Second Talent: Ouroboros Ring

Lance.

In the common tongue's dictionary, this name meant a straightforward, sharp spear.

It was the greatest blessing Lance's late father had given him, hoping he could be like a spear and carve out a future in this shitty world.

Yet faced with this jaw-dropping Talent panel, Lance could not help sinking into deep self-doubt.

Was Heaven not planning to make him a hero, but rather the legendary perverted king?

In this world, Talents were not unique to Lance.

Beyond the Talents granted by professions and special bloodline Talents, there was an even rarer kind: personal Talents.

Each person could awaken at most one in their lifetime.

Their quality was strictly divided into five ranks: Ordinary, Excellent, Extraordinary, Legendary, and Mythical.

And the glaring red on the panel, Lance was certain, represented Mythical.

Although he felt somewhat ashamed of where this Talent had come from, he had to admit that it was powerful to an outright unfair degree.

Even overpowered was not enough to describe it.

As long as he breathed, his stamina would fully recover. That meant that as long as his mind did not break down, he could train without end and hone his skills at a speed ordinary people could never reach.

One had to know that even veteran adventurers were often forced to withdraw hastily after exhausting their stamina in high-pressure places like dungeons.

But Lance, with this Talent...

Only needed to consider two things: whether his health bar was long enough, and whether his backpack was big enough.

He would become a tireless perpetual-motion machine.

"Perhaps... I could give it a try too?"

Just as the ambition in Lance's heart had begun to ignite, and he was considering whether to change professions and become an adventurer—

Reality slapped him hard across the face.

The following afternoon, the Adventurers' Guild delivered terrible news.

The dungeon outside the town had suffered an unexpected mana rampage, burying hundreds of adventurers who had been exploring it.

This disaster not only took countless lives, but directly struck at Grayrock Town's economic lifeline.

The sudden loss of adventurers, a high-spending group, instantly plunged the town's service industry into a cold winter.

The most obvious effect was that Lance discovered his daily food expenses had risen by two copper coins.

Worse still, his workload skyrocketed.

As a scribe, he had no choice but to work overtime processing hundreds of death notices.

And amid the mechanical copying, he also received many letters sent from distant places.

Unfortunately, the people those letters were addressed to would never be able to open them with their own hands again.

While sorting through the belongings, Lance saw a familiar name.

It belonged to a young adventurer he had once served back when he made money writing letters for others.

When no one was paying attention, Lance secretly opened the reply letter that no one would ever claim.

The paper was rough, and the handwriting crooked.

Inside was an old farmer's pride that his son had become an adventurer, along with rambling assurances that everything at home was well.

The letter mentioned that his younger brother often leaned by the window, asking when his brother would return. He wanted to know whether Grayrock Town really had airships with enormous gas bags and propellers, whether they truly could fly above the clouds.

At the end of the letter were the mother's somewhat clumsy words of advice.

She said that not a single silver coin her son had sent home over the years had been spent. They had saved them all.

If he was tired out there, he should come home.

They had saved enough money to find him a beautiful wife.

Every line overflowed with the parents' deep, unshakable longing and concern for their wandering son.

The longer Lance read, the blurrier his vision became.

He could not keep reading.

At that moment, the tiny "dream of adventure" that had just begun to burn within him was completely extinguished by that letter from home.

Perhaps the only change brought by that red Talent was an adjustment to his retirement plans.

Originally, he had wanted to marry a fox girl with fox ears, or a delicate and frail elf.

Now, he added in-demand succubi, as well as dragonkin girls with strong physiques and astonishing endurance, to his list of options.

That was all.

Life in Grayrock Town continued amid sorrow.

The rampaging dungeon was eventually brought under control, and Grayrock Town slowly returned to its former prosperity.

New adventurers filled the vacancies, and it seemed that no one remembered the people who had died.

Only one person was an exception.

Lance quietly took more than half of the wages he had saved over the month and slipped them into that man's death notice envelope.

Other than adventurers who became professionals, Ordinary low-level adventurers received no compensation for death.

It was only a tiny bit of help Lance could offer that distant family.

After doing all that, Lance viciously slapped his right hand with his left.

"Hey, you useless sympathy."

The money he had thrown away meant that his dream of going to Ostella would have to be postponed for a while longer.

Over the next three months, life returned to peace.

With that harmlessly handsome face of his, Lance successfully wormed his way into the little circle of Nia, one of the Guild receptionists.

Nia had smooth brown hair and a tall, slender figure. She was widely acknowledged as a beauty in the Guild.

Through her, Lance met two more girls with completely different personalities.

One was Amber, the tavern's poster girl. She had dazzling short golden-red hair, a stunningly ample chest that was impossible to look away from, and a fiery, straightforward personality.

The other was Flora, who worked at the town's potion shop. This braided girl was always quiet and spoke in a soft, gentle voice.

The four often got together in their spare time to play a game called Three Dragon Cards, whose rules resembled poker from Lance's previous life.

To save back the money he had donated, Lance became extremely stingy with food and drink, often buying only the hardest black bread to fill his stomach.

Flora noticed, and often secretly slipped him honeyed croissants. Blushing, she would say she had tried making bread herself, but today's batch had baked badly, so she could only give them to him to deal with.

And whenever he went to the tavern, the large-breasted Amber would always add an extra big cup of warm milk to the cheap set meal he ordered.

Then she would tease him in front of everyone, saying that little boys needed to drink more milk if they wanted to grow stronger.

Whenever the adventurers in the tavern burst into laughter over this, Amber would seize a huge wooden mug and slam it heavily onto the table, then scold those crude men back as protectively as a mother hen guarding her chicks.

Over time, Lance gained a bit of a reputation in Grayrock Town and earned a nickname that left people unsure whether to laugh or cry:

"That pretty-boy scribe."

But Lance did not mind.

Every day, he happily counted the copper coins he had saved, occasionally played cards with the girls, and mooched some good food.

Nia would also occasionally find him private jobs writing letters home for others, helping him earn some extra money.

As he watched his savings gradually rise again, his dream seemed to be drawing closer by the day.

However, Aredia, the goddess who presided over Talents, courage, and adventure in this world, clearly had no intention of letting him off so easily.

Another month passed.

One late night.

That panel, which seemed to short-circuit and spasm at random, suddenly popped up again without warning.

Logically, personal Talents were unique.

But perhaps it was because of Lance's special transmigrator soul.

After four long months of gestation, a second line of crimson text slowly appeared.

[Talent: Ouroboros Ring (Red)]