The First Store System

After some time, the opaque skin entirely melted in Carlos’s head.

Carlos was standing straight, but there was no semblance that he was conscious. His eyes were closed.

Time flew by.

After a good hour passed, Carlos’s body finally had a movement.

His eyelids flickered, and not long after, they opened.

Carlos found the sight in front of him blurry and confused.

The last thing he remembered was the faces of his parents. In the illusion, he had succeeded in resisting the temptation of the 2nd Gradient Peach and had chosen death. But since his mind wasn’t clear, he couldn’t guess whether it was reality or another illusion.

Time flew by.

A few moments later, Carlos finally came around as he finally rubbed his eyes and focused on the area surrounding him.

Carlos hurriedly looked at his hand, and a shocked expression appeared on his face since he remembered that everything started when he had gotten the 2nd Gradient Peach.

Carlos was trying to put things together when suddenly a headache attacked him.

At the same rate, as the headache came, it disappeared.

“Eh!” Carlos exclaimed in surprise as he checked his consciousness since the sudden pain had come from that part.

The next moment, he exclaimed in astonishment as he noticed that his sea of consciousness had gotten smaller than before. Similarly, he found that his soul energy had turned purer.

Attaining divinity granted an improvement in all three: Energy, physique, and spirituality parameters.

When someone attained divinity, they wouldn’t have the sea of consciousness. Instead, there would be a core after the soul energy’s condensation.

The most the cultivator could condense their sea of consciousness, the stronger their soul would be after passing the Primal tribulation and attaining divinity.

At the same time, Carlos could also feel that his comprehension of knowledge had also gotten deeper.

Carlos didn’t have to think much about the reason behind the sudden condensation of the sea of consciousness since he already knew it was the 2nd Gradient Peach.

Carlos then looked at the place where once the stall and the stall owner were. His eyes turned cold, and subconsciously an invisible pressure erupted, sinking that spot into the ground.

Carlos’s eyes flew wide open in shock as he witnessed his spiritual growth just by eating a single 2nd Gradient Peach.

“Argh!”

Before Carlos could even celebrate his growth, a sudden pain attacked his body.

A few seconds later, Carlos’s face turned grave as he found out the reason behind the sudden pain.

The reason for the pain was his body being unable to handle the sudden spiritual growth. A hurried expression appeared on his face as Carlos could feel that the situation was dire for him. If his body didn’t grow strong enough to accommodate his sea of consciousness in the next several years, his body would explode as a result.

(A/N: I refer to the sea of consciousness as the spirit and soul. That’s why I have defined an increase in its strength as spiritual growth.)

Carlos knew he couldn’t waste any more time here. If he wanted revenge against the stall owner, he needed to get more powerful at an outrageous rate. He had to survive at any cost for doing that, so his first aim was to solve this situation.

Thinking like this, he flew toward the other side of the city. After eating the 2nd Gradient Peach, all the restrictions on him disappeared.

***

“HOW?” Autumn had an unbelievable expression on her face as she had just witnessed the loss of Katrina when she had raised her strength by four levels.

Autumn wasn’t the only one to feel such. Katrina, who had just given up seeing an attack that created a life-threatening situation for the current her, also felt the same since it was entirely unexpected.

Aakesh, who had numerous severe injuries spread across his body, had an excited expression as defeating the current Katrina wasn’t an easy task.

It was the fruit of his thirteen years of hard work, so how could he not be excited?

“You win,” Katrina finally accepted her defeat and congratulated Aakesh for his first win against the current her.

Even for Aakesh, this win meant a lot, so he didn’t just listen to the congratulations, but he thanked Katrina for it. It came out as an even bigger surprise to Katrina and Autumn since it was the first time, Aakesh had given any response to their compliments or congratulations.

The win over Katrina wasn’t the only reason behind Aakesh’s excitement. There was another reason, and it had an even larger role to play. Today was also the last day of Lily’s breakthrough, and she would finally wake up after a deep sleep of more than 150 years.

“Hey, system, I want the testing slab,” Aakesh then requested the system in his head since he wanted to test his strength after more than a year.

The next moment, a few hundred meters away from Aakesh, out of nowhere, light particles appeared, and they then started combining together. Not long after, the testing slab presented itself to Aakesh.

Aakesh then took a step forward, and the space around him pushed him forward. After only two steps, Aakesh appeared in front of the testing slab.

Aakesh first decided to test his raw strength as usual.

“2,854,683,284 Primal units,” Aakesh muttered, the number shining on the slab after it appeared.

After raw strength, it was now time for Aakesh to test the destruction of the Apocalyptic Blast at his full might.

“3,987,983,618 Primal units,” After Aakesh hit the slab with his skill, the testing slab showed.

“Almost four billion,” Aakesh mumbled as he was only several million Primal units away from attaining the strength of four billion Primal units.

Aakesh then requested the system to take back the testing slab since he only tested these two.

The next moment, the reverse happened as light particles started moving away, resulting in the testing slab slowly dispersing. Not long after, nothing remained on the ground.

Aakesh then turned around and proceeded in the direction of the chair.

A gentle smile erupted on his face as his eyes fell on Lily, peacefully sleeping in a blob of light.

The blob of light had grown in size these past years. It now came up to Aakesh’s knee, unlike the time when Lily fell asleep. At that time, it was only of Aakesh’s single palm size.