The Use of a Cheat

"Burp... I'm finally full. I never knew eating your fill could make you this happy!"

At Carl and Hopp's temporary camp, the two lay sprawled against the rock wall after finishing their steaks, digesting their meal.

The chain of thoughts sparked earlier by the Giant Lizard meat had already been tossed to the back of their minds. Right now, they were simply enjoying the satisfaction of being full.

A sulfur-scented breeze brushed across Carl's face, but he no longer reacted as strongly as he had when he first arrived.

The quiet surroundings loosened the nerves that had once been stretched taut. As digestion drew blood toward their stomachs, their minds grew drowsy.

Staring at the pitch-black "sky," Carl's eyelids kept drooping and lifting, as though he would drift off the next second.

But just then, Hopp suddenly gave him a slap.

"Wake up! Don't sleep yet! We need to find somewhere hidden to use as a place to stay."

Startled out of his sleepiness, Carl nearly sprang straight off the ground.

His mind took a while to react before finally emerging from that muddled state.

"Do you have any suggestions?"

Blinking, Carl decided to take the advice of Hopp, the more experienced one, on the matter of shelter.

From what she had said before, she had spent most of her time in Zhuomu wandering the wilderness outside. Caves, treetops—she had encountered all kinds of places.

"I think that Giant Lizard's nest from earlier was pretty well hidden. We can go take a look later, and if it really doesn't work, we can..."

Before Hopp could finish, Carl had already climbed to his feet.

"Wait a moment. We can still make something from those two Giant Lizard hides. We can't take their meat with us, but we definitely can't waste the hides."

With that, Carl grabbed Hopp and ran back down.

The two Giant Lizard corpses still lay where they had been. Working together, Carl and Hopp quickly skinned them and packed up the Giant Lizard Hide along with several steaks.

Following the route they had used to track the Giant Lizards earlier, the two returned to the cave of the Giant Lizard they had encountered before.

"This cave looks pretty deep."

Hunching down, Carl was the first to crawl into the Giant Lizard's cave.

The inside of the cave was surprisingly spacious, reminding Carl of the secret base he and his hometown friends had built when he was a child in this life.

If they had found somewhere like this back then, they would have spent every day playing inside it.

"Fine, we'll settle here for now. But it looks like someone could easily block off the entrance. We need to figure out a solution for that."

For safety's sake, Hopp felt that they should dig out another hidden exit.

But that was clearly not a job the two of them could finish anytime soon.

"All right, don't think about that for now. Find some rocks and block the entrance. We need to rest."

The long trek had nearly drained Carl's energy, especially after the changes caused by the Mind Flayer Tadpole. He needed a deep sleep to soothe the exhaustion in both his mind and spirit.

Seeing how sleepy Carl was, Hopp nodded. She found several rocks outside and blocked the entrance, then used her flexible body to squeeze in through a small opening.

Carl took off his armor. The Rivet he had made glow with Prestidigitation was still shining brightly.

He set the armor down with its glowing side facing upward, piled some sand into a pillow, and lay down directly on it.

Within two seconds, the sound of steady breathing rose, and he fell completely into a dream.

"People born and raised in peaceful lands are truly fortunate."

After saying that with a sigh, Hopp leaned against the wall beside him and rested as well.

Unlike Carl, though, she slept lightly. Even the faintest movement would jolt her awake.

"Hmm... Looks like whenever I sleep or meditate, I come to this Dream Space. I wonder whether it has layers like in Inception."

In the blank Dream World, Carl's consciousness awoke once more.

Looking at the boundless world, Carl focused his thoughts and projected the status panel he had seen before.

At the same time, Carl's spirituality resonated with his psionic power once more, and a status panel identical to the previous one appeared before him.

"Not a single change. It seems this thing can't display overly detailed information."

Carl frowned slightly as his gaze swept over the status panel.

When he saw that his Intelligence attribute was now 14, he paused for a moment.

Carl's original Intelligence attribute had only been around 12, but perhaps due to the boost from his psionic power and those two psionic subsidiary feats, it had now become 14.

But this increase did not mean that he himself had become smarter. Rather, his memory and the resilience of his soul had improved.

Just as the Charisma attribute did not refer solely to appearance, but incorporated many aspects such as temperament and personal magnetism.

The Intelligence attribute was likewise a composite measure.

When his gaze stopped on the Spell Slot section at the end of the status panel, Carl shook his head lightly, feeling that his cheat was even more useless.

Spellcasters could already infer their own attributes and feats through feedback from their spirituality.

It was not as precise as a status panel, but knowing the rough details was enough.

He also did not need something like this to check and confirm the spells he had prepared.

If the Dream Space could only do this, then its usefulness was truly limited.

And this status panel apparently could only appear within the Dream Space, which was extremely inconvenient!

"Forget it. I should think about the spells I need to prepare tomorrow. Based on what we've seen so far, this dungeon shouldn't be especially dangerous. In that case, I can remove Feather Fall for now and replace it with a damaging spell to strengthen my combat ability."

A spellcaster's ability to cast spells relied on a strange structure known as the Weave. To cast a spell, a professional not only needed to understand the spell's principles, but also had to consume a "Spell Slot."

Put simply, casting spells was like a computer running software.

The spellcaster was the computer, spells were the software, Spell Slots were the available memory, and the spell list was the catalog of software that could be installed.

Unlike a computer, whose occupied memory was restored immediately once software stopped running, a spellcaster could only restore Spell Slots through sleep or meditation.

And which spells a spellcaster could use depended on the spells they had prepared beforehand.

Just as Pokémon could only use four moves, a spellcaster could only prepare a limited number of spells.

Fortunately, as a spellcaster's level increased, the number and tier of their Spell Slots, as well as the number of spells they could prepare, would gradually increase.

"Hmm, I could replace Feather Fall with Tasha's Acid Arrow. This spell only requires a small piece of spoiled organic matter as material, and its damage is decent too."

Just as Carl recalled the Spell Runes for Tasha's Acid Arrow, vast swathes of magical runes suddenly appeared in the sky of the Dream World.

And in the Spell Slot section at the end of the status panel, a spell called "Tasha's Acid Arrow" appeared after the label for 1st-tier spells.

Artificers adjusted their spells faster than any other type of spellcaster. Replacing a 1st-tier spell usually took only around two minutes.

But the Dream World adjusted spells even faster than an ordinary Artificer.

More importantly, the spells Carl had prepared before had not been replaced. They were still safely sitting in his Spell Slot.