Legendary Traveler: By Earning Progress Points I will Become Supreme!

'Defense it is then,' laying on his back shirtless and staring up at the sky with glazed eyes, Aoni tried thinking about anything other than what he was about to do.

Of all his stats he'd increased in the past, Defense was by far the worst. Sure, having your muscles stretched and shredded isn't fun, but Defense hits everything, bones, eyes, teeth, Skin, pores, all the soft fleshy bits; basically, if there's a nerve attached to it, you can damn well be sure it was about to hurt like a son of a bitch lit on fire with super gasoline.

However, through it all, there was a silver lining; it was also the only stat to trigger an unintentional upgrade in his Pain Resistance…which…

'Yeah, can't say whether that's good or bad. I mean, sure, it's good in the sense that I can tank my way through pain a bit better, but….it also makes me seem like some type of sick masochistic freak.' Feeling his right eye twitch in frustration, Aoni pushed down the thought of how the teachers and officials who saw his passives were going to react.

Pity, that was more than likely what he will face because there is no way someone gets the Pain Resistance passive on a fluke; nope, the only way to get your hands on it is to…well, experience a quantifiable amount of pain.

'Foooo, okay-okay, fucking throw all these useless thoughts away; you only have one focus here, Aoni, make it through without passing out.' Rapidly clenching and unclenching his hands, the Lad Closed his eyes and uttered the mental command he'd been dreading since the first time he willed it into existence.

'Increase my Defense Stat.'

| Scanning Host's Mental Health |

| Mind Fully Intact, proceeding |

| Increasing Defense from F- to F |

| Progress Points have been Deducted |

| 10 pp Earned |

Wincing and preparing his mind for what was to come the moment he thought the command, Aoni was soon left a bit confused by the lack of reaction from his body.

Bbbrrrrrrr@@novelbin@@

And that's when he felt the upgrade kick in.

Brrrrrrrr

Instead of immediate pain, this time around, a faint vibration ran the length of his body, from his toes to his hair follicles.

It was faint, almost like when you hear a car off in the distance with its base cranked all the way up during a rap song. Unfortunately, that momentary reprieve was washed away moments later because the rumbling, which originated from Aoni's chest, turned violent without warning.

"Ack!" clenching his teeth and pushing his tongue to the roof of his mouth so as not to bite through it, Aoni's panic senses fired off because he watched in real time as the shape of his body deformed.

It was almost as if someone was stabbing dozens of bicycle pumps into his body; with each passing second, part of his Skin would inflate, then burst, heal, inflate, burst, repeat.

While this was happening, Aoni's bones became extremely brittle and porous; in seconds, they were so frail that even a slight tremble of his pinky toe was more than enough to powderise the skeletal structure of his entire foot.

Pair his brittle bones with the vibrations coursing through his body and the game of bubble pop happening across his flesh, and well…Aoni essentially turned into a meat suit.

The worst part about it wasn't the pain either. Yeah, it hurt, but the last thing the Lad saw before his eyes exploded was the horrified and tear-filled eyes of Glacia and Nyria, and THAT cut him deeper than the physical pain he was being tortured by.

With the mental image of his two summons, scared shitless for his safety, Aoni's resolve strengthened to new, unseen heights, with a singular thought repeating in his mind, "You do this, So they Don't Have To," he fought on.

Having all your bones crushed, then rebuilt while your fleshy bits explode before healing and repeating the process, was no doubt something out of a horror movie, yet, even through all this, Aoni knew…he was only halfway done.

Bones, Skin, that's one thing, but his organs were next, and for some unholy reason, THOSE hurt the worst, that and, of course, his teeth.

Thankfully, his chompers were under the bone category, so the pain he felt from them didn't last very long before they turned to dust and were quickly replaced.

From an outside perspective, and as strange as it may seem, the only thing left untouched was, of course, his muscular system. So every thirty or so seconds, Aoni would "Titan Shift" if you get the reference.

From looking like a human to being a living embodiment of a medical example, he was in hell, and the two watching this rapid evolution were in an even worse state.

It got so bad for Nyria at one point that she was forced to turn her head away while dropping icy tears into the fire. Read the latest on My Virtual Library Empire

Glacia, on the other hand, had her Lord's words echoing in her head from earlier, "Don't do anything unless I pass out." Although it was extremely difficult for the floof to watch what was happening to Aoni, she persisted, like the good, obedient floof she was.

Exactly one hour after the first part of the process began, and with his body back in one piece, the second phase began, and this one was just as brutal to watch.

His fresh new body was abused in worse ways: cuts, bruises, limbs twisting at strange angles, and while this occurred, his organs, apart from his circulatory system, were going through the first phase of pump and explode.

At the 2-hour mark, his body's roles were reversed, and now his organs were getting hacked to bits, beaten to shit, and stretched while his body was back to pump and explode again.

Then, at the three-hour mark, it all began slowing down, and Aoni, who had, amazingly enough, stayed conscious throughout the entire process, let loose a deafening roar of agony, one which had been building throughout his upgrade, but he was unable to release due to the lack of functioning parts.