No pain no gain

Unlike when he did this before, Kai was trying to sense his soul inside him, not look at it through his reflection.

While the latter would be much easier, the prior would be much more important to comprehend early on. He wouldn't be able to see his reflection anywhere he went after all.

Well... Maybe if I had a mirror.

Alas, a mirror was a luxury Kai could not afford.

Kai lost track of time as he immersed himself into the act of soul searching, literally, not metaphorically.

All that mattered was successfully finding his soul and living long enough to actually become proficient in soul related abilities.

If souls were to be the root of his growth, it would be much better to actually be able to use his abilities to their full capabilities.

Since the soul of everyone and everything he's gazed at so far has been in their chest area, Kai focused his search on there.

Being able to narrow down where it was helped with not having to waste time checking other parts of his body, but it still would not be easy to find.

The whole time, Kai felt as if he was grasping at straw, about to get a good handful yet it always slipped through his fingers.

Thinking back to how he managed to do it the first time, Kai tried to spot any possible hint or thing that he's doing wrong that would affect not being able to find his soul.

Maybe I do need to just use my eyes... It is called Soul Sight after all.

Opening his status, Kai glanced at the description of the skill once more for any hints.

A soul is one's being, peering at one's soul could almost be called perverted. This is a passive type skill. Allows the user to perceive the souls of sentient beings. The difficulty of viewing the soul is based on the user current Mana pool.

Well, it does just say perceive...

Inwardly groaning, Kai continued to intolerate the cold which was slowly seeping into his bones as he closed his eyes and concentrated on finding his soul.

His soul was elusive, dull. It would be nearly impossible for him to-

*Thump*

What?

Suddenly, Kai's chest flared up in pain as he fell down into the water he was meditating in.

Nearly drowning himself by accident, Kai clawed at his chest, trying to get the pain to stop.

A gut-wrenching scream escaped his mouth, but it was muffled as he thrashed around in the shallow water.

Fucking pain!

It was like there was a ball of magma cooling in his chest. He couldn't breathe properly, his throat felt like it had a lit match stuck inside it.

The pain in his chest was unbearable, tears welled up in Kai's eyes but he did not cry. Kai bit down on his lower lip to stifle any more shouts as he tensed his whole body, trying to make it numb to the pain.

After what felt like an eternity of torture, the heat started residing. The intolerable scorching feeling left his body.

Shockingly, some of the water that Kai was lying in started to steam, but it only lastsr for a few seconds.

Panting, Kai grew limp in the shallow pond, his nose and mouth barely above the surface of the water.

His whole body hurt, especially his chest. It felt as if his organs were being rearranged by something inside him.

What... the hell... was that?

As soon as Kai asked the question, he got his answer in the form of a notification on his status screen.

Soul (E) successfully formed

2% increase to Mana pool

Kai kept silent.

He didn't know what to say.

His grin said all he needed to.

The pain which seemed oh so terrible a moment ago now seemed like a gift sent from heaven. At this point, everything that has gone right for Kai has had some sort of terrible pain right before it.

He couldn't tell if that was lucky or not.

At least this time it wasn't as bad as the other times...

Despite the fact that either the previous self-inflicted torture sessions were just that much worse or that forming a soul wasn't as bad as those other times, Kai continued to just watch the letters on his status screen with an intense gaze.

E? Is that its rank or something? And a two percent Mana increase? Two percent of one thousand and fifteen is...

With an extra twenty-two in his Mana pool, the equivalent of a level-up, Kai was more than happy. If he wanted to, he could dump the sixty-three unassigned stat points he got into the tunnel and bring his Mana up to one thousand-two hundred.

Of course, he would much rather save those stats for an emergency. Sadly, it seemed as if there was going to be an emergency in the next few days anyway, with Aldred and The Demon's duel coming up soon.

But there was one question lingering on Kai's mind.

How did I form a soul? Wait, what does forming one even mean?

