After the integration process had ended, Licht's stats rose to new heights. Heights and power that he had never experienced.
'Status window'
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[Host Attributes]
[Name]: Licht Vanrir
[Race]: Human
[Spiritual energy]: 2.4
[Martial Arts]:
[Monster]: Aspect of Devil
____
[Strength]: 4.9
[Endurance]: 4.6
[Agility]: 3.0
[Stamina]: 5
[Mentality]: 7.1
===========
[Calamity Soul]: 2990
His strength had increased by leaps and bounds.
If then, he could only raise it for a single hour, but now he could wield it for a whole day.
The sword that would have felt as heavy as a five-kilogram dumbbell now felt like a small stack of paper.
His stamina and endurance rose the most.
Stamina helped in prolonged fights, fighting off exhaustion, and it also directly affected his reflexes and agility.
On the other hand, endurance referred to his whole body's limits.
How many hits he could take, how much exhaustion he could proceed with, how much mental fatigue he could endure.
It encompassed them all.
His mentality also increased drastically when he asked the system about it. It gave a monotonous reply like always.
'That it is one of the hardest to raise.'
'Then what does it mean for me? Why is mine increasing that much?'
But something hit Licht harder than everything else, his agility!
The lowest increase was in his agility stat, it didn't have a great improvement like stamina and endurance, but Licht didn't expect even spiritual energy to have more increase than it!
He didn't want to look like a bulky bodybuilder in the future…but the more he thought about it, the more appealing it looked.
'Ehem, let's leave useless things behind,'
'I should just focus on this exploration for now,' reaffirmed Licht while trying to get a stable footing on the inclined slope.
His teeth held onto a big lamp that illuminated some meters ahead of him.
Licht was also in a new set of clothes adorned in a black battle suit which had cost him a fortune of 500 calamity souls…
'Heh, talking about saving up..' he thought while placing his sore hand on a protruding rock.
He was currently climbing the slope he had encountered after exploring the cave for more than six hours.
After getting some new clothes after he had torn apart and dirtied the previous ones beyond use, he also bought a luminescent lamp from the shop.
There was no lighting in the cave. It was too dark for him to venture without one.
He was in quite a good mood after finding a path in this cave. The cave was too big, but it had no way out.
It only resulted in dead ends everywhere.
In structure, Licht could somewhat make it out to be like a typical cave, spherical, but this one had a big wall in between from the center.
The wall extended from the center to the walls of the cave.
Licht started climbing it up when he noticed a small amount of light coming out the top.
In this place, it was his only hope to get out.
Contrary to his happy and lethargic mood on the outside. He was crying internally.
'I spent almost 1000 calamity souls…'
The shop ripped off calamity souls from him at every turn and for even the smallest of things.
Grunting for a few minutes and almost falling off after not finding a stable footing, Licht finally decided to use his newfound power.
A sharp and big nail made out of bone slowly came out of the palm of his hand.
Sending the lantern back into his inventory, Licht used his mouth to hold the nail while the hand the bone came out of started healing.
The wound didn't bleed even after expelling a bone.
He had discovered how to use his bone powers just after his body had healed from the spikes all over his body.
They had disappeared without even leaving a small nick on his body.
The prerequisite of his power was to imagine a bone coming out of his hand, and he also had to make out the shape of the bone coming out in his mind.
The easiest things to materialize was a nail, pike and spear out of all the tries he attempted.
He could produce around twenty of these pikes and a hundred of nails before running out of fuel, which was apparently, not his bones but spiritual energy.
It was like his bones worked as an intermediary and guided spiritual energy to make the bones.
That's why the bones he formed came out from the inside of his palm. It used his bones as a catalyst to form what he desired out of power.
But Licht knew this wasn't the whole thing behind it.
For all he knew, he could be completely wrong and off the mark.
There was the reason why powers came from the monsters and not from the human himself as Mr. Flare had said.
Using the now-increased strength of his. Licht blasted the nail into the rocks with his hand, essentially making a footing for himself.
Lifting his body and standing on the nail with one leg, he started to repeat the process.
Making nails again and again. He forced them inside the wall to make footings while he slowly advanced.
But now, he couldn't even use the lantern to see his progress. Without any way to know where he was, Licht kept going up.
Without no way of knowing the time, Licht did this process again and again
In this half-trance state, Licht sometimes reused the nails he had made.
He tried to lessen the consumption of his spiritual energy in any way possible.
Taking out another nail, he readied his hand to push it into the rocks.
But instead of the it hitting the wall, something else happened.
"Ouch, what the fuck!?" he shouted.
Licht's hand started bruising. His forearm had hit the rock while his hand went forward, hitting nothing.
Grimacing in pain because of his strength for a few seconds, Licht sent everything back into his inventory.
Taking out the lantern, Licht illuminated the darkness above him. With darkness fading, he finally saw it.
It was a flat stone! He had just reached the surface of the big wall!