God-Tier Enhancement: My Upgrades Never Fail-Chapter 273: Episode _Legend of the Demon World (6)

8.

—Do Limit Stats Exist?

It all began with a simple question.

『Fantastic World』 had only been open for a little over a year, but if it lasted for five, ten, or even fifteen years like other long-running PC online games, just how strong could players become?

It was a natural question, a natural curiosity.

Ever since virtual reality became a part of everyday life, countless people had asked that very question.

Could humans surpass human limits?

And would the day come when they could feel that power with their own bodies and control it directly?

Of course, even now, some—no, the majority—of users controlled characters with specs far better than their real-world bodies.

However, those stats were still within an “allowed range.”

Could they reproduce the superhuman movements they’d only ever seen in movies or performed by NPCs from afar?

The most practical stat for this kind of experimentation was, of course, Agility, as it could be pushed to its limits with the least amount of risk.

They set the benchmark at 500, the Magic stat value already proven to correspond to the 5th Circle.

At the time, only a handful of users could push their Agility to 500, but it wasn’t impossible to find one.

『Fantastic World』 was vast, and there were indeed players who had invested every single stat point into Agility.

They found a level 70 user who had gone all-in on Agility, even with his items.

His Agility stat was 583, and from the perspective of ordinary low-level users, his movements were so fast that they could only see afterimages.

But that was all.

It wasn’t enough.

They wanted to confirm the existence of a "Limit Stat"—a threshold that would allow them to surpass human limits.

Unfortunately, no user was capable of that.

So they turned to the history books.

『Fantastic World』 was a new world for users, but for the inhabitants of the continent, it was a land with a history stretching back thousands, even tens of thousands of years, with countless recorded events.

After weeks spent buried in piles of history books, they found it.

They couldn’t determine exact values.

However, they were able to find materials far more valuable than their limited, small-sample personal experiments.

Limit Stats.

They existed.

It was the data they needed to answer their question: if a user continued to raise their level indefinitely over time, would they be able to exert power that surpassed human limits?

The records stated the following.

In summary:

It is both possible and impossible.

Raising one’s level makes it possible, but restrictions are imposed depending on class.

To put it simply:

Knights can raise their physical stats beyond the initial limit, but only up to a certain point.

Mages can do the same with their Magic stat, but not with their physical stats.

It was a simple yet fundamental logic.

They were amazed that even this detail had been given a layer of realism.

At the same time, it was disappointing.

If 『Fantastic World』 still existed twenty years from now, and if it was still maintained as another world, then we might have seen scenes from movies and novels brought to life in a game: a magic swordsman leading dragons through the sky, or a battlemage diving alone into an army of millions to unleash dazzling spells.

It was disappointing, but on the other hand, they were impressed once again.

Not only users, but even NPCs could not escape the framework of 『Fantastic World』.

And this experiment once again proved the value of the information contained in the history books.

Based on this, we plan to determine the concrete values of these Limit Stats going forward.

What is the true limit of the stats a human can achieve?

*

“...You’ve got to be kidding me.”

After carefully reading the post, Simin’s face scrunched in frustration.

He didn’t bother rereading it; he knew he hadn’t misread anything.

He had never been one for reading long texts, even back in his school days.

If it hadn’t been information that could help him in 『Fantastic World』, he wouldn’t have even read a three-line summary.

Even so, the information from that long post kept circling in his head, refusing to leave.

Simin hated studying, but he wasn’t stupid.

He had clearly grasped the main point.

“So basically, no matter what I do, I can’t raise any stat beyond a thousand with Stat Points alone.”

The post hadn’t mentioned what the Limit Stat values actually were.

But hadn’t Simin just experienced it himself?

The hologram had kindly spelled it out for him.

On top of that, the mention of a “1st Awakening” meant that even if he broke past 1,000, he would eventually be blocked again at 1,500, 2,000, or whatever the next threshold was.

This would apply not only to him but to other users as well.

The important thing was that other players’ circumstances didn’t matter to him at all.

“How do you even do a 1st Awakening?” he muttered in frustration, but BetaGo didn’t answer.

Not that it had any intention of telling him. Besides, Simin already knew the answer.

’It’s basically telling me to stop here.’

The one saving grace was that points gained from items and stat buffs were counted separately from the 1,000 points raised via Stat Points.

After raising Magic to 1,000, his total combined Magic stat was a little over 1,300.

He didn’t know whether to be happy about that or not.

What was clear was that he felt cheated.

“Damn it. This makes all-stat buffs kind of pointless.”

’Not entirely pointless,’ he corrected himself.

A stat of 1,000 was by no means low, and percentage-based buffs might be the only way to push his stats higher despite the cap.

It was just absurd that he would ultimately hit a hard ceiling.

“They said it depends on class.”

Even in this bleak reality, Simin quickly pulled himself together and started damage control.

You never knew.

Life was unpredictable; variables could pop up from the most unexpected places.

He currently had two classes: Enhancer and Tamer.

For Enhancer, it was obvious the Awakening would apply to Luck; that much was a given. His remaining hope was Tamer.

“If it’s Tamer... wouldn’t it be Magic?”

It had to be Magic.

