"Hard?"
After the quest appeared, An Kai wanted to ask, "That's it?!"
He looked at his current stats panel.
[Level Lv1: 10/10 "Locked"] [Intelligence: 40 (Initially 1)] [Endurance: 39 (Initially 1)] [Stamina: 39 (Initially 1)] [Strength: 39 (Initially 1)] [Talents: Immortality "∞", Mage's Body "lv1"] [Spells: Meditation Lv4 "40/40", Fireball Lv4 "40/40", Freezing Spell Lv4 "40/40"] [Identity: Nobody.]
When he entered the mage tower, his four attributes had been at either 30 or 31 points.
In a hundred days, An Kai had raised them to their current levels!
An increase of nearly 10 points!
So An Kai was fully confident about completing the quest!
He hadn't spent those hundred days solely on Meditation, either.
He had explored every inch of the room, which covered more than a hundred square meters.
He couldn't open the bookshelves holding the books. An Kai guessed it might be because he hadn't completed the quest.
Likewise, he couldn't access the stairs to the second floor. A magical barrier blocked his way.
He had, however, found the letter Hanks needed. An Kai had found it.
The letter had been carelessly tossed onto the floor. An Kai opened it and found nothing but a blank sheet inside.
He had long since thrown Hanks's instructions out the window...
Unfortunately, no matter what he tried, the blank sheet inside the letter showed no change whatsoever.
In the end, An Kai even held it over a flame.
According to the plots of the novels he had read in his previous life, heating the paper should have revealed some writing.
However...
Under the heat of the flame, the sheet rapidly turned into ash scattered across the floor...
An Kai was dumbfounded. He had never imagined that the letter Hanks had been so secretive about finding would actually burn!
This was nothing like the plots of the novels he had read!
Fortunately, not far away, a stack of identical blank sheets lay scattered haphazardly across the floor...
After a moment's thought, An Kai took one, folded it as the original had been folded, and slipped it back into the envelope...
Then he put it into his storage ring.
Aside from the letter, An Kai had also found 58 Lower-grade Magic Stones scattered around the first floor.
He exchanged them for skill points.
Together with his remaining skill points, he now had 61 skill points.
Those skill points alone made this trip worthwhile!
He rested for a while.
Holding the [Meditation Staff], An Kai began his tedious yet hopeful cultivation...
Fifteen days later.
An Kai added his newly acquired attribute point to Intelligence.
[Intelligence: 41]
With his Intelligence raised to 41 points, he could upgrade his spells again!
An Kai glanced at his skill points.
With a grand wave of his hand...
[Meditation proficiency +10] [Fireball proficiency +10] [Freezing Spell proficiency +10] [Meditation Lv5 "50/50"] [Fireball Lv5 "50/50"] [Freezing Spell Lv5 "50/50"]
An Kai had planned to upgrade all of them. After the next upgrade, he would leave the mage tower.
His remaining 31 skill points were just enough to upgrade all three skills once more.
After the upgrades, An Kai assessed his progress. Now, while holding the [Meditation Staff], he needed only a day and a half to gain a new attribute point!
As the time needed to gain attribute points grew shorter, each reduction became smaller as well!
Every upgrade felt like breaking through a bottleneck.
After upgrading, An Kai rested for two days before throwing himself back into cultivation!
Time slipped away as he cultivated.
As the food in his storage ring slowly dwindled, An Kai's four attributes drew closer and closer to 50 points!
Nearly another 150 days passed.
An Kai let out a long breath!
[Attribute points +1]
He added the newly acquired attribute point to Stamina, his last attribute still at 49.
[Stamina: 50] [Abandoned Mage Tower inheritance quest 1 completed.] [Abandoned Mage Tower inheritance quest 2: Unlocks at 100 Intelligence.] [Quest hint: Reach 100 Intelligence to enter the second floor and cultivate.]
A new quest appeared.
As An Kai completed the quest, a ripple swept through the mage tower's first floor.
All the magical restrictions vanished!
A brilliant smile spread across An Kai's face as he took every book off the shelves!
He put the ones he felt he wouldn't get around to reading yet into his storage ring.
He set the useful ones aside to read shortly.
But once An Kai finished sorting them, he was dumbfounded...
He couldn't read the contents of these books!
They were written in neither the continent's common tongue nor the Booklin script!
Instead, they used a script he had never seen before!
"Looks like I'll have to leave."
An Kai muttered to himself.
He put the unreadable books into his storage ring.
Then he chose to continue his secluded cultivation.
He planned to raise his Intelligence to 51 before leaving.
By now, his patience for cultivating in seclusion had reached its limit...
One day later.
[Attributes +1]
An Kai added it to his Intelligence.
With that, his three spells could be upgraded once again.
An Kai made another grand wave of his hand...
[Meditation proficiency +10] [Fireball proficiency +10] [Freezing Spell proficiency +10]
An Kai looked at his newly upgraded stats panel.
[Level Lv1: 10/10 "Locked"] [Intelligence: 51 (Initially 1)] [Endurance: 50 (Initially 1)] [Stamina: 50 (Initially 1)] [Strength: 50 (Initially 1)] [Talents: Immortality "∞", Mage's Body "lv1"] [Spells: Meditation Lv6 "60/60", Fireball Lv6 "60/60", Freezing Spell Lv6 "60/60"] [Identity: Nobody.]
His strength had increased enormously compared to before he entered!
Looking at it now, Hanks really was his benefactor!
At this point, An Kai was ready to leave the mage tower.
First, his patience for seclusion had reached its limit.
Second, he had barely any food left. He had only made it this far by rationing it carefully.
As his attributes increased, his appetite had been skyrocketing day by day!
He looked around the first floor.
After confirming that nothing remained except the bookshelves, An Kai headed toward the first-floor entrance...
Suddenly, he stopped in his tracks.
A look of delighted surprise appeared on An Kai's face!
He had discovered that the storyline forum in his system... had opened!
[Countdown to public beta: 9,999 years.] [Side Story:] [1: The continental Mage Association headquarters has announced its decision to resume the search for the path to becoming the God of Magic!] [2: The Dragon Clan has killed four Dragon Knights and issued a fierce warning: They will kill every Dragon Knight they encounter, as the profession is an insult to the Dragon Clan!] [3: The Bukelin Duchy's civil unrest has reached its final stage. The fifth princess was the first to be targeted in the purge. After being surrounded and hunted by four factions, her whereabouts are unknown.] [4...]
After glancing at the first three Side Stories, An Kai felt relieved that he hadn't gone to the Bukelin Duchy's capital!
He had known that fifth princess was unreliable!
The remaining Side Stories were truly minor ones, mostly everyday affairs in small places An Kai had never heard of.
Scrolling to the bottom, An Kai found the lone main storyline button.
Curious, he chose to open it...
[Main storyline 1: First boss confirmed: An Kai, a first-tier, first-stage mage in Chaos City, Desert, Bukelin Duchy!] [Identity introduction: As the most gifted mage in the land where the God of Magic resides, his blood is the perfect choice for wiping the warriors' butcher knives!]
"Fuck!"
Before you continue