermediate Runes sheet you gave me."

William opened the door and let Yuming in, "I don't need them back. Have you already memorized all the Runes I gave you?"

Yuming nodded with a smile, twirling his fingers and forming an Intermediate Rune of Stability and connecting it with a Rune of Fire to form a stationary Fireball Array on his fingertips— a cheap trick used by Intermediate Array Masters.

William nodded seriously, "You've done well, my Disciple."

Yuming immediately dispersed the Array and scowled at William, "We're the same age, don't call me your Disciple!"

Just the thought of calling him Master makes me want to puke. Whose idea was it to give this shameless idiot so much talent?

William laughed, "I'm just joking. I only showed you what to do anyway."

Yuming shrugged, "Good, because the day I call you Master is the day I eat my own toes. Gunther and Tia are about to spar with Charlotte, Carl, and me. Do you want to come watch?"

"Sure, why not?" William followed Yuming to an area of the residence he hadn't been to before. It was a large arena much like the one in the Adventurer's Guild, except the entire floor was made of dark blue stone brick.

The entire Arena was covered in Complete Arrays, which both protected the Arena and prevented any true deaths. As long as the level of attack didn't exceed the ability of the Arrays, no one would truly be hurt.

"I can't believe I haven't seen this place before..." William muttered. He really hadn't spent much time exploring the Gravitas Ruins, which had many facilities like this one. After all, the residence took up most of the underground layer.

"It's great, right?" Yuming nodded.

He wasn't much of a fighter, but being able to fight to your heart's content was a special kind of experience. Yuming jumped into the Arena, where Charlotte, Gunther, Tia, and Carl were all waiting.

"What took you so long? Too busy causing trouble outside?" Carl shouted to William, who sat in the stands up above to watch. He had no intention to join a low-level battle.

The group got started immediately, placing Yuming, Charlotte, and Carl on one team while Tia and Gunther were on the other. To keep things fair, Carl wasn't allowed to summon any of his Magical Beasts, while Tia and Gunther were each allowed to use their unique treasures that the Artifact Spirit had given them.

Tia had a special kind of gauntlet that enhanced the power of her punches, while Gunther's robe was enhanced with even more Arrays that better amplified the Ice Element. It was a perfect set for the duo, and they seemed quite accustomed to the Artifacts.

Carl adopted a more front-line stance, casting multiple Earth Walls to obstruct his opponents' vision and defend against any surprise Ice Spells. He stood just a few meters in front of Charlotte, whose primary purpose was to heal any of the temporary injuries that formed.

In the backline, Yuming had a unique fighting style, throwing vials of corrosive liquid over the walls and casting Fireballs to blast them apart midair. The fluids spread over a large portion of the Arena, forcing Gunther to cast multiple layers of Ice over their heads.

As soon as the corrosive rain ended, Tia rushed forward and punched at the Earth Wall with her thick gauntlets, clashing head-on with Carl who was directly behind it.

How did they detect him so accurately? They couldn't even see him! William inspected the battle more closely, but it wasn't until Tia's next attack that William understood what was going on.

Every time Carl cast Earth Magic, Tia would stop moving for a brief second as if she was frozen. It seemed like just a coincidence at first, but it became more strikingly obvious as the battle continued. He looked at her feet, realizing that she wasn't wearing any shoes.

Is she sensing where the Earth Mana is coming from, even though she doesn't have the Earth Element? William was astounded with Tia's Talent.

Not only was her body already strong enough to deal with Nascent Soul-level Earth Walls, but she had a detection method unique to herself that was incredibly sneaky!

Many Mages would avoid casting Detection Spells during a battle, since they could be reverse-traced and used against them, but this method didn't have that shortcoming. He decided to add this move to his repertoire of niche abilities.

As the sparring raged on and on, it became more of a battle of attrition than an actual spar. Tia and Gunther were still holding on surprisingly well, despite being unable to inflict any serious injuries on their opponents and not having a healer of their own. Their teamwork was impeccable, reminding William of his battle with Supreme Left and Unbreakable Right.

For some reason, I kinda miss those guys. They may be my enemies, but they didn't seem all that bad...

His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden development in the battle Arena. Gunther had secretly prepared a tunnel of Ice through one of Carl's Earth Walls, then made ice skates around Tia's feet. All it took was one high-speed push, and Tia had broken through the last thin wall of Earth, which happened to lead her directly towards Charlotte.

Take out the healer first, a tried-and-true strategy. There was only one problem— Charlotte had been targeted before during their spars and had been working on something nasty. After all, Charlotte wasn't a pushover.

When she saw Tia speeding in her direction much faster than she could dodge, Charlotte clasped her hands together and mumbled a few short chants, drawing in the ambient Life Mana to gather in front of her into a small one-meter cube.

The cube was pushed directly in the path of Tia, connecting with her left leg around the knee and redirecting her movement. Her momentum was halted in an instant as she dropped to one knee, finding that the vitality in her lower left leg had been reallocated to her upper thigh.