He was mentally prepared to finish leveling all of his skills to their limit and still be blocked from leveling. It'd become a habit to check his status a few times a day after training, or when he was resting. He'd gotten used to the same warning over and over again, which was why when he didn't see it at first, he thought something was wrong.

Then before the confusion could clear away, he received two system notifications back to back.

You have survived a soul-related injury! Title gained; Indomitable.

Title Indomitable already exists; Error Resolution; Title has been upgraded!

He stared at the system messages with an open mouth, rereading the messages several times to make sure he wasn't hallucinating or dreaming about this. For starters he was surprised the system could have errors. He had a few different theories about the system that now needed modifying.

His new title was interesting; unyielding. He didn't need to worry about indomitable's effects disappearing in the end. Unyielding was an expansion of his previous title. He would have loved it if the title affected soul-related injuries, as that was where the upgrade had come from, but even so the new effects were pretty nice. Injuries healed faster and for some reason he got resistance to curses as well.

Shaking his head, he ignored that for now and quickly headed over to where Edel was, only to find her still sleeping. He had to fight with himself not to wake her up in his excitement. He felt good. More than good, he felt amazing! His heart beat in excitement and he was already daydreaming on how he could help her.

Lately she had been returning with more and more injuries when she went hunting. That didn't happen when they went hunting together, because she went fighting stronger and more dangerous monsters when she left on her own, but he wasn't an idiot. After the first few times he went to find out what had caused those injuries.

In the end luck and a general direction let him find where Edel had returned from. What he found out was dead goblins by the dozens. A handful of wild boars were making short work of the dead goblins when he found them, so he was lucky he even found what he found.

He felt annoyed that he was finding out about these goblins only after Edel had taken care of them. He was too used to thinking like a human, afraid to get lost, afraid to get into fights with monsters he didn't know about.

Frankly his scouting was less of actual scouting and more of enjoying the forest. The region they were in didn't have a lot of predators and he'd grown complacent.

When he'd gone deeper inside the forest, however, both the level of the enemies as well as their numbers increased. Then what about the rest of it? To his surprise he needed to go quite far to find other goblin camps. As for the camp by the river, that was gone when he ran to check it over. Most of their high level goblins had died in the quiet zone after chasing them that day. What was left was probably taken care of by Edel, which made sense, but he still felt a sense of loss.

He had wanted to take care of them when he got stronger, that was his plan before leaving the forest! Though, he could take solace in the fact that he'd been instrumental in their destruction.

When Edel woke up, he was excited to get the day going.

Then he had an idea. If he went with her, she would choose some low-leveled monster to hunt in consideration and fear of him getting hurt. Maybe that wouldn't be too bad to show her that he was fine now, but he wanted to follow her and help her with the higher-leveled enemies she was fighting.

In the end the sane part of his brain won the argument and he didn't follow Edel in secret. That didn't mean he wasn't going to surprise her, of course. When they met their first victim for the day, one of those large lizards, he teleported behind its head before she had the chance to do anything more than take another step.

The moment he appeared behind its head, its fate was sealed. His claws passed through its scales like they weren't even there, and that was without using ether. The lizard was lying dead a few seconds later, but before he hopped away from its body, he couldn't help but meow triumphantly.

It was because he was so caught up in the moment, that he didn't notice Edel running up to him. She almost tackled him to the ground, barking his ears off in her excitement.

After the first three seconds of her licking his face he was already gathering the ether to teleport away. He liked Edel, but that was too much excitement for a small cat.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Besides, this was a low-leveled monster, probably level 5 or 6 at best. He was double that, and now his greatest stats had come online. He imagined most monsters had quite a lot more strength, opposed to him who had more skills but his stats were also more evenly spread out.

When he couldn't use ether he'd been at a disadvantage and now he couldn't help but want to even out the score. Letting the body of the lizard go to waste felt more than wrong to him, but he didn't want to end their hunt this early. He made Edel carry the lizard back to their place and then they took off again.

He swore to find out how to create an inventory-like space. If there was one element to do that with, it was space, and he didn't want to leave his prey rotting in the forest.

The two of them headed into the deeper parts of the forest. It seemed like Edel knew this area because she didn't stop to think where she was going. Following behind her was a fun exercise. He hadn't realized how much faster she'd grown in the few months he had been unable to hunt until he struggled to keep up.

