Weapon Upgrade

Kai summoned the Epic Weapon Upgrade from his soul, getting ready to upgrade Esurient and hopefully make the blade much stronger.

It was a little surprising that the weapon upgrade came in the form of a strange looking piece of paper with weird markings etched onto it, but Kai just accepted it and summon Esurient into his hand.

While the blade was manifesting, Kai set up a telepathic link with it and began speaking.

"Alright Esurient, you ready to get upgraded?"

The blade trembled slightly in Kai's hand before responding.

"Yes, if it makes me less useless then do it."

Kai sighed softly as he tenderly patted the blade's body.

"As I said, you're not useless, you're strong and perfectly capable. Now, let's do this."

After cutting off the telepathic connection, Kai had a look at Esurient's description one last time before it's upgrade.

[Life Eater (Uncommon)]

After only just gaining sentience, an unnamed abomination was struck down before it could even form an idea of its own. A blade forged by the flesh of an abomination. The blade is able to grow stronger by absorbing the life of those it fells. Provides +7 Strength as well as enhancing Mana circulation in the wielders body.

There was quite a lot going on in the description, which had to be a good thing, surely it meant that Esurient could get upgraded a lot.

Having a faint idea of what to do, but mainly guessing, Kai pressed the strange looking piece of paper against Esurient's body and watched as the blade started to glow.

"Come on ugly duckling, you can do it. It's time for you to become a beautiful swan."

Unaware of Kai's words of encouragement, or maybe they were aware, Esurient steeled itself and tried to get the most out of the weapon upgrade.

It's not like Kai would be able to feel it, but Esurient could. All weapons had an innate link with weapon upgrades, they were like two sides of the same coin.

A suitable metaphor for the link between a weapon and a weapon upgrade would be someone trying to squeeze the very last drop out of a tube of toothpaste. The upgrade would start easily, a big boost at the very beginning, but as the upgrade went on it would become harder to get the metaphorical toothpaste.

But the more a weapon managed to extract from a weapon upgrade, the stronger and more dominant the effects of the upgrade would be.

Esurient had always been watching Kai in the background, even when they weren't fully sentient and only on the brink of gaining consciousness, they had been there.

And they had seen the way he trained, the hours he put in, the effort he gave to become stronger.

Esurient wanted to be like that.

So he was going to squeeze every bit of power out of the weapon upgrade that they possibly could.

Kai watched in awe as the light that had enveloped Esurient, which was a bright white, slowly started to turn to a light shade of red.

Esurient trembled as it focused on absorbing the powers of the upgrade, not wanting to let any of it slip away.

And to Kai's, and the cat's shock, the environment around them started to react to the upgrade.

The air around Esurient shimmered, as if it was being chewed on. A soft hiss emerged from within the red light, but Kai was unable to do anything about it.

A small crack appeared on Esurient's body, followed by another, then another, the result of trying to absorb more power than it could handle.

But would they stop?

Why would they? They had been watching and learning from the most masochistic of them all.

Unable to scream like Kai had when going through every major upgrade or evolution, Esurient settled on letting segments of its body chip away and dissolve into the light, only making it burn brighter.

Then, a loud crack echoed throughout the room as the light started to dim.

The cat gazed at the upgraded blade in awe. Was that what was supposed to happen in an Epic Weapon Upgrade? Obviously not, there was definitely something more to it.

But they just couldn't figure out what the hell that something more was.

All the cat knew was that it was something to do with the boy who had gotten first place. There was definitely something off about him, but they just couldn't tell what.

And there was definitely something special about that wolf in their shadow as well, obviously they were able to sense that. That wolf's blood had something strange to it, but it should just be a regular moon beast, only leaving the cat more confused.

Still, it's not like any of that mattered to them, they were just well paying customers after all.

"Hah... Maniacs, the lot of them."

Kai didn't pick up on the cat's words, he was too focused on looking at Esurient's upgraded form.

And it definitely reminded Kai of the ugly duckling.

