Bab 219: Flame of Hope

Annie.

In all honesty, Kai didn't really know what to think when he thought of the cheerful woman.

He had technically only known her for a month after all, but she had left her mark on him. She was always cheerful, always smiling, always happy.

So why did someone like her have to suffer while people like Anastasia, Castillian and Ezekial prospered?

Kai sighed softly.

Life really was not fair.

Back in the moment, he had thought that sending her out using painless flames would have been enough, but he had not expected to get another notification by killing the girl.

And that notification was this:

You have received an item.

By now, Kai was mostly certain that his theory was correct.

Back in the beginning of his journey, he had learned that his Luck somehow stat influenced the drop rate of items, but as for how much it influenced it he had no idea. After all, his Luck Stat had always been rather low, but he had received five items from killing people or abominations.

There was the bracer he had gifted to Sofia, Esurient, the blade from the Demon, Failure's crown, and now this new item from Annie.

Two of those items had been pure luck, those being Esurient and the bracers, but the other three all came from people that had some sort of relationship to Kai.

Which practically confirmed one thing to do with gaining items.

The system, while it would also take a person's Luck stat into account, also relied on stories.

Well, maybe not stories, but some sort of relationship, fate even. The three people that he had gained items from had all affected him in some way after all.

Failure had affected him the most, giving Kai a lot of items, training, advice and just guiding him in general.

The Demon was the first much stronger opponent that Kai had faced, and facing them had helped them realise who they wanted to be.

And Annie, even though she might not have had as much of an impact as the other two, it was her final wish that gave Kai the determination to turn the city to ruin.

All of them had impacted his life in someway, all of them were dead, and all of them had given him an item.

Kai sighed softly.

How shitty...

There was no use delaying the inevitable though, so with a heavy heart, Kai looked at the name of the item.

Flame of Hope (Epic)

An Epic item, which didn't really make sense considering that Annie was just a regular, mundane human. Maybe the system also relied on the so called story to give item rarities as well.

Moving his eyes downward, Kai looked at the description of the item. It was a really short one, much shorter than the last few items he had obtained.

This item boosts all fire based abilities by 50% When desparate, boosts the abilities by a further 50%. Grants the user +350 Luck

Kai blinked.

Did the system really like Annie that much, or was this some sick sort of prank?

Boosting fire based abilities by 50%, was it because Kai had burned her? And the boosting it by a further 50% when desparate, Annie hadn't been desparate, so why was that part of the item?

Kai sighed.

In all honesty, it really was an incredible item.

Soul Flame was a skill that gave Kai 33 bonus stats in each stat, although they could be adjusted to anything he wanted, the main premise of it was 33 in each stat.

25 of those stat points came from the base skill, while the extra 8 came from the 30% boost from his Bloodline.

But with this item thrown in the mix, Kai would be able to get 46 bonus stats in each stat, 25 from the base skill, 8 from his Bloodline and 13 from his new item, the system rounded upwards after all. Then, if he was desparate, he would be able to reach 58 bonus stats in each stat, reaching a grand total of 406 bonus stat points free to be Statshifted. That was about the same as 6 level ups.

The boost to his Luck was nothing to scoff at either.

Deciding to summon the item to see what it looked like, Kai was a little shocked to see its appearance.

It looked near identical to the necklace he had placed on Annie's body, only instead of a beautiful green gem in its centre, there was a small cage with a multi-coloured ember trapped inside it.

The colours were the exact same as Soul Flame's.

Lifting his hands up, Kai put the necklace around his neck and watched as the flame on the wick grew ever so slightly, its heat now a little more prominent.

Kai smiled softly.

The item would boost the stats gained and also the potency of the flames, how incredible.

Actually, now that he thought about it, would the necklace also be able to boost his Ignition skill? Sparks were technically the beginning of a flame, so there was a possibility.

Kai was hesitant to use the skill though, so that idea would have to go on hold for a while.

Still, he couldn't help but be a little dejected.

He knew he was being a little dumb, but that's how he always was. Nonchalance always helped to keep him calm in stressful situations, but it's in the moments where he looked back on those situations that he felt bitter.

Could he have done anything better? Maybe if he ignored Ezekial, got Petunia as quickly as possible and made a dash to the teleporter they could have gotten out, but there was no certainty that they wouldn't have gotten caught along the way.

Plus, Annie would have been forced to endure the same horrible life that she despised.

So there was no use looking back on things, all Kai could do was look forward and deal with the consequences.

Now, it was time for the final notifications that he had to deal with.

The Skill Selections.

The system had mentioned that two of these would be influenced by The Ever-changing, so Kai was curious to see what those would be like.

However, he was a little confused as to why he was actually able to select the skills this time. He had blacked out at the end of everything, and the last time he blacked out and got Skill Selections the system had automatically performed them for him.

But at that time, Kai had blacked out before he received them, while this time he blacked out after, maybe that was it.

Opening the first skill selection, Kai-

Grimaced.

It was like he was back in the days of the white room, getting given am abysmal skill selection for his first time. Telepathy had actually ended up being much more useful than he could have imagined though, so Kai wasn't that upset.

Still, Kai instantly wrote off two skills after seeing what they did. One allowed him to exert some sort of mental influence on anyone who attempted to manipulate him, only the requirement was the person who was trying go manipulate him had to have a Soul Core at least one rank higher than Kai's own.

Meaning that the skill was practically useless as their mental defences would be many times better than Kai's.

The second one skill offered was one that would allow Kai to burn a corpse in exchange for temporary power ups, but the requirement was that the corpse had to belong to someone he was close to.

...

Yeah, there was no way he was going to murder his companions in exchange for some timed boosts, he had Ignition for that.

The last skill, however, was one that caught Kai's eye as it relied on one of the concepts he learned back in the castle.

Adept Internal Mana Manipulation (Rare)

Back in the castle, Kai learned through the experiment in the book that his compatability with Internal Mana was incredibly high, especially after getting boosted by the Mana Vein Enhancement. That was also one of the reasons he could maintain his transformation for so long, very little Mana being circulated around his body went to waste.

Even if he was using Soul Flame it would still work in his favour as the origin of the skill was his body, but if he were to use a skill like a regular Fireball it wouldn't be as powerful as it relied on External Mana.

Kai knew that he would end up picking this skill anyway, but he still had a look at the description anyway.

Passively boosts the user's control of Internal Mana.

Kai blinked.

A really, really short description, but he didn't mind, it got right to the point and explained what it did, even though it wasn't that hard to tell what it did.

At least it was a passive skill, meaning it was always active, like Nonchalance, it just meant that even if he didn't mean to, Kai would always be more efficient in controlling his Mana.

After picking the skill, the result was instantly noticible as the candle Cecilia was holding once again flared a little and gained a tad bit more life and heat.

Thinking to himself, Kai was sure that selection was not one of the two that The Ever-changing had influenced, so that meant he had gotten rather lucky being offered that skill. It was a great one after all.

So, already feeling a little better about this whole situation, Kai moved onto the second skill selection.