Chapter 450: Chapter450-Ascension Once More
The information Daniel had obtained was, as always, a mixture of truth and falsehood.
Sorting through it all required an immense amount of time and mental effort.
Yet, even so, he didn’t consider this operation a waste of time.
On the contrary — though the gains weren’t immediately tangible, he could feel that the hidden insights and subtle patterns he had gathered would, in the long run, prove valuable.
Night had fallen.
At the center of the experimental field, Kartora was performing the final test on the temporal portal.
Although the portal’s cooldown period had ended long ago, Kartora insisted on performing a thorough inspection before reactivation.
After all, each use of a portal carried inherent risks — distortions, misalignments, or worse, a complete failure that could lead to being lost between timelines.
Kartora’s portal wasn’t the same as the ones Milla had once used.
The difference was as vast as that between an ordinary spatial bridge and the grand constructs that connected worlds.
There were, broadly speaking, two types of portals.
The first type — distance portals and plane portals — didn’t usually require a physical frame.
If a frame was needed, the material consumption was minor; one could simply offer up a small quantity of sacrificial materials and open the passage.
For instance, when Daniel traveled to Backworld, he had sacrificed specific materials to open the gateway.
Milla’s portals, on the other hand, were purely energetic.
They didn’t even form a visible structure; they were made entirely of condensed energy — ephemeral, transient, and elegant in their instability.
But the time-transcending portal Kartora was dealing with now was on a completely different level.
Even for a Time Domain God like her, it demanded precision and patience.
The smallest miscalculation could lead to disastrous consequences — an arrival at the wrong point in history, or worse, an annihilation by paradox.
Daniel stood nearby, quietly watching Kartora’s graceful movements as she adjusted the portal’s parameters.
The shimmering light cast her silhouette in a surreal glow — the very embodiment of a divine being manipulating time itself.
Then, without warning, a peculiar sensation surged through Daniel’s mind — an echo in his heart that made him pause.
He blinked. And then his expression froze.
He had never expected this.
At such a tranquil moment, when the night wind was still and the stars seemed half-asleep — the Human Advancement Quest had been completed!
Three months of relentless growth, training, and battle had finally borne fruit.
Humanity’s overall strength had skyrocketed to levels unimaginable even half a year ago.
Almost every demigod-ranked awakener had reached Level 400.
[Human Advancement Quest]
Objective 1: Possess at least 100,000 demigods — (Completed)
Objective 2: Reach a total population exceeding one trillion — (Completed)
Objective 3: Possess at least one demigod capable of slaying five or more Fake God-ranked entities — (Completed)
Reward: The maximum level cap for all humans is increased to Level 500.
Daniel exhaled slowly as the words shimmered before him.
The quest was complete. Humanity had done it.
During the past three months, the race’s power had risen dramatically.
Many of the strongest demigods had even acquired the ability to bestow divine positions — the first step toward forming pantheons.
However, there were restrictions.
Each demigod could only share their divinity with up to ten others.
Those who received a shared divinity, though capable of future ascension to demigod rank, would lose the ability to share divinity themselves.
Even so, this marked a monumental shift in the race’s structure.
Still, Daniel mused, it was far too early to worry about those details.
Reaching demigod rank itself was an arduous journey, even for those blessed with divine inheritance.
The path to godhood required endless ascension tasks — tests that pushed one’s limits in both spirit and essence.
To become a god was, and always would be, a trial beyond imagination.
Within the human race, however, reaching demigod status had become far easier.
Thanks to the methods Daniel had devised, the difficulty had been reduced by a hundredfold.
What once took centuries could now be accomplished in months.
That was why this Advancement Quest had been completed so quickly.
Under ordinary circumstances, achieving this in three months would have been utterly impossible.
Much of this progress stemmed from the relentless efforts of the Project Hope participants — the one billion demigods who had traveled back to the ancient era.
Upon arrival, they had immediately begun searching for suitable relics and inheritances.
Many even slew wild demigod-ranked beings, securing rare divine resources and spreading knowledge among the race.
