Meeting back up with everybody went about as I expected. There was a lot of tears, a lot of hugging, a lot of happiness, a lot of sadness, a lot of everything, but obviously it was all centered around the fact that two members of this family would no longer be with us. And then grandpa woke up, and that came with its own set of emotions as well.

  The loss of his arm was not something the rest of us took easy, but in true grandpa fashion, the man simply went on as if nothing happened.

  He paid it no mind, he showed no signs of pain or discomfort, nor did he ever complain about the fact he lost a limb, but that was just how he was, always wearing it on the chin and keeping his finer emotions tucked away.

  And of course, since we returned into the dungeon, there were once again people approaching, asking about the state outside, and the mood in the dungeon did not improve upon our words that they were out there waiting for us to come out.

  Some people ignored that warning and left. Others thought we were lying since we managed to leave and come back, but eventually, and under a small threat of violence, we were left alone.

  Answering a couple of questions to help out others in the same situation was fine, but dealing with a bunch of annoyances wasn’t something we were gonna let fly. We weren’t really in the mood for that right now. Thankfully, no one came to blows, and we could move on to more important things like reading the book on how to integrate our traits.

  Looking at it now properly, it was a lot smaller than the book on how to fuse traits, which is a good thing since I’m sure everyone here wanted a chance to read it on their own, and if it was too long, we simply wouldn’t have had the time to do that.

  But eventually, the hours passed, and everyone who wanted to at least get a chance to read the book did, which of course included me.

  The book really only had three sections. It had what integrating traits meant and what it would do, you know just a basic knowledge section about the concept. Then it had two sections on how to accomplish the integration of traits.

  So first of all, traits. They were physical modifications to the body, born out of evolution or gifted through the system or in some way, shape, or form. Just know at the end of the day it was a physical modification to the body.

  Now unless you somehow evolved, got a new class, and were born with a trait for example, anything else that was acquired after the fact would work with your body, but it wouldn’t truly be a part of you.

  It would be like wearing a suit of skin-tight armor. Actually, I don’t even know why I thought that. It would be more like wearing a wetsuit.

  Yeah, a wetsuit while swimming, one that felt like it was your skin, so not only was it very tight and clung to you like your own skin did, but it also looked and felt like your skin, but unlike your skin, it was far more resistant to water, and it had features that helped to keep you warm and insulated while swimming through the depths. Only it still wasn’t you.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  You got all the major effects of it, but it wasn’t a part of you. That skin or wetsuit could be removed. It wasn’t you.

  That’s a rough example at least to understand what traits were. Even if you did something like getting stronger bones, yes, your bones would be stronger. You got the full effect, or the major effect, of the trait, but it wasn’t really you.

  It was like storing foreign entities in your body.

  So, integrating traits into your body was a fancy way of saying making the trait your own, making your own bones that you were born with truly hard. That membrane that I got at level 25, right now it’s a foreign entity in my body, but after integrating it, it would become truly a part of me just like my finger or my heart or my tongue was a part of me.

  And obviously there would be benefits after integrating these traits, but that was for later. What mattered now is how to do it, and there lay the problem.

  According to the book, at least, there were only two ways to go about integrating traits. One was simply by doing extraneous physical activity that incorporated the mind and every part of one’s being. It described one of the best ways to do this as through fighting intense battles, and by doing so over a large period of time the traits would naturally integrate themselves into your body.

  This is the recommended way and the easiest way. There is no set time for how long this should take, as it all depends on which traits you have, how many traits you have, and the rarity and impact of those traits.

  It could take months or even years before all traits of just F grade are properly integrated. And seeing as I keep getting new traits, then it’s not like all the fighting I’ve done since the start has had any impact on the newer traits in possession.

  But there was another way. Of course there was another way. One that involved a far more manual process, a process that was even more dangerous than fusing traits because it was going against the natural order of doing things, and it would severely hinder your future prospects.

  It talked about using the mana within one’s body to actively take hold of whatever trait you were in possession of and forcefully integrate it into your body. It could almost be described as destroying the heart you already had and replacing it with a new one. Probably not quite so literal, but the pain wouldn’t be far from it.

  The fact that doing this would mean your traits would never work to their full ability. It would always mean that your counterpart who did it naturally, while maybe taking a longer time than you did, would be stronger for it at the end of the day.

  Of course, not everything is always so black and white, because if you had three unbound traits and they had three rooted ones, you were already stronger at the beginning.

  Going the fast way wouldn’t give them that much room to catch up, but if that was the case, you already weren’t on the same field as them anyway. There was bound to be someone else also with three unbound traits, and if they did it the right way, then they would likely have an edge over you at least in one department.

  If this is how you continuously progressed up the ranks, then the gap would only get wider.

  And that was just to speak of if you survived the process at all, as it was very, very dangerous to go down this path, or at least the book emphasized it was that dangerous, multiple times in fact, reminding us that in this case a slip-up wasn’t just likely to happen.

  It was almost expected to happen, and only very few people actually managed to go down this path, especially if they didn’t have the sort of guidance or resources to help alleviate any of the cons of doing this process.

  Basically, my family and I were now between a rock and a hard place, and we were firmly lodged there.