"AAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!"
Currently I am running as fast as I can whilst screaming at the top of my soul lungs. At this point my voice is so loud that I doubt Death wouldn't be able to hear me wherever he is. That being said, even after all this time, of which I have no idea how long its been, Death still hasn't appeared again.
You might think that running around screaming in a place where I am sure the enemy who is dead set on killing me can hear me is a bad idea right?
I have a good reason for it though.
I promise.
It's a really good reason.'
And that is because by doing this…
Alongside flickering [Spark] constantly to its absolute limits and everything in between, waving my arms around like a mad man as I run at full speed, constantly turning [Soul Manifest] on and off and changing the shape of my soul constantly by increasing and decreasing the lengths of various parts of my soul.
By doing all of this nonsense stuff constantly for the last… few years?
Decades?
Has it been a century yet? Or maybe longer?
Anyway by doing all this I have reached level 9.
LEVEL 9!!!
But that's not all!
I was right about getting new abilities too! However… there is a slight complication with it.
I'll start from the beginning. Here's the story.
After testing my theory about running whilst using [Spark] and using my soul as much as possible, a.k.a yelling, swinging my arms around, changing the shape of my soul, I finally hit level 4. It took only about a day?
I wish I had a watch or something.
My speed increased, the range of [Spark] increased a bit and that's about it. Following that I reached level 5.
This is when I got my first new ability. However, I didn't realise it immediately. In fact it I learnt about it on accident. You see, during my life I was an adamant reader in my free time. One might even describe me as a closet weeb. I loved light novels and the like and as a connoisseur of the arts I obviously know about cultivation systems and information screens and such. And as a well-educated man I was thinking about how useful one said information screen would be.
And then…
I got one…
Kind of…
[Soul Manifest] activated. A 'screen' appeared in front of me but really it felt like it was engraved in my eye's balls. The screen read.
[Soul Manifest]
[Name: Rey Stein]
[Race: Human]
[Constitution: Sloth]
[Soul Level: 5]
[@###%$^()!@#!@$#$%^#!@]
[@###%$^()!@#!@$#$%^#!@]
[Strength: ?]
[Agility: ?]
[Stamina: ?]
[Mana: ?]
[Intelligence: ?]
[Ki: ?]
[Karma: ?]
[Luck: ?]
[Martial Affinity: ?]
[Abilities: Spark, Soul Manifest]
[Spark: allows the user to manifest a light from within or around the user's soul with a radius of 1.5 meters]
[Soul Manifest: shows the user an information screen]
…
Odd right?
Apart from the [Constitution: Sloth] thing, my 'system' seemed to only show things that I already knew. And as it turns out that is exactly what it does. But more about that later. First I want to explain something about this sloth business.
I got no idea what it means. Absolutely none. Zip. Nada. I am perplexed, baffles, bewildered, dumbstruck, clueless and every other iteration of the word. Even after reaching level 9 and [Soul Manifest] has changed a bit since then I still have no idea.
This makes sense though because as I have progressed through the levels I quickly understood that [Soul Manifest] is just a systematic manifestation of what I know about myself.
For example, when I first used [Soul Manifest] the description for [Spark] told me it had a radius of 1.5 meters. I 'knew' this because I figured it out by testing it. That was how far I could use [Spark] at the time. However, after reaching level 6 the information didn't change at all… until… I tested some things out and found [Spark] now had a radius of 2 meters. This was when I confirmed the rules around [Soul Manifest] as it automatically read 2 meters instead of 1.5 meters now.
So, what did I do with this information? Well, as I continued to… 'train', I thought about everything I had learned about myself and my soul to improve my [Soul Manifest]. At the same time I realised that [Soul Manifest] wouldn't tell me when I get a new ability if I didn't know what that ability was or how to use it. So basically I'm on my own in that department.
Skipping to now, when I am level 9 and trying to reach level 10, my [Soul Manifest] now looks like this.
[Soul Manifest]
[Name: Rey Stein]
[Race: Human]
[Constitution: Sloth]
[Soul Level: 9]
[@###%$^()!@#!@$#$%^#!@]
[@###%$^()!@#!@$#$%^#!@]
[Strength: 24]
[Agility: 33]
[Stamina: 35]
[Mana: ?]
[Intelligence: ?]
[Ki: ?]
[Karma: ?]
[Luck: ?]
[Martial Affinity: ?]
[Abilities: Spark, Soul Manifest]
[Spark: allows the user to manifest a light from within or around the user's soul with a radius of 3.5 meters]
[Soul Manifest: shows the user an information screen about themselves based upon their understanding of themselves. Soul Manifest can 'assist' with this to some degree.]
So yeah… not a lot has changed but I do have information of my strength, agility and stamina now. I wouldn't call it the most accurate information though. To acquire my 'understanding' for my strength, agility and stamina I compared my self with others. I did this simply because these things need a frame of reference to make any sense. I cant say my strength is 100 if I don't know how much strength 100 is can I?
To do this I first set a bottom line. I decided a newborn baby had a strength, agility and stamina of 0. Then from there the average 10-year-old would be about a 5 in these areas. From there the average adult would be about 10 to 15 in these areas. The slightly fitter or stronger ones would reach 20. Given how I am a professional athlete on the world stage I figured I should be higher than the fitter or stronger individual in these areas.
My strength, which was always my weakest point, would be a bit higher than 20. My agility and stamina, however, would be much higher because those were my strong points. I can say with a high level of confidence that in these areas I was one of the best in the world. However, because of that I wasn't sure were to place myself for these. In the end I didn't have to though.
[Soul Manifest], the godsend that it is, decided to throw me a bone and decided on these values itself. My agility was set to 33 and my stamina 35.
As for the rest of the information in [Soul Manifest] such as mana, intelligence, ki, karma, luck and martial affinity… I don't even know what most of these things are, let alone were to begin. I initially thought that for mana, ki and karma I would just be at 0 however that didn't work so… what can I do?
Moving on from my culture enthused information screen, I have been trying to reach level 10 for who knows how long now. For some reason I just don't seem to be able to reach it. Let alone reach it, I can't even find that familiar soul splitting pain that tells me I'm close to the threshold.
Basically, I'm stuck. And this time I've got nothing I can try that I'm not already doing.