After seeing such a large amount of points come to him, he truly began to realize how large of an advantage he had over other people. Being able to see mana truly was a powerful ability. It was to the point that he might’ve been unable to decline Ling’s offer if he had known.
In fact, he might’ve gone out of his way to steal it.
Nonetheless, he had it now, so there was no point in dwelling over it.
The thing he was more curious about was if he could create his own original spell. Granted that he had the ability to see mana, it wasn’t a stretch to say that he would probably be the first to create his own.
Though, those were more like fantasies for now. He could just barely replicate a spell he had seen right now, understanding the actual principles behind it and creating a new one was too far away for him now.
But it wasn’t unreachable.
Kairos cast aside those thoughts for now. He took off his glasses and opened up his status panel as it had been a little while since he last did so.
[Status]
[ID: 345315364923]
[Rank: 11/15000 Evolution Energy – 5000 required for Rankup]
[Objective: Gain 4989 Evolution Energy]
[Proof Of Perfection Points: 250.8]
[Stats –
Strength – 14.9
Endurance – 17.7
Agility – 14.9
Willpower – 14.9
Mana Capacity – 14.9
Magic Affinity – 29.9]
[Special Abilities: Water Spell (E), Alone (E), Pulse Spell (E), Fire Spell (F), Gale Spell (F)]
[Inborn Abilities: Shattered Truth (F)]
[Hide]
Kairos was incredibly tempted to just add points into his stat points right away, but didn’t want to do so right away since they could also be used for the sake of increasing the rank of his abilities.
That was when his eye caught onto his inborn ability, Shattered Truth (F).
He recently found out that he could not only look at the descriptions of his abilities, as well as increase their rank, but did not think to do so for his inborn ability. He simply thought of that ability as a part of him, rather than an actual add-on like the spells, causing him to not group the two.
Kairos was a little surprised that it slipped his mind.
The first thing he did was attempt to bring up the skill description of his inborn ability.
[Shattered Truth (F)]
[______________]
His eyelid twitched when he saw what came up. It wasn’t exactly the most enlightening thing to say the least. With low hopes, he tried to increase the rank of the skill.
[Upgrade Shattered Truth to F+ Rank with 100 points? | Yes/No]
Kairos felt a little strange looking at the text in front of him. Although it was a good thing he could upgrade it with just points, looking at both the amount as well as how little improved gave him a bittersweet feeling.
It definitely wasn’t going to get any cheaper from here, that much was clear.
If Kairos really wanted to invest in his inborn ability, the costs would become staggering very quickly. Although he had just come upon a huge boon, he couldn’t help but still feel quite lacking.
Though it would hurt to invest in his inborn ability, the fact was it had saved his life far too many times, both before and after the apocalypse.
Kairos didn’t doubt that it would be worth it in the long run, though it would slow his stat growth considerably.
There were three main things he wanted to do with his points right now.
The first and most obvious one was to increase his stats, as that was what they were traditionally for. Though, from what he had realized before, there was a direct relationship between his willpower and how easily he could use his future vision. Because of that, his willpower was actually his main priority.
The second one was to increase the rank of his inborn ability. He imagined that the burden on his mind would increase, but if he did increase his willpower, that shouldn’t be too big of a deal.
The third one was actually to increase the rank of his Alone ability. Although he was quite annoyed by the drawback it had, the fact was it basically doubled his magic affinity, and since it used the same amount of mana for double power, it basically doubled his mana capacity too. By putting points into it, the effects would surely increase considerably enough. Going this way would mean he should probably increase his mana capacity as well so that he could make better use of it.
After noting all of that down, Kairos found that he had enough points to go through every single one of those upgrades due to getting a top one hundred achievement.
Though, he would neglect his physical stats in the process.
After a bit of hesitation, he decided to go through with it. His current abilities didn’t really suit a warrior type of combat anyway.
Kairos took a deep breath.
[Upgrade Alone to D Rank with 100 points? | Yes/No]
[Alone (E) – Alone (D) | Points 250.8 – 150.8]
His body tensed up, almost like it was being stretched thin. It was almost like he was hardening to stone, but the fresh pain from his muscles told him that was not the case. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead as a small frown rested on his face.
He didn’t expect there to be physical side effects to upgrading a skill, as the last time when he did so with the pulse spell nothing happened. Kairos thought it over and realized it somewhat made sense considering that his alone ability was more of a passive one, meaning it likely involved his body in some way.
Once the pain eventually subsided, he could feel his body gradually relax.
Then, he checked on the changes.
[Alone (D)]
[If there are no beings within one kilometer that are considered in allegiance with you, all magical spells have their power tripled and resilience to magical backlash is doubled. If not, mana regeneration is reduced by a quarter.
This is a passive skill.]
