I Reincarnated As A Stick

Chapter 121: Soul Strength

Within the inheritance named Area 52, there lied a green wooden sculpture that looked like it was sculpted by a master craftsman, but in fact, it was an Inanimate being nearing the Animate level. If you can say that S-grade Inanimate is close to being Animate, that is.

This green wooden sculpture was none other than Aurus, who had just finished the 10th and final instruction of the second trial, the Trial of Logic. At this current moment, the monotonous voice was finished announcing to him how he had surpassed all the other previous inheritors in terms of the trial, getting a boosted reward thanks to it.

Ding!

As usual, when obtaining a reward from an inheritance, Aurus’ system would notify him of such a thing…although it goes without a saying that Aurus could find the reward just fine without the notification. Nonetheless, it made it easier for him to find the reward since it was all in a single holographic screen.

“System, open the notification log,” Aurus commanded the system not long after the monotonous voice was gone. Without missing a beat, the system responded with a holographic screen manifesting and expanding in front of his field of vision, allowing him to see all of the things he might have missed with just one glance.

‘[Flux Sacrifice] has reached the MAX level.’

‘[Flux Sacrifice] has met the necessary requirements and is ready to evolve.’

‘[Greater Illusion Resistance] has leveled up by two levels.’

“Well that was fast.” Since Aurus was reading from top to bottom, he did not notice the reward from the inheritance trial, focusing on the notification that was at the very top first.

“System, remove [Flux Sacrifice] from the Learning module and replace it with hmm…” Aurus commanded the system and as he was about to finish the command, he pondered for a bit in silence. It took him a few seconds to say “[Spirit Aura].”

To be honest, it was a logical thought. Ever since he obtained the skill from the Alliance Market, he had never used it even once. Now that he had placed it in the Learning module, even though he did not use it, by the time he did, it would be better than ever.

‘[Flux Sacrifice] has been removed from the module, replaced with [Spirit Aura].’ Another screen popped up in front of Aurus’ field of vision, notifying him that it was a success.

After seeing another screen pop up in front of his field of vision, he then said, “Evolve [Flux Sacrifice].”

Ding!

It only took an instant for the skill to be evolved as the system notified him of the skill’s new name, [Better Flux Sacrifice].

Definitely great naming sense coming from the system.

After he was finished evolving the skill, Aurus continued to read the notification log and eventually, he found the reward the inheritance gave him.

‘The user has obtained 300 Genesis Points from the Area 52 Inheritance, Trial of Logic.”

“…” After he was finished reading the notification, Aurus was left at a loss for words. He closed and opened his sense of vision multiple times as he could not believe the number that was plastered beside the words ‘Genesis Points’.

It only took him around 20 times of closing and opening his sense of vision, in other words blinking, to fully accept the reward the inheritance gave him. The first word that came out of his nonexistent mouth was…

“Woah.”

It was truly unbelievable. He had grinded for so long, only to get around 40 Genesis Points. But now, he had only cleared a trial, but it gave him 300 Genesis Points?

Aurus shook his head to remove all the random thoughts in his mind. Oh wait, he doesn’t have one. Wait…does he?

Anyways, Aurus shook away the random thoughts in his mind and thought about the 300 Genesis Points seriously.

“How should I allocate it?” Aurus questioned himself, only for his thought process to be interrupted by the monotonous voice from the inheritance.

“Inheritor, you have thirty minutes to prepare before the third trial, the Trial of Soul Strength, starts. It is highly suggested that the inheritor should have incredibly high soul strength, or else the inheritor would not be able to pass this trial,” the monotonous voice stated, slightly surprising Aurus as he had three times the amount of time to prepare.

Now, was Aurus going to use the whole 30 minutes to create hypotheses as to how the third trial worked? Of course not! He was going to use the 300 Genesis Points given to him within these 30 minutes!

“First off, I’m going to use a portion of my points on the Soul Enchantment System.” Aurus made up his mind as he commanded the system to open the Soul Enchantment System. Then again, it was pretty much a given that he would have to dabble in the feature once again since the name of the trial he was up against was Soul Strength.

Ding!

In an instant, a holographic screen appeared in front of Aurus, revealing the Soul Enchantment System to him. As he skimmed through the information on the screen, Aurus could not help but skim over the screen a few more times as he asked himself, “Why is my Soul Power so high?”

