Repair time

Ignoring the pain surging through his body, Kai reached out and softly shook Cecilia's shoulder. When she didn't wake up after the first attempt, he leaned a little closer and whispered:

"Cecilia."

Cecilia's eyelids trembled as they slowly began to open, her green eyes looking like the most beautiful of gemstones. Kai has forgotten how close they were in favour of admiring the sight before him.

Once her eyes were open and Cecilia has remembered where she was, she panicked a little as she scrambled up. She looked down and softly felt Kai's arm, where she had been resting her head, for any other damage. She really hadn't meant to fall asleep there.

Once she was sure that Kai's arm hadn't suffered from being used as a pillow, she relaxed a little.

"Sir, you are awake."

Kai nodded.

"I am... How long has it been though?"

Cecilia shifted slightly.

"A little over five days."

She then paused before asking:

"...How are you feeling?"

Kai sighed softly. He had been passed out for over five days, a new personal record by a mile.

As for how he was feeling?

"Shit... I feel like shit."

Both mentally and physically, Kai felt the worst he had ever felt.

He had thought that getting to the teleporter would be the end of their troubles, but in reality it was only the halfway point. Now they had an even more treacherous journey to take on, traversing a blizzard infested with unforseen horrors and climbing an extremely steep mountain.

And all of this has to be done within five months.

Great.

Cecilia remained silent, reaching out and softly tracing a finger over one of the many bruises on Kai's body. She herself had a pained expression on her face, like she was feeling guilty.

"I'm sorry if you are feeling any pain, but I've already given you your HP potions for the day, so you will have to wait to get them."

Kai let out a pained sigh.

"That's fine."

He then looked around the tent. It wasn't a spacious area, but Kai already knew that it hadn't been chosen for comfort, it probably had some sort of camouflaging or scent covering feature, hence the white colour.

The lantern beside Petunia didn't seem to be giving out much heat either, so Kai assumed that it was mainly used for another feature as well.

And the pads attached to him were presumably healing items or just items that healed bruises specifically, if rather slowly.

All of these were things that Cecilia had ransacked from the treasury of the castle while Kai had been distracting Ezekial.

Curiously, Kai glanced down at the ring on her finger.

"Is there anything useful in there?"

Cecilia paused for a moment before softly shaking her head.

"There is a large amount of potions, things that can be sold for Units and other things that can be used for utility, but all of the important items Anastasia kept on herself as she didn't trust the treasury."

Kai inwardly cursed.

So all of the valuable things had been lost back in that city, while they had ended up with mostly useless things.

Still, some of them could have some niche uses that could come in handy in the future, so Kai wouldn't write them off just yet.

While Kai was in thought, Cecilia was internally struggling. She wanted to ask something of him, but she wasn't sure if it was her place to, he has gotten injured for them after all.

But they would probably struggle even more if she didn't ask.

Plus, he had always been trying to make her see him as more of an equal rather than a Lord, so maybe...

"Do you..." Cecilia licked her lips nervously before continuing. "Think that you would be able to cover us all in your flames?"

Even Kai had noticed that it was rather cold in the tent, and he was the one who was the highest level and had the most protection against it, then it would probably be Petunia since she was still wearing his tunic.

But Cecilia, she was probably freezing, she was still wearing a rather tame dress after all.

Kai grimaced in response to the question. The system had advised him to not use any soul based skills for at least a month, and he wasn't exactly big on the idea of accidently killing himself by doing so.

"I don't think I can."

Cecilia's shoulders dropped, making Kai quickly continue speaking.

"Becase of one of the skills I used, my soul is broken, so I need some time to repair it before I can used any soul based skill, so it will take a little while. Is there no lanterns or candles in your ring?"

Cecilia's eyes widened as she began to panic once more, her eyes darted down to the ring, like she was looking for something.

"Your soul is broken? I had no idea. I don't think I have anything that can fix that... Oh no, what will I-"

Kai cut her off by slowly raising his hand up.

"Why are you so worried?"

Cecilia blinked.

"Because your soul is leaking, is it not?"

Kai nodded.

"It is."

Cecilia stared at him blankly.

"Then why are you not worried?"

Kai shrugged, instantly regretting the action because of the pain it brought.

"I can just fix it, it will take me a while though."

Cecilia blinked again.

"Fix... it?"

Now it was Kai's turn to blink.

"Fix it, yeah, I have a skill that let's me fix my own soul. Actually, I don't know is it limited to my own soul, haven't exactly tested it much."

After he finished speaking, Kai noticed that Cecilia was looking at him rather strangely, even stranger than the way she would normally gaze at him. Normally, it would be a kind look, even if it contained a little fear, but now it was a look of... awe?

"You can fix your own soul?"

Kai slowly nodded.

"Yeah... is it an uncommon ability or something?"

Cecilia shook her head, a smile on her face.

"No, its quite common actually, but only if you're a God. For a normal being, any sort of damage to the soul can be crippling, only God's can repair it after all."

Huh...

Kai nodded along to Cecilia's words. In all honesty, repairing his soul didn't seem that special. It seemed like an ability a bunch of people should have, considering everyone after level 50 formed their Soul Core.

But it was then that Kai remembered how he was able to repair his soul in the first place.

Soulcery

It was an extinct skill which had been gifted to him by The Ever-changing, meaning if he hadn't met that God he most certainly would not have been able to repair his soul. It also meant that God's had a means to repair souls using a method other than Soulcery, but Kai was more focused on that skill.

Since it was so rare did it mean that only he and his Master possessed it, or had his Master also gifted it to any other apprentices that they had... if they had any other ones.

"Okay... Cecilia, do you mind if you just stay quiet for a little while? I don't mean this in a mean way, but I really don't feel good and would rather have silence when doing this."

Cecilia quickly nodded her head.

"Of course, Sir."

Kai took a deep breath and closed his eyes, focusing on his soul.

Even after all this time, it was still an incredible sight. The glow of his Stat Sparks had dulled by quite a lot, but they would eventually return back to normal, same with the seed in his soul.

With the help of his Bloodline, Kai was able to tell which cracks in his soul would cause the most problems if left untouched, so those were the ones that he would have to focus on first.

But as soon as he went to repair the cracks, he realised that there was a problem.

Soulcery wasn't working like how he remembered it.

Back when Failure had been possessing him and he had to constantly repair his soul to keep it from falling apart, Kai had been able to repair a single crack in a few seconds, maybe a little more depending on how bad the damage was.

But now... now it took Kai about five minutes just to repair a single crack.

Meaning there was two answers. Soulcery scaled on a stat that he gained a ton of when Failure had been possessing him, or...

Soulcery relied on the state of his soul.

Kai would much rather it be the former option, considering the latter seemed way too stupid. A skill that was made to repair souls got worse the more damaged his own soul was, that was rather dumb.

Or maybe it wasn't. Kai only knew that Soulcery repaired his soul because that was all he had done with it, who knew what other uses it had that he wasn't making use of?

Like, maybe the skill was made to repair other people's souls, that's why it scaled with Kai's own soul.

Or maybe repairing skills was only one feature of it, who said that it was limited to only repairing?

After all, it had combined with Soul Manipulation in the past so who knew what the skill was capable of?

These were all questions that Kai would have to answer eventually, but for now he had to focus on repairing as much of his soul as possible.