Skill fusion

Lesser Identify

A skill that Kai had only used twice throughout his whole journey in the tutorial, the first time being when fighting Umbra and that other wolf, and the second time being when fighting Creepy and Beefcake.

After those encounters, the skill had quickly become useless. Nearly all the moon beasts were too high of a level for the skill to work, and the same could be said about the abominations, Failure, Aldred and the Demon.

Now, Kai was level 31, meaning he would be able to use the skill on everyone else that was in a tutorial, but what about in the outside world?

Appearances were definitely going to be deceiving, and Kai would much rather not end up thinking that someone was weak when they were really super strong and could kill him a by flicking him with their finger.

So what skill could Kai fuse with Lesser Identify to have the skill rise in the ranks of his arsenal?

Soul Sense, of course.

If Kai were to combine a skill that allowed him to see the levels of beings with a skill that allowed him to see the souls of beings... Well, he wasn't actually sure, but it was bound to be something good.

But before that, Kai decided to look at the description of both the skills so he would be able to tell what changed after the fusion.

[Lesser Identify (Common)]

Allows the user to view the level of anyone below their level or up to 5 levels above their own depending on their Luck stat. Costs 10 mana per use.

Looking back on it, maybe it was a good thing that the skill was so useless. A whole 10 Mana, especially early on, was definitely not cheap. Even now when Kai had over 1000 Mana, it was still pricy.

Kai said a small prayer that the fusion would lower the cost while simultaneously doing something about the level cap of the skill before looking at the description of Soul Sense.

[Soul Sense (Rare)]

A soul is one's being, peering at one's soul could definitely be considered perverted. This is a passive type skill. Allows the user to perceive the souls of sentient beings. Grants the user a slight affinity to souls.

Kai was still a little bitter that his own skill was calling him perverted, how could it be considered perverted if it had saved his life on numerous occasions? That made no logical sense.

Still, he could only sigh and say another prayer that that line was taken out after fusing those two skills.

Summoning the Rare Skill Fusion Bead from his soul, Kai was a little surprise to see that the bead was actually purple and not the blue that he was expecting, considering that it was a Rare skill fusion item.

"Why did you have to make it so complicated? It's an item for fusing Rare skills, but the item itself it Epic rarity. Make that make sense."

The cat simply shrugged in response.

"Don't give out to me for that, I'm just the seller. Blame the creator for their strange choices."

Sighing, Kai gave up and done as the description told him. Popping the bead into his mouth, he repeated Lesser Identify and Soul Sense in his mind before biting down on it.

After the bead was crushed by his teeth, Kai felt a rush of energy shoot through his body. Nothing was happening externally, yet Kai could feel something shift within his soul because of the high affinity he had with it.

To his surprise, the process took less than 3 seconds, and the description of the newly upgraded skill was already before Kai's eyes.

[Soul Sense (Epic)]

It seemed that the fusion had decided to keep the name of the higher rarity skill, just it upgraded the rarity in the process.

But that wasn't the main change, Kai was more so focused on whether the skill was still calling him perverted or not.

A soul is one's being, peering at one's soul could definitely be considered perverted. Allows the user to perceive the souls of sentient beings. The user is able to perceive the Stat Sparks, an original concept created by the progenitor of Statshifting, and level of the beings who's soul they attempt to perceive. There is no limit for the act of perceiving souls, but the difficulty of viewing the beings level and Stat Sparks relies on the strength of the users own soul.

Kai inwardly groaned, accepting defeat.

It seemed that he was destined to be called perverted for looking at people's souls, which was a shame as it was probably something that he would be doing quite a lot in the future considering how versatile the upgrade was.

But being able to see their Stat Sparks? Kai hadn't really thought of a name for the little dots he saw in his soul, but Stat Sparks were definitely a fitting title considering how the dots resembled mini flames.

And the upgrade was definitely useful, it completetly removed the level cap that Lesser Identify was restricted by and replaced it with the strength of Kai's soul being the limit.

But that left Kai with another question, how strong was his own soul? His bloodline gave him an in depth knowledge to the working of souls and a twenty percent boost to all soul related abilities, and this new Soul Sense was based on the strength of his soul. Did that mean this skill had a 20% higher chance to succeed?

There was also the fact that Kai had a C-ranked Soul Core, meaning he would be able to identify and see the Stat Sparks of anyone with a C-ranked Soul Core and below.

But with the help of that twenty percent, would he be able to see the Stat Sparks and the level of someone who had a B-ranked Soul Core?

