When Tim woke up in his bed, he was immediately aghast that he had slept through the night as though he were just a normal kid from before the System. Some of the older kids at school boasted about how they could barely sleep due to their extremely high stats, yet here he was completely conked out for hours. Tim had done his best to struggle to stay awake most of this week, but after everything that happened yesterday-

Tim shuddered as he remembered the violence and death at the stadium. Blood had seeped through the walls of the referee hut that he had hidden himself in and he couldn’t get the sight of it out of his mind. Even though he knew he shouldn’t be such a baby about it, he had been scared.

The gore and the blood had seemed to glow. And even the people that were fighting for their side… There had been times where just looking at some of the people fighting in the stadium had left Tim dizzy enough that he was only a second away from passing it.

Despite the very real fear, his face burned with shame as he remembered how he had hidden within that room with the bloodsoaked walls. If only he had been older and stronger. Very clearly, Tim remembered the monstrous figure of Randidly Ghosthound shattering through the sky and descending to the battle. In only a few moments, he overpowered the most powerful evil guy and then simply left.

Tim clenched his fists. If it had been me, I would have stayed and killed all of the bad guys. I would have been a hero for everyone. I would have saved them.

Very quickly, Tim sat up on his bed and began to plan out how he would improve himself and become someone as powerful as Randidly Ghosthound. His school was full of liars that kept getting him in trouble, but Tim had heard that Randidly Ghosthound was so hated by his original town that they wouldn’t even let him get a Class for the longest time. And if Randidly Ghosthound could become so powerful without a Class, Tim could do the same with stupid Lucy Rowell constantly bothering him.

He even had the Rare Skill Voice of the Greensinger to help Tim earn extra PP, although he was a little embarrassed that it was a Skill related to plants. But once he got enough PP to finish the Earth Mage Path he was working on, he would get a cool Skill like Earthquake or Seismic Burst that could become his signature move. Brown wasn’t a cool color, but maybe he could even get a cool armor related to it. Then he could finally tell his dad how powerful he had become, and that he didn’t need to worry about Tim any longer.

With a goofy grin on his face from his future success, Tim walked out into the hallway and then down to the kitchen. But when he got to the threshold of the kitchen, his nose twitched. It smelled like someone was cooking bacon. Tim licked his lips. His dad barely ever cooked bacon these days.

But as Tim walked into the room, he froze. “Dad… what are you doing?”

Derek slapped the ground with his palm and threw himself up onto his feet from his plank position on the floor. “Oh, just doing a few push-ups. I really have been letting my training slacken recently- It’s time I get back in shape.”

“Oh. I guess that’s good.” Tim wandered to the table and took a few pieces of bacon. He eyed the scrambled eggs suspiciously, but ultimately decided against eating the strangely springy food. But Tim supposed it was a good thing that his dad was also trying to get stronger. Very quickly, Tim’s excitement came surging back. Maybe they could become heroes together!

“Take your time eating, buddy. You don’t have to go to school today,” Derek said as he moved to the sink and began to wash his hands.

This finally took Tim over the edge. He leapt to his feet with an excited expression on his face. “WHAT?!? Really?”

“Yea, really,” After tapping his fingers against the countertop for several seconds, Derek turned to Tim and asked. “How would you feel about moving? I hear that Kharon has several great schools.”

*****

Randidly supposed he should have expected that he was extremely spoiled from his time on the frontlines, but after a few hours of hunting and only just managing to push himself up to Level 60, he was quite exhausted. Most of his anger had faded and left him just feeling drained. For now, he had finished his rampage through the geothermally heated mountains.

Enemies around his Level didn’t grant meaningful experience and those above Level 75 were so rare that he wasted more time searching for them than actually killing them. The process of approaching them was extremely aggravating.

Even with Grim Intuition and Absolute Grasp of Yggdrasil, monsters around Level 80 had enough capability to hide from Randidly’s senses unless they were within a few miles of him. So he had ended up just dashing back and forth across the mountain range to slowly sniff out the valuable experience givers. Randidly’s stats made him extremely fast, but navigating the ridges were quite annoying.

Not that the Leveling was without other benefits. Aside from several small gains on the various combat Skills he utilized while hunting, Randidly focused on trying to specifically power Level two Skills: Sigil of an Approaching Fate and Stalemate Breaker. Stalemate Breaker used to be a much more valuable Skill, but as Randidly moved to rely on images it slowly fell out of favor.

Focusing on specific Skills seemed like the best way to improve Skills quickly, but Randidly had rarely made the attempt in the past.

