Jera stood perfectly still in the Infinite Fortress. The echoes of his own roar still vibrated in the multiplied rock. The System Test was over, the trauma of his past had been weaponized and then purged. What remained was a new, terrifying silence.
He felt... heavy.
His body, which had always felt light and fast, now felt dense, like a block of lead. The power thrumming under his skin was no longer a wild, chaotic river; it was a deep, compressed, massive ocean.
He looked at his Status interface.
[Status Update: Jera Murphy (Alias: Cain Walker)]
[Level: 76]
[Core Stats (Baseline) - POST-TRIAL BOOST (x512)]
Strength: 410,000+ Agility: 365,000+ Mana: 491,000+ Endurance: 403,000+
Jera stared at the numbers until his eyes burned.
Before the Trial, his base stats had been in the 800-900 range. Now, his permanent, un-multiplied baseline had been multiplied by 512.
He was, at this very moment, without using a single random multiplier, already one of the strongest beings on the planet. His base stats were likely higher than those of the 7 Ascended.
The System Trial had not just been a test; it had been an evolution. It had removed his last human weakness and replaced it with absolute, divine-level power.
"This..." Jera murmured, his voice a low rumble. "This is my new normal."
He needed to know what this new "normal" felt like.
Jera walked to the far end of his fortress, to the 20-foot-thick testing wall he had built from multiplied, S-Rank-equivalent materials.
Before, he needed a $\times 1000$ multiplier to vaporize it.
Now, he raised his fist. He made a conscious, deliberate effort to block the Multiplier System. He wanted to feel only his new base strength.
He punched.
It was a simple, straight punch. No speed. No flash.
The wall—a construct designed to withstand an S-Rank assault—did not explode. It did not vaporize.
It simply vanished.
It was not pushed back. It was not shattered. The 20-foot-thick block of solid matter was hit with so much focused, kinetic force that it was reduced to its base atoms in a microsecond. A cloud of fine, grey dust was all that remained.
Jera looked at his fist. He had not felt a single ripple of impact. It was like punching a cloud.
This was his strength without a multiplier.
A cold, terrifying thought entered his mind. What would happen if he used a multiplier now? On top of this new, monstrous baseline?
Jera needed a new target. He reached into his Unlimited Inventory and pulled out an item he had been saving: one of his 999 multiplied Sentinel Cores.
The C-Rank artifact was a glowing, softball-sized crystal, dense with mana.
He held it up. He focused.
Maximum Strength. Maximum Multiplier.
[Action: Unarmed Strike. Strength Multiplier Roll: $\times 1000$.]
His new, 410,000 base strength was now being multiplied by one thousand. The number was so large, Jera's human mind could not even process it.
He flicked his finger at the crystal.
The world stopped.
There was no sound. There was no explosion. For one-trillionth of a second, Jera's finger phased through the crystal.
The crystal itself did not break. It was erased from reality.
At the same time, the air in the fortress ignited. The sheer force of Jera's movement had created a vacuum and then a corresponding implosion. A sonic boom, multiplied a thousand times, detonated in the small room.
The fortress, his creation of multiplied, S-Rank rock, screamed. The walls cracked. The ceiling split open. The entire structure, three hundred feet beneath New York City, threatened to collapse.
Jera instantly activated his [Aetheric Shield (L512)]. The S-Rank shield, now backed by his S-Rank+ mana core, flared to life, not as a barrier, but as a cocoon. It absorbed the entire multi-megaton blast, containing the force and preventing the entire city block above him from being turned into a crater.
Jera stood in the settling dust, breathing hard for the first time since his awakening.
He had broken his own fortress by flicking his finger.
"Power," he whispered, "is useless without control."
His power was now too big. It was unstable. It was like trying to hold a star in a glass jar. A single, full-power action could accidentally destroy the city he was standing in.
He needed to fix this.
Jera sat cross-legged in the ruins of his training area. He did not need to gain more power. He needed to contain it.
He needed to make his Mana Core, his internal engine, denser. He needed to compress that raging, white-hot star into something small, stable, and infinitely powerful.
This was a ritual that only the most advanced S-Rank Hunters even attempted. It was called Mana Core Compression, and it usually required decades of meditation and a billion credits' worth of rare artifacts.
Jera had his own version.
He opened his Unlimited Inventory.
He began to pull out the Sentinel Cores. Not one. Not ten.
One hundred of them.
Five hundred of them.
Nine hundred and ninety-nine of them.
He surrounded himself in a mountain of glowing, C-Rank artifacts, a treasure hoard that would make the richest Guild on Earth declare war.
To Jera, they were just fuel.
"Begin," he commanded.
[Action: Mana Core Compression. Multiplier Roll: $\times 890$.]
He focused his will and crushed the 999 Sentinel Cores at the same time.
Their C-Rank energy, multiplied by $\times 890$, flooded the room. It was an ocean of pure, raw mana, enough to instantly kill an S-Rank Hunter.
Jera's body, however, was a black hole.
His new, hyper-dense mana core acted as a perfect, gravitational center. The flood of energy did not disperse. It swirled around him, faster and faster, forming a miniature galaxy of blue-white light.
Then, it compressed.
The entire ocean of multiplied energy was sucked into Jera's core.
He felt his core, the size of a star, collapse in on itself. It became the size of a sun. Then a planet. Then a baseball.
It compressed until it was the size of a single, perfect pinprick of light. It was no longer a burning, raging fire. It was a point of absolute density.
The light faded. Jera opened his eyes.
The room was silent. The terrifying, oppressive weight of his power was gone.
He felt... light. He felt normal again.
He stood up. He felt like Jera Murphy, the miner.
He raised his hand. He looked at his new Status.
[Mana Core: STABLE. (Density: 100,000x)]
[Level: 78] (The compression had leveled him up twice more.)
He threw a simple, un-multiplied punch at the cracked wall.
The wall did not vaporize. A clean, perfect, fist-sized hole appeared in the rock. The rest of the wall was untouched.
Jera smiled.
He had done it. He had achieved perfect control.
His power was no longer a bomb. It was a bullet. It was a scalpel. He could now choose to level a city... or, he could choose to punch a clean hole through a piece of paper without tearing the edges.
He was now, truly, a monster hiding in a human shell. His base power was solidly at the peak of A-Rank. His multiplied power was in a realm all its own, far beyond the 7 Ascended.
He was ready.
His disguise as "Cain Walker" was perfect. The world was busy looking for a "Miracle Miner" who was a high B-Rank or maybe a low A-Rank. They were looking for a hero.
Jera picked up his DM-100 Rig from his inventory.
It was time to go to the Hunter Bureau. It was time to make his disguise official.
It was time for Cain Walker, the most powerful being on Earth, to officially register as a "humble" B-Rank Hunter.