Through their combined determination, the human race had finally reached the milestone — one hundred thousand demigods.
The quest was fulfilled.
Daniel didn’t hesitate.
He selected "Claim Reward."
At that instant, across every human settlement, every city, every world under humanity’s banner — brilliant light erupted.
From the smallest child to the mightiest godling, every human and affiliated being was enveloped in radiant luminescence.
[Current Human Level Cap: 500]
And in that single moment, humanity ascended once again.
The power surge was so immense that Daniel could feel it rippling through the cosmos, echoing like a pulse through the fabric of the Void.
If one compared the humans now to the Angels of Gold and Silver, their strength was nearly equivalent.
In fact, the new human limit had already surpassed the upper boundary once thought exclusive to that ancient race.
Up to this point, Daniel had never encountered a race stronger than the Angels of Gold and Silver.
Perhaps such beings existed somewhere in Backworld, but as far as his knowledge extended, none in the known universe could rival humanity’s current potential.
With the level cap increased, another divine revelation descended upon the race — a new buff, woven into the essence of all humanity.
[Racial Unity – Coexistence of Domains]Human gods will no longer need to occupy a specific domain to gain tier advancement.
All domains mastered by humanity will now exist in shared coexistence — a collective prosperity of divine knowledge and authority!
In an instant, every human awakened their Domain.
Ordinarily, only those who had claimed a domain through conquest or creation could wield its power.
But now, due to the Shared Domain Effect, every human could access the collective might of the race’s existing domains.
Each individual had, effectively, become a sovereign of their own domain — a complete practitioner of the divine art they shared.
Daniel’s eyes widened slightly. He hadn’t expected this side effect.
Then, another surprise unfolded before him — his personal interface shimmered, revealing a new domain he had never seen before.
[Mirror Realm]
Effect 1: Within your domain, all effects mirror those of your opponent’s domain. You gain complete access to all of your enemy’s domain permissions.
Effect 2: This domain can fuse entirely with any of your existing domains, creating unique effects. The resulting outcome depends on the type of domains merged.
Daniel rubbed his temples, reading the short but cryptic description carefully.
The Mirror Realm was deceptively simple in words, yet terrifying in implication.
To mirror another god’s domain — to seize its permissions — was essentially the ability to equalize or even overpower any opponent within the same dimensional space.
This wasn’t merely imitation.
It was control.
But what intrigued him even more was the second clause — fusion.
If this domain could merge with others, could it amplify the power of his Infinity Domain?
Would merging them unlock some new, incomprehensible state?
Daniel’s curiosity deepened.
Could the number of divine seats one possessed be connected to the number of domains they commanded?
He, after all, possessed two divine seats, both under the Infinity Domain, yet each felt subtly distinct — like two facets of the same endless truth.
If so, could it be that each seat represented a manifestation of domain authority?
The thought made his head spin. For the first time in a while, he found himself genuinely uncertain.
Until now, he had never encountered any record or information that hinted at such a structure — that divinity and domain might be inherently interlinked, two sides of the same infinite equation.
If so, then perhaps the Mirror Realm was a reflection — another way in which Infinity extended itself into the world.
A domain that reflected the universe, just as infinity reflected the boundless.
Daniel closed his eyes and activated Mental Deduction, hoping to parse the mystery.
The threads of probability unfolded before him — countless branching paths of logic, cause, and effect, weaving through the cosmos.
Yet no matter how far his mind stretched, every deduction led into fog.
He frowned, exhaled, and finally let the glowing calculations dissolve into the ether.
"So even Mental Deduction can’t compute this..." he murmured softly.
If even that omniscient faculty failed to derive an answer, there was no point in continuing.
Some truths, he realized, lay beyond comprehension — perhaps even beyond the structure of time and thought.
He gazed once more at Kartora, still calibrating the shining rings of the temporal portal, her hands tracing delicate arcs through streams of golden energy.
In that serene, surreal moment, Daniel smiled faintly.
Humanity had ascended again, and so had he — not only in power but in the depth of questions he could no longer answer.
For him, that too was a kind of enlightenment.