However, his goal during his hunting had been to test some theories about how his boosted Stats enabled him to Level Skills quickly. In theory, higher Willpower, Intelligence, and Mana pool would let Randidly repeated use the Skill more efficiently when he set his mind to it, increasing the Skill Level growth. In addition, theoretically his experience with images would make it simpler for him to understand the essence of the Skill, further boosting his efficiency.

As it turned out, he was correct. After only a few hours concentrating on the utilization and action of the images, Randidly had gained 59 PP from the two skills. Sigil of the approaching Fate had grown from Level 32 to Level 66. Stalemate Breaker rose from Level 87 to Level 112.

During the process, Randidly could even feel the Skill almost trying to resist his capability to Level it and normalizing the Leveling speed. But as he understood the essence and focus of the Skill, he could push past those limits. In a way, it was similar to the limits in understanding imposed by Leveling his Fates. But with normal Skill you could make up for understanding with hard work.

But since understanding helped… Randidly wasn’t going to miss out on the chance to earn some more PP.

Especially because he received a new Skill along with reaching Level 60.

Congratulations! You have learned the Skill Ray of the Desolate Dawn (R)!

Ray of the Desolate Dawn (R): Shoot a blast of light toward either a friend or foe. When hitting an ally, the ally’s Health, Mana, and Stamina regeneration will be greatly increased for a short amount of time. When hitting an enemy, Ray will burn and blind the target. The effect increases the longer the ray is on the target. The length of effect increases with Skill Level. Magnitude of effect increases with Skill Level. Damage to foes increases with Skill Level.

With a fresh Skill at Level 1, Randidly intended to really test the limits of how quickly he could push a Skill’s Level upward. But before he did that, he had another unfortunate task to accomplish. After returning to his floating island in the sky, he descended to Kharon and went to one of the more private bathhouses reserved for the Order Ducis. His rinsed away the blood and sweat that stained his knuckles and then quickly dried off.

When he was dressed, he used one of his nicer casual outfits; a pair of leather pants combined with a deep green shirt. Then he went to find Tatiana.

Finding Tatiana was quite easy, but it was more difficult for Randidly to approach her without causing a scene. Because of the Ogre Lord Wolfram’s larger size, he couldn’t comfortably fit into any of the buildings in Kharon. And because he had apparently made himself quite indispensable to Tatiana’s project of helping the ogres relocate, they had commandeered one of the nearby parks and set up a mobile office underneath a large tent.

But the area was teeming with ogres and merchants that were patiently waiting for the opportunity to walk in and talk with Tatiana. Each meeting perhaps only took five to ten minutes, but there were almost two dozen people patiently waiting for their turn. Apparently the situation in the park was well known, because several enterprising, floating food-platforms floated down and began to sell snacks and drinks to the assembled crowd.

Obviously, Randidly could cut in front of everyone, but that felt a little bit…

It took thirty minutes, during which time the crowd perhaps doubled in size as more people seemed to need Tattiana’s guidance, for Randidly to over come his unwillingness to take advantage of his influence.

He used Grim Intuition to monitor the situation within the tent and when the applicant was leaving, Randidly made his move. He moved quickly to the back of the crowd and then strode purposefully through everyone with a little bit of the pressure from his Nether Might leaking out into the air.

Human and ogre alike instantly fell silent and craned their neck to stare at him as Randidly imperiously stalked by. The only noise was the sizzle of frying foods on the floating food platforms.

Although Randidly had spent some time associating with the people of Kharon during the party thrown a week ago, the population of Kharon was too large for everyone to have even caught sight of him or talked to him. So for many, this was probably their first time seeing Randidly Ghosthound in the flesh.

And for the ogres, they looked intently at the man who had subdued their Ogre Lord and now held sway over their people in the foreseeable future. Their gazes were intense. Randidly wondered what they saw when they looked at him.

Because he had moved quickly, Randidly reached the from of the tent before the person within had reached the exit. So the person inside was surprised when the tent flap was pulled open just as she was reaching for it.

She was a human merchant, and she froze like a rat caught stealing a piece of trash when she saw Randidly. Her eyes went very round.

“I… It’s nice… my name….!”

Her whole body was trembling as she struggled to find the words after recognizing Randidly. But Randidly gave her a meaningful look.

Instantly, the woman jumped out of the tent. “I’m so sorry!”

Randidly touched her shoulder lightly as he walked briskly past her. “Thanks for the hard work.”

Then he allowed the tent flap to close behind him.