Open 'Status'

Status

Name: Xuan

Race: High Elf

Level: 1001

Blank Points: 250

Stats

STR: 2809

AGI: 1370

CON: 3290

MAG: 106700

WIS: 33860

Spells: [Leaf Manipulation (Common)], [Mana Sight (Common)], [Body Manipulation (Rare)], [Special Stasis (Rare)], [Ray Tracing (Rare)], [Thread Manipulation (Common)], [Parallel Processing (Rare)], [Demon (Unique)], [Spirit Lord (Unique)].

Resistances: Pain Resistance, Poison Resistance, Heat Resistance, Perception Resistance.

It was a while since he'd checked his stats. Not like with all things happening he'd gotten much of a chance. But now that the village was running smoothly, with each chief having finished selecting their subordinates and all that, he was much of a free man.

Of course, he still would have to get to places where fights and such broke out. But it's not like a village—which was still relatively small despite the addition of several hundred spirit borns—had many conflicts to begin with.

Now, about his resistances, they seemed pretty balanced. They covered much of his sensory aspects. Pain was a big plus, after all—who liked pain? Nobody!

Well, maybe not nobody. There were people called the masochists, after all. Though, he was a hundred percent certain he had no such tendencies.

Overall he was happy with it. As for perception resistance—that was an odd kind of resistance. He could think up some naughty perverted scenarios where this could be used. But it was a shame; a fine gentleman like himself wouldn't ever use it maliciously! Especially not after becoming the lord of a village.

Though, if I ever get a girlfriend and break out of this virgin streak, maybe this could be used to pull some nice pranks on her.

As for battlefield situations, he wasn't planning on going to war anyway. He'd live a peaceful life here. There were also these racist 'ancient' races roaming around who hated his kind in particular anyway.

Plus, one could very easily perceive the mana fluctuations when casting spells. Perception resistance could only allow him to be invisible to the naked eyes of normal people—not skilled mages adept in mana detection.

Poison Resistance would've been really nice to have if he was some ancient emperor of China with a court full of people eyeing his throne. But here, where the queen of poisons herself cooked his food, maybe it wasn't so bad to have.

The one thing he'd just noticed was a small icon beside the 'blank points' tab. It hadn't been there before when he'd first opened this panel.

"A Shop?"

"The system offered shops too?" he asked out loud.

"Yes, my lord!” Luna's ears perked up, she paused her eating. “You can buy very exciting stuff from there, even spells! Though, it costs alot…"

She was munching on some finely cooked meat. Noticing his gaze, she offered her meat to him by flicking her maw where it lay pinned to her milky white teeth.

He shook his head, "No thanks, but shouldn't you be out at work?"

He was certain he'd sent her alongside Slynera so she could use her to shift around her minions where needed. He'd thought she'd come for some lunch, but seeing her posture, and how in peace she was munching, it didn't seem that way.

"Ah, that. I've instructed my most trusted subordinate, little minion, to do that work." She said, still focused on devouring the meat bone by bone.

Lun, huh.

She was quite the smarty-pants. But right now, he needs her for something.

"So," he turned back to the shop panel and opened it by touching the 'shop' inscription. Several windows appeared, with listings of various scrolls, each containing a single spell. "How does all this work?"

"Hrum!" She bit down and ate the last morsel of meat, then jumped near him. Pointing her paws at the scrolls. "Master, you use your experience points that you've earned from leveling up to buy these scrolls." She swiped across the different available scrolls with her claws.

"Are there endless amounts of these scrolls?" Luna kept scrolling and the spells kept on coming one after another.

"Not really. The only spells available for purchase are those from the enemies you've killed. And it seems, my lord has killed a lot of them…" Her jaw slackened more as she kept swiping.

She now looked back at him with eyes that sparkled even brighter than before.

He ignored her radiant gaze and focused on the shop panel instead. Although there were myriad kinds of spells listed—some especially weird and mundane ones like 'digestion' were listed for fifty experience points—he didn't see any particularly eye-grabbing ones. Also, each spell had only a one-liner description.

After scrolling for a while, he stumbled upon one specific spell tagged with the word 'summon'.

