Lesser Healing Spell

Su Ran leaned back in his chair and let out a long, complete sigh of relief.

Double Chests.

It was the unique talent he had gained as a transmigrator. Every chest that belonged to him could be opened twice.

The first time, it yielded a random reward according to the normal probabilities.

Then the chest reset.

The second time, the items obtained would be entirely different and more valuable, and seemed to bear some subtle connection to his performance in the dungeon.

It was his greatest advantage, and also his most dangerous secret.

Su Ran took three [Old Skill Scroll Fragments] from his personal space and pieced them together on the table.

A faint, milky-white light shone along the edges of the fragments as they slowly fused.

He found himself sinking into recollection, and images surfaced one after another:

Growing up in an orphanage's communal sleeping quarters, where silence and caution were the first lessons.

At fourteen, volunteering to work in a restaurant kitchen, his hands soaked pale, the Federation credits he saved one by one—his hope for change.

At sixteen, the testing station, mental power aptitude: a flash of blue light indicating a relatively high result, followed by the harsh reality of the Class Change Scroll's cost.

A loan agreement, 200,000 credits, in exchange for a pale-gold metal cylinder.

The intense stabbing pain and dizziness as the [Basic Class Scroll: Scholar] turned into a stream of light and poured into him.

A moment later, the white light stabilized, and the fragments formed a complete scroll.

[Lesser Healing Spell Skill Scroll]: Upon use, grants the Lesser Healing Spell skill to Scholars, Mages, and similar classes.

Su Ran picked up the scroll, feeling the gentle, limited power within it.

The parchment felt slightly tough to the touch. The complete white runes on it were not dazzling in the room's light, yet a hint of vitality flowed through them.

He did not hesitate. Gripping both ends of the scroll, he focused his mind on it.

"Use."

The scroll instantly transformed into a soft stream of light. Rather than dissipating, it wound its way up his hands as though alive and quickly entered the space between his brows.

[Lesser Healing Spell Lv.1]

Channels a faint glimmer of natural life to restore a tiny amount of the target's vitality. Its current effect is weak, casting is slow, and it has little effect on severe injuries.

The skill's details were clear in his mind.

Su Ran opened his class panel.

[Level: Lv.1.]

[Experience: 88/100.]

[Class: Scholar.]

[Constitution: 8.]

[Strength: 6.]

[Agility: 7.]

[Spirit: 12.]

[Skills: Knowledge Insight Lv.2, Scrollmaking Lv.2, Light Spell Lv.1, Lesser Healing Spell Lv.1.]

[Equipped: Cloth Robe (common), Rabbit-Skin Shoes (common), Oak Staff (common).]

[Personal space: Copper coins ×69, silver coins ×4, Worn Knowledge Notes (common), Basic Conductive Ink (common), Simple Bracers (common).]

Su Ran looked at the palm where a faint white glow had just gathered, then glanced at the plain roundwood shield and the silver coin on the table.

Lesser Healing Spell... Lv.1.

Reinforced Roundwood Shield... physical defense +2.

From outside the window came the distant clamor of the vast lower city, muffled and drawn-out, like the endless panting of some enormous creature.

A hard-to-describe sense of absurdity, mixed with a faint, almost self-mocking sentiment, quietly passed through his heart.

He recalled the legends about two hundred years ago that he had read when he secretly slipped into the school library.

Back then, at the beginning of the world's upheaval, the gifts of a great being or supreme law, the Primordial Sound, had descended directly.

Classes had not been obtained through cold, clearly priced [Basic Class Scrolls], but rather as though through a selection by fate, or a direct resonance with some grand will.

Awakening was power, and talent determined one's starting point.

A Silver-grade class? That might have been merely a starting point. Even Gold-grade classes were not unattainable legends.

Beyond those were the Hidden Classes and Unique Classes, vaguely recorded yet possessing one-of-a-kind traits and growth potential... like stars.

[Dragon Tongue Pact], [Mind Overlord], [Elemental King], [Spacetime Walker]...

They lit up humanity's first dark sky as the technological world collapsed, leading the human race in cleaving through ignorance and fear.

The power system was like an erupting volcano: primal, immense, and full of infinite possibilities.

It was an age when heroes and legends were born, the opening of an era when one person's might could illuminate an entire age.

"If..."

What if... I had transmigrated two hundred years earlier?

I wouldn't have had to count the value of every mouthful of food in the orphanage, or trade my youth for meager credits in a greasy kitchen.

I wouldn't have had to sign a loan agreement heavy enough to bend my spine, just to obtain the most basic qualification as a [Scholar].

Perhaps, in that first great tide, with the traits of a transmigrator's soul, even if I had only managed to grab the tail of an opportunity...

But the thought lasted only an instant.

The real-world noise outside the window continued.

The faint sensation of the skill in his palm remained. The meager spoils on the table remained. The debt figures were still coldly etched into the corner of his personal terminal.

Between the magnificent, epic beginnings of two hundred years ago and him in this cramped room lay more than just time.

There was also a gulf that had already hardened, with clear divisions between classes and resources held under tight monopolies.

That pioneering age, full of untamed opportunities, had long since ended. Now was an age of strict order and painstaking cultivation, where one had to fortify every step.

Such thoughts were useless.

Su Ran took a soft breath and pressed down on that distant sense of melancholy, belonging to another spacetime, crushing it.

His gaze grew clear and focused again.

However glorious the legends were, they had nothing to do with surviving in the present.

In his cramped single room, Su Ran cooked himself a meal on a portable stove.

A simple soup made from energy blocks, with a few dried vegetable leaves added. It tasted bland, but it could quickly replenish his strength and was cheap.

As he ate, he opened his personal terminal, connected to the city's intranet, and checked the current market price of the [Black Iron-Class Scroll: Mage].

A screen of light unfolded, and pale-blue data streams scrolled across it.

Price: 1 gold coin or the equivalent of 1,000,000 credits

A line of small print below read: "Historic low, lowest price in nearly ten years."

The related threads in the forum section were lively, with most titles expressing amazement and hesitation:

"mage scroll falls below the 1-gold mark! Is now the time to buy?"

"buying the dip? Or catching a falling knife? A rational analysis of the Mage class's current state"

"lowest price in ten years! Are Mages really no good anymore?"

Su Ran opened the most popular analysis thread, gulped down the last mouthful of soup, and quickly scanned the text, which mingled emotion with data.

The poster called himself a data miner and had posted graphs charting scroll prices over the past five years for Mages, Archers, Elementalists, and other traditional ranged magic classes,

as well as a bar chart showing the proportions chosen by newly awakened people. All the curves were declining, especially the Mage's, which had fallen almost off a cliff over the past year.