Infinite Ascension: 100,000x Amplified-Chapter 42: Harvest

The moment Nova and Kaelith stepped through the spatial barrier, reality twisted around them. Colors inverted, stretched, compressed — then snapped back into focus with disorienting abruptness.

[DING! You have entered a Tier 1 Abyssal Rift]

[Difficulty: Level 1]

[Warning: Death is permanent. Emergency extraction available via distress beacon.]

"So this is an Abyssal Rift..." Nova murmured, his golden eyes taking in the alien landscape.

The sky above was a featureless gray expanse — no sun, no clouds, no discernible light source, yet somehow providing dim illumination that cast no shadows. The ground beneath his feet was dark volcanic rock, hard as iron and cracked into geometric patterns that hurt to look at directly. Jagged stone formations jutted from the terrain at impossible angles, defying normal geology.

The air tasted wrong — not toxic exactly, but carrying a metallic tang that suggested this atmosphere operated on slightly different chemical principles than Earth’s.

So this is what dimensional overlay feels like. The physics here are subtly different. Gravity feels about 5% heavier. The electromagnetic spectrum is shifted slightly toward infrared.

Kaelith thrust her hands into her jacket pockets, tilting her delicate face upward with an expression of profound disdain. "Still the same. Filthy air. Oppressive darkness."

Her tone carried such familiarity — such tired recognition — that it immediately caught Nova’s attention.

He turned to stare at her directly.

Kaelith felt his gaze and looked back with irritation. "Why are you staring at me?"

"We’re both Tier 1 Warriors," Nova said slowly, his analytical mind processing the inconsistency. "Both entering an Abyssal Rift for the first time, officially. Yet you’re talking about it like you’re intimately familiar with the environment."

His golden eyes narrowed slightly. "Academy Beauty Kaelith... you wouldn’t happen to—"

Kaelith’s ice-blue eyes widened fractionally. Shit. Did he realize I’m a regressor? I was too casual with my comments!

"ROOOAAAAR!"

A bestial roar in the distance cut through the tension. Both teenagers’ heads snapped toward the sound, conversation forgotten.

"Be careful," Kaelith said, already moving toward the source.

But Nova was faster — explosively so.

He kicked off the volcanic rock with enough force to crack the surface and became a golden-black blur across the terrain. As he accelerated his thoughts were already running ahead of him.

Tier 1 Abyssal Spawn equal one merit point, which equals 10,000 currency points. He had money. Plenty of it. But too much money was never a bad thing, and the poor mentality that had lived in his bones for seventeen years hadn’t been completely eradicated from his brain yet — probably wouldn’t be for a while. When you spent most of your life calculating whether you could afford supplements, the instinct to harvest every available resource didn’t just switch off overnight.

Kill everything. All of it.

What Nova didn’t know was that Kaelith had arrived at Hunter’s Haven with the exact same plan. Regressor or not, knowledge of the future didn’t make equipment and resources appear from thin air. She needed merit points. She needed cultivation materials. She could have sold her techniques from the previous life under an anonymous account the way Nova had done, but hiding her identity and managing that process was another layer of complexity she didn’t want to deal with right now. Straightforward hunting was simpler. She was here to clean out this rift, and she had intended to be systematic about it.

Then this boy had immediately sprinted toward the first sound.

"THAT’S MY PREY!" Kaelith’s furious shout echoed behind him as she activated her own movement abilities and gave chase.

Nova’s speed even at controlled output left a visible trail of disrupted air. Ice crackled beneath Kaelith’s feet as she pushed her movement abilities hard, creating frictionless acceleration paths.

"Damn it! How is he so fast?! That’s right... assassin-type profession. Burst speed is their specialty..."

Nova locked onto the target with his senses.

Standing atop a cone-shaped boulder approximately 150 meters distant, a wolf-like creature raised its head and howled at the gray sky. The beast stood nearly two meters at the shoulder, covered in midnight-black fur that seemed to absorb light. Its most distinctive feature was its skull — enlarged and reinforced with what appeared to be natural bone armor plates.

[Abyssal Spawn Identified]

[Species: Ironskull Wolf]

[Skills: Crushing Bite, Ramming Charge]

[Notable Traits: Pack hunter. Extremely hard cranium. Highly vengeful — killing one alerts the pack. Dangerous in coordinated groups.]

[Weakness: Relatively fragile body compared to reinforced skull. Vulnerable to overwhelming force that bypasses physical defense.]

Perfect test subject.

The clone’s base stats sat at 60% of the main body’s — which put his combat power at roughly Tier 3 territory. He didn’t need anywhere near that for a Tier 1 LV4 wolf. He would use 50% of his current punching strength. Any more would be wasteful and considerably messier than necessary.

