Backlashes

As soon as Kai's eyes began to flutter open...

He wished that they hadn't.

His body was throbbing in pain, like he had just been hit by a truck, ran over by a train, dunked in a vat of boiling oil and then had a marching band perform on his body.

Still, Kai had to open his eyes, so he gritted his teeth and endured the agonising pain.

The first thing he noticed was... the white sky?

He knew that snow was white and all that, but the clouds were more of a gray colour, not normally as white as they looked now.

It was only after looking to his left did Kai realise that what he was looking at wasn't the sky, but the roof of a tent.

To his left he also spotted Remy, Umbra and Petunia all cuddled together beside a lantern. The young girl was clinging to the wolf in an effort to keep herself warm, which wasn't actually working that well considering she was shivering. Umbra seemed to be doing a little better because of all her fur and Remy was sandwiched in between them.

Looking down, Kai saw that his armour had been taken off him and his bodysuit had been peeled down to his waist.

His body did not look good to say the least.

Practically all of it was purple with bruises, some of them even being a dark shade of black. He wasn't sure if bruises were supposed to turn that colour, but they had.

There was also some strange pads stuck to various parts of his torso, and he barely noticed that light liquid they were secreting. It was like a sort of gel, which the bruises seemed to be absorbing.

He still felt like shit though, no doubt about that. It was like he was being sapped of all his energy, like his very being was leaking out of him.

Kai tried to get up, but he was quickly overwhelmed by a wave of agonising pain. Quickly lying back down, he took a minute to compose himself before attempting to move again.

But after he tried to sit up, Kai thought that it felt like something was pinning his arm down, so when he turned his head to the left he-

Blushed ever so slightly.

Cecilia was lying down beside him, her head resting on his injured arm. It didn't really seem like a good idea to use someone's injured arm as a pillow, but she must have been so exhausted that she had accidently fallen asleep.

And Kai couldn't help but noticing that she was shivering too, only unlike Petunia who had a furry wolf to cuddle up to, Cecilia had to make use of the heat of Kai's body, which there wasn't really that much of.

Kai let his body relax, trying to ignore as much of the pain as possible. He closed his eyes, wanting to be moody and sour, but he just couldn't bring himself to do so.

He hadn't lost hope just yet, there was still time to escape, just it was going to be a very small window which didn't leave much room for error.

But Kai was still upset.

Who the fuck had broken the teleporter? It had to have been Anastasia as she was the only one unaccounted for at the time, unless the Plague Harbinger had accidently broken it when pursuing Castillian.

Or could it have been Yelena? Kai still had no idea what her goal was, pretending to be a maid and all that, it was a possibility that it had been her who destroyed their way out, but it was one that he didn't want to believe.

He was in no rush to wake up Cecilia, she probably deserved some rest, considering that Kai had no idea how long he had been out for.

Plus, he had more pressing matters to tend to.

All of the notifications he had received that he never got the chance to look out.

And the first thing he was greeted with was:

You have slain Disharmonied Sword Saint Ezekial.

The Ever-changing has granted you a small boost to your XP gained for that 10/10 performance while simultaneously minorly manipulating 2 of your 4 skill selections.

Level 53 reached.

So Kai had gained 22 levels for killing Ezekial. In all honestly, it didn't really seem like a lot for all the work he put in and all the pain he endured, but it was a lot of levels to get in one go.

Because of that massive level jump, all of Kai's stats gained 110 because of the 5 assigned stat points per level from his class. He also obtained 814 unassigned stat points for all that trouble, which he would probably be using sooner rather than later. 44 of those unassigned stat points came from his Human Bloodline, which was really looking worse and worse the higher level Kai got.

That was more unassigned stat points than he had before fighting Ezekial, so overall Kai had gained 1584 stats overall.

And it also meant that Kai had obtained 4 skill selections, which were bound to help him massively on this horrible journey.

But before he could take a look at those selections... he had to reap what he had sown.

The backlashes.

Grimacing, Kai took a look at his stats. If they were normal, they should look like this:

Strength: 146

Dexterity: 365 (+150)

Constitution: 140 (+250)

Mana: 213 (+12)

Stamina: 315 (+100)

Will: 307

Luck: 395

That's what Kai's stats should look like. The numbers in the brackets came from the stats his bodysuit gave, and the bonus stats in the Mana came from the 6% boost from his Soul Core. The numbers in the bracket weren't actually included in the main number, meaning even though Kai's Stamina read 315, it was actually 415 because of the plus 100. It was the same for all of his other stats as well.

But sadly, that's what his stats would look like if he didn't have to suffer for using all the boosts he had.

And because of the backlash of using Ignition, they actually looked like this:

Strength: 73 (208 hours remaining)

Dexterity: 183 (+150) (208 hours remaining)

Constitution: 70 (+250) (208 hours remaining)

Mana: 107 (+12) (208 hours remaining)

Stamina: 315 (+100) (208 hours remaining)

Will: 158 (208 hours remaining)

Luck: 198 (208 hours remaining)

Kai let out a pained sigh.

It made sense, in exchange for doubling his stats he would have his stats halved.

But that time though... He thought that he had escaped the curse of having to do hour to day based maths, but turns out he was still in its clutches.

After adding 24 in his head over and over again, Kai realised that 208 hours was a little over 8 days.

That seemed like a rather strange amount of days to select as backlash, so that left Kai with another question.

How long had he been passed out for?

Still, he couldn't figure that out as he had another pressing matter to attend to.

What the backlash of touching the seed in his soul and severing a Soul Link would be.

Activating Soul Sense, Kai-

Began instantly panicking because of what he saw.

The entire body of his soul was covered in an enormous amount of cracks. Wisps of his soul were constantly slipping out of them, and the stats in his soul had already been knocked out of position.

If there was any good news to come of the cracks, it's that there was so many it was practically impossible for Kai to have lost any of his stats because they kept getting pulled in every direction.

But that was only a little bit of comfort, the sight before Kai was nothing short of harrowing.

His soul was on the verge of collapse. It was like if he even attempted to use Soul Flame it would shatter and kill him instantly.

And that fact was only further pressed in the form of a warning from the system.

User should refrain from using any soul based skill for at least 1 month.

Kai panicked a little, remembering that Soul Sense was a skill to do with souls, but it seemed like that skill was fine considering that he hadn't dropped dead yet, so the warning was mainly for Soul Flame.

... And if there was any good skill to do with souls offered in his skill selection.

Kai would definitely need to use Soulcery to piece his soul together, but he needed to have both of his hands free to do that. He didn't exactly want to wake up Cecilia just yet, but he didn't really have a choice.

However, just as Kai was about to wake up the sleeping Queen, he caught sight of something that was still in the center of his soul.

An incredibly small brown seed.

It was much, much smaller than the first time Kai had seen it, meaning the seed itself also had some sort of internal cooldown. It was less than half the size it had been that time.

So if Kai's maths was correct, it would be at least a full year before he could use that form again, which was an outrageous amount of time for a cooldown.

But that left Kai with another question. He had used that ability when the seed had only just sprouted, so what would have happened if he let the seed grow even more before using it?

That was something for the distant future, for now, Kai had to worry about repairing his soul.

So with a heavy heart, and a lot of pain, Kai slowly reached out and woke up Cecilia.