[Goat Worm (Summon) (20): Can summon the all-devouring goat worms]

Yeah, it sounded way too overpowered. Like how Demon had sounded when he'd gotten it—except that thing couldn't predict the future for shit, which was supposed to be its core function.

He shouldn't buy it. One shouldn't judge a book by its cover. Though, he really wished to know what kind of all-devouring worms this one could summon, especially what a goat worm even looked like.

Plus, he could spent these to improve his stats, but considering how absurdly high thet already were, that was pretty useless. Also, he lacked spells more than stats now anyway.

It was listed for twenty experience points. Which, in itself, was a big red flag. No way they were gonna sell a super overpowered spell for such a low price. Plus, the beast with this spell had been killed so easily, he hadn't even taken notice. So there was little chance for this spell to be of any use.

I'd buy it.

Luna gave him a look that a dog like her had no right giving!

"Come on, it might not be the smartest choice, but you can't deny you too are curious to know what these worms look like!" He said to her, to which she cocked her head.

"I already know how they look," she pulled up her paw and showed it to him. "Half my paw's size, their color is purple, with some cool patterns."

He looked at her paw. It was about several inches across in her shrunken state, and she'd said the worms were half that size. All the excitement drained out of him.

"Yeah, let's go for the next spell. Also, this time I'd ask you before purchasing—let me know whether it's good or not." He said, letting go of his pride at having to take shopping decisions from a wolf.

He continued scrolling. Next, he had three candidates.

[Slime Stitching (10): Allows one to use slime to stitch stuff.]

[Dimensional Portal (100): Allows one to store and retrieve creatures and objects from a pocket dimension.]

That one was from Raynair. While the rest were mostly from his tamed beasts.

"So despite the villagers killing the guy, with Phaeron running the bamboo growth spell, it gave the kill to me?" He felt skeptical.

Luna, surprisingly, took a thoughtful look before she opened her own panel. He could see her panel mainly because it could be seen by anyone the user wanted to show.

Blue holograms opened around her as she used her nails and swiped through the spells on the panel. Xuan couldn't help but imagine a sharp claw scratching against a glass screen instead of a hologram. The thought sent shivers down his spine.

After reaching a certain spell, she made an 'aha' face before swiping the screen towards him.

"Master, I believe we've all been assigned as killers of that meatbag."

“Interesting, is it because we didn't help prevent his execution or because we all agreed to it?”

Maybe that wasn't the reason, because that way everyone in a country in this world would get the chance of buying a criminal's spell after he's executed. It was much more likely that only some of them had been assigned as the killer, like the Elders of both spirit borns and elven side.

Either way, the real question was: who's gonna buy this super rare spell? It came at exactly one hundred blank points!

"So, what happens if multiple people want to get the same spell from the foe they'd killed?"

"Auction, master. My mother and father used to do this. They'd compete amongst each other on who could spend the most money to get it."

"And what happened when your father won?" He had to ask. Couple quarrels were by far the most interesting stuff to listen to.

The wolf sniffed the air. "Well, usually mother would sulk and go into a hunting spree until father went and calmed her down." She hummed, digging up more details. "I believe she'd nearly wiped out the population of our forest the last time she'd sulked."

Scary. What kind of sulking led to the genocide of a whole forest's worth of animals? She sounded really terrifying.

"So, do you have the points to purchase it yourself, Luna?"

After getting back her consciousness, she was the only one who'd actively gone out on hunting trips. She'd even invited him several times. Though, hunting itself didn't level one up—this wasn't some game world where killing monsters gave you experience points. Though, he'd have preferred such a world. Considering the amount of strength he had, he could've probably helped the villagers level up too.

Except that in this world, one leveled up by using their class-specific spells to accomplish feats. The greater the feat, the greater the rewards would be.

"On that note, Luna, what's your class?"

She lifted her paws and retracted her large, curved nails. "I'm a hunter, just like my class." She retracted and extended her claws again.

"Huh, but you don't really have any spells that suggest that. I mean, yeah you do, but not very hunterish."

