Emilio confirmed the purchase and received a small bottle with 12 red pills, a fancy new Skill and a monologue from his buddy.

  So that is the way it limits itself so you can’t use it on a human or a baby. It is a smart way.

  “I hope this Skill really pays off,” Emilio wished.

  “Me too. But either way, given you and Amelia’s talent, you would be all right in most scenarios. Especially if you have healing pills.”

  “Most is not enough and we have to keep our effort to add the rest. Either way, thank you for everything.”

  “You are welcome. If you want to be prepared you have to receive the information you purchased. Are you ready for another Infodump?”

  “Shoot it. I really want to know how far away I am from being a real powerhouse.”

  “Haha, really far away. I will first tell you about a regular person, and then add the differences for people with a Bloodline.

  “As you know, you can increase each of your Stats doing specific things and the Trials are a way for you to learn them. In this way, you can increase them until you have 10 points in each.

  “After reaching ten points in a single Stat, you can break through to the next Rank, but there is a catch. Once you start breaking through in one Stat, you will not be able to increase another Stat before you break through with all of your Stats.

  “You don't have to do all of them at once, but you have to go through all of them to keep improving your strength. This means that if you start breaking through when you have a Stat that is not maxed out, it will be weaker forever or you might even become completely crippled in that specific Stat.

  “There are some super specific methods that discard a Stat on purpose, but unless you want to follow a specific school like that I would recommend you to always reach the peak on all your Stats before breaking through.

  “There is one exception and that is someone who reached the peak of Vitality and has no hope of raising the other Stats before dying. In that case, they might want to break through to keep increasing their Vitality, and with it their lifespan. They are killing their future prospects, but if they don't do it they are dead anyway.”

  “I get it,” Emilio agreed. “There is no worth in keeping your potential if you are about to die of old age.”

  “Exactly,” Tuor continued. “Without that specific case, you should always raise all your Stats to the maximum. If you have a Bloodline it will be more than 10, but you still need to reach your maximum.

  “Once you are breaking through you will be doing something called compressing the Stats. The method to do it changes from Rank to Rank, and finding what to do is one of the hurdles on raising Ranks.”

  “Wait, why would it be like that?” Emilio asked, “Anyone from a higher Rank would be able to share it and let everyone know what to do.”

  “Please be careful of that way of thought. It is forbidden to massively share this kind of information. Restricting the information is a way for the powerhouses to keep the power in their own families.”

  “One of the universal rules of the Realm is that if you share the information with everyone, you will be hunted down.”

  When he heard the consequences, Emilio gulped. He was horrified by the truth of the way of living in the Realm. He had gotten used to having an abundance of information on the internet, but the Realm worked differently. “Your ways of living suck.”

  “It is the way it has always been. For example, you paid quite an expensive price for this information, would you share it for free?”

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  “I was about to do it for a really cheap price,” Emilio admitted, “Well cheap for the ones purchasing, but cheap times billions is still a lot, so you know… Business.”

  “Haha, good one. As long as you are selling it, you should not be having a huge problem. I mean, how would you know the real market price?” Tuor winked at his friend. “But once you are completely integrated, you should bring up the price to the normal market price of the Realm. No one would blame you for selling for cheap when isolated, but they will if you keep doing it afterwards.”

  “Which means that we will have no problems because we are selling it.”

  “No, even giving it for free to your own army or hired people is fine, it is still considered as not doing it massively. Should I keep going on what to do to break through?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “For this Rank, you just have to literally compress what makes the Stat. As long as you reach the peak of all your Stats and just for this Rank, you should receive the System help.

  “Other Rank Ups will be different and the way of raising your Stats in higher Ranks will also change. The higher the Rank the higher the complexity.”

  “Can I know how to raise them after Ranking up?”

  “I am not allowed to tell you. Good luck finding it.”

  Emilio gritted his teeth at the mention of another restriction, he was starting to get really annoyed at the System. He was just starting to understand how to raise the Stats in Rank 1, but the method was going to change and the System restricted the information even after he paid Tuor for the expensive Rank Up information.

  “I’m starting to hate the System. Anything else I should know?”

  “Don’t hate it. It is considered part of your planet’s trial to see if you can figure it out. As for more things you need to know, yes there are. And some important ones.

  “When you are breaking through the compression is not all at once and not everyone performs the same. Every compression is harder than the last one and you have to try to push all the way until the maximum compression possible.