He raced across the rugged terrain, his enhanced agility navigating the treacherous volcanic landscape without slowing. The distance evaporated in seconds.

When the Ironskull Wolf finally sensed danger and began turning its massive head, Nova had already launched himself from an elevated position, descending on the creature like a missile.

The wolf’s green eyes widened — barely registering the approaching threat.

Nova’s right fist, carrying 50% of his current strength, struck the wolf’s reinforced skull directly.

CRACK!

The sound was sharp and structural. The Ironskull Wolf’s head didn’t explode — it caved, the reinforced bone folding under a concentrated force it had never been designed to resist. The creature dropped instantly, dead before its body fully registered the impact.

[DING! You have slain Ironskull Wolf (LV4)]

[Experience gained: +40 EXP]

[Merit points earned: +1]

Nova landed beside the corpse and looked at his fist. Clean. Good. That calibration works.

He pulled out his record card and watched the display shift from 0 to 1.

"Ten thousand points. Not bad for five seconds of work."

He smiled slightly. "Hunting Abyssal Spawn is simpler than expected."

If any experienced Tier 1 Hunter had heard this casual dismissal, they would have suffered psychological damage. Ironskull Wolves were notoriously difficult for new warriors — their reinforced skulls deflected most conventional attacks, forcing hunters to target vulnerable areas while avoiding devastating charges and coordinated pack bites. Most novice warriors required full parties and careful strategy to bring down a single specimen.

Many beginners had died learning that lesson.

Yet this teenager had just one-shot the creature’s hardest anatomical structure with his bare fist at half strength.

"AWOOOO!" "AWOOOO!" "AWOOOO!"

Howls erupted from multiple directions simultaneously — close and getting closer.

Nova turned his head, scanning the terrain. "What’s happening?"

Kaelith — who had caught up almost instantaneously with him stood atop a different boulder about twenty meters away — called out with obvious satisfaction. "You think it’s simple? Let me educate you about Abyssal ecology."

She gestured toward the approaching sounds. "That creature is an Ironskull Wolf. Pack hunters with strong social bonds. Kill one, and you alert the entire pack within territorial range."

Her ice-blue eyes glinted with anticipation. "You’re about to face a coordinated assault. Enjoy."

Nova’s eyes literally lit up — his golden irises brightening with genuine excitement. "Isn’t that perfect?"

Kaelith blinked. "...What?"

"More targets means more merit points and experience." His smile widened slightly. "This is exactly what I wanted."

Kaelith stared at him in stunned silence. It’s the first time I’ve ever met someone this aggressively enthusiastic about being surrounded, she thought with disbelief.

She sat down on her boulder, propped her chin on one hand with queenly composure. "Fine. I’ll just watch and see how many you can kill before you’re overwhelmed and begging for rescue."

As if responding to her words, pairs of glowing green eyes ignited in the darkness surrounding Nova — dozens of them, approaching from all directions. Health bars materialized above their heads as the System Integration tracked incoming threats.

"CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!"

The sound of breaking stone and cascading debris filled the air as massive black-furred bodies emerged from concealment and charged.

Over a dozen Ironskull Wolves — each weighing 300+ kilograms and moving with predatory coordination — converged on Nova’s position simultaneously.

"ROOOAAAAR!"

The pack attacked as one. Several leaped from elevated positions, their enormous jaws opening to reveal teeth like alloy daggers.

In Nova’s perception — enhanced by his comprehended laws and mastered techniques — the world slowed to a crawl. He could see every detail. The flexing of muscles beneath midnight fur. The trajectory of each leaping body. The pack’s coordination patterns programmed into their predatory instincts.

All experience points. All merit points. All mine.

"SO MUCH MONEY!" 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

His eyes blazed with excitement — not fear, but genuine enthusiasm at the prospect of mass harvesting.

A wolf descended from above, jaws aimed for his throat. Nova tilted his head casually, the creature’s bite passing through empty air where his neck had been a fraction of a second earlier. His right fist shot upward in a rising uppercut at 50% strength.

BOOM!

The impact transferred kinetic energy through the wolf’s jaw, into its skull, and throughout its entire body. The creature’s head caved with a sharp crack, the body dropping clean.

[DING! You have slain Ironskull Wolf (LV5)] [Experience gained: +50 EXP]

Before the body hit the ground, another wolf had already committed to its attack — claws extended, three parallel slashes descending toward Nova’s torso.

He raised his left arm in a casual blocking motion.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

The sound of claws striking his forearm produced metallic impacts rather than tearing flesh. The razor-sharp natural weapons — capable of slicing through military-grade armor — left only three shallow white scratches on his skin before shattering.

The wolf’s eyes widened with incomprehension.

