Heroic Gambler

Spun it back around for Chapter 2, hope you enjoy.

I forgot to put this in the last chapter but Kichiro's intelligence increasing also increased his [MP] so now instead of 30 it is now 85. I will attempt to make better notes of anything happening in his system.

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POV, UENO KICHIRO...

Getting out of bed I went to start my morning routine, though I had to add on a few steps like making breakfast myself for obvious reasons. Today was Friday and the beginning of my plan to get into UA, I don't exactly have a source of EXP so if I wanted to get stronger I was limited to 3 methods. Stat training, leveling my abilities, and trying to earn more tickets. Thankfully [Bark] was already level 7 which was probably because of this body having practiced it before, placing my hand on the wooden table I watched as my hand became made of the same wood. The material spreading till my entire arm was made of wood before I stopped using [Bark] on the table and flexed my arm, trying to figure out if the transformation had any downsides on my flexibility which thankfully it didn't. The arm and fingers still bent and moved like normal but for some reason the wooden arm felt more natural to me than it did when it was just flesh and bone but my research at the library already told me that using a quirk in public is against the law so I turned off [Bark] and wouldn't be trying my luck outside.... Unless?

Activating [Angel Form] the wings thankfully didn't destroy my shirt but I might be able to pass it off as a mutant type quirk instead, with 3 months till UA's entrance exam I needed to make the most of my time and plan out my training, I'll spend two months grinding stats and a month grinding abilities. Double checking my MP I noticed that the numbers were sitting at 65/85 which if the math is adding up, transforming with [Angel Form] takes 15 MP while turning only an arm into wood took 5 MP. Keeping an eye on my MP I started pulling on the holy power that [Angel Form]'s description mentioned... Or at least I tried to, I guess I need to actually train with this ability before I can make full use of it.

The next 3 hours were spent in my backyard trying to pull on even just a little bit of the holy power and it was at the end of those three hours that I managed to make a small golf ball sized orb of light, thankfully my efforts were not in vain as a yellow system panel appeared in my face suddenly. With my concentration broken the small orb burst, it didn't hurt me but it was effectively a flashbang. 

[{Angel Form} has leveled up!]

Note to self, learn how to ignore system pop-ups. Finally recovering from my self induced flashbang I noticed that my MP which had regenerated during the time that I had failed to use the holy power went down a little after the orb had been made, so going right back to practicing I noticed that making the same orb of light was slightly easier than before after the level up. So I started trying to throw it to see if I could turn it into an actual flashbang kind of attack... My first attempt at throwing it had failed and subsequently I ended up hitting myself with a flashbang again, so maybe I should take baby steps before trying to make any special moves. Simply making and trying to maintain the orb, I attempted to make the orb larger, trying not to let it burst I soon had a baseball sized orb... Another 4 hours had passed and it was about 1:00pm, having made considerable progress despite having had to stop multiple times to let my MP recover [Angel Form] was sitting at a solid LV8. which was better than before but considering Hardcore mode in my status, it would not be even remotely viable.

Deciding to test out my familiars I made my way back inside the house. Having a rough idea of what they were, I knew I could summon them inside without much worry. Unlike the chance of me blowing something up inside my house if I practiced with my abilities, moving the furniture around a bit in the living room to make a little more space for the first summoning of my familiars. Deciding on summoning the Harpy Eagle after having done more research, the hardest part of it would be trying to explain to anybody where I got such a thing. Willing the eagle to appear with my thoughts, the large bird came out from my shadow and quickly moved towards the middle of the open space I made. Moving around it in circles and inspecting it closely I quickly came to a conclusion, the description I got of it did it no justice yet it looked like an ordinary Harpy Eagle. Realizing I summoned a bird indoors and that I couldn't test it like this. I let it disappear again and watched it sort of melt into a pale blue liquid that steamed before disappearing, I then summoned the Banshee. A feminine pale figure that seemed almost see through appeared in front of me, despite being very obviously a ghost not just due to her transparency but due to how she floated around and simply looked dead. Thankfully though, I couldn't hear her voice which meant that my fears when I first rolled her as a familiar were for nothing. Though I wonder if other people could see her?

I was unsure on exactly what her capabilities were so after debating with my current stats for a moment I walked over to the table and turned my whole body into wood this time, though interestingly enough the wings from Angel Form which I had yet to turn off became made of leaves. Moving back into my improvised open space I gave the banshee the order to attack me, and although she was kind of slow in the grand scheme of things she was still faster than me... Having an agility stat of 4 made keeping up with her difficult, trying to slip between her exaggerated wide swings she eventually caught me with a haymaker to the forearm and I felt cracks form through the wooden arm up to my shoulder. I'm surprised she didn't take the arm off entirely even though she might have done so if I didn't use [Bark] before this. So I quickly called off her attack, her strength was freakish compared to mine, despite her body looking built for speed she was obviously a strength build.

Thankfully the cracks in the wood of my body were reduced to a dark purple bruise in the spot she had punched me and wasn't as serious as I thought it would be, which confirmed that [Bark] reduced the damage done to my body when I return to normal. Taking mental note of how strong my Banshee was, I decided to dismiss her. Watching as she simply dispersed into pale blue particles that quickly faded away unlike the when Harpy Eagle got dismissed.

Having finished testing everything currently at my disposal I checked the time and started making lunch or I guess dinner since it was actually closer to that time of the day, actually putting the [Cooking] skill to use I moved with knowledge I didn't know I had till I started. Almost 20 minutes later I had a decent meal though I didn't make anything special and cooking leveled up once. After eating my bowl of fried rice I decided to continue training because I need to roll more tickets, and I can't get tickets if I don't become strong enough to earn them.

