Chapter Six: Stretch Armstrong

I continue to trail in the wake of the Train with no sign of the valley mentioned in my quests.

[Status of Sebastian Bet]

Pillar Difficulty: Death is Certain

Floor 1: The Last Tribe

Time Used: 02:14:02:52

Time Left: 2187:09:57:08

Level: 3

Body (BDY): 3

Mind (MND): 6

Agility (AGI) : 4

Power (PWR): 3

[Unallocated Points: 0]

Class: Undecided

Form Association: Undecided

Skills:

Emit [Lvl 4]

Polarize [Lvl 1]

Cogitation [Lvl 4]

Condition: Mana Mutation [Permanent]

Multiple hours have passed but the time spent walking has taught me a few things.

1. Having stat points in BDY does not change the fact that I am out of shape.
2. I am not magically immune to dehydration or starvation either.

Now for the useful stuff.

1. The itch on my skin lessens the higher my level goes up in <Emit>.
2. My skills don’t level up just by using them. For example, <Polarize> hasn’t leveled once despite my constant use of it to dim the harsh sunlight.
3. My body heals much faster than normal.

I glance down at my right hand and flex my fingers. It is still extremely swollen, and my fingers won’t clench all of the way, but my wrist no longer needs the chain to hold it in place. Secondarily, my shoulder only cracks occasionally, and there is a purplish-brown bruise covering the area which isn’t too bad.

Within only a couple of hours, my injuries have healed significantly. What used to take weeks to heal is now something that probably only takes a matter of days. Even the scratches from earlier have scabbed over already and the blisters from the cave are nothing but faded smudges.

My shackle chain swings next to me in a lazy arc as I twirl it around to pass time. Small wisps of smoke curl off of the metal as I use <Emit> at full force through my hand. A couple of the links clasped in my hand glow with a faint red light due to the extended exposure to my skill. Hot metal bites into my hand, but I think the material is somewhat non-conductive given the lack of heat spreading to the rest of the chain.

I have been using this time in the woods to experiment with my skills. <Cogitation> hasn’t leveled up again, but I surmise it might be because the skill is best trained during times of stress like before. I wasn’t particularly stressed when I first gained the skill, but every time it leveled afterward, I was forcing myself to focus.

<Polarize> hasn’t leveled one time. This makes sense of course. It already is at peak sunglasses efficiency.

<Emit> is where I have made the most progress. After I had started focusing on the skill, I attempted to see what exactly the difference was when I imagined myself turning it up and down slowly. Just like a sliding light switch, the lower it went, the more itching I felt, the higher I turned it, the more the itching subsided.

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