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But it is an indisputable fact that adventurers are weaker than ancient heroes.
Because grace is renewed.
In the Adventurer's Guild, there is a saying that 'Adventurers can't adventure', and to some extent, this is appropriate.
Adventurers can never achieve sudden breakthrough, and cannot suddenly gain abilities that they do not have.
An ancient hero could develop new abilities by tinkering with the power bestowed upon him by immortal essence. What about adventurers?
Strength, dexterity, endurance, etc., including magic and skills, are all written on the words of grace on the back, and the values are exactly what they say.
Relying on perseverance to stay standing?
Ancient heroes can.
Adventurer?
Does your panel support you to hold on with perseverance?
Gained the power to run wild when faced with danger?
Ancient heroes can.
Adventurer?
Do you have any skills that can allow you to go berserk in your status bar?
The power of an adventurer can also evolve. An adventurer may have strong perseverance and comprehend new skills at the time, breaking through the adventurer's current limits.
——But just breaking through is useless, it will not be reflected on the adventurer's panel. The adventurer needs to receive the God's renewal of grace before the breakthrough part in the desperate situation will be unlocked.
When facing a crisis, adventurers can awaken skills through spiritual sublimation, and it is possible for them to kill the enemy with the newly awakened skills - but because of the existence of God's Grace, the status bar is firmly locked, and the person involved does not even know that he has comprehended the skill.
After returning to the clan and being updated by the God, the awakened skills will be unlocked. Because of the existence of God's grace, adventurers can better understand and exercise their awakened abilities.
But usually, adventurers were killed on the spot by hostile monsters.
For example, adventurers can awaken skills that increase their strength when angry, and can develop skills accurately by training their emotions.
The ancient hero awakened a skill that allowed him to increase his strength when angry. Since there was no explanation of God's grace, the hero was confused as to why his strength had increased, and he might even have thought that he was hallucinating.
But only when the ancient heroes awaken their skills, the skills are already used. When adventurers awaken their skills, the skills cannot be used. They are extracted as experience by God's Grace and can only be unlocked after the update.
This is a scam.
God's Grace... The stronger the adventurer, the more aware of its drawbacks.
Specifically, it is a favor that benefits the gods.
The awakening skills of ancient heroes only take a moment, and it is difficult for the gods to witness it with their own eyes.
The strength of ancient heroes grew gradually, and the gods would not be surprised even if they watched them.
However, when adventurers awaken their skills, God's grace fixes that as experience - that is, at the moment when the gods renew their grace, the changes will take effect on the adventurer's body, and the gods can witness the changes before and after the adventurer awakens his skills.
The adventurer's strength grew in an instant. A little bit of strength growth would not surprise the gods, but the long-term training bursting out in an instant, the changes in human attributes before and after, were enough to amaze the gods.
But even so, Ota had previously only thought that God's grace was to fix human growth as experience, and that growth was ultimately the result of human's own efforts, and the gods could not take it away at will.
But even his own power could be taken away... Although it was a bit unexpected, Ota was unexpectedly calm.
If you think about it, this doesn't seem surprising.
No matter what, humans have no right to complain about gods. Whether it is ancient heroes or today's adventurers, it is gods who have bestowed power on humans. It is the gods' business to choose what means and what kind of power to give to humans.
Neither majestic nor merciful nor just, totally unworthy of awe, just plain fun-seeking, this is the nature of most gods.
That's why Ota likes his own God.
Perhaps Freya and other gods simply seek pleasure in the unknown, but Freya has never disguised this fact.
And, Freya's love for children is real.
In the eyes of some gods, Freya is a god with a bad character who drives her own people without mercy.
But even so, she is real.
Looking at the entire Orario, how many gods can be called real? What is the true nature of each god behind their human appearance?
Does it have nature?
At least Ota knew that God's grace was by no means a gift bestowed by the gods on the people in the lower world. On the contrary, it was a gift given by the gods themselves so that they could more conveniently enjoy the growth of the people in the lower world.
Since this is the grace of God, it is the common wish of at least more than half of the gods.
But throughout Orario, most gods seem to like their own people very much.
So, is this so-called liking from the bottom of one's heart, or is it that the gods, under their kind appearance, treat their followers as props to satisfy their curiosity?
The essence of God's grace is grace locking.
When there is no renewal grace from God, no matter how the person exercises, there will not be even the slightest change in his body.
Several years ago, in the disaster caused by the dark god Erebus, Erebus colluded with the only remaining level 7 adventurers of Zeus and Hera's families.
Orario faced a total of two level 7 adventurers, and Ota was only level 6 at the time.
The two level 7s were seriously injured and difficult to recover. Although they escaped with their lives after the failure of the expedition against the black dragon, they would not live long. So they had a big fight with Erebus, sacrificing their lives as a great cause for the growth of a new generation of heroes.