Nova’s right leg snapped up in a devastating knee strike. CRACK! The wolf’s chest cavity folded. It was launched backward, dead before it landed.

[DING! You have slain Ironskull Wolf (LV6)]

[Experience gained: +60 EXP]

[DING! Level increased to LV3! All attributes +10. Free attribute points +10 acquired.]

A particularly large wolf — nearly three meters at the shoulder and easily weighing three tons — lowered its reinforced skull and charged like a biological battering ram, accelerating to approximately 100 kilometers per hour. Its momentum contained enough force to demolish a small house.

Any normal Tier 1 Warrior facing this charge would have two options: dodge successfully, or die.

Nova chose a third option.

He extended his left hand and placed his palm directly against the wolf’s reinforced skull as it made contact.

BOOM!

The collision created a shockwave that radiated outward, kicking up volcanic dust and debris in expanding rings.

"GRRRR... ROOOAAAR!"

The Ironskull Wolf’s claws scraped against volcanic rock, gouging deep furrows as it pushed forward with every ounce of strength. Its roar became desperate, enraged, confused.

It couldn’t move forward even a single centimeter.

Nova stood completely motionless — unmoved, unshaken, as solid as a mountain. His left arm didn’t even tremble under the multi-ton impact force.

These Tier 1 creatures below LV10 are simply not a factor at my current physical level.

With a casual flex of his arm he lifted the three-ton wolf off the ground entirely and threw it sideways. The creature sailed through the air and crashed into a cluster of jagged rocks with bone-breaking force.

Before Nova could check on it, another wolf had clamped onto his forearm with crushing pressure capable of splintering steel.

The bite produced no screaming. No blood. Just the sound of teeth scraping against impossibly durable flesh.

Nova’s backhand strike caught the wolf across its face, sending it tumbling. His right fist descended in a hammer blow that finished it cleanly.

[DING! You have slain Ironskull Wolf (LV7)] [Experience gained: +70 EXP]

The pack continued its assault — coordinated, desperate, increasingly frantic as their numbers dwindled without inflicting a single meaningful injury.

Nova moved through them methodically.

A dodge here. A punch there. A kick that shattered spines. An elbow that caved in skulls. Every movement was precise, economical, brutally efficient. Not fighting — harvesting.

Wolves flew through the air, alive for a moment and then dead. Blood painted the volcanic rock crimson. The sounds of breaking bone and tearing flesh became a rhythmic percussion against the gray sky.

Kaelith sat frozen on her boulder, watching with wide ice-blue eyes.

The brutal efficiency unfolding before her challenged her understanding of normal cultivation progression. In her previous life — even accounting for top-tier talents and legendary professions — newly awakened Tier 1 Warriors didn’t perform like this.

Is his physique abnormally enhanced? she thought, analytical mind attempting to rationalize what she was witnessing. Even those legendary physical specialists with S-Rank body reinforcement talents weren’t this overwhelmingly dominant when they first entered Tier 1.

A possibility occurred to her — one that made disturbing sense.

Could it be he also concealed his true talent and profession the same way I did?

If his official E-Rank Shadow Reaper classification is false, then what did he actually awaken? What kind of talent produces this level of physical superiority?

Gradually, genuine interest began replacing her earlier contempt.

Less than five minutes after the pack’s initial assault, silence returned to the volcanic wasteland.

Corpses of Ironskull Wolves lay scattered around Nova in various states of damage. Blood had saturated the porous volcanic rock, creating a crimson zone approximately thirty meters in diameter.

Only the boy remained standing — completely calm, barely breathing hard, his expression one of mild satisfaction rather than exhaustion or fear.

Kaelith found it difficult to maintain her composure.

She had planned to wait until he exhausted himself and begged for rescue, at which point she would graciously intervene and establish some semblance of hierarchy in their relationship.

Instead he had simply annihilated the entire pack with his bare hands while making it look like a mild inconvenience.

This doesn’t match any scenario from my previous timeline, she thought, a frown creasing her beautiful features. Who is Nova Stern? And why does he feel like an anomaly the timeline is struggling to accommodate?

Nova examined his record card with satisfaction.

[Current Merit Points: 15] [Current Level: LV3]

"Not bad for five minutes of work," he said aloud, then looked up at Kaelith. "So. Are you planning to actually participate, or just observe all day?"

Kaelith’s eye twitched. "I was giving you a chance to prove yourself. Don’t get cocky just because you handled a basic pack encounter."

"Then let’s proceed deeper." Nova suggested. "Unless you’re afraid?"

Her ice-blue eyes flashed dangerously. "I’ll show you what real Rift diving looks like."

She leaped down from her boulder with athletic grace, landing softly despite the height. "Follow me. And try not to steal all the kills this time."

"No promises," Nova said as they ventured deeper into the Abyssal Rift.