28 Journey

[Calculating your Faith in the All-seeing. Calculation complete. Comparing to the average resident in the One World, your Faith stat reaches 0.014. Shown as 0 on your status screen.]

[WARNING: Skills requiring Faith Stat will have negligible effects.]

"What? Did I just get a useless skill?"

"What happened?"

"My Faith stat just got created, and it's only 0.01, so the skill doesn't receive any benefits!"

"Oh… Ah, it's because you're from a different world. You don't have the Faith Stat already. That makes sense… Usually it's a Hunter's biggest stat."

"What's yours?"

"22."

Lorn wanted to curse. He realized something even worse.

"And you basically don't feel the skill's effects?"

"Eh," she shrugged. "I guess it's there."

"Fuck."

"Happens," Sybil patted his head with a smile.

Lorn couldn't help but notice the jeering hint it had.

"You're thinking I deserved it."

"No, no. Of course not," Sybil said, the smile still on her face.

"You have an 'I told you so!' look on your face."

"No! How would I even know what was going to happen?" she said, chortling a bit.

Lorn paused. He took a deep breath and let it all out.

"It's fine…" he said calmly. "You win some, you lose some."

"You'll find a use for it someday."

"Thanks."

Sybil hummed. The giggly mood had departed her. She stared silently at Lorn for a few seconds.

"What?" Lorn couldn't help but ask.

"Nothing."

"You know that'll just make me more curious, right? At least say I have something on my face if you're gonna stare that much."

"No, no. It's just… I just realized that you too lost your cool sometimes."

Lorn tilted his head. And he sneezed.

"I lose my cool all the time," he said, scratching his nose. "I just don't show it so often."

"…"

"I feel it's the same with you. You look like a calm, collected woman all the time, but I'm sure half the time, you're just going: 'What the fuck is going on…' "

"Bah," Sybil smiled amusedly. "You're definitely right."

Bantering endlessly, the two continued on.

The journey was mostly uneventful. They saw no bandits, nor anything dangerous, only a collection of possessed clay dolls. It was a creepy sight, but nothing dangerous. Sybil explained that similar phenomenon occurred often in the wild.

Stray souls of the dead who end up on the ground sometimes gained sentience and turned to clay dolls. They tended to flock together.

The two destroyed them, absorbed their spirits and moved on.

Lorn suddenly felt like an old man, as the sight of bare nature and a lonely path made him endlessly happy for whatever reason. But he supposed it was natural with how rarely he got to see something like this living in the big cities. When was the last time he saw a herd of deer? Even the air smelled better.

With a giddy attitude, he practiced his skills. The rate at which he could level them up became faster thanks to his new Focused Spirit Meditation. It allowed for a much quicker recovery of his spirit. He got to use it a lot as well, because of his abysmally low Spirit stat that got emptied in a second every time he used anything other than Strengthening.

During the short two days, he already got it up to Lv.3. and it even reduced his Spirit consumption by 2% with each level as well.

High on his ever-increasing power, Lorn endlessly practiced. When Strengthening became Lv.5, his Strength and Agility Stats became 3. Always feeling three times stronger than the average person was an addicting feeling. And when he actually used the skill, he would receive a 2.5x and 2x bonus to the two stats. 7.5 times stronger than the average man and 6 times faster.

He really couldn't get why the Hunters here didn't just endlessly practice their skills and spirit.

But his phase of rapid growth was short-lived. As the skills became stronger, the harder they became to level. Aside from the few levels he got on his newly acquired skills, he faced a decline. He didn't give up, though, and still practiced diligently.

Sybil sometimes joined him, but she looked more concerned with her body getting sorer and sorer with every hill they had to climb. She occasionally looked at him like he was an alien, with how addicted he was to practicing. The only thing she truly seemed to enjoy was launching herself to the air with a Gravitational Push.

Lorn would somehow end up practicing that together with her. Acrobatic sense and his Strengthened body helped Lorn a lot to survive these flights. Sybil, of course, helped him soften his falls by throwing heavy boulders to the air. If Lorn used Gravitational Pull on them at the right time, he could fall without issues. The problem was the 'If'. Half the time, Lorn's skills would miss the boulder entirely, and the other half, he would time it all wrong.

During all this, he never felt his Probability Alteration working its magic.

Sybil often teased him, saying that Gravitational Push would've made this whole process much easier. He would just need to push himself off the ground.

Soon enough, they arrived at the gates of Belo city.