Kwon Moon gently placed the torso onto the ground. Down on both knees, he bowed to the corpse before lifting his head.
"My king, do forgive me."
Although his actions saddened him, it was too late, and it was necessary.
Placing his palm on the torso, he activated his ability.
[Gluttony]: Steal the abilities of others. As a glutton, you will want to eat the entire meal without sharing, so once the ability has been stolen, it completely belongs to you. You are not borrowing their ability. You are not copying their ability. You have stolen it. Remember that.
Only visible to him, he could see these strings of light that were extracted from Ryok Yongsun's body. Once the last string was pulled out, they entered his body.
It felt anticlimactic as there wasn't any sudden sharp pain or a surge of strength.
Well, the latter did happen, but it wouldn't be noticed since it wasn't like his mana reserves increased or anything.
The knowledge and description of his newly acquired ability were now in his brain.
[King's Avatar]: As someone destined to be a king, how can you die before your fate comes true? In order to prevent an early death again, you can now create an avatar of yourself. They are you. You are them. They share your memories, personality, and consciousness, but depending on how they are developed, each avatar can have different appearances, strengths, and weaknesses. Current avatars: 0/1
"So this is how you became king?" Kwon Moon uttered. "How could someone be given such an overpowered ability? Well… I'm not exactly one to talk."
If he sounded like he was partially confused, then that was indeed the truth.
Although he may've been a regressor, the conditions of doing it required him to lose much of his memories of the future.
Only allowed to bring back a few key memories and information, he took only what was necessary, such as the fact that he had to kill Ryok Yongsun and steal their ability in order to achieve his goal.
The information about what the ability was wasn't necessary to bring back since he would discover it once he stole the ability, so he didn't waste the limited space on it.
That meant that most of the future itself was unknown to him. He didn't know who his allies were, who his enemies were, etc. He could only rely on himself, his intuition, and his intelligence to deduce things.
Standing up, he pointed his finger at the corpse and said, "Goodbye."
[Flame]: Basic control over the element of fire.
That was the first ability he had stolen since he regressed, which was less than a month ago. He had stolen it from a criminal who had been mugging someone on the streets late at night.
The conditions to steal an ability were rather simple. The easiest way to kill them and take it from their corpse. Another option was that the other person gave up and allowed them to take it without resistance. A third option would be to subjugate them without killing, such as knocking them out cold or injuring them to the point of half-death. The hardest and last method was to attempt a battle of superiority, which basically meant he was trying to claim ownership of the other person's ability while they were perfectly fine mentally and physically. This usually only worked on far weaker hunters, and if he attempted to do this, it would leave him and the other person vulnerable to a third party.
That was his only other ability.
It was the same ability that he had demonstrated during his hunter exam, which resulted in him getting an F-rank evaluation.
He couldn't and would never reveal to anyone what his true ability was. That was asking for trouble.
But that didn't mean that he wasn't approached by guilds when he exited. The thing about abilities is that they can evolve with more usage, training, and proficiency. Hunters can also develop more abilities, typically in the same bubble as their first ability.
For example, someone who had [Flame] might someday develop [Fire Dragon], which can cast a dragon made of fire that flies across the field to deal a ton of damage in exchange for a longer casting time and more mana usage than the usual [Flame].
Their [Flame] could also develop into [Blue Flame], which was similar to the original ability, but the flames were much stronger and harder to put out.
"There's no more time to mourn," he said as he watched his king's body turn into ashes. The decapitated head had already rolled down the cliff and would probably be eaten by a wild animal soon.
'[King's Avatar],' he thought in his mind, activating the ability.
Some abilities didn't have any mana usage, such as this one. He didn't feel any mana leaving his body, and what he saw instead was a screen.
It listed out their name, age, weight, height, and gave him the options to adjust their appearance. Other than their name, which was just "Avatar 1", the rest of the listed information was identical to his, and even the 3d image of the avatar that was spinning in circles on the screen was the same.
"Before I change anything about their appearance, let's do this," he said as he clicked on a button that said talents.
Then a new screen appeared, and he watched as five bars with symbols on them began to spin like a slot machine at a casino.
Once all the bars came to a stop, another set of five began spinning.
When the last one stopped, the screen with the "slot machines" disappeared, and a new screen replaced it. On the screen was a row of the first five symbols, and below that was the next five symbols.
"I have to select not only my talents, my strength… but also my weaknesses."
He had to pick three from each row — three strengths, three weaknesses.
Clicking on the information tab under each symbol, he began reading them one by one, starting with his strengths.
[Weapon Master]: You were born with the natural ability to wield all weapons. Rather than picking one, why not pick all? Unlike a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none, you can become a master-of-all.
