His gut was telling him to go with [Kic Reinforcement]. He didn''t like that he was relying on his instincts to guide his skill choices so far, but they hadn''t led him astray so far.


    Congrattions, skill [Kic Reinforcement] (Umon) acquired


    Biting the bullet he chose [Kic Reinforcement]. Typically, when he learned a skill the details of how to use it were ingrained into him. It made activation much quicker and easier. However, it seemed like [Kic Reinforcement] was not like normal skills. Julius had expected to learn how to apply kic mana to strengthen his body, but not this.


    It started as a warm flow of kic energy suffusing his body, it felt good. For about a few seconds at least. Then it felt like fire ants were crawling up and down his body. It didn''t hurt at first, just more ufortable than anything else. However, it soon felt like the ants started to eat him from the inside out. Moltenva was ripping through his veins and his entire skeletal structure felt like it was being broken down and rebuilt from the ground up.


    Julius tried his best not to scream out loud, but it was too much. He shoved his bloodied and dirty shirt into his mouth to muffle his cries. To any observer, it would look like Julius was having an exorcism being performed on him. His back was contorted and arching backward, as he wed the rock writhing in pain. He tried to use [Restoration] but the pain magnified even more and quickly stopped. It was by far the worst pain he had experienced, his entire being was broken down and reconstructed before his very eyes.


    Despite that, Julius could feel his body bing stronger, more flexible, and more dense. What was interesting, was during that slight moment when he activated [Restoration] he could feel his body respond to it. The pain increased, yes. But the process elerated and used the energy being supplied by [Restoration] to make further improvements to his body. It swiftly returned to its prior pace, but Julius got the impression that [Kic Reinforcement] wanted more life mana. As if once it got a taste of it, it wanted more.


    He froze and began contemting. He knew that this might be a pivotal point in his advancement. Would he continue to go with the standard process? Or would he take a gamble? He had no evidence to think that using [Restoration] would provide him with superior results. However, he did know it would for sure cause him significantly more pain.


    Julius didn''t even hesitate. In this world, power meant freedom. It became clear to Julius that he needed to be more powerful if he ever wanted to have a say. A moment of pain for even a small possibility of a lifetime of freedom? It was an easy choice. He immediately activated [Restoration], feeding [Kic Reinforcement] with as much life mana as he could.


    He was not the most talented, his affinities said as much. Most of his aplishments were because of his previous memories. He knew that there were some options for gaining power that he could never have ess to. But pain? If all it cost was a bit of physical pain, then he wasn''t willing to back down. Physical pain was nothingpared to the emotional torment of being too weak to save your loved ones. It was an opportunity he wasn''t willing to pass him by. So he gritted his teeth and let the pain in, weing it with open arms.


    The pain twisted throughout his body, mana molding it to its desires. [Restoration] was aiding it, providing it with additional life mana to infuse into his flesh and bones.


    After what seemed like an eternity, the pain started to subside and dial back. It was still there butpared to before it was bliss. Julius justid there, not able to move a single finger, it was like he had just gotten run over by a cement paver. His only movements were slight twitches and spasms from the lingering pain. He couldn''t do anything buty on his back panting in exertion, feeling immeasurable tiredness. The soreness on top of the exhaustion from the day''s events pushed him over the edge and lulled Julius to sleep.


    When he woke up he was still sore but could at least move. He thought about activating [Restoration] but the memory of the increased pain held him off. He hypothesized that [Restoration] would have positive benefits to whatever was being done by [Kic Reinforcement] but he didn''t know for certainty. It was a calcted risk he was willing to make.


    Steeling himself, he activated [Restoration]. The wave of life mana instantly shot through him. He could feel much of the soreness start to dissipate until all that was left was an ufortable itch under his skin. It was like wearing itchy underwear that was three sizes too small, but around his entire body.


    Suddenly, the smell hit him. Akin to rotten eggs and moldy cheese. It was all around him, suffocating him in its foul odor. Grabbing his nose to squeeze it shut, he felt something on his hands and face. He discovered that his skin was covered in a transparent film of ck tar. It coated him from head to toe. It was definitely where the smell wasing from. And it was absolutely rank.


    He climbed down from the shelf and made his way toward the small pool of water below. Julius tried to remove the disgusting muck attached to his skin, but it wasn''ting off easily. The water helped a bit, but after a couple of minutes, scrubbing it off with his fingers wasn''t working. He didn''t have anything to scrub himself, so he decided to use a t rock he found lying around.


    I mean, it''s kind of like a pumice, if I think about it, Julius thought to himself.


    Julius viciously scoured his skin with his rock, making sure there wasn''t anything left on it. The pool was already bing ck, contaminated by the tar-like substance. It took almost half an hour until he waspletely clean. Or at least as clean as he was going to get without a proper shower. The biggest problem was his clothes. His pants were soaked in the substance and even after scrubbing them for a good while, they still smelled like the back alley of a nightclub. He ditched his shirt, he could go without a shirt. But he didn''t want to gopletely native, so he bore with it and put his nasty pants back on, praying he didn''t catch any unfortunate disease on his private parts.


