Kaiser of the New World

The mural on the wall clearly depicted a humanoid figure inside the massive ball of fire, as if it was the origin of it all.

Kai frowned to himself.

So the fireball hadn't just been some random phenomenon, but actually was created by someone else.

But then there was the question of...

Why bother?

Was there any real reason to try and blow up a random mountain in a random Subdimension?

Was there any reason to care about all of this in the first place? All Kai needed was to scale the mountain and get out of here, was there any need to get in some lore that happened billions and billions of years ago?

Probably not.

Kai was still going to get interested though, why wouldn't he? There was no harm in being a little curious.

So there's a sentient blizzard, and in the past there was a sentient fireball. What's next? Is there gonna be a sentient mountain?

Suddenly feeling a shiver run up his spine, Kai felt that it was best not to test how random and how terrifying this Subdimension could be, especially since they were climbing a gargantuan mountain right now.

That mural ended up being the final one, presumably because whoever painted these murals died after the fireball exploded. It also made sense how this section of the monastery had ended up down here, it must have gotten knocked off the side of the mountain and had gotten buried beneath billions and billions of years worth of snow.

Not long after that mural, the group finally arrived at the end of the tunnel.

Kai sighed in relief.

Even though the tunnel had been a relatively safe space, that would all change once they actually got out of here. They hadn't even been at the Royal Peak for more than five minutes before getting ambushed by a beast way stronger than them, even if it was part of a trial.

Approaching the end of the tunnel, Kai saw what the exit actually was.

A rickety wooden door.

...

Kai sighed again.

In all honesty, he was never going to get over how random everything could be. They had just been dragged beneath the earth by a massive snake and now they were about to exit it through a random door.

Which didn't even make any sense considering that they had gone down a flight of stairs, meaning they should be incredibly deep underground, yet they were about to come out of a door.

Unless the door didn't actually lead to an exit and instead led to an underground cave system or something.

Hopefully not.

Getting a little closer to the door, Kai couldn't help but wonder how exactly this was going to be their exit. It was just a regular door after all.

So, carefully, he placed his hand on its wooden body, pushed it open and-

Stared blankly out in front of him, wondering why couldn't things ever just be simple.

On the other side of the door was the exact same spot that Kai and the rest of the group had been dragged underground by the Winter Serpent. Their footsteps were even still in the snow, like no time at all had passed.

Turning around to face the rest of the group, Kai grinned.

"Well, that went well."

Cecilia wore a weak smile on her face, meanwhile Petunia rolled her eyes and went back to staring at nothing.

To be honest, Kai was kind of creeped out by the little child. Even though she was a child after all, he had assumed that she would at least be a little scared by everything that was going on.

She had been torn away from her family, practically watched her mother get killed, and now she had to traverse an unforgiving wilderness with two people she had never met before, and that was before the rat, wolf and sentient blade were mentioned.

So quite frankly, Kai felt as if there was something off about the girl. If that something off was a good thing or not was yet to be decided.

Taking a step out the door, Kai was once again embraced by the freezing cold blizzard.

In his head, all he could think about was how the could would be nullified when his soul was repaired. The thought of being able to warm himself with Soul Inferno was particularly appealing right now.

Cecilia, Petunia and Remy had followed him out the door, and by the time Kai had turned around, the door had vanished, replaced by the same snow that surrounded them.

Magical doors... that's a new one for the counter.

Now that they were back where they had been not too long ago, Kai felt wary of their climb to the peak.

Sure there would be relatively peaceful sections of their ascent, but there would also be their fair share of torturous ones too.

So all he could do was enjoy the next few days before the climb had any chance to screw them over.

And with that, the group set off to climb the Royal Peak.

All while unaware of the blizzard shifting strangely behind them.

*****

Three days later and it was finally complete.

Kai laid on his back inside the tent, staring blankly at the roof of it with a wide, goofy grin on his face.

Everyone else was asleep. Umbra, Petunia, Remy and Esurient were all together under a blanket, meanwhile he and Cecilia were still sharing one.

None of that mattered though, all that mattered was that he was finally back in peak condition.

His stats had returned to normal a little while ago, but he had taken his time with repairing his soul the last couple of days. Non-stop soul repair had made him tired after all.

It had been extremely beneficial to his skillset though. Before, it took him about five minutes to repair a single bad crack, now it would take him about a minute, normally less.

Of course, that was a massive increase in his Soulcery proficiency, but it wasn't like he was actually bad, its just that the amount of stats while fused with Failure must have been incredible to make repairing his soul so easy.

He was already pretty good at it, its just that his current stats and skillset were holding him back, but it wouldn't be long until he was back to repairing the cracks in a couple of seconds.

But other than that, Kai was over the moon to finally have all his stats return to normal. It was like he had been missing a chunk of himself, or had been going around with a few sleeping pills inside him that always made him feel a little weaker.

Now that he was back to normal though, he felt a little more confident about how their climb of the Royal Peak would go.

Of course, Kai wasn't going to get cocky, he was still much to easily scared to have any sort of misplaced confidence in himself.

He did, however, believe that he had a solid chance of running away from something if push came to shove. He could fuse with Umbra, pick up Cecilia, Petunia and Remy and sprint away before anything attacking them had the chance to react.

But those were worries for the future, Kai had something much more exciting to think about now.

Carefully getting up so that he didn't accidently wake up Cecilia or anyone else, Kai slipped out from under the blanket and crawled to the door of the tent. Once he was outside, he let out a sigh of relief.

It was finally time to test out Soul Inferno.

He had spent a month religiously practicing it, then he upgraded it using a Divine rarity item. If his flames did not look any different then he was going to feel a little disappointed.

So, after taking a deep breath, Kai activated his newly upgraded his skill.

Instantly, his body was engulfed by beautiful multi-coloured flames.

Looking down at the flames, Kai could help but feel as if they looked... deeper, somehow, more physical, tangible.

The heat emanating from them was also much more intense, even the snow beneath his feet was reacting. And this wasn't even as hot as he could burn, he was actually calming it a little in case he accidently made the tent catch fire.

For the next few moments, Kai experimented a little. He created a dense ball of flames in his his palm, then he created an arrow of multi-coloured flames, making him whistle softly.

This upgrade had opened up a whole new world of possibilities of what he could accomplish.

If he had a bow, he would have an infinite supply of arrows, and what sort of archer didn't like having an infinite supply of arrows?

He was just going to overlook the fact that he could definitely not be called an archer, having never held a bow in his life.

Because there was more pressing matters to tend to.

Like how much did his stats increase now.

So, nervously opening his status screen, Kai looked at his stats and-

"Oh..."

His stats, which used to previously get boosted by 46 every time he used the skill...

Now got boosted by 450 each.