Kaiser of the New World

Kai closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, mentally preparing himself for the oncoming pain and the feeling of his fingers turning to ice.

Only that frozen feeling never came, in fact, no pain came.

Opening his eyes, Kai grinned as he saw what was sitting on the palm of his hand.

A vibrant flame, made up of seven different colours. That was the only thing on his hand, no ice, no frostbite, just fire.

Only the ball of fire was much smaller than it would usually be when Kai summoned it. It also didn't feel as hot, or as potent.

Kai sighed, but he was still over the moon with the results.

Soul Flame worked, for some reason, but the collar was limiting it. But even when the flame was limited, Kai was still ecstatic. For two reasons actually, one because it would make the cold a little more bearable.

But also because it meant that the collar couldn't completetly counter all of his skills.

It did seem a little far fetched that it could completetly counter all of his abilities, normally an item like the collar would specialise in a single thing, like nullifying all magical skills or something.

But since there was so many things going on in the collar, it meant that its abilities were spread thin, meaning there were countless cracks that Kai could take advantage of.

And Soul Flame had made it through one of those cracks.

Carefully, Kai attempted to concentrate on the area of his wrist where the chain was located in an effort to melt it. He didn't really have high hopes for it, but it was worth a shot.

Instantly, Kai realised that he had been underestimating the collar.

Even though he could still use Soul Flame to a much lesser degree, it was much harder to control it. Normally, it would have only taken a few seconds to direct the flames, but Kai was struggling.

He had to fully concentrate just to make the flames wrap around his wrist and the chain, it took quite a bit out of him.

Sadly, it was all for naught as even after a couple of minutes the chain showed no signs of melting.

Still, Kai wasn't upset, he hadn't expected it to be able to melt the chain anyway, he was just happy that at least one of his skills could be used.

And that also meant that Kai could attempt something else since the cooldown on the collar hadn't increased.

But what to try this time.

Soul Flame was limited, and the worst thing about this dungeon was the cold. The cold was going to be the deciding factor in how well he was able to adapt to the current situation.

So Kai needed something to keep him warm, and after a lot of thinking between which of the two items to attempt to summon, he made up his mind.

His Tunic of Rememberance.

Attempting to summon it, Kai-

Cried out in pain as the cold powers of the collar started invading him once more. His fingers started freezing over, only this time the frostbite only affected the top half of all his fingers.

Kai panted as he remained still, careful not to move in case he accidently shattered one of his fingers.

He remained like that for a couple of minutes, until his fingers had returned to their normal complexion and didn't feel as if they would shatter at the slightest movement.

Kai sighed. His tunic was another failure, locked behind the blue collar wrapped around his neck.

But now he was faced with another decision.

The cooldown was current only affecting the top half of his fingers, meaning he probably had one more good attempt before he had to take another break and let the cooldown reset.

By now, Kai was kind of certain that all of his items were locked, so he wasn't going to attempt summoning them any more, so that left him with only his skills and Innate Ability.

But Kai wasn't going to attempt to use either of them, instead, he was going to try to Statshift.

Taking a deep breath, Kai closed his eyes and imagined his soul and his seven Stat Sparks.

However, as soon as he done so, he frowned.

He was able to see his soul fine, and all his Stat Sparks were the same, but he felt a little confused seeing the seed that resided in the centre of his soul.

Why did it look like it had gotten... bigger?

The change wasn't that noticible, in fact, it was barely there, but Kai was sure that his eyes weren't deceiving him-

Even though they had been deceiving him for the last six months-

But the seed had gotten a small bit bigger, and Kai had no idea as to why that was.

He wasn't sure if it was a good or had thing that it was getting bigger, he still had no idea what it was for after all. What would happen if it got big enough and was hitting against his Stat Sparks.

Or even just what would happen if it grew in general?

Kai shook his head and got back on target, he was doing this to Statshift, not to speculate about the seed that Failure had left inside him.

...

He... would need a better way of saying that if anyone ever ended up asking, it probably didn't sound good to say that another man had left their seed inside him.

Shaking his head again, Kai took a deep breath and tried to replicate how be used to Statshift and...

Was extremely pleased that the collar did not affect it at all.

Of course, he wasn't as quick as he used to be, compliments of him not practicing for the last six months, but it wasn't actually that slow either.

Maybe the Mana Vein Enhancement had some effect...

It wouldn't be that far fetched, it seemed like something that could happen. Kai had yet to experiment the full abilities of the Enhancement since he had been under a hex for the last six months.

So to imagine that it could improve his Statshifting, Kai wouldn't be surprised.

It took him roughly fifteen minutes to move five Strength into Dexterity, which was about the same as it would have been previously. Actually, it could have been considered an improvement considering that it took him ten minutes to move three stats before.

For the next while, Kai continued to Statshift. It was sort of relaxing.

He was the only one in the Multiverse that could do this, all because of the bizzare combination of his Class, Bloodline and Skills. He felt happy when Statshifting, it was like raising a puppy and watching it grow.

Even though he wasn't sure if it was good for someone's mentality to compare seven colourful sparks to something like a puppy, maybe he still had some of the hex madness left in him.

Nah, he was fine now... probably.

Kai continued to experiment with his Statshifting, as far as he could tell the collar wasn't affecting it, unless there was some unseen side affect.

But no, his Statshifting seemed to be fine, no changes to it.

After opening his eyes, a mad grin made its way onto Kai's face. He was happy, no, he was more than happy.

It had only been about a day and he had already found two loopholes around the collar. Well, maybe they weren't loopholes, but they were exploits, glitches in the system.

Soul Flame and Statshifting. Kai wasn't sure how yet, but he knew that these two would be his ticket out of here.

Leaning back against the ice, Kai began formulating his plan.

One month, well, he had no way to measure days so he was going to resort back to his method of tracking time back in the white room.

Thirty sleeps, Kai was going to give himself thirty sleeps to increase his mastery of Statshifting, to learn to use Soul Flame better now that it was being limited by the collar and to try and summon every item in his soul, attempt to use every skill he possessed and use his Innate Ability.

After those thirty sleeps pass, that was when Kai was going to try to break out.

The situation wasn't actually that dire, just a little cold, but if he got better at using Soul Flame that would solve that problem.

After all, when would he get a better oppurtunity to practice? All he was able to do currently was practice Statshifting and using Soul Flame.

It was always the situation that wearing weights while training would show a bigger increase, and it was basically the same for Soul Flame. If he got better at using it while it was limited, then he would see a massive increase when he got this damn collar off of his neck.

He felt a little guilty though, it meant that Petunia would have to put up with Castillian for another thirty sleeps. Even though it pained him to do so, he knew that these thirty sleeps would be vital to their escape, so he had to leave her alone for another while.

So Kai got right back to Statshifting. He didn't really have any end goal in mind, he simply trained moving all his Stats between each other.

Luck went into Stamina, Strength went into Mana, Mana went into Dexterity, Stamina went into Will, everything was shared between the seven Stat Sparks.

And that was how Kai spent the rest of his day, well, sleep.

He constantly Statshifted until he grew tired enough that even a wall of ice seemed like an appealing pillow.

Laying his head back on the wall, Kai closed his eyes and fell into the sweet embrace of sleep.

All while unaware of the movement outside of his cell.

And when he woke up, he couldn't help but be surprised about the tray of ice inside his cell with more food on top.

Only unlike the meal he had been given earlier, where the bread had been moldy and the broth disgusting, this tray had a stir fry similar to the one he always made on it.