'Hah'

I let out a breath as I finished my absorption session, I could feel that I'm close to breaking through the next layer as my cells were almost fully saturated with elements.

[ • Stats :

Strength: 20.11

Constitution: 15.3

Agility: 20.03

Dexterity: 11.93

Perception: 15.11

Wisdom: 20.33

Intelligence: ???

Dual-Element: 20.76 ( Lightning, Thunder )

Unassigned stat points: 17.305 ]

At this point, more than half of my stats surpassed 20 points, leaving only Constitution, Dexterity, and Perception under that line.

My current preparation required me to assign the free stat points in a suitable way according to my next venture's needs.

My next venture referred to my last tempering plan using the two floors gate, using the corruption soldiers inside to hone and create an elemental weapon style, which had two requirements that needed to be fulfilled.

The first requirement was to reach the next elemental layer and obtain 'Elemental Armament', while the second one was to increase my dexterity to an inhuman level.

As I was still working on the first one, I had to assign a suitable amount of stat points to Dexterity to clear the second requirement.

Earlier, I had somewhat given up on raising my Dexterity as it was already sufficient to pull off more regular weapon arts that I came in contact with, but if I wanted this bold attempt of fusing elemental concepts into weapon arts, I had to have the ability to go along the nature of these elements which were mostly quite agile, especially Lightning & Thunder, my starting elements that had speed as one of their primary nature.

As such, I quickly assigned 8.3 points to Dexterity without hesitation.

[ Dexterity +8.3! ]

[ Dexterity: 20.23 ]

Thump!

Pain signals rushed into my brain as my muscles were being reformed to match the current Dexterity stat, but it wasn't intolerable thanks to 'Immunity'.

[ 'Pain Immunity' Proficiency +66%! ]

Swoosh!

I swing my sword around as I felt the change, my control over the weapon had truly entered the inhuman level, clearing the second requirement, all that was left was to advance to the next layer!

Of course, this wasn't the end of my assignment as I still had 9 points left, I went over my thoughts on how to assign them as I confirmed my choice.

There were two choices that were in my mind from the very start, extreme distribution, or balance.

Extreme distribution which meant that I would assign my stat points into just one or two stats, it seemed like the correct choice if I wanted to gain power very quickly at any risk, but when observing my growth path till this point, I could easily confirm that this choice won't work for me who have very diverse abilities that relied on different stats and seeked balance.

Wrong distribution at this point could easily cause my versatile foundation to crumble, turning me into a one trick pony or worse…

So, as there were only two stats left under 20, raising them beyond that was my choice.

Due to the nature of the gate I was headed to next, I decided on assigning to Perception first, to increase my 'Sensory Area' and make stealthy attacks more useless, that was a measure for the dangerous second floor.

[ Perception +5! ]

[ Perception: 20.11 ]

[ 'Pain Immunity' Proficiency +33%! ]

The usual strong headache and dizziness weren't there this time, it only felt like a sting, which only proved that 'Immunity' had a great affinity with 'Immediate Synchro', allowing me to make the most out of it while removing most of the side effects!

Regretfully, being only left with 4.005 points, I was only less than 0.7 points short from Constitution beyond 20, but considering my soon to be leveling session in the gate, it was just a matter of time before I achieved my target, I only needed to level once more after all…

[ Constitution +4! ]

[ Constitution: 19.3 ]

[ 'Pain Immunity' has leveled up! ]