Kairos couldn’t help but nod after seeing the changes. He was slightly unsure whether or not it was a good idea to blow one hundred points on a single ability, but it was enhanced in so many ways.
The main purpose of it was increased tremendously. Now it tripled his magic affinity. Under normal circumstances, that wouldn’t be the most useful if his body couldn’t bear the stress, but since his resilience to magical backlash would be increased then it wasn’t nearly as bad.
Though, the fact it was only double and not triple was a bit annoying. It was almost like the ability wanted to make him overexert himself to cast stronger spells.
The drawback of the spell decreasing too was also a nice little add-on.
Then, he increased his mana capacity.
[Mana Capacity 14.9 – 29.9 | Points 150.8 – 135.8]
Kairos watched the strands of mana around him suddenly become attracted, getting absorbed into his body. It was a nice refreshing feeling, though there was an elusive resistance that pushed some of the mana away, probably due to his Alone ability.
Kairos then wanted to increase the rank of his inborn ability, but got a little scared. He remembered a while ago some random guy appeared in his dream and forcefully increased the rank. Which was incredibly painful.
He gently pushed Nicole to the side, then got up from the couch. Then, Kairos walked over to the fridge and opened it.
After that, he held his hand to his forehead, before casting the frost spell. It was quite the shaky cast and was very weak, but ice now coated the top of his head.
Then, Kairos increased his willpower.
[Willpower 14.9 – 29.9 | Points 135.8 – 120.8]
The thin layer of frost on his head immediately melted, causing some water to drip down from his hair. Heat very clearly radiated from his head, while his head felt a little dizzy. Without waiting for the hunger to kick in, he began eating whatever he could.
Just when he was beginning to feel full, he felt extreme hunger and continued to eat voraciously. After going through a decent chunk of the food in his fridge, he finally felt normal again.
With a sigh, he closed the fridge.
He couldn’t increase his willpower any further, so this was as prepared as he was going to get. Kairos set his glasses aside, then laid down on one of the large carpets before opening his status panel.
Then, he upgraded the rank of his inborn ability.
[Upgrade Shattered Truth to F+ Rank with 100 points? | Yes/No]
[Shattered Truth (F) – Shattered Truth (F+) | Points 120.8 – 20.8]
At first, it didn’t feel so bad. His eyes felt incredibly itchy and they also hurt. However, it wasn’t anything Kairos couldn’t deal with. However, as time passed, the pain rapidly ramped up.
He reached towards his eyes with his hands, but forced himself to stop, as he knew that pressing against them wouldn’t help his situation. Nonetheless, he instinctively wanted to do just that, and that urge was only increasing by the second.
Kairos pressed his fingers against his eyebrow and other parts of his face just around his eye. The force he used continued to increase, even when the skin was ripped apart.
Not too long after that, he could no longer hold in his voice and began screaming out loud. Originally, he thought that he would’ve been able to keep it in, but that turned out to be a naive thought.
Kairos curled up as he thrashed around. He gradually lost sense of everything around him and wasn’t even sure of what he was doing anymore.
Yet, that wasn’t the end of it. The pain increased even further. By now, the rest of his body had gone numb, and nearly completely lost sensation. At least, that was what Kairos thought was happening. It may very well be that the relative difference between the pain and the normal sensation that made it hard to notice.
Kairos eventually blanked out completely.
By the time he gradually recovered enough to have coherent thought, the first thing that popped into his mind was how pointless increasing his willpower felt. There was still so much pain that it didn’t matter that his tolerance had increased.
In the next few seconds, he could feel himself being gently shaken, along with something wet hitting his face.
As his hearing came back to him, a loud ringing sound filled his ears. It gradually died down to reveal the sound of crying.
“Kairos! Kairos!”
Kairos slowly opened his eyes and saw Nicole’s blurry figure above him. His body felt strangely empty. Then he realized he wasn’t breathing.
With that realization, his body immediately forced him to draw in a deep breath.
He continued to take one ragged breath in after another as though he had just been drowning. Tears began involuntarily forming in the corners of his eyes, not out of any sadness, but simply due to the stress his body was experiencing.
As he gradually came to, Kairos felt Nicole hug him tightly.
“I’m… trying to breathe…”
Nicole let go in a fluster. Her eyes were very red, and tears had fallen down.
“I-I thought you died…”
Kairos shook his head.
“This was… the effect of using points to improve one of my abilities…”
Nicole bit her lip.
“Then don’t do it anymore!”
Kairos sighed.
“It’s inevitable that this strength will be needed, so there’s no helping it.”
Nicole clenched her fists.
“But you weren’t breathing for so long!”
Kairos furrowed his brow.
Not being able to breathe truly was quite the scary thing. He almost couldn’t believe that he almost died just from increasing the rank of an ability. He wondered what would’ve happened if Nicole wasn’t there to shake him awake.