Kaiser of the New World

Another seven sleeps passed, meaning Kai had spent roughly two weeks in the ice cell. Cecilia had offered to just tell him whenever a day passed, but Kai refused in favour of sticking to the sleep schedule. It felt a bit more reliable to him, especially since he had used it so much in the white room.

Over the last seven sleeps, he continued to diligently train, continuously increasing his proficiency with Soul Flame and getting much better at Statshifting.

Now, he was able to fully set up the flames in less than fifteen minutes, a five minute improvement when compared to the twenty minutes that it took only a week ago.

And with his Statshfiting, now he was able to shift a stat in just less than a minute and a half, a thirty second upgrade.

That was a massive improvement, a whole thirty seconds knocked off in just a week of training. Those sorts of numbers were off the charts in terms of productivity.

Of course, those numbers didn't just come from Kai's relentless training, they also stemmed from one other source.

On sleep twelve, Anastasia paid Kai another visit, along with her two guards, Spear Guy and Box Man, a terrifying and formidable duo.

The hag taunted him for a while, trying to scare him before getting the duo to inject him again. This time, Anastasia said that she was injecting him with '30%' Ghoul Bloodline, only when Kai's actual Bloodline devoured it, it only equated to another 5%, making Kai's Bloodlines now look like this.

Bloodline: Human 80%. Kaiser of Souls 30%

He still had no idea how his second and more powerful Bloodline was meant to work, considering it didn't rely on what seemed practical and real. It was like it had no limit. Did that mean that it Kai continued to inject himself with other Bloodlines he could just statpad percentage boosts?

Turns out, the answer was no and Kai quickly realised why.

The first injection had contained 10% Ghoul Bloodline and only boosted his main Bloodline by 5%. However, the second time he had been injected with 30% Ghoul Bloodline and only gotten another 5%.

That was because Mid-Tier Bloodlines and below had already become incredibly diluted for him. If he continued to get injected with Bloodlines Mid-Tier and below, he may be able to get another few percent, but that would be it, he wouldn't be able to get any more percent from those sources.

Meaning, if Kai wanted to increase the percentage of his Bloodline, he had to get injected with a Bloodline that was High-Tier or something, he had no idea how the tiers of Bloodlines worked.

But that opened up its own risks. Like, what if the Bloodline he got injected with was stronger than his own Bloodline and wasn't able to be devoured, what would happen then?

So, Kai was sure that he would hold off on injecting himself with any foreign substances, at least for the time being anyway.

One thing that Kai enjoyed over the last seven sleeps was the time he spent with Cecilia.

Their conversations were actually surprisingly enjoyable. Cecilia was quite talkative when she came out of her shell.

Only it still felt like she was only poking her head out, rather than fully coming out. She still insisted on upholding the invisible boundary they had by calling Kai 'Sir', but Kai wasn't too bothered by that. It was up to her what she wanted to do.

During their time together, while Kai ate the stir-fry she had cooked for him, Cecilia would tell him about what her life was like before she got put under the hex.

Turns out, she had only been twenty when Castillian chose her to marry him and bear his children.

That meant she had only experienced twenty years of life before Anastasia put her under the hex for the next ten thousand years.

She was basically the same age as Kai. She hadn't gotten to experience anything. She had to work from a young age to support her single mother, her father had died from the cold when she was young so her mother was all on her own.

Cecilia had two jobs, working as a bar woman in a tavern that had now closed down, and she also cleaned warehouses, but even doing both of those, she wasn't able to make enough money.

Castillian had offered to support her mother as long as Cecilia married him, so her being the naive and innocent girl she was, she instantly accepted.

But then she was put under the hex, and that was her life up until now.

Kai couldn't help but feel bad for her. Imagine having a rough life up until your twenties, only to marry someone you thought could be your way out, only to break free of a mind hex after ten thousand years had passed.

He wasn't sure what he would do, and he most definitely wouldn't have been able to handle it as well as she had. Maybe the fact it was a God that had broken her free had helped, but still.

Her mother, which she had gotten into this whole mess for, was long dead. Everyone she knew was dead.

Cecilia revealed to Kai that the mind hex had another insidious feature that wasn't mentioned, and that was the fact that it slowed down the aging process of whoever it enchanted.

Under normal circumstances, Cecilia would be dead by now. Even though the aging process was different in the Multiverse, ten thousand years was still a very long time for a normal human.

She taught Kai that the way the aging process worked was tied to levels. The higher the level that one got, the longer they could live for. That's why Gods were near invincible, they were the highest level after all.

It was a sick sort of paradox that Cecilia had been subjected to. She had been an extremely low level when she was put under the mind hex, but the mind hex also slowed the way she aged. Both of those factors combined together so that while Cecilia was still relatively young and had kept her youthful appearance, her body was incredibly weak.

However, she also told Kai that problem would go away as long as she gained some levels. She basically just had to reach the level she would have to be to reach her current age, then her body would be fine.

It took her the course of multiple meetings to reveal all of that to Kai, mainly because she kept getting upset when talking about the past, which he understood. Who wouldn't be upset after what she had gone through?

But other than training with Soul Flame, getting better at Statshifting and having his sleeply talks with Cecilia, Kai continued to attempt to summon everything in his possession.

And surprisingly, there was a single item that had slipped through the cracks that were present in the collar, an item that Kai still had no idea what to really thing of.

His Legacy Item.

The Stat Bead.

Even after all this time, Kai still didn't really understand the capabilities of this item. He knew that is was weakened, considering he didn't pick the class that it belonged to, but that didn't mean its only property had to be so... strange.

Its only purpose was to store Kai's stats, but that didn't seem useful at all. Why would he want to purposely make himself weaker?

Kai, who had been in the middle of his Statshifting practice, froze.

... Purposely make myself weaker.

A small grin started making its way onto his face, his plan of escape seeming a little more realistic.

The collar around his neck had the property that the stronger one was, the harder it was to get out of it.

So what if Kai didn't get stronger, what if he made himself weaker? What if he stored every single stat possible in the bead and gave himself the stats of a level one, wouldn't that make it easier to get out?

Kai laughed to himself. In his head, it sounded plausible, but he would wait to test it for now as he would much rather not accidently trap all his stats in the bead. He hadn't experimented with the item before, so he had no idea how to actually use it.

Leaning back on the ice wall behind him, Kai-

Frowned as he heard a strange noise out in the ice hallway to the left, out of his sight. There was something moving closer to him, only it wasn't human footsteps, it was more like... scurrying?

After a couple of seconds where Kai waited patiently for whatever was coming to be in front of his cell, Kai's eyes widened slightly as he saw what had been causing the noise.

A rat, a rather clean looking rat compared to all the ones he had seen so far in this Subdimension, was walking across the ice.

He had no idea how a rat had gotten down here. But then again, Kai didn't know what the path to get here was like, maybe it was connected to the sewers or something.

The rat sniffed the ice before turning its head, looking right at Kai before it froze, realising Kai was looking back.

Now that Kai thought about it, this might be his only chance to test one of the things he hadn't been able to test with the collar on.

There hadn't been a proper test subject for this, so he had no way of knowing could he still do it with the collar on. It's not like he used this ability much anyway, but he was still curious.

So for the first time since the very beginning of his journey, all the way back in the eternal shade of the Forest of Ethania...

Kai used the first aspect of his Innate Ability.

Taking a deep breath, Kai looked right at the rat, opened his mouth and said:

"Freeze"