Nicole gave him a curious look.
“What do you mean by limit breaking?”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s not something you should worry about right now, but it’s something you can do after reaching the ranks.”
Nicole tilted her head to the side.
“Then maybe the rest of us should promote to the D rank as well!”
Kairos tapped his chin a few times.
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”
Nicole clasped her hands together.
“So should I invite everyone else?”
Kairos narrowed his eyes ever so slightly.
“…We might as well take it slow. The promotion process takes a while, so it would be better to do it one at a time.”
Nicole tilted her head to the side.
“Eh? But wouldn’t it be better if everyone got together? It’s not like there’s much else to do anyway…”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“Alright, but your evolution process will be hidden from the others. Ok?”
Nicole looked back at him with confusion.
“Eh? Why is that?”
Kairos let out a soft sigh.
“I know you want to trust everyone, but we have to do it slowly.”
Nicole stammered.
“T-Then we can at least trust my mom too, right?”
Kairos looked at her blankly.
“…Under normal circumstances, yes. But I think something strange is happening with her. I have a plan to fix it, but I can’t act on it right now.”
Nicole stared back at him with unsure eyes. She clearly didn’t like all this uncertainty and doubt, but Kairos was forcing it onto her. Though it made her uncomfortable, she nodded in the end.
“O-Ok…”
Kairos and Nicole walked back into the city, all the way back into the center building. Most people were just sleeping. Once he got back into his room, he opened up his status panel once more.
[Status]
[ID: 345315364923]
[Rank: D-]
[Objective: Survive]
[Proof Of Perfection Points: 22.1]
[Stats –
Strength – 29.9
Endurance – 29.9
Agility – 29.9
Willpower – 29.9
Mana Capacity – 30.0
Magic Affinity – 29.9]
[Special Abilities: Alone (D), Water Spell (E), Pulse Spell (E), Fire Spell (F), Gale Spell (F)]
[Hide]
Nicole couldn’t help but let out a small gasp.
“All your stats are so high!”
Kairos raised an eyebrow.
“How many points do you have?”
Nicole blinked a few times.
“Um… a little over two hundred. Wait, let me bring it up.”
[Status]
[ID: 934783245676]
[Rank: E]
[Objective: Survive]
[Proof Of Perfection Points: 217.3]
[Strength – 14.9
Agility – 14.9
Endurance – 14.9
Willpower – 14.9
Mana Capacity – 14.9
Magic Affinity – 14.9]
[Special Abilities: Afraid Spell (F), Frost Spell (F)]
[Hide]
The side of Kairos’ face twitched.
“You… have a lot of points.”
Nicole tilted her head to the side.
“But that’s because I’ve killed a lot of monsters with the red watch on. You haven’t been killing anything but you still have so many!”
Kairos thought to himself for a long moment. He didn’t really think about the consequences of ranking up all that much. Though when he looked at it realistically, he had been doing so much, yet the real gap in points between the two of them wasn’t as large as he thought it was.
When he thought about it, Kairos definitely was underestimating how advantageous point-wise staying at a lower rank was. The only real exception were dungeons, but Kairos didn’t know when the next time he would see one of those was.
Granted, it wasn’t as though he really had a choice in promoting himself at the time. He was in a rather desperate situation within that dungeon, and it was the only chance he had at survival. Nonetheless, this realization made his enthusiasm to complete his promotion mission fall considerably.
After all, once he did reach that peak, growing further would be so much harder.
Nicole let out a weak cough.
“Um, are you limit-breaking your stats right now?”
Kairos woke out of his stupor and gave a small nod.
“Ah, yeah. I was doing that.”
From there, he began adding points to increase his status points past their limit.
[Strength 29.9 – 30.0 | Prestige Points 255 – 254]
Like with the increased mana capacity, he could hardly tell the difference at first, as it truly did feel like he only added a tenth of his points. Yet, just a few moments later, he could feel his muscles rearranging themselves. He could feel something changing with his tendons like they were wrapping around his bones even tighter.
There wasn’t a realistic change in his muscle mass, but he could tell that it was rearranged in a way to be more efficient in a way that made sense for someone that had long left the realm of human limitations.
Kairos didn’t stop there, continuing to increase all of his stats.
[Endurance 29.9 – 30.0 | Prestige Points 254 – 253]
This time, he could feel his skin get tougher, and seemed to wrap around his muscles themselves. He even felt his organs shifting within his body, in particular, his ribcage extended downwards slightly while his liver raised up. He could also vaguely tell that some sort of padding formed around his brain.
After feeling the changes stop, he continued on.
[Agility 29.9 – 30.0 | Prestige Points 253 – 252]
He waited to feel the changes, but nothing really happened. After a bit of confusion, he tried moving his hand around in the air and noticed a difference. It was very slight, but he could feel that his hesitation had disappeared.
