Published at 21st of August 2026 8:16 am

Chapter 4424: Calibrating Experience

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Her father’s revelation stunned Ria. That the universe emerged from the information dimension? That information was the true essence of reality and that the manipulation of information led to the manipulation of reality itself?

It was hard to believe, but it would explain what she felt from her father. She didn’t feel the very material and physical power of materia prima. Instead, his power felt like authority. Authority on a higher level that was simply above the vain struggles of matter and energy.

Now, she finally understood why a Transcendent felt so fundamentally different from the Realms beneath it. Transcendents got to break the rules that bound all lesser pathwalkers. They made the rules. They existed on a whole other level of power that went beyond force or energy.

Her father’s story made her starry-eyed about the power that awaited her. After all, even the most dull and unmotivated Martial Artist would get excited at the thought of possessing godly power that transcended the laws of reality. And she had managed to reach the Sage Realm, which meant that she was only a Realm away from achieving this power, not counting the Transcendent Realm.

All she needed to learn now was the condition for breaking through to the Transcendent Realm.

"Tsk tsk," her father tutted with disapproval, reading her mind. "Your rate of growth has prevented you from developing the necessary respect for how difficult achieving power is."

She shrugged lightly at that. "That’s not my fault. I can’t control my experiences with how easy it is to achieve power."

After all, she had managed to reach the Sage Realm by the age of eighteen. Even if she understood that she was blessed with a tremendous amount of innate talent that her father granted her by virtue of his aptitude-cultivating therapy, it was difficult for her to change the intuitions that she had developed from a lifetime of achieving power much more easily than everybody else.

"Speaking of that, I am curious," her father’s expression became one of intrigue. "How exactly did you break through to the Sage Realm? The Sage Realm should be impossible for an eighteen-year-old. You lack the foundational maturity and self-awareness that only comes with age and experience such that not even the Enlightenment of Self AI modeling should have been able to help you reach it."

This hard limit for how young one could be and achieve Enlightenment of Self was something that had only been discovered in the Era of Expansion because the age at which Martial Artists broke through had reduced drastically severalfold.

The Enlightenment of Self AI was only later discovered to partially bridge a gap, not entirely. Without some foundational, intuitive, and experience-driven self-awareness, not even the conscious Large SOUL Model would be able to grant the enlightenment.

Her father had been somewhat relieved that not even her talent would be enough to break through, giving her time to acclimatize to her power and truly master it.

"Oh... I was shocked too," Ria muttered, recalling the moments she experienced on the verge of death. "It was thanks to a neural program I received from the Psyker as a gift. He told me that this would help me overcome a bottleneck. I didn’t understand what he meant at the time, and he refused to elaborate. But it helped me achieve the enlightenment on the verge of death."

Her father’s expression grew colored with displeasure. "...Experimenting on my precious baby angel, is he? I will have to have a word with him sometime."

"Go easy on him, Dad. I would be dead if not for that, you know?"

"Hmph, we’ll see." He turned back towards her. "Still... I don’t think it’s healthy to get this much power this quickly."

"What’s the issue? Power is power. More of it can never be a bad thing," she calmly replied.

"Power that you are not attuned to is dangerous power," her father warned. "There is a reason that even modern Martial training and growth theory places great importance on experience."

"...which is?"

"Calibration, Ria," her father answered with a wise tone of voice. "Calibration between your mind, soul, and your Martial Art. Your mind needs experience to calibrate itself to your power, as does your soul. Every dimension of you needs experience to be calibrated to every other aspect of you. The truth is..."

He heaved a sigh. "Your experience was highly insufficient even for a Martial Master. And now you have suddenly become a Martial Sage."

"Is it really that big of a deal?" she frowned.

"It is," Rui remarked with certainty. "One of your uncles, actually, is a prime example of this. Over the span of decades, he has only managed to become a Martial Senior despite modern means. That’s because being a former prince of the Kandrian Empire gives him no opportunity for real experience."

"You mean, Uncle Raijun?" Ria smiled wryly. "Is he seriously trying to pretend to be a Martial Artist to this day? He does nothing but hang out in the royal palaces of the Kandrian Empire."

Prince Raijun had been one of the princes contending for the throne in the two previous throne wars that had occurred. Ria knew of him as a bitter man who had delusions of being ripped off what belonged to him. She didn’t like his kids, her cousins, either. They had inherited his resentment and glared at her every time she met them.

"Yes, he trains decently, surprisingly, but despite having access to the cutting-edge technology of our Empire, he struggles to make any progress at all," her father huffed, shaking his head. "That is because no amount of technology can contribute to experience, Ria. Experience is Water; it is the banks of the river, the stone at the bottom, the ledges, the rocks, and everything that directs the flow of water in the direction that it does."

Her eyes softened as she nodded, turning towards her father with a serious expression. "I intend to rack up tons of experience in the coming years, Papa. I’m going to go all out with hunting infected worlds."

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