________

[Soul Enchantment System]

Soul Power: 20 [Damage+100% (Capped)]

——–

[Rank 0 — Sigils of Tempering] – Mastered

[Rank 1 — Sigils of Inner Tempering] – 0/5

[Rank Upper 1 – ???? ?? ?? ????] – Needs the Sigils of Inner Tempering to be mastered

________

He pondered over the reason as to why his Soul Power was insanely high. It took him a few minutes to find out the reason, which was all because of the skill given to him by the inheritance at the first trial.

“To think that the Soul Enchantment System is considered as a soul-based technique…” Aurus could not help but sigh as he felt some stress creeping in his mind. Of course, he did not mind high Soul Power, since it brought him benefits. But from his memories, those with high Soul Power in the early Inanimate stages were most likely to be used as a catalyst for the weapons of Animates. That also meant that players at the Animate stage could basically create weapons out of Inanimate players.

Although there were no other player of ISE other than himself in this world, he still wanted to be safe from Animates, or at least less detectable than now. He was very sure that those Animates with high perception could easily sense his strong soul.

“I’ll have to check the Tempest Cliff Inheritance or the Alliance Market if they have soul sealing skills at hand later,” Aurus said to himself as he commanded the system to max out the Rank 1 Sigils.

Ding!

’10 Genesis Points have been consumed to upgrade [Rank 1 — Sigils of Inner Tempering] to its maximum level.’

‘Your Soul Power has increased by 5 points (13 points total due to a special skill).’

‘Thanks to the user mastering the Rank 1 Sigils, an additional two points of Soul Power has been added (5 points total due to a special skill).’

‘Thanks to the user mastering the Rank 1 Sigils, the Rank Upper 1 Sigils, the Sigils of External Tempering, have been unlocked.’

Reading through the consecutive notifications brought by upgrading the Rank 1 Sigils to the maximum level, Aurus could not help but shiver at the fact that this was going to make him more detectable.

“I now have a Soul Power of 38…this is too much, even for a decently ranked Animate!” Aurus could not help but complain in his heart. Contrary to his complaints though, he continued to invest Genesis Points into the Soul Enchantment System, maxing out the Rank Upper 1 Sigils which consisted of 8 Sigils in total.

Ding!

’25 Genesis Points have been consumed to upgrade [Rank Upper 1 — Sigils of External Tempering] to maximum level.’

‘Your Soul Power has increased by 12 points (30 points total due to a special skill).’

‘Thanks to the user mastering the Rank Upper 1 Sigils, an additional 4 points of Soul Power have been added (10 points total due to a special skill).’

‘Thanks to the user mastering the Rank Upper 1 Sigils, the Rank Inferior 2 Sigils, the Sigils of Inner-Outer Unification, have been unlocked. This set consists of 12 Sigils.’

“…” Aurus could not help but calculate his current Soul Power after seeing the notifications from the system one more time. In the end, he could not help but curse out, “Now this is just fucking overkill at this point.”

As he said this to himself, he decided that he was going to stop…only for it to be at a crossroads as he hesitated. “Is a Soul Power truly enough to fully clear the third trial?” Aurus had a feeling that a Soul Power of 100 would totally be enough to clear the third trial. Then again, he was now going to be extremely noticeable at this point.

“Ah, fuck it,” Aurus said to himself. “The first thing I’ll do after leaving this inheritance is to get a soul sealing skill as fast as possible!”

“Upgrade the Rank Inferior 2 Sigils to its maximum level!”

Ding!

’60 Genesis Points have been consumed to upgrade [Rank Inferior 2 — Sigils of Inner-Outer Unification] to maximum level.’

‘Your Soul Power has increased by 36 points (90 points total due to a special skill).’

‘Thanks to the user mastering the Rank Inferior 2 Sigils, an additional 8 points of Soul Power have been added (20 points total due to a special skill).’

‘Thanks to the user mastering the Rank Inferior 2 Sigils, the Rank Lower 2 Sigils, the Sigils of Foundation Establishment, have been unlocked. This set consists of 15 Sigils.’

‘Due to the user having a Soul Power of over 150, the Rare grade skill [Soul Transcendence] has been created, allowing the user’s stats and senses to be highly boosted for a certain amount of time.’

‘Due to the user having a high Soul Power, the system shall warn the user to suppress the Soul Power, lest the user wants to be caught by external entities.’

“…” After upgrading the Soul Sigils once more, Aurus decided that now was a good time to stop. He calculated the total amount of Soul Power he had and could not help but curse afterwards.

“Fuck.”

“A Soul Power of 188.”

“Ain’t this overkill?”

“I’m just fucking target practice for the Animates at this point!”