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《Quick Steps 》

For a brief moment, move as fast as the wind. Your Agility increases by x3 for 1 second.

《Mighty Shout》

Let out a roar that shakes the air around you, diverting projectiles and leaving your foes off-balance.

《Redirection》

Instantly alter the trajectory of any of your movements, avoiding any backlash that would otherwise occur to the self.]]

Before looking at what I had gotten from the second system, I checked my skill options for reaching level 5.

[[STR: 20+4

END: 20

AGI: 13+4

PER: 10

MAG: 10

MANA: 10

Skill Points: 1]]

Thanks to the level-up, my Strength and Endurance had each increased by two points each, and I was left with a free point to spend.

While my body could finally move properly at the speed I wanted, the problem had been my ability to actually see attacks in time to dodge them. That would be helped by raising my Perception, as it had a sort of time dilation or faster thinking speed effect that would allow me to properly react to situations that would have otherwise been too fast for me to understand.

[[PER: 11]]

I put the point into Perception and considered my skill options. Every single one of the skills seemed like they would be extremely helpful for covering one of my biggest weaknesses—fighting opponents that used ranged attacks.

«Quick Steps» would not only increase my movement speed for avoiding ranged attacks, but it would also allow me to close the gap.

«Mighty Shout» would help me create openings and was actually better than it let on if I was reading it correctly, as it didn’t give any requirements for the projectiles it could divert from me. Would it be able to theoretically save me from even a massive boulder?

Finally, «Redirection» let me instantly change the direction I was moving with no ill effects, allowing me to break the rules of physics in ways I could only imagine. Falling from a great height at terminal velocity? I could just redirect my movement instantly at a horizontal angle before hitting the ground, stopping all downward momentum and launching forward like an arrow.

All of them were good skills, but if I used «Strike» correctly, I was already basically using «Quick Steps».

That left «Mighty Shout» and «Redirection». Considering the two skills, «Redirection» had more utility and could be used in more situations, so I ended up going with it.

[[«Redirection» selected.]]

With that done, I had reached level 5, crossing into the standard of a true Awakener.

The frigid wind was biting at my skin. Koise was likely much colder, but he was still unconscious. I needed to move us out of the cold somehow, and I needed to do it as soon as possible.

I looked over the Second System level I had gained in the hopes that whatever rewards I would be given could assist us somehow in the harsh snow.

{{Level Up}}

{{Options

《Heat Manipulation》

Increased proficiency with heat sense has opened up the way to reach out and manipulate heat itself.

《Earth Formation》

Increased proficiency with earth control has opened up the way to manipulate external earth at your touch.

《Earth Armor》

Increased proficiency with rapidly forming the earth around your body in various ways has opened up the way to increase the amount of earth you can summon.}}

The Second System offered me upgrade choices based on how I had been using the skills it had given me. Would it continue to do so every time I gained a level in it? Just how powerful could those little bits of earth I summoned become?

I might have considered «Earth Armor» and «Earth Formation» in any other circumstance, but the cold wasn’t a foe that could be fought off with armor or earth. I needed something to warm us up as soon as possible, and «Heat Manipulation» was the best choice for that.

[[«Heat Manipulation» selected.]]

The Second System message faded with those words, leaving me feeling no different, still next to Koise’s unconscious form in the middle of the snowfield.

‘Did it say something about being an upgrade for heat sense?’

It didn’t hurt to try.

I reached out with heat sense, shutting my eyes to concentrate on whatever I could feel.

The heat sense definitely felt more accurate, more… sensitive, somehow.

It took less effort, and I was easily able to sense the warmth of my body and Koise’s fading warmth.

Reaching out with the sense to try to manipulate the faint shimmers of heat I felt from my body, I tried to constrain the warmth, to keep it from dispersing into the cool air like some sort of invisible coat.

I might have just imagined it, but while holding that image in my mind, I thought I felt the slightest tingle of warmth through my body.

Right then…

Boom!

