The process of fusing with Umbra was one that Kai was fairly familiar with by now.

He would grow a few feet, gain a lot of weight in muscle, gain increased senses and a bucket load of stats.

It was a nice feeling, all that strength and he was the one who had it. It was something to be proud of, after all, it meant all of his efforts had not been in vain.

Yet, he would much rather just be in bed asleep. After all, he was in the middle a war.

Once the fusion process was over, Kai snarled and started dashing at a portion of defensive wall where it seemed that the moon beasts were the weakest.

And while he did that, he finally spent all of his remaining unnasigned stat points.

Over the last week, since he reached the breakthrough in statshifting, Kai spent all his free time swapping his useless stats into Strength.

Well, maybe not useless, just he did not know the actual use of them.

All of his Luck, well, nearly all. He found out the hard way that he couldn't go below the amount of Luck that he had when he first unlocked his status, meaning he still had twelve Luck. Trying to go below that resulted in a lot of pain and nearly drowning under the waterfall again.

Kai even swapped some of his Mana into Strength. He now had ninety-eight stats in Mana, equalling nine hundred and eighty Mana. A problem would be that this amount was not enough to activate the upgraded fusion with Umbra. Luckily, because of the two percent bonus offered by his Soul Core, he still technically had one thousand Mana, meaning he could still get the boon of the much higher stats and the skill he had gone through all this work for.

Another factor was that when Kai first unlocked the upgraded fusion, he summoned Life Eater after he had activated Indomitable, meaning he only got the base plus seven Strength offered by the blade.

But one thing that he discovered was that if he summoned the hideous weapon before he used the skill, he would get plus fourteen Strength.

Every little stat counted, and Kai had done the maths.

He had done way, way too much maths actually. But it would all be worth it in the end, because now, now he was going to get to display true Strength and get some revenge on the damn abominations that once threatened to end his life.

All those stats shifted gave him a base Strength stat of seventy-two. Kai then summoned Life Eater, bringing it up to seventy-seven. Then, he chucked his remaining eighty-five unnasigned stat points into Strength, bringing the total up to one hundred and sixty-four.

That already was an incredible number to reach. In fact, Kai might have the highest Strength stat out of all the people in this tutorial, he was maybe the only one who got eighteen unnasigned stat points per level up after all.

And that was excluding that he had a epic class, majority of the others probably had a common or uncommon class, a few maybe having rare or epic ones. Kai had yet to even catch a trace of someone with a legendary class.

Actually, maybe Creepy did. The weird looking guy that Kai first met and put Noelle under some sort of spell. That cloud that disoriented and masked everything seemed a little OP.

But Kai was not one to complain about OP, as the cherry on the cake for his Strength stat came from one little OP skill he unlocked whenever he was fused.

Grinning as he continued his charge, Kai activated Indomitable.

Instantly, Kai felt his whole body change. His dash faltered slightly when his Dexterity got halved, but he quickly caught himself and continued running.

But the main change came from his muscles. He felt them swell and brim with power as his Strength stat reached a whopping three hundred and twenty-eight.

Now, now Kai had to have the highest Strength stat out of everyone. That number was just too abnormal. It took a combination of statshifting, taming a familiar, a god that had manipulated his familiar's skills, dumping a bunch of unnasigned stat points into Mana to unlock a special fusion state and not dying throughout that whole process just to achieve that incredible number.

And after all the work he went through, all the sleep he gave up on in favour of statshifting, Kai was finally going to get to witness what that number truly meant.

But just before he got to pummel all the weak crescent moon abominations, there was one more skill he had to use.

And Kai was extremely happy at the prospect of using it.

Suddenly, his whole Lycan body was engulfed by a raging gray flame. The grass beneath his feet singed, but by the time it started burning, Kai had already dashed away, leaving a trail of burnt grass behind him.

Having Soul Flame activated allowed Kai to deal even more damage with his attacks, and it kind of counted as an AOE skill as it would passively deal damage to the abominations around him.

Even though Kai didn't feel the heat, and it probably wouldn't do all that much damage in the first place, any sort of damage was welcome damage.

But after activating the skill,Kai frowned. He didn't stop his charge, but he felt as if something was off. After the flames enveloped him, he felt... stronger, for some reason.

Opening his status screen, Kai was carful not to trip as he quickly scanned over everything to see had anything changed.

And there was a change. For some reason, his Strength stat read three hundred and thirty-three instead of the three hundred and twenty-eight he had just a moment ago.

What the-

But that'd when he saw it. It wasn't just Strength that increased by five, it was all of his stats.

Soul Flame had increased every single one of Kai's stats by five.

It may not seem like a lot, but thirty stats was worth a level and a half, and this was while the skill was at common rarity.

