"Rising up, back on the streets. Did my time, took my chances..."
"What are you singing to yourself?"
Kai chose to ignore Cecilia's grumpy remark to his incredible singing in favour of letting her continue her training with her Mana Threads.
About a week and a half had passed since encountering that strange Lynx creature and deciding to have Cecilia madly train to get stronger, but progress was steady enough.
Even though there was a large lack of any sort of creatures that Kai would be willing to fight in this environment, they managed to encounter a few that he had successfully taken down and got Cecilia to deal the final blow, albeit with a little trouble.
The higher they rose, the worse the blizzard got, and the more dangerous the abominations infesting the side of the mountain got as well.
By now, every creature they encountered was minimum level 75, meanwhile Kai was level 63. Of course, he had a variety of skills to make up for the stat difference, but that's not to say that the beasts he encountered did not also have skills that could do the same, especially since they all possessed three more skills than him.
But no, things had gone rather smoothly. Cecilia had successfully reached level 9, meaning there was only one more beast standing between her and obtaining her first class.
Kai sighed to himself, reminiscing about the good old days. Unlike Cecilia, all he had to do to level up early on was get beat up by Noelle, which was a much nicer alternative to fighting these damned blizzard creatures.
At least Noelle knew how to go easy.
... Well, not really, but it was still better than their current situation.
Currently, the group was resting in the tent, various small candles lit around them using Soul Flame helping to keep them warm.
Cecilia was sitting beside Kai, weaving her Mana Threads into various different items.
Turns out, she had already been on the brink of turning the Uncommon skill to a Rare one without even realising, and the path it was following was actually quite interesting.
Like Kai, who had obtained Strong Mind and Nonchalance at the Uncommon rarity when first unlocking his skills, Cecilia had unlocked Mana Thread at Uncommon rarity. Despite that, after ten thousand years passing, the skill had not received a single upgrade.
And the reason for that was the path the skill was following was not one that Kai expected.
Mana Threads upgrade came in the form of desire.
Cecilia was under a mind hex nearly her entire life, trapped under a spell that Anastasia had placed on her, and because of that, she had never been free.
And like any being trapped in a cage, Cecilia subconsciously longed to be free.
And that desire for freedom manifested in the only way it was able to at the time.
Her skill.
The upgrade Mana Thread received when reaching Rare rarity was that its strength no longer relied on Cecilia's Mana stat, it also relied on how strong she desired them to be.
If there was a situation where Cecilia was trying to create a rope made of her Mana Threads to lift something below her, the rope would be pretty strong considering that she probably wouldn't want to drop the item, combined with the fact that the threads woven together were stronger than the average threads used in a rope thanks to its Uncommon ability.
But if it was a rope created to hold onto a loved one who was dangling over a ledge, a ledge that if they fell from they would most certainly die, the rope would be much, much stronger.
Of course, there had to be a balance of her Mana stat and her desire for the strength of the threads to reach their full potential, but as of now the threads were already pretty strong.
Another upgrade the skill had received when reaching Rare rarity was that Cecilia now had more control over weaving them.
She could make ropes, webs, even weave different items of clothing, although the latter would take much longer than the first few items, and all of those would disappear as soon as she ran out of Mana, but the posibilities were all there.
So, happy that their training was already beginning to bear fruits, Kai saw no reason to not be happy.
"A song that's commonly used back on my world for training montages. It was used in a movie about a boxer, and people really liked it."
Cecilia continued to weave as she listened to Kai speak. He felt a little guilty about the way she was working, the fact she did not possess any needles so she had to make use of the tips of her fingernails to control the threads. Kai took a mental note that they would have to get a needle at the first oppurtunity available.
"I saw a boxer once."
Kai raised an eyebrow, but he did not stop his own training.
"Really?"
Cecilia sighed, lifting a shoddy rope weaved of her Mana Threads up to her eyes for closer inspection. Even though the threads themselves were strong, her weaving abilities were not as strong, so it would take a bit of time before she could create a rope that could actually hold onto anything.
"Not really, they weren't really a proper boxer, just a drunk that got in a fight in the bar I was working in. They ended up throwing someone across a table and picking up said table and throwing it down on the winded person before they finally threw up and passed out.
... Of course, they threw a punch at the very beginning of the fight, like a boxer would."
Kai chuckled to himself as he lifted his own self created rope up to his eyes.
"I think you and I have different ideas of boxing."
Looking at the own rope in his hand, Kai could help but let out a disappointed sigh.
Unlike Cecilia, who possessed a proper skill for this sort of thing, Kai was trying to get better at using Soul Flame. He still had not figured out the limits of what the skill was capable of, in fact, he felt that he was only touching the surface.
The only problem was that no matter how hard he tried, the skill would never be as flexible as Mana Threads.
Of course, Kai didn't mean that Soul Flame wasn't a flexible skill, it's just that it was more so suited to creating arrows, coating weapons or just throwing balls of fire rather than creating ropes or webs.
The rope in Kai's hand had been weaved together messily, every edge of it was singed and there was various little embers on its body. The rope was blue, like Cecilia's Mana Threads, considering that Kai had attempted to weave it using his Mana stat, but it turned out that his attempts were unsuccessful.
Still, maybe when the skill went up a few rarities he would be able to create ropes or clothing made of fire.
Imagine that, a long, gallant cape of flames following behind him. Wouldn't that be a sight to behold, especially if it were combined with his red hair. Maybe he would be able to disguise himself as some long lost son of a fire lord or something.
Unaware of the thoughts going on in his mind, Cecilia could only stare at Kai blankly as he chuckled to himself.
Smiling, Kai mentally went over the checklist he created in his mind, the one that he had to complete before challenging the third trial.
Help Cecilia reach level 10.
Either help Cecilia get her Mana Threads to Epic rarity or obtain an item that could somehow help boost them.
Get his swordsmanship to Rare rarity.
Give the items in his satchel some time to receive the boons of the bags effect.
Find out for sure that Petunia had a way to get stronger.
Get Umbra to level 20, as then they would obtain another skill, which he would then be able to use when they fused.
And finally, he himself had to reach level 65, so he could obtain another skill. If all went well, maybe he would be able to reach level 70 before reaching the next trial. He wasn't sure how many more days it would take before they reached it, but if Kai had to guess, he would say somewhere between a week and a month. They still had a fair amount of time before he and Petunia would be trapped in this Subdimension, so he wasn't keen on the idea of cutting it close.
Overall, the list was pretty sizeable, but it wasn't exactly impossible. Some of the tasks could potentially take a little while longer than others, but some should be relatively easy.
And as luck would have it, one of those tasks was going to be completed in the next few minutes.
Far away, Esurient had finally located the final beast Cecilia would have to slay to reach level 10.