Chapter 2: Abyssal Expanse. 

The bleak expanse stretched as far the eye could see- which meant about half a mile from where Trent stood due to the haze of darkness. The rock ground was almost completely flat and uniformly rough. The rock seemed to be made up of a homogenous substance, but still had texture like natural rock. It could be that the weird rules of light in this place made it look like that, or other wild theories that his imagination cooked up. Like this whole world being an incomprehensible being's attempt at creating an imitation of whatever the 'base' realm is. 

The only notable feature of the terrain around Trent was a vague shape beginning to rise at the edge of his 'render distance', so that was obviously where he headed towards first. He started jogging at a moderate pace while keeping Voiding active. 

The featureless expanse around him caused a disconnect from reality. After a couple of minutes of just looking around as he jogged, Trent started focusing inward instead. He identified the feeling of his one Skill and started studying it. It felt... like a part of him. He innately felt that it came from him and was completely his own. This clashed with his view of himself as a fairly mundane human being, but it was comforting with the knowledge that he wasn't borrowing his power from the system. Or the Abyss, if it existed. 

He experimented with the activation and use of the Skill. It turned out that the current level he was maintaining was just the minimum focus that would activate the Skill. If he strained himself, he could increase the strength of the suppression. Around double maybe? It was hard to maintain for any reasonable period of time, and he wasn't really able to think about much else during the process. Well, it was more that the moment he thought about something else his focus dropped. 

It would definitely be possible to further increase the power of Voiding if he could somehow increase his willpower. Maybe the Mind stat? But that wasn't the most thing he figured out. He felt that the same power inside him that Voiding stemmed from could be expanded on, and maybe even used to create more Skills! 

It wasn't even a solid idea yet. But the strength of the sense that he could made him hope that it was an instinct that came with whatever this power inside him was. Probably his Abyss Affinity, if he had to guess. Definitely a good thing to work on as he trudged through the bleak plain. 

He got quite absorbed in prodding the feeling inside him to coax out some response. So absorbed that he missed the monster until it was just a couple dozen meters ahead. 

It wasn't really his fault that he missed it. The thing was just a darker blob in the air, like the omnipresent haze had condensed on that one spot. But by the time he broke out of his thoughts, the ghostly blob had noticed him and started floating his way... fast. 

It wasn't blink-and-your-dead fast, but it was smoothly gliding towards Trent faster than he could run. He tried to get away, but it was to no avail. It reached him quickly and enveloped him in its cold embrace. In Trent's panic, he had dropped Voiding, leaving no protection against the miasmic cloud. 

He felt his life draining away, a hollow pain that pervaded his very being. He flailed wildly to no avail. 'Damn it!' He rallied himself. 'Don't just sit there!' With an effort of will, Voiding blasted out of him again. A haunting screech emanated around him, the pull on his life halting. The cloud thinned out and tried to pull away from him. 

Trent didn't let up. It was more than likely that the thing would continue attacking him, and this would turn into a battle of attrition. He redoubled all his focus into his Skill, no longer attempting to harm it physically. The blob seemed to overcome its shock at being suppressed and resumed sucking out his life force. 

He actually won the battle of attrition with quite a bit to spare. It took about 30 seconds to reduce the creature to the point where it couldn't drain him anymore, and he could have lasted a few more minutes of the life drain before losing consciousness.  The nullifying force of his skill actually reduced the power of the life drain, which made sense. 

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As he lay there, taking some time to mentally recover from a battle to the death, he heard soft chime. It was felt more than heard, a feeling that notified him without distracting him. When he focused on the chime, a screen appeared. 

*Defeated Morel Finisis (Lv. 6). A great amount of experience is gained for defeating a level 5 or higher monster while level 1. *

Level up! You have reached level 2. +1 free stat points. +1 Mind and +3 Perception(phys) from Affinity. +1 Vitality, +2 Endurance, and +2 Strength from Sub-affinity. 

Wow. The kill message itself wasn't that interesting besides the nonsense (or maybe Latin?) name of the monster and a bit of info about how experience might be calculated. The knowledge that you leveled up by killing things was also useful. 

But that paled in comparison to the fact he was getting 9 times as many stats from his Affinities than just from leveling up. And they were all pre-allocated! At least it made deciding what to do with his free point easy. That would almost definitely go to Agility, as that was the only physical stat not raised by the Affinities. 

What if he hadn't had any Affinities? Was that even possible? Also, it didn’t seem quite right that his Sub-affinity gave more stats than his Affinity. There were so many questions, and it bugged him.

The fact that his opposition Affinity gave more than his Abyss was a good sign, but there were too many unknowns.

What if, by leveling up, he had ruined his chances of getting the best build? It wasn't impossible, especially if stats could be increased by training. With all that said, there wasn't much he could do about that. So, he put his free point in Agility and looked at his status. 

Name: Trent

Species: Human

Lv: 2

Affinity: Abyss

Sub-affinity: Opposition

Stats: 

Physical: 

Vitality: 4

Endurance: 5

Strength: 5

Agility: 4

Mind: 4

Perception: 6

Magical: 

Capacity: 0

Regen: 0

Power: 0

Control: 0

Connection: 0

Perception: 0

Skills: Voiding

Yup, nothing else had changed. Just a higher level and boosted stats. Now for the fun part. 

He got up off the featureless ground and started moving his limbs and shadow boxing. It was very interesting to see the changes. At first it didn't seem like he had gotten faster because his Mind and Agility had increased by the same amount. In fact, the massive increase in his Perception made it seem like he had gotten slower. But his sense of timing wasn't slowed—in fact, it was better and more accurate—so he could tell that he was moving faster. 33.33% faster, if the raw numbers were to be believed. 

There wasn't anything around to measure his strength, but punching himself hurt a bit more than it should have. Which wasn't very hard at all. Because he's not a masochist. He did not hit himself that hard. It was purely for a test. And that's the end of that. 

Anyway, he had survived his first monster, and become all the stronger for it. So... just continue walking? it was a bit weird to go straight from a fight to the death back to a boring trudge through a wasteland, but at least his increased stats would alleviate some of the boredom. 

As he continued on to the mountain—the top of which still hadn't appeared from the fog—he continued to examine the power inside of him. His doubled perception greatly assisted with his ability to grasp it—wait, why would his physical perception help him see the source of his mystical powers? 

Huh... Maybe it is technically a physical Skill? He didn't see how the magical stats could boost something that nullifies them, and considering how quickly it killed the morel or whatever, it was far too strong for something that scaled with a bunch of zeroed stats. So it was almost definitely non-magical, which meant he didn't need to worry about investing into the magical stats with what might well stay as a single point per level.

But that brought up the question of what was considered 'physical'. Was it anything that didn't use mana? How could he tell what used mana and what didn't? Assumedly his score in magical perception made it so that he couldn't sense mana at all, so any energy he could sense was something else. 

Really, it came down to the frustrating fact that he didn't know what the words on his status meant. He could make inferences, but how was he to know if 'physical' included things like ki or life energy? He just had to continue forward and ignore all of this pointless stuff.