It wasn't that An Kai had failed to prepare.
Rather, as his four attributes increased, his appetite kept growing...
Every increase in his attributes put his food supplies to the test.
Food that should have lasted two years was now nearly gone in less than one...
This time, he planned to head to Chaos City, first to exchange the gold coins in his storage ring for food.
Second, he wanted to find an opportunity to acquire a batch of Lower-grade Magic Stones.
Also, if possible, An Kai wanted to try opening the book in his storage ring that he hadn't been able to open by any means!
Of course, before leaving, An Kai still had one thing to do.
That was to turn all his resources into strength.
[Skill points -1] [Skill points -7] [Freezing Spell proficiency +1] [Freezing Spell upgraded to Lv1] [Freezing Spell proficiency +7] [Freezing Spell Lv1 "7/10"]
With a thought, a fist-sized chunk of ice appeared in his hand.
An Kai hefted it. If he caught someone off guard and hit them in the head...
It should leave a big lump, right...
Fuck!
He knew it. Support spells were unreliable!
An Kai whipped his arm forward, hurling the ice at the wall to vent his frustration...
Boom!
With a thunderous crash, a hole roughly thirty centimeters across appeared in the wall, filled with shards of ice...
Staring at the damage caused by Freezing Spell, An Kai froze in place. He couldn't help wondering...
Were my attributes too high? Or had I misunderstood Freezing Spell?
No matter how he thought about it, this wasn't the Freezing Spell he remembered.
He had seen people use it in Nameless Town, but only to chill hot water or fruit...
As for its power...
Being hit by it would only hurt a little...
It was nothing like his [Freezing Spell], which packed an astonishing punch!
Standing at the cave entrance, An Kai checked his panel after all his upgrades...
[Level Lv1: 10/10 "Locked"] [Intelligence: 31 (initially 1)] [Endurance: 30 (initially 1)] [Stamina: 30 (initially 1)] [Strength: 30 (initially 1)] [Talents: Immortality "∞", Mage's Body "lv1"] [Spells: Meditation Lv4 "40/40", Fireball Lv4 "40/40", Freezing Spell Lv1 "7/10"] [Identity: Nobody.]
His level remained unchanged. He was still level one.
But compared to before his seclusion, his attributes had doubled, and both [Meditation] and [Fireball] had risen by two levels!
With his current Meditation, An Kai needed only two days to earn an attribute point while holding the [Meditation Staff]!
That was half the four days it had taken when he first entered seclusion!
And as for Fireball...
Hiss!
A fireball the size of a swim ring suddenly appeared in An Kai's hand.
It lit up the cave with a brilliant glow.
With a thought, the fireball in his hand vanished.
This was a change brought about by An Kai's Lv4 Meditation. He could now control his spells precisely.
Once he cast a spell, throwing it away was no longer his only way to get rid of it...
After putting the beast meat in the cave into his storage ring, An Kai went to the entrance.
Without much effort, he moved aside the boulder that stood twice a person's height.
With brute strength like that, people would believe him if he claimed to be a warrior...
Perhaps the noise of the boulder had disturbed the nearby animals...
A three-meter-long aquatic creature slowly surfaced...
[Lv5: Desert Crocodile]
Its entire body was covered in blackish-brown armored skin, and the sharp teeth in its mouth gleamed dazzlingly in the sunlight.
An Kai smiled slightly, and two fireballs suddenly appeared in his hands...
The [Desert Crocodile] spotted a two-legged beast in its territory?
It was about to open its mouth and teach the two-legged beast a lesson with [Water Arrow] when it saw two huge fireballs appear in the creature's hands!
The [Desert Crocodile] admitted it had been a little rash just now. At that moment, it missed its mate...
At the same time, it seemed to see its ancestors beckoning to it...
Boom! Boom!!
An Kai was like a merciless [Fireball] machine!
One after another, he hurled the fireballs in his hands at the [Desert Crocodile]...
After a full ten fireballs, all that remained of the [Desert Crocodile] was a few teeth scattered along the lakeshore...
An Kai's [Fireball] barrage had also blasted an empty patch into the water where the [Desert Crocodile] had just been...
His attacks had forcibly evaporated enough water to shrink the lake...
An Kai went to where the [Desert Crocodile] had died and picked up a crystal...
"Exchange!"
[Skill points +1]
Then he put it into [Freezing Spell]...
[Freezing Spell Lv1 "8/10"]
The [Desert Crocodile] had been blasted to pieces by the third fireball in An Kai's barrage.
The seven extra fireballs had been a free bonus from An Kai, as well as a way to vent after spending 300 days in seclusion...
After that outburst, the gloom brought on by his seclusion vanished completely...
Having sorted out his mood, An Kai set off for Chaos City...
Along the way, he happened to meet someone in the same line of work, using a carriage as bait.
Without much effort, An Kai acquired a carriage...
Chaos City.
At the city gates.
At his old stall, Hanks lay off to one side, utterly at ease.
Three burly men stood beside him, feeding and fanning him...
Meanwhile, the wizard Reed had replaced Hanks as the one running the stall.
300 days earlier.
After An Kai left, Hanks took Reed and the other three to the Bounty Tower and withdrew their remaining wealth.
He had intended to sell them off to recoup some of his losses.
But Reed had said that keeping them around would be worth more to Hanks than selling them for money.
Who was Hanks? Naturally, he didn't believe that.
Then, to stay alive, Reed had taken the three warriors out that very night and swindled twelve gold coins under Hanks's supervision.
Hanks had been overjoyed.
He had loudly praised Reed and the other three as geniuses.
And so, Reed and the others had naturally become Hanks's slaves.
They had considered escaping and fighting back, but the strength Hanks had casually revealed put those ideas to rest.
Without exaggeration, Hanks was the strongest person they had ever seen in their lives.
The four were puzzled. If Hanks was so strong, why wasn't he famous in Chaos City?
And why wasn't he particularly well-off?
In response, Hanks had merely smiled and said he was a merchant...
A merchant? My ass! Reed had inwardly scoffed at those words...
Outwardly, however, he had searched for ways to flatter Hanks.
With Reed and the other three around, Hanks's days grew more comfortable by the day.
Perhaps because of their honest-looking faces, Reed and the others always found it easy to win people's trust when swindling them...
The way Widow Wang looked at Hanks also grew more tender by the day.
In fact, while Hanks was out running his stall today, Widow Wang had copied the wealthy ladies in the city and gone to a rouge shop in the city center, planning to buy some rouge to doll herself up...
Lying off to one side, Hanks felt more and more that An Kai was his lucky star, having delivered four lucky helpers to him...
"Stop sleeping! Take a look at my carriage, built from high-grade magic stone, decorated with gold, and pulled by a High-tier Magical Steed! How much is it worth?!"
Hanks's eyes snapped open, and there stood An Kai, the very person he had just been thinking about...
Standing atop a battered carriage a short distance from the stall, An Kai called out to Hanks with an expression that declared he had a real treasure.
As for Reed and the other three, the moment they saw An Kai, they ducked their heads like frightened quails...
Trying to convince themselves that An Kai hadn't noticed them...
Before you continue