No longer a slave... Maybe

It had officially been one year since Eric had been sent to hell and become a slave. During the time between now and when he cut off asies hand a few things had happened. one, he has gone from energy gathering stage 1 to stage 3, two, the bestial set now included a high-quality pair of suit-like pants and shoes. Three, the camp had become a proper outpost. And lastly, Eric was now known as the beast killer and the crazy battle maniac, the reason for the beast killer title was that he would regularly go out into the forest and come back carrying the bodies of several dangerous monsters and beasts. And the crazy battle maniac title was because he would accept any fight, even if he knew he would lose.

During his stay at the outpost, he has fought almost everyone here be it foot soldiers, captains, and even some low-ranking generals. He had only managed to win against the foot shoulders and a newly promoted captain, in every other fight he had been sent to the medbay with varying degrees of injury. This was because every time someone went up in rank, such as going from energy gathering to foundation building, there was a qualitative change in their energy, while this still happened when going up in minor realms is as much lesser than going up in a major realm, and every realm further the change was more and more.

Eric was only able to beat people in the higher stages of energy gathering because of his monstrous body and a vast quantity of spells. His status currently looked like this.

{name: Eric

Gifts:Potential, adaptation

Realm: energy gathering 3/9

Powers: energy refinement lv3, physical refinement lv3, passive growth lv3

Skills:

enhanced intellect lv5, rapid learning lv5, black magic(Journeyman), sacrificial magic(Journeyman), puppet control lv2, soul magic(intermediate), multi-minded lv2, body magic(intermediate) life/trade skills(intermediate), combat mastery lv2, weapon mastery lv2, bestial fighting(self-made), appraisal(self-made),

Energy: demonic/mana

Equipment: flesh seed(growth type), bestial set (4/4, coat, gloves, pants, shoes, growth type)

Stats: (currently healing)

Strength:300

Agility:300

Perception:300

Intelligence:300

Constitution: 300

Ep: 22,500 (15%)}

A few things had changed, the levels were due to his appraisal skill, a skill he had made by refining his eyes to be able to 'see' the traits of things, combat, and weapon mastery were gained because of his constant fighting, all they did was make it easier to learn and use different fighting styles and weapons. Bestial fighting was the fighting style he had made and used before he even came to hell, it only became a skill after he gained combat mastery. It appeared that his stat cap go up by one hundred for every realm he went up, and his energy cap would go up by 7,500 for every realm, His powers also went up in a level for every realm due to being directly related to his core and how it was made.

The {currently healing} part of his status was due to appraisal and because he just got out of a fight with one of the captains, hence his energy being at 15%. Currently, he was talking to one of the generals of the outpost while healing in the med bay, "Eric, as you may know, it has been one year since you first came here, normally this would be when a slave is moved to a new department or colony to suit their skills. You, however, are an exception, most underworlds have an academy used to train promising talents from across their respective underworld. Normally this would include nobility and various geniuses. however, a slave has never been expected in the history of this underworld, you will be the first.

Due to your immense talent for combat and various magic's, you will be sent to the academy as one of the talent slots that the military has, if you properly graduate you will be granted freedom and will no longer be a slave, if you don't, you will be sent to one of the front lines on earth, you old home world, And most likely die. there is no choice, once you are healed pack your things, we're leaving tomorrow."

Eric just looked up at the general and said one word "Cool." before looking back at his hands as he practiced various magics. After finishing his job the general just left, he wouldn't even fight or argue with Eric as he was known to be extremely annoying to fight against purely due to the way he fought. Looking back down at his hands Eric was currently playing with some of the souls he had collected.

Most of his skills could level up just by using them or with practice or doing certain things, there were only 4 exceptions to this, rapid learning, encased intellect, puppet control, and multi-minded. Rapid learning and enhanced intellect would level up once his soul strength reached a certain point, at their current level, one of his intelligence points was roughly worth 2.5 times a normal person's and he learned about 3 times faster than he would without rapid learning.

He could strengthen his soul by actively absorbing and refining the souls that he had collected. However, puppet control and multi-minded needed souls directly put into them to level up. The benefits of leveling up rapid learning and enhanced intellect were obvious while the benefits of leveling up puppet control and multi-minded were more obscure.

By leveling up puppet control he could control more puppets and have a deeper connection to them, leveling up multi-minded on the other hand would give him more minds and would strengthen them at the same time. The reason that he had straightened his soul so much compared to upgrading the other skills was that he could level up both skills by straightening his soul while he could only level up one of the other skills at a time by adding souls to it.

He just went for efficiency in this case and continued to upgrade his soul, plus his soul getting stronger had various other benefits anyway. If he had an access amount of souls at one time he would use some to upgrade puppet control and multi-minded but otherwise, he would leave them alone unless needed.

The reason he was playing with some souls was because he was trying to make a skill similar to his physical and energy refinement, the way it would work was it would passively refine souls for his souls to absorb while also refining his soul at the same time. The way energy refinement worked was it would use the energy absorbed by his passive absorption to refine the already existing energy and physical refinement would use said refined energy to refine his body, these only worked when he was at max capacity for energy though.

His plan for refining his soul was to make a fire out of the souls he currently had and use it to refine the souls he would collect later, allowing him to passively strengthen his soul so long as he had some souls collected.