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    Now that he was "clean", he noticed how different he felt. His skin was much stronger and more pliable than it was before. When he was scrubbing, he noted how aggressively he was able to exfoliate his skin without tearing or bruising it. He barely felt the rock on his skin even though he was going to town on it. He also felt more dense, like his bones became steel rods but at the same time he never felt so light in his life. It seemed like [Kic Reinforcement] had lived up to its name.


    He wanted to check out his status to see if the changes he felt were reflected in it. Surprisingly, there were a lot of notifications that he missed.


    [Restoration lvl 3 -> lvl 6]


    [Kic Reinforcement lvl 1 -> lvl 5]


    Julius was shocked. [Kic Reinforcement] had gained four levels although he just got the skill. He hadn''t even used the skill yet and it was a third of the way until the next rank up. [Restoration] had also gained three levels. It appeared that using [Restoration] in conjunction with [Kic Reinforcement] had done wonders for both skills.


    He also felt like there were other benefits from pushing himself that weren''t represented in his status. Through the intense pain, Julius could distinctly feel life mana augmenting the process as well. He believed that after some experimentation he would find out if it was worth it. He was praying that the pain was worth it.


    Name: Julius Von Hyperius


    Tier: 1


    Skills:


    [Spatial Perception lvl 18] (Rare)


    [Savage Dance lvl 4] (Rare)


    [Thermal Compression lvl 7] (Umon)


    [Firebolt lvl 9] (Umon)


    [Restoration lvl 6] (Umon)


    [Kic Reinforcement lvl 5] (Umon)


    His status was looking pretty nice, he had a total of six skills and had four more open spots for additional ones. He still wanted a defensive skill, like a barrier or shield. However, [Kic Reinforcement] gave him confidence in taking more damage, even though he hadn''t tested it out yet. Furthermore, he was seriously considering a movement-based skill.


    In the fight with the trolls, Julius would have seriously benefitted by being able to disengage from his opponents. sting himself back with kic energy worked, but it was very inefficient. First, he couldn''t dictate exactly where he wouldnd, and second, his body couldn''t handle such violent uses of kic mana.


    However, now that he was thinking about it, [Kic Reinforcement] would most likely take care of thetter problem. Wanting to test it out, Julius walked from the pond to an open spot a couple dozen feet away. He started slow and gently fed a bit of mana into his legs. Except that instead of the slow steam of mana, his body sucked it up like a sand in the desert. He ended up putting way more in than he expected, but to his surprise, it felt fine.


    At this amount, it was simr to how much he was putting into his legs while fighting the trolls. Before, Julius needed to feed [Restoration] into his legs to counteract the damage the kic energy was doing to them. Now, it wasn''t tearing his muscles apart or putting an extreme load on his bones. It felt like his legs were humming with energy that was just waiting to be let loose. As if someone has hooked up a car battery to his feet.


    He took a quick dash forward, releasing the pent-up kic energy. Julius noticed that he wasn''t able to control the release of kic energy as well. However, that was to be expected, considering he no longer had [Kic Release]. With that being said, his legs felt fine afterward.


    He could probably repeat the same technique over and over now until he ran out of mana. Previously, his legs could only handle his burst step after [Restoration] healed them enough. Which took a few seconds of healing. Currently, his body felt like it could take much more mana and was reacting to it much more fluidly.


    There had always been a small dy when he used this technique, but it was instantaneous now. Despite the noticeable drop in his control over the release, he was quite happy with the results. It reminded him why he chose to forgo [Mana Maniption]. It would be better in the long run if he didn''t rely on a skill for something that was integral to kic energy control.


    Julius usually forgot that he didn''t have [Mana Maniption], but to be honest, he was thankful every day for it. He would be restricted by the skill parameters for most if not all his constructs. For example, [Firebolt] was his most offensively powerful skill, but there were some things he could not change about it. The activation sequence, the amount of mana it used, and the general construction of it were the same every time. If he wanted to change it, he needed to modify it after it had already been created.


    Most skills were like this, you sacrifice flexibility for reliability and speed. However, in his opinion for an integral ability like manipting mana or kic energy, skills be a crutch. He believed that these skills would restrict him and he would lose a lot of adaptability in the long run.


    Julius hadn''t heard about any other person modifying [Firebolt] or other skills like it. But he also hadn''t heard of anyone not having [Mana Maniption]. If someone wanted to change a skill, they did it during a skill advancement or evolution. He suspected that people''s overreliance on the [Mana Maniption], or the skill itself had constraints in its usage that prevented them from being able to modify their skills like he had done.


    It was a lot harder to do without a skill and took a lot more practice, but he maintained his stance that it was worth it. If he hadn''t trained so hard, and practiced in creative and challenging ways, he wouldn''t have been able to create thepound [Firebolt]. He would be stuck using the normal [Firebolt] and he saw what they did to the troll. Or rather, what they didn''t do. The troll had taken four [Firebolts] to the face and didn''t even faze it.


    Without a better way to do damage, his corpse would be roasting over a campfire, filling the bellies of the group of trolls. Now, he would just need to practice using kic energy without the skill. He expected it to be easier than when he was learning mana maniption manually because Julius still used kic-aspected mana to generate the majority of his kic energy. Only a small part of it was harnessed from the environment. In the meantime, he nned to stay in this particr ravine until he got a handle on his kic maniption abilities, at least until they were back to his previous level. It was important to allocate some time to explore his new abilities because he had a feeling that things were going to get a lot tougher down the road.