Swordsmanship

Kai grunted as he deflected an attack aimed at his head using the body of Esurient.

By now, he had gotten slightly more accustomed to wielding the Ruby blade.

After going through multiple battles, Kai had gotten a little better at sword fighting.

Even though he no longer had a proper teacher, he was at least developing his skills.

And that was evident in this fight.

Especially since he wasn't using Soul Inferno, he was fighting this particular Forgotten Husk using only his sword and the occasional burst of strength using Mana Surge.

After deflecting that blow, Kai retaliated by twisting his body and slicing Esurient at the invisible beast's left side.

Unluckily, since he wasn't able to make out where the Husk's actual body was, Kai ended up missing.

It didn't make a difference though as he managed to execute nice grip switch and end up bringing his trusty blade back down on the beast.

This time, he actually managed to hit it.

Another bloodcurdling scream infiltrated his ears, threatening to make him lose his focus, but he had been listening to those cries practically non-stop for the last day so they hardly affected him anymore.

Finally, after fighting this Forgotten Husk for a little over three minutes, Kai managed to finish it off by thrusting his shadow blade through the soul of the beast.

The next thing he knew, he was back in the cave, embraced by the chilling cold once more.

Kai shivered slightly.

He glanced around the cave, looking at all the markings he had left.

Due to the fact that he couldn't actually see the corpses of the Forgotten Husks, he had been smart by leaving a little mark beside the ones he already used Soul Memorial on, meaning he wouldn't accidently stumble upon the same corpse.

But now it was getting harder and to find new bodies, meaning the explosion he had created had been a little stronger than he expected and ended up incineration more bodies than he had hoped.

Of course, its not like the Husks were that physically strong, they mainly specialised in their invisibility and sneak attacks.

That didn't mean they were actually weak though, they still managed to do a number on him.

Kai sighed and turned back to the tent.

It was nearly time to move out, they had spent a little over twenty hours here.

In that time, Kai had managed to fully repair his soul and get over the backlash of using Ignition. He had also found eighteen invisible corpses, excluding the two he first fought going all out, the other sixteen he fought trying to only use shadow Esurient.

And because he of all those fights, he managed to gain another 216 Strength and 126 Constitution.

A nice amount of stats, which would also just be Statshifted into any stat he wanted if he just put some time into it, but Kai was fine with his current stat allocation for now.

What he was a little less fine with was the fact that after that final fight, a new notification rang in his mind.

[Lesser Sword Master (Common)] -> [Minor Sword Mastery (Uncommon)]

Kai grinned.

He had gotten that skill less than a day ago and it had already upgraded.

Why couldn't every skill just be like that?

Still, it gave him a little hope. Maybe he wasn't as useless with a sword as he originally believed. If the system thought he deserved to upgrade the skill already then maybe he did posses a minor mastery of the blade.

Kai grinned to himself as he shared up at the roof of the cave before opening his Status to see how exactly the skill had upgraded.

Grants the wielder 1.2× damage when wielding sword type weapons. When wielding a sword, wielders Sword Styles damage is increased by 2%.

It wasn't exactly a big upgrade, but a good one nonetheless. It just meant that Kai would do extra damage when wielding a sword.

And who didn't like extra damage?

Kai certainly did.

Happily making his way back to the tent, Kai decided that he could afford to treat the group today and give them another few hours rest, it would be more detrimental than useful if they kept marching without getting the proper amount of rest.

It wasn't that Kai just wanted to sleep for a while, absolutely not.

Humming to himself, after opening the tent Kai was greeted by the sight of everyone else fast asleep.

Which was a good thing as it meant he could just go to sleep without anyone else noticing.

Crawling into the tent, Kai made his way over to where Cecilia was and rested his head on the very edge of the pillow. She already had the blanket covering her, so he didn't want to accidently wake her up by moving it so he decided to sacrifice it for the night and sleep without it.

So, with a soft smile on his face, Kai ended up falling asleep.

After a few minutes had passed, and another few minutes of making sure that he was actually asleep, Cecilia slowly sat up and glanced down at the sleeping Kai.

She then tenderly adjusted the pillow so that a little more of it was under his head before placing half of the blanket over him.

And after making sure he was nice and tucked into bed, Cecilia smiled to herself and went back to sleep.

*****

And just like that, another two weeks passed.

The blizzard surrounding them slowly got stronger and stronger. By now, even Kai was beginning to notice its effects.

And it wasn't just the blizzard that was getting stronger, it was also the monsters they encountered.

Each one had been enough to put the groups life at risk, but luckily, unlike the swarm of Forgotten Husks where they had accidently walked into their lair unknowingly, Kai had been making more use of Soul Sense to see if there was anything on the path ahead of them.

It was a good thing that he had as they had managed to avoid a couple of fights with creatures over level 70 in the process.

In fact, because he had constantly been on the lookout, Kai only ended up having to fight only one singular creature.

Seven days after leaving the cave, they ended up encountering a rhino bear that had been sleeping in the middle of the path. Unable to go around it due to its size, Kai ended up having to fight it.

He started off the fight by throwing balls of flame at it while Esurient went close and slashed its eyes, blinding it.

Sadly, the beast ended up being an evolved form of the average rhino bear and actually possessed some form of blizzard sense so it was still able to tell where Kai was even after being blinded.

That fight had taken a while, but in the end Kai emerged victories, even though he had to make use of the main ability of Chrome Skin and chug a few health potions after the fight.

Luckily, their reserves of the healing potions did not seem to be dwindling in the slightest, neither did their reserves of Mana potions.

However, there was one thing that Kai learned after the fight that actually should have been pretty obvious.

There was a difference between a creature that had evolved and an Evolved beast.

It should have been obvious, considering Umbra had evolved and had not been given a new race name other than the fact her Crescent moon had been replaced by a Quarter moon.

On the other hand, an Evolved beast, like the Depth Dweller or the Veiled of the Dark Side, seemed to posses extra powers, which is what made them so terrifying.

Which meant that the Evolved Winter Serpent that they encountered a few weeks ago would have been even more fearsome if Kai didn't get lucky and end up killing it with its own flames.

Sadly, after the fight with the even stronger rhino bear, Kai did not receive an item.

He did, however, level up, considering that the beast had been level 71, meaning he had reached level 63.

That was how the journey ended up mainly going. There had been a few close calls, but overall the group had gotten pretty lucky with their encounters.

As they continued to scale the Royal Peak, the ground below got further and further away. By now, Kai was barely able to see over the walls of the ruined city and he could roughly make out the widespread destruction that he had caused.

However, whenever he tried to look at it for too long or too intently, the entire city shimmered, almost like how he would shimmer every once in a while when making use of the Veiled of the Dark Side's stored soul.

Kai didn't even want to imagine what sort of horror had taken over the city.

Luckily, he didn't have time to worry about that, because roughly three weeks after completing the first trial...

The group had reached the second trial.