After leaving Lady Aoki's cafe, I didn't really have much to do before evening.
I had gotten all the information I needed. Any more would be useless.
Quincy was probably training with Jake and Valentina, so I couldn't get in touch with them.
And there wasn't a plot point I could take advantage of at present, since the author didn't say much about these parts.
Since there was nothing I could do to waste time, I went back to the new apartment I had purchased with the money Val had given me.
It was in a large skyscraper building, the glass glistening under the sun.
Entering my apartment on the twenty-eighth floor, I collapsed on the couch.
"What kind of ability would I end up with?"
That singular thought had been in my head since the start of this week.
Would I get pyrokinesis, or ice manipulation, or maybe some crazy time ability?
I sat up straight and looked at nothing. "If I were to make a choice, then it would be something that can help with runes."
During my experiments, I had found out something. Although I knew runes and used them to manipulate my mana and add antivirus to them, putting stacking powers was far more difficult.
'Maybe it's because I haven't finished the second awakening?'
I sat cross-legged and closed my eyes. The mana within me was excessive, so much so that I had to create multiple cores.
One in my abdomen. Then I turned my heart and brain into cores. The heart core made sure mana constantly flowed through me just like blood, while the brain core increased my perception and thinking speed, though I could still draw mana from both.
I also created mana gates at all my joints, which served as mini cores. Finally, I filled my bones with mana, which made them have a sapphire glow to them.
All this meant was that I had pushed my body to the maximum it could reach pre-awakening. On top of that, I had gained resistance to most ailments, and my bones, which had integrated with my mana, could heal at a crazy speed.
However, even with my massive mana capacity and physical prowess, I still couldn't make an ability with runes.
The way unique skills worked was that once you got them, they kind of wrote their runic form with your mana inside your body.
So not only did they carry your mana signature, they were now one with your body and soul.
I tried doing the exact same thing, though I wasn't doing it with full intent, since if I got a unique skill now, I wouldn't be able to enter the rift world.
I was only checking if I could also use my mana to write runes with a specific ability inside my body, just like I did for the antivirus. Each time I tried, both my mana and the runes resisted.
I was even lucky that I didn't blow up in the process. "Something is missing." There was one more ingredient needed to do this.
If I could get that, then whether I got a strong unique skill or not wouldn't matter, since I could just create a new one.
Sitting up straight, I let out a sigh. "Why is getting a cheat skill so hard in this world?"
I stood up from the chair and headed for the room I had turned into a small training chamber.
There were many things I didn't have control over, like how to integrate runes into one's body, or how the system functioned so I could upgrade it once I got one. One thing I could control, however, was how strong my body and martial arts were before awakening.
"Quilbot, activate the simulation."
[Beep! Beep! Training Simulation Activated.]
[Level… 2]
For a week now, I had been fighting against a level two awakened simulation, and it had kicked my ass every single time.
Since none of a level 0's stats could be higher than ten, no matter how strong or talented they were, their total stats were calculated as the combination of all displayed attributes, which were:
Constitution, which measured stamina, endurance, HP, defense, and resistance.
Dexterity, which measured agility, balance, accuracy, coordination, and reflexes.
Faith, which affected divine magic, healing capabilities, and resistance to certain status effects.
Strength, which affected physical damage dealt in melee combat and carrying capacity.
Speed, which determined how likely you were to avoid an incoming attack and your running speed.
Mana Points, which represented the capacity of your mana pool and affected how many times you could use your unique skills or augment your body.
Perception and Senses, which affected not only how far you could see, but also how sharp your senses were.
Stats like luck, intelligence, and charisma were present, but they were not counted, since they did not manifest in the form of stat points.
This resulted in a total of seventy combined stat points for someone at the peak of level 0.
That meant a peak level 2 would have 158 combined stat points. Each being twenty-two or twenty-three assuming that person distributed all their stats evenly.
Not having enough stat points did not mean you could not grow further, only that it would be far harder than simply clicking a button.
Besides, the higher your level, the harder it became to improve your stats on your own.
This rigid mechanism was the main reason I tried to raise my starting stats to the absolute maximum. Once someone pulled ahead of you, it became incredibly difficult to surpass them again.
Unless, of course, you found some elixir or a forbidden technique capable of increasing stats, even beyond their level cap. The latter was far more deadly, while the former was exceedingly rare.
[Simulation Activated.]
In front of me was a glowing red form of a slender woman with an eyepatch that bore a crimson crystal.
When I first tried this simulation, I didn't know who she was. Now I did.
The greatest awakened hunter when she was still level 2, Asura.
"This time I'm surely going to beat you."
I put on my leather combat gloves and dragged the end with my teeth so they would fit in place. "I'm ready whenever you are?"