He had not really done anything special to trigger forming a core, if it had some sort of trigger. Maybe it was just that he was trying to inwardly sense his soul and his Luck stat helped out.

I still don't know what to think of that stat.

While Luck was still an enigma to him, every stat technically was. He knew the basics, sure, but there had to be more than that to every stat.

Leaving that thought on hold for now, Kai relented and looked into his reflection in the water.

Exactly like last time he looked into the water, which wasn't that long ago, Kai looked the same.

Shaggy red hair, less fat on his face, and his eyes shone like deep, blue pools.

There was one change though, the bags under his eyes seemed to have disappeared. While Kai knew it takes much longer than one good rest to get rid of those pesky things, he wasn't going to complain.

Another thing though, something that Kai wasn't so happy with. He looked... older.

Maybe because of all the stress and anxiety in recent times, but Kai seemed to have been acting a lot older than he should have been. It wasn't that long ago he was just messing around with his friends in school, now look where he is.

Maybe it was a long time ago, actually.

Quickly opening his status screen once more, Kai checked his age to try and deter his fears. Luckily, it still said he was seventeen, meaning it hadn't been a full year.

Yet.

While gazing at his reflection, Kai tenderly touched his cheek before activating Soul Sight.

Once the skill turned on, Kai's very being peeled away before his eyes at the change in his sight.

Skin, muscles, bones, everything turned to black and all that was left was the black silhouette of him.

A black silhouette and a soul, that is.

Lying in the black reflections chest was Kai's soul, still dull and gray. Yet it looked... different.

It was still dull and colourless with the six vibrant dots inside it, but now, now it looked a lot more solid.

It didn't look as ethereal as before.

While before, his soul looked as if it was just a concept he saw, now, it looked as if it was actually inside him.

Oh god, is that what the pain was?

His soul, which was just something he could see and wasn't actually inside him, was now actually inside him.

It had moved his organs and God knows done what else, but it was now an organ inside him.

If it counts as an organ.

But his organs had actually been rearranged. Kai didn't know if that was going to affect him later down the line, but if it gave him two percent extra Mana, he would accept it for now.

Tapping at his chest, Kai watched his silhouette to see would his soul react in anyway to his touch. Sadly, it did not.

Souls were still an unknown concept to Kai, so he had no idea what he should do.

If he was being honest, he was expecting Soul Sight or maybe even Soulcery to upgrade after that, but they stayed the same, much to Kai's dismay.

It's not that bad though.

With two percent extra Mana, Kai would be able to keep up his transformation with Umbra for longer. Not much longer though, the transformation still took a monstrous amount of Mana to maintain.

But now, it was finally time to get back to what he wanted to do in the first place. The valiant goal in which he endured all the pain for in the first place.

To become a walking Statshifter.

I should trademark that. If The Ever-changing is technically a shapeshifter, what's to stop me from becoming a Statshifter?

Deciding to give it one more attempt, Kai deactivated Soul Sight.

Crawling to back under the waterfall, not particularly enjoying the cold embrace of the falling water, Kai took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

Focus...

*Ding*

Huh?

His soul, which was impossible to find without looking at his reflection just a moment ago, was just... there.

In his chest, Kai could physically feel an orb. His soul must have been hiding on him or something before, because that was just too easy.

The shock and quite a bit of disappointment that it was that easy after forming a soul was washed away by the cold water.

The six vibrant dots still sat in his soul, each colour representing a different stat. The violet dot was now much larger than the other dots, it would have been larger than all of them combined.

So I guess violet was Mana, meaning Stamina is yellow.

With the colour issue between those two stats sorted out, Kai now knew what each dot represented.

There was still one thing that had Kai confused though.

What was that ding?

Assuming it was a notification, Kai opened his status screen, and for a second time today...

Kai could not hold back his grin.

[Soul Sight (Uncommon)] -> [Soul Sense (Rare)]