In the end he started using his teleportation too. He still held back a bit because he didn't want to enter a fight with no ether, but in the richer parts of the forest it regenerated quite a bit faster. The richer ether also made his body tire less easily and in combination they made for quite the race.

What was weird was how they met no monster attacks in the meanwhile. When he'd gone this deep on his own previously he'd needed to hide and run away from monsters quite often. Of course none could match his teleportation, so it wasn't a big deal, but it slowed him down more than he thought because they reached a fairly deep part of the forest in record time.

No more than thirty minutes later and they were about where he'd needed to run away from last time.

At first he was worried Edel might take it too easy with him following. Now he was worried she might go too far. Sure enough, the first enemy they met that stood up to them was the three tailed lizard.

Thankfully the most aggressive monsters were solitary ones. If that kangaroo lizard had friends, he wasn't sure how he would have survived encountering it the first time. Edel was strong, but the kangaroo lizard wasn't a pushover either.

He didn't like his chances if he got hit by it, but he was confident he could do some damage if he boosted his body with ether and teleported in front of its face. It would also be nice if he could figure out a way to use his element to attack from afar, but he would take what he was given.

Edel and the lizard stared each other for a few seconds before jumping at each other's throats at the same time.

Well, if Edel was fighting monsters like this it was no wonder she came back injured so often. Though he would have preferred it if Edel had led them to a goblin camp, he had a score to settle with one of these terrors of the forest. Now that he was here there was no chance in hell he would let it injure his friend that easily.

Ether flowed through his entire body and his eyes turned pitch black. His fur obtained an ethereal quality to it as space around him distorted. Then he jumped, vanishing at the same time and reappearing in front of the lizard only seconds before it and Edel met.

Say goodbye to your eyes, lizard-roo!

The lizard should have had no time to react, yet he could see it leaning back to avoid his attack. It didn't matter as he teleported a few centimeters forward again, slashing at its face with his claws.

He managed to hit one of its eyes before he was forced to teleport for the third time in a second, and although the third teleport was wildly inaccurate, it got him out of the line of fire.

Then Edel reached it just as it missed its attack on him. It didn't have time to put up a proper defense as Edel closed her jaws around the upper part of its right arm.

She easily crunched through the scales that his claws couldn't touch, then putting more strength into her neck, she shook the lizard violently, throwing it against a tree over three meters away.

The lizard held its arm close to its body as its three tails thrashed behind it. For a moment he thought it was going to run, but he should have known better. Screaming loud enough to make him wince, the lizard charged back towards Edel.

With one less arm to attack with, he didn't worry for Edel. Instead, he looked for a better opportunity to attack the injured lizard. Teleporting to its injured arm, this time his claws found little resistance as he cut almost half of its arm off.

He was still almost hit by its quick reaction, teleporting just as its other arm reached his body. If he'd been a second slower he would have gotten more than a few years shaved off his life by its claws.

Edel, of course, was right behind him, finding it unprepared for her attack this time. Her fangs made short work of its remaining arm, after which she finished it off by taking a bite out of its throat.

The fight ended and almost the entire day was still ahead of them. He wondered what the tails of this one tasted like. Considering it had three of them, it couldn't be too bad.

The day was still long, but he would settle for a break.

Opening his status window he checked to see his previously stagnant level replaced with a new number.

Name - Kiel

Level - 13

Titles - Traveler, Unyielding, Ritualist

Body - 18

Mind - 22

Spirit - 31

Skills - Body Adaptation (Lvl 10) [Max], Climbing (Lvl 7), Ether Sense (Lvl 10) [Max], Affinity Sense (Lvl 10) [Max], Spatial Manipulation (Lvl 10) [Max], Spatial Rend (Lvl 2), Spatial Shift (Lvl 10) [Max], Ether Manipulation (Lvl 6)

His body increased by three, his mind by two and his spirit by one. Even though the increase was small enough that he shouldn't be feeling the changes impact his body like he did when he'd first started out in this world, he could have sworn that he felt the rush of energy as his body grew stronger and his mind expanded.

Edel sat next to him as he ate one of the lizard's tails. Unfortunately, even though the meat wasn't as tough as when the lizard was still alive, it was still too hard to be enjoyable. Maybe if he could cook it, but that was another story entirely.

You win this one, lizard!

Maybe next time he could come with the fire mage to cook it for him... it was an idea. It was an idea he was starting to like more and more.