'Alright, so, how much stronger are my Aspects of Power actually?' Kyle thought as he looked at his Ether.
'Luckily, there's an easy way to check.'
Back when Kyle had learned how to cast his first Spells, he had learned of the concept of Miz.
Miz was a standardized unit with which one could measure Ether.
Kyle knew how much Miz he had before his breakthrough and how much Miz someone with an improved Center had when they reached the Initial Third Realm.
After all, he had to know how powerful he was compared to his enemies to see whether an attack would be effective or a waste of Ether.
An advancement between Realms was more significant than an advancement between levels.
A level advancement generally doubled one's Ether, while reaching the Third Realm essentially tripled it.
'But that's probably because of the manual distribution of Ether during the breakthrough. Otherwise, it would just double. I mean, the actual significant combat increase comes from the extra abilities you get. Like permanent time slow or the Soul Space.'
In terms of arbitrary numbers, a Peak Warrior had one bit of Ether in their Center, while a Peak Knight had around 2.1 to 2.2 bits.
An Initial Expert with a natural breakthrough would have two bits, while an Initial Royal Knight with a natural breakthrough would have about 4.3 bits.
An Initial Expert with a manual breakthrough would have about three bits, while an Initial Royal Knight with a manual breakthrough would have about 6.45 bits.
For someone with an Aristocrat's Body, the respective values would be two, four, and six bits for the three cases.
But what about Kyle?
Kyle emptied his entire Center of Ether and calculated the Miz he produced.
When he was done calculating, his eyes widened.
The number he came up with represented a value of 24 bits with the arbitrary numbers.
He had about four times as much Ether in his Center as a Royal Knight of the same level.
'But that's also because of the Element of my speck. As far as I can see, the fire speck increases the power of my Center dramatically in exchange for control. I just don't know by how much.'
'Luckily, I got other things I can try.'
The next moment, Kyle's body grew explosively.
Since he was now in the Third Realm, he was no longer limited to the size of his True Body.
He could now choose how big he wanted to be up to a certain limit.
The limit for Grand Masters and Royal Knights was about 50 meters.
However, Kyle quickly shot past that limit.
Within seconds, a humongous giant appeared inside the ruins, and Kyle looked around the toy city around him with interest for a moment.
'Double, I see,' Kyle thought.
Kyle was around 100 meters tall.
The giant furrowed his brows as he thought more about his powers.
'My Soul Space is about thrice as big. My body is about twice as big. My Center is about four times as strong.'
'Yep, pretty straightforward.'
'The base value of my Aspects of Power after a natural breakthrough, when compared to people with strengthened Aspects of Power, is about two-thirds. 0.66 to their 1.'
'Just the specks triple my power, which is equivalent to their double. My body has the Wind Element, and I don't think that increases my body's power. It's just speed.'
'The metal specks increase my control and power evenly. Both of them get increased by 50%. 200% times 1.5 is 300%. That's why my Soul Space is three times as big as the Soul Space of Beast Tamers.'
'The metal speck doubles my power but does not increase the control. It just feels like I have less control since I just put the motor of a racecar into my old pickup truck without upgrading the controls or the wheels.'
'That's actually crazy. So, with two metal specks, one fire speck, and one wind speck, the average power of my Aspects of Power is three times higher than the average power of an Expert with an Aristocrat's Body.'
'On top of that, it's not like the wind speck does nothing. My speed probably increased drastically.'
'Speaking of, I should check that.'
Kyle returned to his normal size and started to run forward.
BOOOOOM!
The ground beneath him exploded as he charged forward.
While he kept running, the hard stone around him exploded to the side, leaving a deep trail of destruction behind.
Within a short moment, Kyle had already reached the other end of the cave.
Out of reflex, he wanted to veer to the right since a wall was quickly approaching him.
And exactly that happened, but it didn't happen as expected.
Despite turning 90 degrees to the right, Kyle's speed didn't drop for a single instant.
It was like inertia didn't exist at all.
'Wait, that's the effect of my Fragment of Wind Movement,' Kyle thought.
'Except that I do not need to use Ether. I also don't need to activate it. I don't even need to think about it. It's just… there.'
The next moment, Kyle stopped.
From speeds of above one kilometer per second, Kyle just stopped walking.
There was no big gust of wind.
There were no clouds of debris.
It was like all the force that pushed him forward simply stopped existing.
'Wait a second,' Kyle thought.
Then, he took a step forward.
That single step was done at over three times the speed of sound on Earth.
But that was it. It was just a single step.
'I can reach my max speed in literally a single fucking step? HOW?! I don't even need to use any fucking Ether!'
'The wind speck literally eradicates the need for acceleration and deceleration.'
'It literally just directly sets the speed I want.'
Then, Kyle took several steps, trying to-
"Whoa!" Kyle said as he had to brake hard, his feet digging into the ground.
'Okay, up to a certain limit,' Kyle thought as he looked at the vibrating green speck.
It almost looked like it was buckling under the stress.
Luckily, it seemed to recover after some seconds.
'Alright, I can set my speed to whatever I want under two conditions.'
'First, it's within my limit.'
'Second, it can't happen too much in a short period of time.'
'That's crazy!'
Kyle experimented with his Aspects of Power for a couple of more minutes until he was sure what he was working with.
'Anyway, where the fuck even am I?' he thought as he looked around the ruined city.
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