Gone was the horrible fleshy look the blade had, now its red body looked as if it was carved out of a beautiful Ruby. It's shine was unparalleled, Kai even caught a glimpse of his own reflection in it.

It's hilt was the exact same, the pretty pattern it possessed still on its body.

Only now, the blade looked much, much sharper. It wasn't anywhere near comparable to the Blade of Eradication, but it was definitely a far cry from what it had been just a minute ago.

Esurient had also gotten a growth spurt, gaining a few inches in length, only increasing its charm.

Kai smiled as he tapped the body of the blade proudly. He knew he was right when predicting that it was an ugly duckling situation, now look at it. Esurient had evolved from a ghastly, fleshy abomination blade to a beautiful weapon that could cut through near anything.

But while appearance was one thing, so was the description, and Kai was extremely curious about that.

[Consumer of Life (Epic)]

"Huh, well would you look at that..."

Esurient had gained a cool new title from their upgrade, befitting of their shtick. Consumer of Life, that was definitely just a more fancy way of saying Life Eater, but Kai saw no harm in switching to fancy words.

Everything ended up like that anyway, something would start with some basic name but by the end it's name would be completely different.

Kai wouldn't be surprised if there was some path for the Fireball spell that started with just Fireball but ended with Phoenix's Embrace or something like that.

But while a fancy title was cool, Kai would much rather a description that didn't give him too much of a headache trying to figure out what it meant.

A blade gained sentience, and with it, a desire to grow stronger. This blade has been forged from the flesh of a dead abomination and has been refined by its Will, increasing its durability and sharpness based on how far its willing to go to gain strength. This blade is able to further increase its sharpness and durability by absorbing the life of those it kills. After absorbing some of the air around it to make up for the lacking essence of an Epic Weapon Upgrade, this blade has gained the ability to levitate. Grants the wielder +200 Strength, +175 Will and +100 Stamina. This blade also gives the wielder a 25% boost to their Mana circulation and a 10% boost to their Mana recovery.

Kai resisted the urge to give Esurient kissed and settled on just carefully hugging the blade close to his chest. What an upgrade this was, it was certainly worthy of being called an Epic weapon.

While Kai knew that the upgrades from the weapon upgrade relied on the potential of the weapon, and while he did know that Esurient had a lot of potential, he didn't expect them to have this much.

Looking at the bonuses in the description once more, Kai saw the large amount of stats it gave, the fact it could grow stronger by killing things, its sharpness and durability were defined by its willpower, it gave a 25% boost to Kai's Mana circulation, which he still wasn't entirely sure what that meant, and a 10% boost to his Mana recovery.

And to top it all off, Esurient could fly now. Imagine that, Kai giving Esurient some of his Mana to borrow the power of the invisible wendigo, hence turning Esurient invisible and having an invisible flying blade.

There was so many possibilies, but Kai didn't have the time to test them all out.

Still, he had to at least congratulate his trusty weapon, which had become even more trusty.

"Well, how are you feeling? You did great, you even absorbed so much that the air around us had to make up for it."

Kai felt Esurient tremble softly in his hand before responding.

"Really? Did I really do great?"

Kai grinned as he patted Esurient's body.

"You didn't do great, you did amazing, you're well on your way to becoming much stronger."

Just as Kai expected Esurient to start trembling again, he was shocked to feel the body of the blade become even harder.

He then smiled be remembered the reason.

...increasing its durability and sharpness based on how far its willing to go to gain strength...

"But..." Esurient began to speak. "Can I rest for a while? I'm feeling tired."

Kai smiled softly down at the now beautiful blade.

"Of course you can, have a nice rest."

And with that, Esurient went back to residing in Kai's soul, promptly falling asleep after spending so much willpower on its upgrade.

But while Esurient went to sleep, Kai was wide awake. All his purchases so far had ended up being incredibly worth it.

However, in comparison to those two, the rest of his purchases were still extremely useful, just rather tame.

Still, time was still ticking away and Kai at least wanted to see the rest of the things he had bought, so with that, he got down to having a look at all his other purchased items in his final few minutes in the tutorial shop.