It sounded a little stupid to have hesitation in just moving his hand, but there was always uncertainty in his actions as he wasn’t always completely sure about how it would end up. It was like people could jump, but they wouldn’t know how high they would jump. As such, if someone was performing something like hurdles, they would likely overshoot their jump by a decent margin.
However, Kairos could feel that hesitation disappear. He would have the confidence to jump just enough for that hurdle.
Nicole scratched the side of her cheek.
“Is anything… happening?”
Kairos couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle.
“A little bit, yes.”
Nicole let out a soft hum.
“I don’t understand… but it looks much nicer since all of the nines are gone.”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“I guess so.”
He couldn’t help but feel doubts over why he was even trying so hard to get stronger. Kairos definitely didn’t feel like he was slacking much at all, and he hadn’t even been all that unlucky either if he took into account his future vision.
Yet, despite all of that, he was still so much weaker than so many others. The Church of Evolution was such a large looming threat to him, while Kian somehow just became some sort of nature monster that could easily create dangerous parasitic mushrooms. And to top it all off, his mother was probably the strongest thing out of all the things he had seen and was probably only stronger at this point.
Not to mention, there were probably many other freaks of nature out there that he couldn’t even imagine.
What was the point if there were so many things that overwhelmed him anyway?
All that effort, only to be killed easily by something stronger than him.
With that thought process, he reluctantly proceeded to upgrade his Willpower as well.
[Willpower 29.9 – 30.0 | Prestige Points 252 – 251]
There were no changes at first, but Kairos suddenly remembered something. It was back from when he was a kid, and a memory he had forgotten as it was something he didn’t really deem important.
As a kid, he would frequently just be wandering around on the streets, as he didn’t really have anything better to do. He would meet with random people and try to talk, though most of them didn’t care enough to do more than greet. Others would hold superficial conversations, but give some excuse to him before going on with their own business.
But to him at the time, he still found it exciting just to meet with new people, even if the interactions were brief and essentially meaningless.
And one of those interactions was with a man strumming a guitar on the side of the sidewalk. He was playing a song and was occasionally messing up the notes, but he was still playing enthusiastically.
There were people that occasionally stopped by to listen for a moment, but they would usually leave after hearing a few mistakes, not to mention the song wasn’t all that good in the first place.
Kairos had walked up to him and greeted him like he used to, and the man was rather friendly, giving a nod and saying hello back. To Kairos’ surprise, the man ended up asking him a question first, when it was usually him that did that.
“Hey kid, you ok without your parents?”
Kairos gave a confident nod.
“Yeah! My parents said I’m allowed to go out on my own now!”
The man laughed.
“Ah, you’re a big boy now!”
Kairos smiled triumphantly.
“Hehe of course!”
The man nodded several times.
“So, what are you doing?”
Kairos tilted his head to the side.
“Talking to people. I don’t really know what else to do.”
The man chuckled.
“Ah, not knowing what to do, huh? I’m pretty familiar with that, haha. Do your parents not tell you what to do?”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“Um… they said that I shouldn’t be so picky when eating.”
The man gave a small nod.
“I see, I see. I’m guessing you haven’t really thought about how things are going to be in the future, huh?”
Kairos looked up at the man with confusion.
“Ehh? But I already know what will happen in the future!”
The man raised an eyebrow.
“Oh really? Then what is going to happen?”
Kairos let out a soft hum.
“You’re going to stand there and do nothing!”
The man laughed.
“Huh? But I’m not doing that now!”
Kairos grumbled.
“Well, you were but you changed it!”
The man let out a sigh.
“When I say future, I mean what do you think will happen years from now?”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“Eh? How am I supposed to know that?! It hasn’t happened yet!”
The man nodded.
“That’s true, but one day you’ll have to be something, you know?”
Kairos put a finger on his chin and thought for a few minutes.
“Ah, an adult! I’m going to be an adult soon!”
The man smirked.
“Of course, of course. But what kind of adult are you going to be?”
Kairos tilted his head to the side. He was able to see in the distance a father lifting up his child and spinning him around slowly.
“Um… a super strong one that can lift people up!”
The man laughed rather loudly.
“That will be rather hard, you know? Are you really sure you want to be someone like that?”
Kairos gave a single nod.
“Yeah!”
The man raised up one finger with a smile.
“Then remember, you will have to try very hard. There will be a lot of expectations on you if you do such a thing, and it may make you feel really pressured to do well. But you shouldn’t let those expectations shake you. Don’t do more than what you know you can’t do.”
Kairos nodded casually to himself.
“That’s obvious! Don’t do what I can’t do.”
The man smiled when he heard that.
“And most importantly, you need to protect yourself. If you aren’t alive, then how can you protect other people?”
Kairos gasped.
“Ah! So no dying! Never!”
The man laughed.
“Yes, yes. If you see that you can die for someone to save them, even if it’s someone really important, you should still try to see if there’s another way.”
Kairos tilted his head to the side.
“Eh? Why?”
The man’s smile suddenly became a little sad.
“Because it gets really hard for the person you saved.”
