About damn time

Skill Selection obtained

Please select 1 of the following 3 skills

It was a familiar message, one that Kai had seen multiple times, and yet he couldn't help but feel giddy each time he saw it.

The last skill he got was Soul Memorial, and that skill had turned out to be incredible, so he felt that it would be a little hard for this selection to top it.

Still, the only way to know was by looking at the skills.

And the first skill was... interesting, to say the least.

Soul Implosion (Legendary):

Learning from long forgotten murals, the progenitor of Statshifting learned how to become a living supernova. This skill allows the user to supercharge their soul with Soul Inferno with increased efficiency. The effects of the explosion will be amplified by 100% and can be boosted even further based on the user's Will stat. The user will be severely weakened after using this skill.

Kai blinked.

Did the system really like watching himself blow up that much?

However, despite the rarity, after looking over the description of the skill, Kai felt that it was a little... lacking.

Sure the power of the explosion was boosted by a crap ton, and if he wanted to he could switch all of his stats into Will before using it and make the attack even stronger, but the fact he would be severely weakened after it?

Severely was a pretty strong word. And even after supercharging his soul himself, which the effect was still really powerful considering that it had killed some beasts that were a higher level than him, the drawback was already him being out of commission for three hours.

He didn't even want to imagine what his soul would look like if it was severely injured. Honestly, if he had to guess, he would imagine that it would be in an even worse state than it was after escaping the city.

And it's not like he really needed a skill to blow himself up. He could already do it semi efficiently. Even if the actual explosion wasn't that strong, it wouldn't be an ability that he would be using often.

Right now, Kai had a terrible way of fighting. He was always weakened after every fight, which was something that would be detrimental to him in the future.

So he had to get better at fighting without harming himself in the process.

So that meant he would have to focus on his fusion with Umbra and sword fighting. Things like Ignition and blowing himself up would be put on hold for the foreseeable future, unless they ended up fighting some incredibly strong enemy.

The second skill offered was interesting, but pretty useless. It could sharpen one of his senses in exchange of weakening his other four. It seemed kind of useful, but not the type of skill he would want.

Looking down at the final skill, Kai-

Grinned happily.

It's about damn time.

Despite the fact that the final skill was of common rarity, despite the fact that the effect of the skill was pretty useless, Kai knew that this was by far the best option.

Lesser Sword Mastery (Common):

Grants the wielder a 1.1× damage increase when wielding sword type weapons.

He already had Lesser Dagger Mastery, but that skill ended up being completely useless considering the fact that Kai hadn't even held a dagger in months.

They just weren't efficient. They were much too short, and Kai didn't exactly have the skill set of an assassin, meaning he wouldn't be able to take full advantage of the skill.

But a sword, however, Kai did use a sword.

Even though he was still below average at wielding one, this skill would help level the playing field a little.

He had been trained by Ezekial for a month, so he knew most of the basics, but that didn't make him a good fighter.

Even though he had been in a variety of fights over the course of the last year and a bit, Kai sadly had to admit that not a single one of his fights had been won by skill.

All of them had been won by raw strength. No sort of finesse was involved, neither was any sort of cunning or tactical planning.

Well, except for his fight against Ezekial, that had some planning involved, but it was mainly just him getting lucky in a variety of circumstances.

But getting back on topic, Kai was over the moon with the skill he had been offered.

Sure the multiplier wasn't much, but extra damage was good damage. There was also the possibility that Esurient would be able to deal extra damage while levitating and in Kai's hand, so that would be a great bonus.

So now, Kai knew how the rest of this journey was going to pan out, for the most part.

He was going to level up Umbra, practice his Statshifting and Mana manipulation, and finally, he would properly learn how to wield a sword.

Even if it would be kind of difficult to self teach himself, but Kai was sure it would somehow work out in the end.

Skill obtained

Lesser Sword Mastery (Common)

Happy with his new skill, Kai looked up at the roof of the tent and grinned.

Ahh, how nice it would be to relax then and there.

Sadly, there was no rest for the wicked as Kai still had to get rid of the throbbing pain in his chest. Repairing his soul would take priority over sleep, and he still also had to venture out of the tent every hour so he could go use Soul Memorial on all of the corpses.

There had been dozens when he fought them, but he wouldn't be surprise if some of the bodies had been utterly annihilated by the explosion he had created, so there may be a few less than originally.

But stats were still stats, all of them were welcome.

So that was what Kai did for the next hour. He diligently repaired the cracks in his soul, nibbling away at various pieces of food created by the wooden box.

One by one, the amount of cracks diminished, the vibrant orb slowly returning back to its usual state.

After an hour had passed, Kai left the tent and spent a minute walking carefully around until he stumbled upon a corpse.

Then, he used Soul Memorial.

The fight went about as expected. He used all of his boosts, selected the preset which made all of his stats equal and let loose an Equilibrium.

Then, he was greeted by a lovely notification.

+12 Strength and +7 Constitution.

Nodding his head in approval, Kai went back in the tent and got back to repairing his soul.

That was how he passed the hours. He would carefully restore his soul back to its former glory during the time his skill was on cooldown, then he would go out and rematch one of the many invisible corpses.

However, after the second fight, Kai decided to switch it up.

Instead of one shotting the invisible monster using Equilibrium, Kai fought it only using Esurient.

And to make it even harder on himself, he didn't even use Ezekial's stored soul, he fought using only his own sword fighting abilities.

It didn't go well, to say the least.

The first fight he was completely overwhelmed. He hadn't wanted to, but he activated Soul Inferno and split the bonus stats evenly between Strength and Dexterity.

That evened the playing field a little, but Kai was still losing.

It was then that he had to admit that he was wrong.

He had believed that after his training with Ezekial that he could be considered alright when wielding a sword, but that was far from the truth.

In fact, he was still completely useless.

Even though he didn't flinch anymore when getting attacked, all of his attacks were off by a few centimetres, rendering them useless.

In fact, Kai even had to make use of the ability Chrome Skin possessed, nullifying half of the damage received after the remnant of the Forgotten Husk landed one incredibly strong attack on him.

Kai's form was sloppy. His footwork was nowhere to be found. His form was non-existent.

These were all things that he would have to overcome during the next few months.

After about five minutes of fighting, Kai finally managed to kill the shadow husk after he ended up landing a solid blow on its invisible shoulder. That attack ended up stunning it for long enough for him to be able to thrust his shadow blade directly through its soul.

Luckily, since he wasn't actually wielding Esurient was just holding a shadow version of his trusty blade, he didn't have to worry about storing the soul of these Forgotten Husks, meaning he could stab them through the soul all he wanted.

And get greeted with the exact same message every time.

+12 Strength and +7 Constitution

And so, without any rest, that was what Kai continued to do for the rest of the night.