The translucent screen in front of Ryan stopped flickering, stabilizing into a bright

color that illuminated the sweaty faces of Karol and Beatrice.

The letters formed clearly before his eyes.

[RANK INCREASED]

› Updated Classification: SS Rank

› Rank Bonus: +1500 Points

› All Attributes: +900

The pressure in the inn’s room multiplied all at once.

Beatrice and Karol, who were exhausted after long hours of enduring the effects of the debt, suddenly sat bolt upright on the bed.

Both had completely forgotten their earlier embarrassment.

They looked at Ryan with their eyes wide open.

A shiver ran down their spines at the monstrous aura he had just unleashed when his relic broke.

"Ryan... what is this overwhelming energy..." Karol murmured, hugging herself as if trying to protect herself from an invisible wind.

Beatrice swallowed hard, her eyes trembling slightly as she tried to process the sheer density of the mana in the room.

"It’s as if I were standing in front of one of the high commanders of the demon continent... no, the purity of this is even higher."

’So this is the SS rank.’ Ryan thought, momentarily ignoring the stupefied gazes of the girls.

Of course, it wasn’t about the accumulated experience from killing monsters.

The pieces of the puzzle finally clicked into place within his mind.

He clearly remembered Ophelia’s words from the past, when they spoke about the power scales in this world.

All this time he had misinterpreted it, believing that the world functioned exclusively like a traditional video game leveling system. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Ryan closed his eyes for a moment and remembered the overwhelming power of that SS-rank dragon they had faced.

He arrived at a cold and logical deduction.

That dragon was not a monster of infinite level.

It simply had all of its base stats above the five thousand point mark, and at least two of them surpassed the ten thousand barrier.

’To reach the SS rank, the world doesn’t ask you to level up by killing millions of monsters. It requires you to have enough accumulated power so that each and every one of your stats crosses an upper limit of five thousand.’

Ryan looked at his own hands, feeling the latent strength beneath his skin.

’And on top of that, having two main attributes above ten thousand.’

Achieving something like that in this world naturally was a task that was almost impossible for an ordinary human, no matter how talented they might be.

It would require decades of continuous training, killing hundreds of high-level demons.

’Or at least that is what I thought until now.’

But Ryan had a debt bug that completely broke any limitations established within the laws of the human system.

As he assimilated his new status of power, his mind began to chart out the next step for his party.

’The best and most convenient thing for our group right now is to go fight against Demon King Rigal and claim his lands, following Ophelia’s plan.’

Ryan analyzed it carefully.

’Facing a target of that magnitude and absorbing that amount of experience is the only thing that could make Helen and Mirian take the definitive leap to the SS rank.’

At the very least, it would leave them very close to achieving it, giving them the necessary combat experience.

’As for Karol, if she actively participates in that fight, she could reach the S rank.’

Ryan looked up from his screens and looked at the mage.

Karol was still breathing with a bit of agitation from the long, sleepless night and the proximity of Ryan’s oppressive aura.

But upon noticing that expression on them, Ryan lowered the intensity with which his aura was manifesting, thus returning harmony to the room.

"Karol, I have a question for you," Ryan said in his usual direct tone, as the tension in the atmosphere dissipated a bit.

"What is it?" she asked, blinking several times to focus.

"What is the maximum level that humans registered in the guilds can reach?"

Karol rubbed her eyes tiredly before answering, puzzled by the sudden question in the middle of the early morning.

"The theoretical limit they talk about in the guilds is level 160. Nobody has gone past that, at least there are no public records of it."

Karol paused to push a strand of dark hair away from her face.

"But starting at level 130, there are already rumors. That it is the average level possessed by the few known SS-rank heroes in the history of the nations."

Beatrice, recovering her breath a little, intervened in the conversation from her side of the bed.

"It is similar for demons, although we aren’t guided as much by guild numbers. An infernal or a Demon King rarely pays attention to their level; they only measure the density of their raw power."

Ryan nodded slowly, processing the mage’s data.

’Level 130 to be considered an SS rank.’

He was barely level 110.

At least for Ryan, the level number no longer mattered in the slightest.

The accumulation of points he managed to farm in silence had granted him the real power of an SS rank, breaking the rule of levels entirely.

The faint, bluish light of dawn began to filter through the cracks of the inn’s wooden window.

It indicated that the long night of automatic collections had come to an end.

The spy squads were surely already on the move through the different sectors of Wind Valley, gathering the information they needed.

Ryan checked his stats one more time under the light of dawn.

By adding the 900 points to all attributes granted by the new rank bonus, his base Strength had reached 10,900.

’I have the 1500 rank bonus points free in my interface.’ Ryan thought, doing a quick mental calculation.

’I need exactly 1400 points to round out the number I want.’

Without hesitating for a second, Ryan dragged the available points over.

He spent 1400 points of the bonus and injected them directly into his Strength.

The stat rose to the monstrous figure of 12,300 points.

The change didn’t generate any shockwave this time, but the sensation of solidness in his own body was undeniable.

"Alright, I think it’s time to get up and prepare for the day," Ryan said, standing up with renewed energy.

Beatrice and Karol looked at each other.

They still felt the lingering effects of the debt collection in their exhausted bodies, aching from the sensory overload.

"You say that so easily, but we can barely feel our legs," Karol grumbled, pouting as she tried to cover herself with the bedsheet.

"It’s true. I feel like I ran across the entire demon continent without stopping," Beatrice added with an exhausted smile.

Ryan looked at them for a moment.

He was aware that he felt wonderful because of the rank increase, but they had paid the price.

"I’ll take care of that."

Ryan extended both hands toward them.

"Recovery."

The warm green light enveloped the two girls, immediately erasing the muscle exhaustion and magical fatigue of the long night.

"Oof... that is cheating," Karol sighed, feeling her strength return all at once.

"I’m not complaining about this particular cheat," Beatrice added, getting up from the bed to look for her clothes.

Ryan walked over to the chair where he had left his coat.

With his SS rank consolidated and his stats through the roof, he was more than ready to face whatever the meeting with Ophelia had prepared for him.