Small respite (247)
Kai leisurely strolled up the path he had been following for the last two weeks. After that whole fiasco with the Forgotten Husks, he had been much more diligent with his use of Soul Sense, but even that couldn't prepare him for what was about to happen.
Behind him, Petunia was riding on Umbra's back, the young child having gotten too tired to climb every day. She was still wearing his tunic, but now she was also making use of the slippers and cloak he had given her. She now looked like a little snow princess.
Cecilia, meanwhile, seemed to be doing much better. She had the Fortified Bodysuit in its actual bodysuit form, only she had changed its colour to black rather than its regular dark white. The coat he had given her was drapped over her body, the snakeskin garment clinging to her comfortable.
Remy was also positioned on top of Umbra, the rat happily clinging onto the large wolf's fur.
And Esurient was stored away, ready to be called upon if anything went down.
That was how well armed and spatially aware the group was, and yet they still had no idea about what was going to happen in a few seconds.
Taking one more step than he was allowed, Kai's foot hit the ground and-
He walked into another invisible wall.
Kai groaned in pain as his he quickly lifted his hands to hold his head. He cursed his luck as he looked in front of them, where the invisible wall is.
"Are you okay, Sir?"
He heard Cecilia's worried voice enter his hears, but he just sighed to himself and responded.
"Yeah... I'm fine, just another damn invisible wall."
And just as he finished that sentence, another voice entered his ears.
Well, not really, considering that the System spoke directly into his brain.
Trial 2 reached
Would you like to challenge Trial 2?
Kai sighed and turned around. He already knew that Cecilia and Petunia had heard the same thing, so he asked:
"You lot ready?"
Petunia didn't really seem to care, as always. She was way too nonchalant for her own good, but that was probably due to the trauma she endured back in the city, which made sense.
Cecilia, however, seemed much more nervous.
"I'm not sure, Sir. I don't feel that we are ready. I mean, we barely survived the last trial, and we only survived because we got lucky.
I think we should at least set up here for a day, rest before we actually challenge anything."
Kai sighed.
Cecilia wasn't wrong. They had gotten very lucky in the last trial, and a bit of rest didn't sound that bad.
Also, it would give him some time to do some things he had to do, just in case anything did go south in the second trial.
He was fully healed, no backlashes currently inflicted on him, his armour had its daily damage negation ready and if he needed to, he had an Equilibrium ready to go.
And yet, Kai couldn't help but feel worried about the second trial.
So that's why he agreed with Cecilia.
"Alright, we'll rest here for a day. Set up the tent and get some food ready, I just want to do something."
After watching Cecilia set up the tent and crawl inside along with Petunia, Kai shook his head and summoned Esurient, giving them a small mission.
After giving the blade some of his Mana so he could turn invisible, and after infusing it with Soul Inferno, Kai sent it off to hunt.
Of course, he hammered into the floating blade that they weren't allowed to challenge anything that looked strong and that they could only challenge weak opponents under level 50.
As for how Esurient was meant to know how a foe was under level 50? Kai had no idea, but the blade said that they could innately tell so he trusted their judgement.
Then, Kai watched as the invisible Esurient went off to go fight.
Ah... the perks of having assistants.
Knowing that Esurient would be fine, Kai crawled inside the tent, took his place in his normal corner and got down to business.
It was time to Statshift.
Right now, he had acquired a lot of stats, an amount that he was rather happy with. He had no idea when the next class selection would be given to him, but he already had an abnormal amount of stats, and that was due to the fact he had absorbed some from the Forgotten Husks and had a Legendary class. There was also the fact he had been given 535 free ones back when he chose this class.
But now it was finally time to assign them to the stats needed. Kai knew that this journey would be perilous, so he had to be careful with his choices. He had to make sure every choice he made was the best one, consider the pros and cons of everything and make sure they made it to the peak safely.
That was his role in all of this.
Kai sighed and shook his head.
They still had another few months left to go of all of this, and yet he couldn't help but feel that it was only going to get worse from here.
Opening his Status and seeing that he had 245 unassigned stat points, Kai quickly put half of them into Strength and the other half into Luck.
After doing that, this was what his stats looked like.
Strength: 644
Dexterity: 544
Constitution: 454
Mana: 505
Stamina: 496
Will: 488
Luck: 694
That was excluding the stats given to him from his items, meaning his stats were much higher than the system displayed.
Overall, he had 3,825 stats, a nice number, basically the same as what was given to him by Soul Inferno and his fusion with Umbra, meaning he could practically triple his stats at any given time and then multiply them even more by using Ignition and Indomitable.
So Kai had to think wisely about where to allocate his stats.
Firstly, the most useless stat was Will. It didn't really have any uses, at least, not that he knew of, so he was fine with lowering that a bit.
Stamina could also be lowered, considering that he got a fair bit of it in his fusion.
In fact, he could practically half all of his stats and it wouldn't make that much of a difference.
It was a tough choice, where to put his stats, but Kai had a rough idea of where to begin.
Strength and Luck.
Strength was important because it was the foundation of his power. Every time he attacked he made use of his Strength, and the more Strength he had, the more damage he would deal, it was simple.
But Luck, Kai had believed Luck to be a fairly useless but niche stat. He had theorised that Luck could potentially have the ability to alter certain things, like back when he was being drowned by the Depth Dweller, how it had decided to bring him right up to its eye and do basically nothing. There was the argument it was just groggy because it might have just woken up, but Kai had no way to confirm nor deny thay.
But now, now was when Luck was beginning to show its use.
He had gotten quite a few items so far on this journey, none of them particularly useful bar the Flame of Hope though, but still, he had received them.
And nearly all of that stemmed down to Luck, which is why he wanted to increase it.
And it wasn't just for the items, it was also because of the fact that half of his Innate Ability relied on it.
It wasn't the exact same as Noelle's one, considering that Noelle was able to disorient Wa'rak that one time when using her Innate Ability, which he would not have been able to do due to the level requirement, so that meant his Innate Ability was like a weaker version of hers.
But then again, his Imnate Ability was more so about the transformation in his opinion, even though he had only touched the surface of what it was capable of.
Like, he had only been in Hobgoblin, Goblin and Wraith Mode. There was also his fusion with Umbra, but even then that was only four forms.
Who knew how many forms he could take on if he used the skill if he attempted to use the skill.
Especially now that he was level 63 and had a much larger reserve of Mana.
He felt that he was still miles away from becoming a dragon or something, but maybe he could manage a Wyvern or something.
Or even just another beast that was kind of cool, like a Phoenix.
That would be a sight, him turning into a Phoenix.
But that was a thought that he would have to focus on later, for now he had to get back to work.
So, now knowing what he had to do, Kai got to Statshifting.