New Year, New Ability

In this world, the first day of the year wasn’t a holiday. It simply felt like something special happened last night.

Hikaru, Lavia, and Paula were on a carriage leaving Hopestadt. They planned to use the Drakon Passage to return to Scholarzard, but the entrance to the passage wasn’t exactly walking distance.

「What’s this?」

Hikaru noticed a change on his Soul Board.

【Soul Board】Hikaru

Age:16 Rank:42

3

【Vitality】

【Magical Power】

【Physical Strength】

..【Strength】1

..【Weapon Mastery】

….【Throwing】10 (MAX)

……【Heaven Shot】0

【Agility】

..【Power Burst】5

..【Stealth】

….【Life Obfuscation】4

….【Mana Obfuscation】4

….【Imperceptibility】5 (MAX)

……【Assassination】3 (MAX)

……【Sniping】3 (MAX)

……【Group Obfuscation】4

【Intuition】

..【Instinct】1

..【Detection】

….【Life Detection】1

….【Mana Detection】3

……【Detection Expansion】3 (MAX)

His age had gone up. He checked Lavia’s and Paula’s Soul Boards and their ages had increased by one as well.

So we age a year every new year, and not on our birthdays, which makes it uniform for everyone. That’s pretty convenient.

The carriage rocked down the road. Sitting beside him was Lavia, who was already starting to doze off. Paula was beside her, telling stories of the Church to a kid, another passenger. The tiger-eared boy listened attentively, his eyes filled with excitement.

How peaceful.

It had been a while since Hikaru studied his board carefully, and he sensed something odd.

Now that I think about it, I felt something strange while looking at Johann’s Soul Board. Like I saw things differently, or something…

Hikaru stared at the board for a while. Just watching made him want to spend his three marvelous points. I think using them now is all right. But how do I allocate them?

「Heaven Shot」— This one’s a no-go. Hikaru knew it was a higher level Weapon Mastery stat, but the description read “lose part of what makes one human.” Losing one’s humanity is no joke.

「Stealth」— It might be a good idea. But since he already had four points on both Life and Mana Obfuscation, he needed two points to max them both.

「Instinct」— A very handy Skill. One point already proved really useful, so he wanted to add more points to it. But since it maxed out at 20, an increase from 1 to 2 might not make much of a difference. The description read “heighten ones’ senses to achieve great foresight similar to clairvoyance.” Perhaps putting more points would eventually turn it into a precognition kind of Skill. At least ten points is probably needed for that, though.

「Detection」— With three points on Mana Detection and maxed out Detection Expansion, he could already gather more than enough information.

「Hmm…」

Hikaru mulled his options over. In the end, he added one point to Instinct. His “Instinct” told him that it would come in handy. He was surprised that his Instinct worked in these cases too. But it also felt like his Instinct was begging to be levelled up.

Yeah, right… That can’t be it. It’s not like Soul Board stats have minds.

As he moved his finger around, adding a point to Instinct, his eyes widened in astonishment. It wasn’t as though he developed some sort of a new sensation. But there was something different. What it was exactly, though, he couldn’t quite explain.

He then realized it had nothing to do with his senses, but his Soul Board.

There’s a sign beside my name…

The symbol wasn’t there before, and he hadn’t seen it in others’ boards either, including Lavia and Paula’s.

Hikaru focused on his Soul Board and tapped the plus sign.

It opened!

He found new stats.

【Soul Blaze】

【Unlock Plus】

【Divine Connect】

【Access Plus】

「What the…」he blurted out.

What in the world is this?! He suppressed the urge to scream.

「Hikaru-sama?」

「Uhh, it’s nothing…」

Paula gave him a curious look, while Lavia dozed off silently.

Wait, wait, wait… How do these even work?

The stats were independent of the other Skill trees. Since descriptions appeared on the other stats when he concentrated, he tried the same to see if it worked.

【Soul Blaze】Increases Soul Board’s effect by 10%.

【Unlock Plus】Grants basic ability to points used to unlock a stat.

【Divine Connect】User will know how much points are needed to gain a blessing.

【Access Plus】Increases range from which the user can access others’ Soul Boards to fifty meters.

They all had quite amazing effects.

What is this…? Like the Soul Board’s Skill tree or something?

Hikaru guessed right. The stats were displayed whether on the Vitality page or the Magical Power page. Above the four stats was the number 1, which most likely meant he could activate only one of them for now.

Which one do I get? Soul Blaze basically just improves my abilities. Same with Unlock Plus. Though in my case, I just unlocked both Vitality and Magical Power and never really configured them, so the points I used on them are basically “dead points”. This Unlock Plus might give them some use which is great. Still can’t use magic, though.

Hikaru had a total of 58 points, 8 of which he used to unlock certain stats. Overall, learning Unlock Plus seemed to be the better option. But if he wanted to improve his strong points, Soul Blaze would be best.

Now on to Divine Connect. It mentions “blessing”… I wonder…

Hikaru took out his guild card, which was basically a soul card.

【Adventurers Guild Card】

【Name】Hikaru

【Registration】Pond Adventurers Guild, Kingdom of Ponsonia

【Rank】D

【Job Class】□▲ヲヘェイ%2○※

As always, his Heaven’s Messenger class was showing bugged out characters. The job class system is a gift from the gods—in other words, receiving blessings.

Does this mean I’ll be able to know how many points I need to put on a stat for a job class to appear on my card?

Of course, since Heaven’s Messenger wasn’t derived from the Soul Board, getting Divine Connect might not even give him answers. Still, an ability that could help understand this divine system of “job classes” and “blessings” could be extremely valuable.

Lastly, there’s Access Plus. This one sounds good. With a fifty-meter distance, I can check all the Soul Boards I want unnoticed.

For the most part, getting within five meters of his target to check their Soul Board wasn’t difficult. But there might be times when it’s physically impossible to check, like if his target was behind a wall. With this, he can solve that problem.

Which one should I get? Ugh, I’m not sure… How did I even get this in the first place? Is it because I now have two points on Instinct? No, that’s not it. All of a sudden, he recalled the conversation he had with Selica.

『There’s that, but also because this world’s fair, in a sense.』

『Fair?』

『Frequently using magic will make you better at it. Killing monsters gives you power. Magic and souls… These are things that didn’t exist on Earth. This world has them, and they’re being balanced.』

Using magic will make you better at it. That’s how this world tunes things. Does this mean I became proficient in the Soul Board because I kept on allocating points?

Put it another way, using the Soul Board time and time again increased his experience and eventually he levelled up. And when he did, he earned bonus points to use.

What if… Now this is purely hypothetical for now… What if spending somebody else’s points will also increase my proficiency? In that case, I can do that on bandits or convicts on death row to level up. Eventually, I can upgrade all four of these… Oh boy, that would be wonderful.

「Haha… Ahahahaha…」

「Hikaru-sama? You’ve been acting strange for a while now…」

「It’s time to hunt some bandits.」

「What?! Where’d that come from?!」

Hikaru decided to put off spending the point on his Soul Board until he proved his theory right.

「The year just started, and fortune is already on my side.」

He now had one more thing to look forward to while en route to Scholarzard. Paula was as pale as a sheet, however.