Kai couldn't help but grin, ecstatic at the choice he made.

So with his muscles bursting with newfound power, his body engulfed by powerful gray flames and his mind brimming with a mix of excitement and overwhelming fear that was partially numbed by Nonchalance, Kai crashed into a wave of abominations.

Every human and moon beast had long made a break for it after they saw an oversized flaming Lycan barrelling towards them, which only fuelled Kai's glee even more. Now, he had free reign over this portion of the attack.

His claws were unable to be stopped by the crescent moon abominations. The mixture of flames, sharpness and Strength gave them no choice but to be annihilated in a moment.

While it may not have been as quick as Wa'rak using his innate ability, and it was most definitely not as efficient considering that Kai was on a timer, Kai did not stop.

Life Eater cut through abominations without resistance, slowly gaining more power by absorbing the life of its kin. Kai didn't care if it was cannibalistic, the more power his blade gained, the better.

His claws stopped for nothing, cleanly slicing anything that got in their way. Kai kept howling as he swept through abomination after abomination.

Sadly, not everything went to plan.

Because of the mindless nature of the crescent moon abominations, the numbers did not lessen. In fact, they only grew.

The crescent moon abominations in the surrounding area all gave up on their current opponents and started dashing towards Kai in a mad frenzy. They were like moths to a flame, and sadly, that flame was Kai.

But Kai still grinned. This was just free XP after all. What could crescent moon abominations do against him at this point?

Previously, he would have been dead ten times over. But this wasn't previously, the future had arrived, and Kai quite liked what it had in store.

He continued mercilessly slaughtering the abominations that tried to overwhelm him.

On multiple occasions he felt a sliver of fear as they all attacked him, overrunning him with their numbers.

But it's not like he was alone in this situation.

Sofia and some of the other mages and archers would attack near Kai, lessening the burden on him. Still, they did hit Kai himself a few times, which wasn't that helpful considering that he was already losing a good amount of HP.

While he was incredibly strong for these few minutes, his Constitution stat was not up to par with his Strength.

But the abominations were coming at him from all sides, its not like he could attack everywhere at once.

Actually, there was a way. Even though it might be slightly embarrassing, Kai couldn't help but grin at the thought of finally becoming a spinjitzu master.

Without delay, Kai gripped the handle of his horrendous blade that he had grown to love and started spinning.

His speed slowly picked up as his claws in one hand and blade in the other freely cut through any abomination that threated to get close.

It was an incredible feeling, Kai was the top of the food chain here. He was the strongest. Nothing could damage him - well, nearly nothing. A few abominations still managed to damage him with their tentacles. But for every abomination that damaged him, Kai killed ten in retaliation.

But in his heart, Kai knew that his efforts were basically in vain.

As he spun, Kai caught glimpses of what was happening around the battlefield.

He saw Noelle kill a quarter moon abomination, then nearly get killed in return by a sneak attack from Rashik.

Honestly, Kai had no idea what was going to happen with those two. Rashik's ability to hide and pop out of the shadows seemed way too strong, Kai knew himself that he did not want to face that. And Kai also knew that Noelle's innate ability was all about manipulating people, that wouldn't exactly be very helpful in a situation like this. He wanted to help, but he had to hold back the waves of weaker abominations so the moon beasts and humans could have time to strategise and focus on the stronger abominations.

It was those that would pose a bigger threat after all.

Like the one that was fighting Wa'rak. A gibbous moon abomination that kept on copying the arrogant wolf. It had to be a mimic of some kind.

Kai also felt his heart skip a beat in fear when the shadows around those two beasts started swirling around Wa'rak. It was way too creepy. It reminded Kai of the description of that one skill Umbra had, about how the darkness of the forest was always watching.

But it couldn't be that skill, right?

But everyone was in trouble. That was what Kai saw in his time spinning and holding back the weaker abominations.

Their numbers were just too much. The abominations were suicidle maniacs who kept sacrificing themselves in an effort to damage anyone and anything.

And the humans weren't any better. They kept idiotically charging and attacking anything they could. They were almost as mad as the beasts.

Kai couldn't help but furrow his eyebrows as a sombre feeling welled up in his heart.

He didn't want to admit it, but it was true. Even with everyone putting in their best efforts, him holding back a large portion of the crescent moon abominations. It was the quarter moon and above abominations that truly mattered.

And those were the ones that were doing the most damage right now.

Kai was probably strong enough to fight a quarter moon abomination by himself, maybe even a gibbous moon one if it was weak enough. But if he gave up his role as a shield that held back the weaker bastards, everyone would be overrun by the numbers.

Kai's expression darkened.

Something had to change, and fast.