Infinite Potential System

-Registering Artifact. This may take a while...

The System's confirmation informed William that it would evaluate the Starmetal Safe. Its voice turned slightly robotic as it spoke, so William knew it wouldn't be a mere couple of minutes before it was complete.

He sat down cross-legged to Cultivate, transforming the ambient Mana Particles into Spirit Qi at incredible speed and creating a massive vortex that made even Uri raise his head to take a look.

Is this Master's Cultivation Technique? It's even stronger than the last time I saw it...

The Flame Dragon knew a few things about the System just from his connection with William, but it didn't fully understand until now what was meant when his contract said good performance could improve his potential.

Seeing William firsthand, though, taught Uri that it wasn't as simple as improving one's strength, but also their ability to gain strength. It was in the name, after all.

Potential System... What is the goal of this being?

The dragon shook its head and returned to its week-long nap. It could think about these things next month.

William's Cultivation progressed smoothly, and by the end of his eight-hour session, a System message was already waiting in his inbox.

-Finished evaluating Artifact quality...

-Invented a new Artifact: +25 PP

-Invented a Mythical Artifact: +1000 PP

-Invented your first Mythical Artifact: +5000 PP

Six thousand Potential Points for making this? That's insane! William exclaimed.

It may not seem like a lot considering William had spent two weeks working on the Starmetal Safe, but it wasn't a small sum either. He made the safe as a storage option, with little intention of using it to earn Points.

I wonder how many Points a Celestial Artifact is worth? Though the difficulty to make one is probably insane. I wonder if my Artifact Belt qualifies as a Celestial Artifact?

William used his free time in between Cultivation to organize his Space Rings with dedicated shelves; another task he had pushed forward up until now. Only after this was completed did he finally start finishing up his Artifact Belt.

With every Element that he was aware of unlocked and at S-Rank, William had quite a few Elemental Spheres to create before the Artifact Belt was completed.

Let's start with the Time Element, I suppose.

William chose the Time Element because it would hopefully add a few more safeguards to his Artifact in case something went wrong. If the belt was about to explode, William had a decent chance of reversing the effects back to its original condition before losing the entire Artifact.

He retrieved the Mana Gathering Staff and made sure to remove all of its seals, increasing his Mana Control by roughly eighty percent. The original increase was supposed to be one hundred percent, but William found that his Mana Control had exceeded the limitations of the Mana Gathering Staff, so it couldn't push his strength any further past that point.

Regardless, it was enough for William to call Time Mana to his fingertips and create a small silvery-blue sphere that rotated in different directions depending on which way time was moving. If he controlled the Time Mana to speed up, it would rotate clockwise, while slowing it down would make the sphere rotate counterclockwise.

It was an interesting detail, but William didn't fully understand what it meant. Other than resembling time moving forwards and backwards, he couldn't tell if there was an underlying concept that he had missed.

The Time Elemental Sphere was popped into the Artifact Belt very carefully, causing no discernable problems with the Artifact itself. He made sure to turn it on and off, leaving it running for half an hour or so before moving on to the next Elemental Sphere.

Sound, Blood, Blessing, Curse. All four Elemental Spheres were added over the next few hours, and by the end of the day William had added every Element except for Chaos.

He knew this would be the trickiest part, since the Chaos Elemental upgrade was the most challenging so far. He communicated with the System on quite a few occasions, ensuring that was he was about to do wouldn't ruin the Artifact Belt or get him killed.

The System mentioned that the most dangerous part of the Chaos Elemental Sphere would be with forming the Sphere itself, and not with placing it within the Artifact Belt. As long as he performed this step correctly, William should have nothing to fear.

He tried to condense the Chaos Elemental Sphere without the System's help since the cost was too expensive, but for some reason it would fall apart as soon as he called the ambient Chaos Mana into a Sphere.

It was to be expected that the Chaos Element would be chaotic, but wouldn't having unparalleled Mana Control offset this? Apparently not.

What William didn't know was that being able to call Chaos Mana outright was already an incredible feat. The few other Cultivators that awakened the Chaos Element were completely unable to control it. It was both an incredibly rare and incredibly unruly Element, which rarely listened to anyone's commands.

Those that gained some control over the Element would usually send the Mana flying towards their opponents, hoping to disrupt the flow of their Mana with the Chaos Magic.

Come on... I'm so close! Isn't there a way to make the Mana do what I want?

William tried a few dozen more times, but he just couldn't think of a way to create a Chaos Elemental Sphere. It was an impossible task, one which even the Element itself didn't want to cooperate.

He was forced to give up for now and make do with an Artifact that only had 23 of the 24 Elements installed. The only one missing was the Chaos Element, and his Order Element wouldn't be used, since it was too terrifying to control.

Just the thought of using the Order Element gave William the shivers, instilling him with fear down to his very core.

I'll try again when I upgrade the Chaos Element to SS-Rank. William decided before crossing his legs to enter another Cultivation session. He wanted to enter the Golden Core Realm as soon as possible.

Days passed, which became weeks, before William eventually filled up his Cultivation Base of five hundred thousand Spirit Qi. During this time, he continued to teach his friends various Arrays, and all of them had at least achieved the Basic level.

Carl, having done Arrays the longest and the most talented among the group, was easily able to create Intermediate Arrays, and was growing close to breaking into the Realm of Advanced Arrays.

It was mostly thanks to William, of course, that they could all progress so quickly in just a few weeks. Being close to creating Advanced Arrays would mean that Carl was almost equivalent to an Array Master from Blue Moon City, which usually took decades if not half a century to reach.

With William's help, however, Carl was able to understand the workings of Arrays on a more complex level than others could teach him. The only setback was his own memory, since he would have to consult a cheat sheet of sorts to perform all his Arrays.

He was incredibly slow, but Arrays were Arrays. Only with practice and repetition could Carl improve his speed.

William spent a few days with Gunther and Yuming as well, teaching them Blacksmithing and Alchemy, respectively. While Gunther was excited to be learning from William, Yuming felt a bit differently.

When William had first come to the Array Hall to help out, it was clear that he only had a basic knowledge of Alchemy. When he left for the Gravitas Ruins and returned, however, it was like William was a whole new person.

Not only was he still able to perfectly refine many different Pill recipes, but Yuming could tell that William's knowledge of Alchemy had at least reached the Seventh or even Eighth Tier. Just like Arrays, this was an unbelievable achievement for someone at William's age.

The only question was, how did he do it?

How can William be talented in Arrays, Alchemy, Blacksmithing, and even Cooking? How could he do all these things, have over a dozen Elemental Affinities, insane physical prowess, and the reaction time of a God?

How could one single person do all of this in such a short amount of time? Is William a reincarnated Godly being, sent down to the Mortal Realms to start all over again?

He wanted to ask, but Yuming was afraid of the consequences. If William was any of these things, why was he still here? He was clearly strong enough to Ascend, but he hadn't yet. Was it because he wanted to help his friends, or is there something else going on?

The others had their doubts about William as well, though very different from one another, but they could all agree on one thing. William was a friend through and through. Explore hidden tales at m,v l'e-m|p y r