No matter how he thought about it, it was Magic, and nothing but Magic.

Strength, Agility, Vitality.

There was no way a Tamer who raised stats like that existed in this world.

Luck gave him a moment’s pause, but compared to Magic, the answer was obvious.

“Magic is national power.”

Hope sparked within him.

He felt like he had found a lead on the 1st Magic Awakening.

He fell silent.

Of course, it was only a dream for now.

He merely thought he might be able to do it; no one had told him where or how.

So he put it on hold.

Even though he still had 2,757 Stat Points left, he decided not to spend them.

He didn’t know what might happen.

For now, a Magic stat of 1,000 was more than enough to proceed with the enhancement.

First, he needed to put out the fire at his feet.

Otherwise, he had a feeling that Epia, who was glaring at him with eyes crackling with dark energy, would soon tear him to shreds.

“Beginning enhancement. Scalpel.”

Simin picked up the hammer.

9.

The +14 ritual was spectacular.

“...Hey, Epia.”

“Mm.”

“Throw me up high. About a hundred meters or so...”

He needed Epia’s help.

At his request, she gladly grabbed his clothes and simply hurled him upward.

It happened with no preliminary motion at all, purely through her raw strength.

A touch of Dark Magic sent him vanishing into the sky before he could even finish his sentence.

Ten seconds, twenty, thirty.

When a full minute passed with no sign of Simin, Specialist grew a little worried, but the worry didn’t last long.

“Aaaaargh!”

His scream came much later, followed by a steadily growing shadow.

His cry was so vivid it could make you feel the sensation of plummeting from the sky even while standing on the ground. Within a few seconds, he slammed straight into the earth.

BOOM.

A massive impact rang out.

Mixed into it was the grating clash of metal on hammer.

“Ugh. Heal!”

“Ah, Simin!”

He had sworn he would save his points, but as he fell, he suddenly realized he might actually die. Sprawled on the ground, Simin hurriedly muttered and dumped about 500 Stat Points into Vitality.

It was the right call.

What was the point of hoarding Stat Points?

For someone staring death in the face, there was no such thing as saving them.

The fortunate part was that the hammer he had thrown with his life on the line had struck the anvil dead-on.

“...Two more times.”

The unfortunate part was that he had to keep doing this.

And that this ritual was only just beginning.

*

They completed all the rituals.

They had gone so wild that there was hardly any intact ground left around the auspicious spot.

You could tell just by looking at Simin’s state.

“Anyone who sees you would think you just fought the Demon King and every demon by yourself.”

Kang Yeseul’s comment wasn’t an exaggeration; he looked that bad.

“Huff... huff...”

It wasn’t just his ragged appearance; Simin was exhausted.

“I’m taking a full day off after this.”

It wasn’t just mental fatigue; his body was worn out.

Even though it was a virtual body, the exhaustion felt real, and he knew he absolutely had to rest.

He needed that as a goal just to endure.

The very last hammer strike.

He focused.

He tensed up again.

It was no exaggeration to say that everything up to now had been nothing compared to this moment.

Seventy-two percent.

The success rate was high, but the chance of failure was enough to make his hands shake and his brain freeze.

He swallowed hard.

This was the first time since he had gained the ability to guarantee enhancement success that he was dealing with a probability.

Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have done it.

Granted, it was a high number. Considering the item’s specs, his current level, and the fact that this was an enhancement to +14, it was practically a freebie.

However, the stakes of failure were too high.

This wasn’t something he could just try and shrug off if it failed.

On top of that, this weapon was the only one of its kind in the world, an Epic Legendary-grade weapon.

The Demon King’s weapon, no less.

If he failed and it shattered with a 90% chance of destruction, there was a very real possibility that Simin’s gaming life would end right here.

That kind of pressure was not easy for anyone to bear, not even him.

“Whew.”

Even so, he closed his eyes and meditated.

He had to do it anyway.

If he’d had a choice, he would have given up long ago instead of putting himself through this exhausting ordeal.

He had prepared diligently.

All that was left was luck.

Thinking that made him suddenly conscious of his Luck stat, which he normally never even thought about.

“Ah, damn it.”

If he hadn’t thought of it, that would have been one thing, but now that it had popped into his head, it felt wrong to ignore it.

Did he really have to invest Stat Points into Luck?

To push it up to 1,000 for the 1st Awakening, he would have to invest a whopping 712 points.

He hesitated.

His hesitation was brief.

The most important thing in enhancement was flow.

The mood.

The feel.

Regretfully, he invested the points.

’Fine. I’m an Enhancer, after all. A high Luck stat can’t possibly hurt.’

There was no way BetaGo would have wasted one of the mere five stats on something completely useless.

He comforted himself as he allocated the points.

[You have reached a Luck value of 1,000.]

[You are blocked by the limit and cannot invest additional Stat Points.]

[The Luck value that can be raised with pure Stat Points is 1,000.]

[1st Luck Awakening is required.]

He’d seen messages like that twice now.

[You have completed 1st Luck Awakening.]

[The Luck value that can be raised with pure Stat Points has been expanded to 1,500.]

“...Huh?”

But the holograms that followed were completely new.

*