Deciding not to practice with the light from [Angel Form]'s holy power outside, I moved to a room in the house with less windows and tried to block the window with both blankets and the curtain. Bright flashes of light would be too noticeable otherwise with how the sky is looking right now so after my privacy preparations were complete I got to work making a baseball sized orb of light immediately and started making it orbit around my hand, slowly trying to make it speed up it's orbit before it eventually became a ring of light around my hand. Now came the hard part of this task, Stopping it directly over my palm. Focusing on the speeding orb I tried willing it to suddenly stop and I flinched when I saw the orb start destabilizing but soon relaxed when it calmed down, staying in [Angel Form] like I have all day has been making me get more used to having this foreign power inside me. Holy power felt almost like a soft warm feeling in my body that seemed to also be calming my mind and possibly influencing me, the aggression and frustration I had at being sent to another world seemed distant when I was in Angel Form. Refocusing on my training I started trying to stretch and shape the orb into different basic shapes when I got an idea so crazy it might just work... Condensing the baseball sized orb back into a golf ball without getting rid of any of the light, I felt the orb become heavier and then I condensed it to the size of a marble which in turn made it heavier again. Though it wasn't actually heavy at all, it was still noticeable that a weightless construct had weight which meant it possibly had mass and in turn meant it could cause damage instead of just blinding people.

Carefully moving back to the backyard so as to not make the tiny orb burst, I focused on making it move away from me. Forcing the orb against the ground I watched as it actually was touching the ground instead of just casting light, but I was lucky as it was that the orb didn't explode so I carefully reabsorbed the light which thankfully replenished my MP with the amount I had spent to make the orb. Moving back inside I continued practicing with a simple orb of light, just changing it's shape to get better control. and eventually I was making some slightly more complex shapes like stars. My control getting better and better as time passed and eventually I was trying to change the shape of two different orbs, with each orb becoming a different shape. When one orb became a cube, the other became a triangle and so forth. My progress becoming both faster and slower somehow, while making more complex shapes and manipulating multiple orbs at once gave me more EXP. [Angel Form] required more EXP to level up with each passing level, and with my current level of actual control I couldn't try any bigger methods to farm EXP for it, especially because manipulating the orbs like this burned MP quickly. Though I did learn along the way that although not by a lot, drinking water while using [Bark] did restore some MP which helped speed up my training though eventually my stomach was hurting after drinking so much water despite [Bark] absorbing most of my intake into MP.

Finally deactivating both [Bark] and [Angel Form] around 1:30 AM I decided to check my system notifications that had managed to pile up as I got ready to actually sleep.

[{Angel Form} has leveled up! LV8-->LV19]

[{Bark} has leveled up! LV7-->LV13]

[Due to continuously training the manipulation of Holy Power a new skill has been created!]

[Skill {Holy Power Manipulation} acquired!]

[Holy Power Manipulation: The manipulation and use of Holy Power becomes easier and more potent than normal. Increases Holy Power damage by 5% and decreases Holy Power cost by 2%. Bonus increases with skill level]

[Due to creating a skill without the system's help, {(Silver)Skill Ticket} rewarded!]

[{Holy Power Manipulation} Leveled up! LV1-->LV8]

[Increases Holy Power damage by 12% and decreases Holy Power cost by 6%.]

Oh yeah, the lack of sleep is a problem for the Kichiro of tomorrow. I'll take a moment to roll this ticket before I actually lay down, so without hesitation I tore the ticket in half and it fizzled away as more system panels opened up.

[Rolling Silver Skill ticket!]

[... .. .!]

[Uncommon skill acquired!]

[Brawling]

[Brawling: the art of fighting without a particular style as your style, very few people brawl the same way. Most brawling is done in street fights or by particularly untrained martial artists. This skill increases melee damage by 5% and decreases melee damage taken by 2%. Bonus increases with skill level]

Now this... Is a better skill pull than cooking, though I can't deny the fact that I'm happy to have pulled cooking since it helps me live on my own now. Brawling will simply help me out more in fights that I will inevitably get into to farm EXP and tickets. Bottling my excitement for later, I finally laid down and promptly passed out without delay.

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Hey hey, welcome back to the author's corner! This chapter was more or less just Kichiro figuring out his abilities and his gameplan to train for UA's entrance exam, since it is only 3 months away. I apologize for being late on when I had said I would upload, I thought I published the chapter before I passed out but sadly I hadn't.

If you have any criticism or advice, feel free to leave a comment. I will happily accept most things that may help me prepare a better story to entertain you my dear readers.

As always feel free to recommend and pitch ideas for things I can add to any of the wheels. The wheel categories and brief descriptions are as follows!

Vehicles: Self explanatory, if it can properly be called a vehicle then it can be put here.

Familiars: Things that are summoned and perform tasks for the user be it simple or complex.

Temporary Debuffs: Self explanatory, can be debilitating for the user or simply annoying. 

Perks: Passive abilities that are usually buffs or bonuses to the user.

Abilities: Self explanatory, examples range from simply producing a small volume of water to actually powerful stuff like stopping time.

Temporary Servants: these are the same as familiars however they have a certain time limit and limitations that normal familiars don't have.

Enemies: A being that appears somewhere in the world with rough estimates of the user's location with the goal to eliminate the user, can't be seen by others until being enters the same city as the user.

Items: Self explanatory, ranges from basic stuff like items to magical artifacts and such.

Temporary Buffs: Temporary bonuses that disappear after a certain timer is over.

Bases: A safehouse type of location that exists in a pocket realm that can only be entered when the user is in a safe location.

Skills: Skills or Techniques that could be simple skills like cooking or entire martial art styles be them fictional or not.

Curses: Simple or extreme debuffs that are either long lasting or don't disappear until certain conditions are met.