  “Every single compression will make your Stats worth double than before. This is called a compression of 2. If you do just one compression, you would end up with 5 Stat points in Rank 2, each worth double of what it did in Rank 1. This means that when you reach the peak you would be having the equivalent of 20 points from a Rank 1.

  “This is by no way optimal and you would be crippling yourself if you progress like that. If you want to keep ranking up, the minimum compression is at least 8 times more than what you had.

  “The only exception is from Rank 1 to Rank 2 where you can keep growing with only 4 times the compression, but that would make you much weaker than someone with a higher compression.

  “When you compress your Stat, you will go through several rounds of compressions. Each round will increase your compression by a factor of 2.

  “Achieving one round will leave you with a total compression of 2, and crippled. Two rounds will leave you with a compression of 4. Every extra round will double it until you compress all of your Stats to only 1.”

  “This means the best you can do is compress your Stats four times and that will result in a compression of 10, but your niece will have a compression of 13 with the same amount of compressions.

  “This also means you will end up with one point that is worth 10 Rank 1 points. At the peak of Rank 2 you will have the equivalent of 100 points.”

  “That is quite the difference, so the weakest breakthrough will end up being 5 times weaker than the strongest and ten times stronger than a peak Rank 1. I also understand why the Bloodlines are so valuable. The higher the Rank, the more of a difference it will make.”

  “You have to remember that having a Bloodline is an exception and most people don’t have one. Also, they will not be 10 times stronger that a peak Rank 1, but 20. There is something else about Ranking Up that i didn’t tell you yet.

  “Once you start breaking through, your body will start changing and that is why you can’t increase your stats anymore. Once that happens all of your Stats will be strengthened by 50%.

  “Once you finish the breakthrough with all of your Stats and you settle in your next Rank you will be strengthened again by another third. As a result all of your Stats will have double your effectiveness.

  “Given that is part of the compression we usually add it into the same bag and the result is that without a Bloodline the maximum compression you can have is 20.”

  “It seems we underestimated the power of higher ranks with our projections,” Emilio interceded, thinking about what they had shared on the broadcast. “A gap like this seems insurmountable.”

  “Are you talking about the gap between Ranks? Unless someone breaks through completely crippling themselves, it is hard to surpass them in a fight as a lower Rank. After all, you would be facing someone with double the effective Stats.”

  Emilio thought about what tuor said, and he was not that worried about the double, but about facing someone with a much higher Rank and how their weapons were going to perform. Someone at the beginning of Rank 3 might be a thousand times more powerful than a normal human. Was it even possible to face someone like that?

  And that is why it is important to go ahead with the diplomacy route.

  Emilio took a deep breath and refocused on the information he was receiving. If he could break through, then he would be able to defend his family by himself.

  “What happens if the compression makes you have Stats with a comma, for example a compression of four.”

  “You would be left with two points worth four. It is less than what you had, but with the 1.5 multiplier you would still be better than before.

  “My best advice is for you to just try to compress them all the way. If you can’t then don’t stop unless you make it through 3 rounds or you will lose the chance of reaching higher Ranks.

  “Also don’t rush. You don’t have to compress all of your Stats at once and you can stop between them to prepare yourself.”

  Emilio made sure to make a heavy mental note with those pieces of advice. “Is there anything else I should know? What happens if you fail the compression?”

  “If you fail, you will end up in the previous compression, unless you do something reckless like you did inside the last Trial. After that, there is not much else to know.”

  Emilio sighed when he was reminded about his slight suicidal tendencies that made him explode. “I get it, it is wrong to do what I did, but it did end up working out.”

  “Just because you are lucky to be in a place where the System healed you,” Tuor pointed out.

  “Do not say that I am lucky after I missed a Bloodline!” Emilio replied.

  “A Bloodline you had no way of getting with just your talent and self destructed trying to get it?”

  “Just shut up,” Emilio dismissed him while Tuor was laughing. The man still couldn’t believe it was actually possible to blow oneself up like that.

  Thanks for reading!

  Today marks one month since I started publishing Paragon of Luck, and I honestly didn’t expect such a warm reception this early. The follows, ratings, comments, and Patreon support have been incredible. Thank you.

  Starting tomorrow, the schedule shifts into the next phase of the launch rush:

  1 chapter per day at 22:00 Argentina time (UTC-3).

  The goal is to keep the momentum going while making the pace sustainable as the story grows. And as always, thank you for being here. If you’re enjoying the story, a follow (and a quick rating) helps it reach more readers.