"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 it's 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 repeatedly by increasing and decreasing the lengths of various parts of my soul at a snail's pace.
By doing all 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, 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,
baffled,
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 then.
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 myself with others.
I did this simply because these things need a frame of reference to make any sense. I can't 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 where to place myself for these. In the end I didn't have too 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 where 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.