Skill selection.

An incredible thing Kai had grown to love and hate over his course throughout all the tutorials. While he has only had three so far, they all could have been better or worse. Overall, all the skills he got so far were more useful than he thought when he originally picked them.

Honestly, Kai didn't even want to imagine what traversing this forest would have been like if he didn't have Telepathy.

Another thing was that while he could converse with moon beasts using that skill, it was translated into English. It had to be some hidden feature of it or something, because Kai knew that none of the beasts here could speak it.

But then he frowned.

All of the moon beasts that could actually speak all spoke in English, but that doesn't seem probable. What are the chances that some magical race could speak English?

There had to be some sort of magic involved that was too complex for Kai to understand, so he just gave up before he even began trying.

He would much rather pick a new skill after all.

Skill selection obtained

Please select one of the three following skills

Damn, three again.

He had still yet to get another one of four option, which was a little disheartening, but as long as one of these skills was good Kai was willing to let it slide.

That was only if one of the skills was good though.

[Soul Flame (Common)]

A flame ignited by the sparks of one's soul. Allows the user to summon flames from within their soul. Strength of the flames is based off the rank of the users soul.

Huh... That's a pretty good option.

Kai had to admit, that skill had a lot of potential. It would be the first offensive option he could pick, allowing him some sort of defence when not fused with Umbra.

While Life Eater did fit that criteria of a back up option, Kai had no experience wielding a blade. Whenever he used it when fused, it only worked because of the monstrous strength he had, allowing the blade to actually be useful.

And while he had shifted a lot of his stats into strength in preparation for the war, Kai still didn't feel comfortable fighting with a sword while not fused.

Strength was just one factor of it. When he was fused, he had the health and defence to kind of make up for any mistakes he would make.

But since majority of his skills were based off of his soul or had something to do with souls, there was a high chance that he would be constantly growing it, making the possibilities of Soul Flame quite a tempting option.

Still, there was another two skills to go.

[Soul Link (Rare)]

Souls are one's true being, linking them together could almost be seen as intimate. Allows the user to tether their soul to another being that possesses a soul. The user can then share stats or skills with the one they are tethered to. Any skill or stats can only be possessed by one party. Severing the tether requires temporarily weakening your soul.

Another good option. But why does it say in this description that it would be intimate yet it always said previously that its perverted?

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Both options he had been offered were, quite frankly, incredible. While they may not look the most useful, both would be great boons to his arsenal.

While Conntract of Artemis allowed Umbra to have ten percent of each of Kai's stats, that could be increased dramatically with this skill.

If he wanted to, he could send all of his stats over to Umbra and let her be an incredible powerhouse. With all the Mana he could give her, she could just spam Bite of Umbra over and over again, easily killing their enemies.

The only downside would be that Kai would be left completetly defenseless. The skill said that only one side can have the skills or stats, meaning he would be left with nothing.

The same with skills, Kai could give Umbra Soul Sense or Strong mind or something like that, but that would mean Kai would temporarily lose them.

On the other hand, what if he linked his soul to someone incredibly powerful and stole some of their skills?

The idea was tempting, but he still had no idea how the linking process worked. Did the other party have to agree to it? Would they get a notification about it? Even if they did link without their knowledge, would Kai be able to steal their skills or do they have to give them willingly?

Even if he couldn't steal other people's skill, just sharing stats and skills was already a pretty damn good thing to have.

So Kai had two good options so far. If he ended up getting a third good option, he would probably wallow in self-pity thinking about why they couldn't have been more spread out.

[Soul Manipulation (Epic)]

Allows the user to Manipulate souls.

... Huh?

That was it, that was the whole description. A single line to describe the first epic skill he had been offered.

It was a little anti-climactic. The first epic skill he had been offered had a one line description that could not have described it any worse.

Like, in what sense would it allow you to manipulate souls? Isn't Kai already technically doing that by statshifting? Does that mean Kai basically had this skill already?

But it was the first epic skill he had been offered, it had to be good. Some secret aspect of it that wasn't shown that secretly made the skill much stronger than the description made it out to be.

But did Kai want to take that risk?

In all honesty, Soul Flame looked like the best option. Even though it was a common skill, it was also based on the rank of his soul. He was the first to form a soul in this tutorial, and even if it was with the help of his master, it had to mean something.

And since half of his innate ability was based on Mana, and souls had some kind of tether to Mana, didn't that mean Kai would probably be upgrading his soul core more than the average person?

Soul Link was also good, but it also had its drawbacks. There was too many unknown factors to make it a plausible choice, so Kai dismissed it.

Soul Manipulation was an enigma. It could be incredibly strong but it could also be one of the weakest epic skills in existence. It would be a gamble to pick it, but Kai wasn't sure if his luck was on an up or down so he did not really want to risk it.

So, after reading the descriptions of all the skills he was offered, Kai made his choice.

Soul Flame (Common) selected

Of course, he picked Soul Flame. He would have liked to have picked Soul Link, but the former just sounded better.

Plus, he was also imaging the sight of him fused with Umbra while covered in flames. If just his Lycan form wasn't terrifying enough, now it would be a flaming Lycan.

The only problem being that Kai didn't know what colour the flame would be.

It would probably be red, that's how flames worked after all. But it could be kind of cool if it was a different colour.

There's only one way to find out what colour it would be, and that would be to test the skill.

Glancing around, Kai saw all the army still just looking ahead for ambushes as they made their way to the Mother Tree. No one would care if he spontaneously lit on fire.

Probably.

Not really knowing how to use the skill since he only just got it, Kai took a deep breath and mentally commanded his pinky finger on his right hand to light up.

A tingling feeling arose in his pinky, but it only lasted about a second before his pinky was engulfed in a dull, gray flame.

Oh, it's based on the colour of my soul... That kind of sucks.

He still had no idea why it showed his soul as a dull gray. It was kind of boring, everyone else had cool souls. Even the Wendigo did, even though it's soul was incredibly revolting to look at, it still had its own charm to it.

Yet Kai's didn't, and that was sad.

Looking down at his pinky, Kai realised that his finger felt the exact same as it did ten seconds ago. It felt completely normal, like it wasn't lit on fire.

There was no heat, yet upon closer inspection you could see the air distorting slightly around it, showing that it was actually hot and not all for show.

Sighing, Kai dismissed the flame and accepted the truth.

His own soul thought that he was boring.

I'm not that boring, am I? I've done some cool things in my life. Like that... I won a crossbar challenge before. I've also done a front flip on a trampoline. I've... uh... I beat Minecraft on the school computers one time.

Okay, maybe he had never done anything cool in his life so far, but that could all change. He still had his whole life ahead of him after all.

Well, maybe. Upcoming war and all that.

So with a new skill in his arsenal and a small bit of motivation to do something cool before he died, Kai and the army continued making their way to the Mother Tree.