Ota killed one of them alone, and with this feat he rose to level 7.
At that time, the Astraea family and the Loki family were responsible for another lv7. With that great achievement, all the girls who participated in the battle completed the promotion in unison.
After that, Astraea's family was involved in the conspiracy of the dark faction, the family was wiped out, and the main god was exiled.
A half-elf named 'Liu' in the clan was completely comparable to Sword Princess at the time. She was also recognized by the level 7 adventurer and the Dark God who caused the disaster. She was qualified to become a hero of the new generation.
It is because Ota always protects Freya's safety, and when Freya transformed into Hill, she and Liu were waiters working in the same tavern, so Ota knew Liu's current situation.
With the exile of the Supreme God, Liu did not reduce the frequency of going to the dungeon because she wanted to find the culprit who caused the destruction of her family.
But after several years, the strength has not improved at all.
Ota has no way to verify whether God's grace really helps human growth. Perhaps even without God's grace, he can become stronger through his own training.
But he was clear that God's grace was absolutely effective in restraining human growth.
As long as the God does not update the merits, no matter how difficult the situation the person has overcome or how hard the training has been, his strength, speed and physical strength will not increase even a little bit.
But it only increases the growth of the lock. As the adventurer ages, God's grace cannot lock the adventurer's physical decline.
God's grace is of this kind, and it can be proven that most of the gods are of this kind.
It can be said that gods are beneficial to humans, and if asked again, you can still make excuses such as "no one asked you to join the clan" or "you wanted to engrave the grace of God on yourself."
But the malice of the gods is absolutely extreme.
But without gods, humans would have been wiped out by monsters long ago.
Human beings have no right to rebel against gods, nor do they even have the right to complain to gods. As long as gods provide help to human beings, they are doing human beings a favor.
Gods have the right to choose how to help humans. Helping more is helping, and helping less is also helping. That is the freedom of gods.
That's why Ota fell in love with Freya. While he hated the fact that most gods pretended to really love humans, at least as a follower of Freya, he could feel that the love was real.
No matter how disgusting the gods are, humans can only survive by relying on them.
As a member of Freya's family, and having met a 'real' god like Freya, there was no reason for him not to offer his loyalty to Freya.
But now...
Being defeated only means that he is weak and his strength has been completely taken away?
An idea came to his mind.
Probably, most first-rate adventurers would have similar questions, right?
...Is your strength the result of your own training, or is it bestowed by the gods?
The gods said over and over again that God's grace only guides the possibilities of mankind, and every bit of training the adventurer undergoes turns into experience to help the adventurer grow.
Ota had wanted to believe this.
but……
In essence, is it that human training becomes the nourishment for growth, or is it that human training is sensed by the gods, who then grant humans power and disguise it as human training?
First of all, the gods came to the world for unknown pleasures, and in theory they should not interfere with the growth of human beings.
But there is only one question that cannot be explained -
Upgrade, great achievement.
We exhausted all our strength to defeat the enemy, who was seriously injured and escaped with difficulty.
Use all your strength to kill the enemy.
The difference between these two possibilities may only be the landing point of the final blow. The various strategies and mental states of the parties involved in the battle may be exactly the same. In the battle to defeat the opponent, the parties involved may even be more attentive and selfless.
——But defeating an enemy who is only slightly stronger than you cannot be considered a great achievement for advancement.
Killing an enemy who is only slightly stronger than you is enough to be considered a great achievement for advancement.
This is definitely not the case that 'human training leads to human potential'. There is not much difference in the growth of the parties involved between defeating an opponent and killing an opponent.
This is more like "some subjective factor" that people prefer to see rivers of blood rather than a fight between the two sides where there is no chance of life or death.
In the past, Ota had tried to convince himself that this might not be a problem with the gods.
——There are other suspects, the dungeon.
Perhaps the factors involved in level upgrading are more complicated, or perhaps it is the agreement between the gods and the dungeon that means that the grace of God can only be unfolded in this way, and only by depriving the dungeon monsters of their lives can the road to promotion be opened.
But this speculation was rejected by him several years ago.
The reason is simple.
——The reason he was promoted to level 7 was not because of the monsters in the dungeon, but because of the adventurers of Zeus’ clan.
The fight between adventurers and monsters can only be accomplished with death as the ending. This forced change can only be blamed on the dungeon.
The fight between adventurers can only end with death to accomplish the great cause. If you blame the dungeon, the dungeon is too innocent.
...Ota once suspected that the reason why the lv7 of Zeus's family fought against him and died in his hands was not to allow him to upgrade to lv7, but to tell him that adventurers also need to take each other's lives in order to complete the upgrade.
In the battle between adventurers, who was so satisfied that he decided that this battle ending in death was qualified to be the great achievement for the winner to upgrade?
Are there any other options besides gods?