The snow exploded in front of us, and Lein landed unceremoniously in the crater in the snow.

“Shit…”

I shielded my face from the cold shower of snow.

“I thought you had left,” I said, relief filling my voice.

He looked confused, his outfit much more worn. With dirt and grime caking the folds in his clothes and matted hair, it almost looked like he had been rolling in a swamp somewhere, but we weren’t near anything of the sort…

“Hey, Lein, I would love to let you catch your breath and everything, but it’s freezing and Koise is going to die if we don’t do something.”

“Koise…?” his eyes wandered over Koise’s form as he seemed to be trying to remember something.

“Oh… that guy… Sorry…”

He didn’t even question my intent to save the guy who had attacked us like I thought he would, he just accepted my statement, a far-off look in his eyes.

“Lein, snap out of it!”

I waved my hand in front of his face.

“Do you have anything in your bag that could help?!”

“Oh… yeah… I might still have some warming stones.”

He looked through his bag, taking out five of the stones and imbuing his mana into them one by one to activate their warmth auras.

It would only last for a small amount of time, but it would be better than nothing.

I dragged Koise into the snowless crater that Lein had made with his appearance.

‘Did he go through a different dungeon instance in that short time?’

I already knew that dungeons could distort time, so it wouldn’t be a complete surprise if the Relic had taken him on an additional quest of some sort shortly after he had exited the dungeon.

Ensuring that Koise was in the warmest point of the little area we had set up, I approached Lein, who was just sitting at the crater’s edge, snow melting around the warmth stones and soaking his clothes—though, he didn’t seem to care.

“Hey, you alright? Where’s the Relic?”

Lein rummaged around in his item bag before pulling out what looked to be a glass orb that his hand could just barely fit around.

The orb shone and seemed to emit a faint aura of cold around it, an innate green energy crackling under the snowstorm raging around the surface of the glass orb.

“We can’t give this to the city,” he said, his tone an inarguable statement.

“What? I thought we came all the way here for the quest.”

He shook his head.

“No, it’s hard to explain it all… But we absolutely cannot let the Edge restore contact with what lies below the clouds.”

“Why not?”

He shuddered and shook his head.

Whatever it was that he had seen, wherever he had been, he couldn’t bring himself to describe it to me.

“Lein… What did you see?”

He licked his cracked lips and hesitated, not his usual flippant self.

“They city, the dragons… they’re gone, not physically, but mentally… Seeing what happens if we take the orb back to them…”

He shook his head again.

If he had the ability to connect mentally like Krylla had, I would have just asked to see his memories. However, Krylla was actually the only one I had seen with such an ability, and she was much too far away to take Lein to just so I could figure out what he wouldn’t say.

“Then what do you want to do with it?”

He put the orb back into his bag.

“Keep it in here and never take it out.”

It was fairly easy to imbue a bag with your personal mana so that only you could open it, which was what I guessed he had done, as he believed the bag to be the most secure place for something that could, supposedly, bring about something terrible.

“I guess we just go back and say the dungeon collapsed?”

I was already thinking about returning to the city and finding a way to take a warm bath, as it had been ages and I stunk to high heaven.

“We shouldn’t go back, either…”

Back was really the only place we could go—the warmth stones wouldn’t last forever, and it was the closest point of civilization to us by far.

Besides, if the city really harbored something so dangerous, we had to warn people before whatever it was could be let loose some other way.

“Come on, Lein. We’re going back, nobody probably even knows we were the ones who did it anyway, there had to have been other instances of Awakeners inside at the same time as us.”

We could just say we were caught in the avalanche and leave it at that. It wasn’t like the city would reward us for a failed quest anyway.

Lein nodded.

Koise was easy enough to pick up with my enhanced stats, and we started the slow climb back over the mountain towards the City on the Edge before the warmth from our stones completely faded.

Whatever was going to happen, I was just really looking forward to taking that warm bath and cutting the scratchy hair that was starting to grow on my face.

‘How long has it been since I’ve had a proper rest, anyway?’