She nodded. "Master's right, but that's mainly because during my various level-ups, and the spells that came alongside them, I'd selected synergistic spells and later merged them into higher-tiered ones."

Xuan's eyes widened. "You could do that? I thought that was more of a coincidental thing—where spells matched and the system auto-merged them. Also, how do you get the option to choose spells upon level up? I've gotten no such options thus far."

"Ah, that's mostly because the master hadn't reached the milestone yet."

He tilted his head. "What's that?"

"It's every fifty levels that's considered a milestone point. You get a list of spells to choose from after reaching that point."

"My current level is 1001. Granted, this vessel was given that level upon my arrival, but since then I've only gotten three whole leve—!?"

The wolf had frozen in place, her jaw slack. Behind him, someone opened the door. It was Elhem.

"What has happened, my lord?" Elhem said, walking forward and moving his hands around the frozen wolf.

"Ah, nothing, I'd just mentioned to her that I reached level 1001 and why I still haven't gotten the milestone feature!?"

Well, Elhem froze like her too. Were level one-thousands that rare? He'd found people like Akupara and Luna, all above level three hundred, roaming around some random forest between the two borders. He hadn't even thought his level was significantly higher, considering that given some time, the people around would probably reach that level too.

Except maybe he'd overestimated the aspect of leveling and the significance of level 1000.

As for why he hadn't gotten that milestone spell-selection feature—it was likely because he hadn't gained his levels through grinding. Instead, he'd been assigned the level because of his vessel's inherent power.

The two—Elhem and Luna—finally came away from their self-imposed stasis.

"Ah, so master, are you planning to buy that spell?" Elhem said, pointing towards the shop panel where the Dimensional Portal spell was listed.

So we're gonna pretend that you two didn't just freeze-up like some ice sculptures?

"Yeah, why? Do you want it instead?"

Elhem shook his head. "No, it's too expensive."

He wished to purchase this spell, but he also had some more ideas in mind after learning about acquiring synergistic spells so they could be merged into better ones.

But what would be the point of getting all these spells?

He was planning on living a comfortable life here—not waging wars, so he had zero need for battle spells. Though, he didn't need them, he still wanted to get some cool stuff.

And with this synergistic and merge mechanic he'd learned from Luna—who was getting slightly better now—he would be able to create some cool combination of spells, probably.

So he bought the spell Dimensional Portal for one hundred blank points. That left him with one hundred and thirty points. He wanted to buy Crystallization to use it in conjunction with his Thread Manipulation spell to make cool stuff. But now that he looked more carefully, there was another spell that would actually synergize well with Dimensional Portal.

[Mirage (100): Allows one to produce a perfect illusory mirage of themselves.]

That one sounded amazing, like, imagine storing a bunch of captured magic born inside the portal, releasing them, and using this spell to double their number— that would wrack havoc on any enemy's morale.

But he had better idea.

"What if I buy the spell 'Crystallization' to turn the illusion into reality?"

Luna unfroze at that and jumped to his lap. "That sounds amazing!"

It does, until one takes into account that if these two spells merged, he could just end up with a spell that turned a moving illusion into a still crystal statue. Though, that sounded good too—if he could sell those statues for a high price.

But there were a lot of 'ifs' in this conclusion about merging spells. It seemed increasingly more like throwing shit together and hoping the system merges them into something they'd envisioned. The system could also not find them synergistic at all and refuse to merge them. Based on what Luna had said, there were zero criteria for what the system considered 'synergistic'.

Elhem leaned forward toward the various panels he'd kept open while Xuan pondered the idea of merging.

"So many stats…" the old man trailed off, dazed.

"Okay!" Xuan suddenly stood up, startling Elhem.

"What okay?" he asked.

"Well, I'm gonna gamble with my blank points!" He turned to Luna, poking her nose. "You shouldn't gamble with your hard-earned points, got it?"

"Hmph, but master, you're doing it!"

He poked her nose harder. "Because mine aren't hard-earned."

....

Thanks for reading, and sorry for not being able to upload here for a while. 

My Patreon is at chapter 51, so if you wish to read ahead and support me, consider checking it out!