Sadly, there was no suitable test subject for the job-

A sly grin etched its way onto Kai's face as he turned to face a white cat who was currently cleaning itself for the umpteenth time.

God's had magnificent abilities and all that, so surely they should be able to adjust their power level, right?

"Oh humble shopkeeper, I'm asking for your permission this time by the way, would you be able to adjust your power to about that of something with a C-ranked Soul Core and let me use my skill again, please?"

The cat's eyebrows furrowed slightly as it turned around to look at Kai. They looked as if they were about to reject the idea, but ended up sighing and saying:

"Fine, go ahead, think of it as an apology for not warning you about the pain of the Mana Vein Enhancement."

Grinning, Kai activated his newly upgraded Soul Sense and...

Was even more in awe of what he saw.

The cat's soul... was one of the most beautiful things Kai had ever seen.

The angel and that form The Ever-changing had taken on in their first meeting, they could be considered externally beautiful, but that was more of a lustful beauty than a true beauty.

But this cat's soul... The body of its soul was a lustrous white and its radiance was dazzling, just the outside of the soul itself resembled purity and innocence.

...Which was something that Kai thought was rather unfitting for the cat.

But inside the soul also had Kai in awe. The Stat Sparks in Kai's soul were still really small as he didn't really have a lot of stats, but the Stat Sparks in the cat's soul were much, much larger.

And while Kai could see the Stat Sparks, he couldn't make out the exact number in that certain stat, he could only tell what stat had the most stat points.

And the inside of the cat's soul was nearly entirely a deep green that reminded Kai of the shade of money, meaning the cat's Constitution stat was much higher than all of its other ones.

"Wow..." Kai mumbled, forgetting where he was for a moment.

Meanwhile, the cat just sat there uncomfortably, it could tell that Kai was using some sort of Identify skill, but it couldn't tell exactly what it was.

"Okay" Kai said after snapping out of his trance. "Can you increase it to the power of a B-ranked Soul Core?"

Curious as to what the boy was actually trying to do, the cat done as it was asked and unleashed some more of its power.

Kai watched as the Stat Sparks inside the cat's soul started to compact on themselves. It was a little strange, but Kai understood what was going on from the knowledge given by his bloodline.

Forming an E-ranked Soul Core in a tutorial was already an incredible feat, something that not many should be able to do.

But exiting a tutorial with a C-ranked Soul Core, that must have been practically unheard of.

So what was happening now was that while the cat was adjusting its Soul Core, it was also adjusting its level.

And at some point along the leveling journey, Kai's soul would experience the same thing.

His stats would compact, the stat itself would remain the same, just the Stat Spark would shrink in order to fit more stats in the future.

And after the process was complete, the Stat Sparks in the cat's body were shining even more brightly, only now the inside of their soul was only three quarters green.

The rest was made up by a mix of violet, yellow, white and gold, meaning the cat had close to no physical stats.

The shine on the soul had also gotten much brighter and much more alluring, almost making Kai forget how to breathe.

"Okay" Kai said as he licked his lips, his eyes starting to sting from not blinking. "Can you increase it to A-rank?"

"Fine" The cat sighed. "But this is the last one."

And like that, Kai watched the cat's Stat Sparks disappear and was left with only their radiant soul.

A-rank was the limit of what Kai could perceive.

But that was also incredible, that meant that Kai could see the levels of beings with a B-rank soul and below.

"Say" Kai began speaking innocently after deactivating the skill, still a little awestruck. "What's the average level for someone to have an A-ranked Soul Core?"

The cat looked up thoughtfully for a few moments before answering.

"It depends on their skillset, some could have an A-ranked soul by level one hundred and fifty, while it could take longer for some.

The process is easy though, every fifty levels your Soul Core Upgrades by itself, meaning everything has a guaranteed A-rank Soul Core by level two hundred and fifty.

Kai sucked in a shallow breath. That meant that he could see the level and Stat Sparks of beings up to a maximum level of 250. There was obviously going to be the odd time he was unlucky and the thing he was trying to identify had an A-rank Soul Core at a lower level than that, but the skill was already incredible now.

And that also meant that Kai's current Soul Core rank was that of someone who was 150, meanwhile he was level 31.

"Thank you very much for helping me." Kai said softly, his head still spinning from a mix of the lingering pain and all that information.

"Don't worry about it, I don't even really know what you did to be honest."

Kai chuckled softly in response before looking at how long was left in the tutorial shop.

Time Remaining - 9:34:21

A little under ten minutes, meaning Kai still had some time to go over some of his new purchases.

After taking a small break, Kai summoned the next of the items he was going to use.