[Bodybuilder]: Your body was born to be strong. With half the effort of someone else, you can get double the result.
[Fire Immunity]: All flame, no matter its origin or heat, can harm you.
[Adaptive Reflexes]: Before your mind can even process danger, your body and instincts will be one step ahead.
[Thirst for Blood]: The more you bleed, the more you make your enemies bleed, the sharper your senses become, and the stronger you get.
Each one of them seemed like a wonderful talent to have. And as for the weaknesses:
[Glass Cannon]: Regardless of how powerful you get, your defence will never catch up to your offence, as all of your enemies' attacks are amplified. Do not get hit by any means if you want to survive.
[Slow Recovery]: Injuries cling to you like parasites. It takes more time to close a wound, and you will have to consume way more healing potions than the regular person just to get the same effect.
[Not a Nightowl]: You are half as powerful when the moon is out.
[Mana Starved]: Mana slips through your fingers like butter. To recover your mana after using your abilities, you will have to wait much longer than others.
[Blind]: You lose the ability to see with your eyes.
"Wow… all of these sucks. I guess I was wrong. Even with how powerful the ability is, the universe will always find a way to balance it… somewhat." It was still overpowered as shit in his opinion.
Racking his brain, he already had an idea of which ones he needed to pick. Depending on what kind of avatar he was going to create, each strength had its own merits, and each weakness could be less harmful than others.
In the end, he selected: [Weapon Master], [Fire Immunity], and [Thirst for Blood] for his strengths. As for his weaknesses, he went with: [Glass Cannon], [Slow Recovery], and [Blind].
His weaknesses made it seem like he would be useless if he ever got injured, but that just meant he couldn't get injured. Also, even if he did get hit, since he got stronger with the more blood he bled, there was also a benefit there.
As for the blindness, that was an issue, but thankfully, Kwon Moon knew that there was a sort of solution to it. He would just have to rely on his hearing and his mana sensitivity to create a virtual image of his surroundings in his mind.
Now that the talents were selected, he had to go and adjust their appearance.
He thought he would have more freedom, but contrary to his expectations, a lot of the options he wanted were locked. It appeared that he would have to develop the ability more before he could do certain things.
In the meantime, he was able to make minor changes, just enough that they wouldn't be considered the same person by anybody.
Somebody might mistake them for distant cousins, but that was about it.
For the changes that he had made based on his original appearance, which was copied from the real Kwon Moon:
Age: 16 > 18
He was only able to adjust his age by two years in either direction.
Height: 5'10 > 6'0
The same applied to his height. He could add or take away two inches.
Weight: 65 kg > 75 kg
He could add or remove twenty kilograms, but chose not to increase it all the way.
He had access to whatever hairstyle he wanted, but as for hair colour, the only one other than his real dark brown hair that was available was blonde, which was ultimately what he went with.
As if he were playing a game where he could pinch certain areas of their face to change their facial structure, that's what he did, and eventually, the final product was this western-looking person. They looked like they could've been from England or France, or some other European country.
Could he just dye their hair later?
He was curious about that and would have to test it sometime in the future.
And lastly, for their name, he went with…
Fletcher Green.
That was the name of his first avatar, and as soon as he confirmed everything, he watched as an icon with Fletcher's face appeared in his mind. Just as he was about to summon his avatar, a screen appeared before him.
[Error. Error. Due to two of your abilities clashing, changes to your ability [King's Avatar] will be made. Adjusting… Adjusting… Adjusting…]
"What's going on?"
He could watch nervously as he prayed that nothing terrible happened. This was the first time he had ever heard that an ability could be adjusted due to another ability clashing with it.
Perhaps this had happened to him in the future before, but he didn't bring that information back with him.
And as for other humans, he reckoned that it didn't happen to them because, unlike him, who could steal abilities and have a strange assortment of abilities that did not correlate with each other, their set of abilities was perfectly in sync with one another.
[Adjusting… Adjustments completed. New changes to [King's Avatar]. Originally, your avatars would share all of your main body's abilities along with their specific talents that you selected in the creation menu, but due to [Gluttony]'s ability to steal other people's abilities, the system has deemed that there's an imbalance. It would be improper for multiple avatars to run around with all the abilities you steal. So from now on, you can only bestow and share your ability with one avatar, excluding [Gluttony] and [King's Avatar], which is exclusive to the main body.]
"Fuck…"
[In exchange, the avatar's usage of the ability will be twice as efficient as the main body, twice as powerful, and cost half the mana.]
"...I take it back."
Although it was a bummer that the avatars wouldn't be able to use all of his abilities he would steal in the future, the fact that their version would be much better than his was a nice consolation.