Underworld Player

Chapter 37: The Perfect Skill

[ Quest Complete ]

[ Calculating rewards... ]

[ Your rating for overall performance is: S-rank. Experience and Coin rewards increased to 150% of base value. ]

[ You have received 300 XP and 750 Coins. ]

[ You have received Rare skill card x1. Item has been automatically added to the Inventory, please inspect it at your own convenience. ]

[ Level Up! You are now Level 3. You have 2 unused attribute points.]

Bai Zhi's eyes fluttered open, as if waking from a long dream, only to be greeted by a host of notifications on floating screens.

Am I back in the real world? Glancing at the time shown on his laptop, he thought, So, six hours in the Scenario quest only takes six minutes here...

Fortunately, the injuries suffered by his avatar during the scenario did not carry over into the real world, so his body was unharmed. However, if he had failed the quest, he would have suffered sudden death.

The fact that he had cleared the quest with an S rank was unsurprising to him—after all, he had saved the party from a complete wipeout. On the other hand, he was surprised to see that he had leveled up not once, but twice.

[ Player level: Level 3 (50/400) ]

According to the system, he would need 400 experience points for his next level up, to level 4.

Getting from Level 1 to Level 2 required 100 experience points, and since he had also leveled up from 2 to 3, that meant the requirement must have been doubled to 200, and doubled again for the next level up. It seemed that the experience requirement increased exponentially.

Successfully leveling up past Level 2 meant that Bai Zhi now had access to the Marketplace, which contained a very important item—the permanent fixture that was the Provisionary On-Demand Stats.

[ Provisionary On-Demand Stats (PODS): Upon use, the Player's basic STR, DEX and CON are increased to the maximum humanly possible. Cost is 5 times the total difference in attribute points. ]

Hmm... My Strength, Dexterity and Constitution add up to 21 points. With a PODS, they would be increased to 15 each for a total of 45. That's a difference of 24 points, which costs... 120 coins an hour?

Bai Zhi frowned slightly as he worked out the implications.

He had been awarded 750 coins for clearing the Newbie Run with an S rank, so even if he spent it all on PODS, he would only be able to maintain the stat enhancement for six hours.

It wasn't possible to customize the exchange, either. He could not purchase individual points, for example, and neither could he buy a few seconds of being at peak human condition—PODS had to be purchased in multiples of one hour.

I have no choice but to raise my basic stats...

Bai Zhi brought up his Attributes screen, which showed his Strength, Dexterity and Constitution at 7, 8 and 6 respectively. If he put his newly acquired growth stats into Constitution, it would raise it from 6—which described the capabilities of a near-invalid—to 8, or barely approaching the abilities of an average human. That also meant that if he ever used a PODS, his constitution would go up to 17, temporarily granting him superhuman abilities where constitution was involved.

In any case, he simply could not stand having something as weak as a 6 in Constitution.

Without further ado, Bai Zhi poured both the unused attribute points into Constitution—something he would soon come to regret.

He decided that he could take his time studying the other nine items in the shop over the next month, so for now, he ignored them and brought up his Inventory instead. Amongst the junkyard of items that filled it, there quietly sat a card of emerald-green—the random Rare skill card!

This was the true, priceless reward for clearing the Newbie Run.

If such an item could be put up for auction, its selling price in Coins would surely be five figures or more. In other words, with the exchange rate of real-world money to Coins on the black market being about 1000 yuan per Coin, something like a random Rare skill card was worth at least 10 million yuan—if selling it was even allowed.

I hope I get something good... nothing fancy, something that grants me the strength of Superman or makes me unkillable as an Ajin* would do fine...

After thoroughly washing his hands with soap and water, Bai Zhi reverently took the card out from his Inventory.

As he contemplated the emerald-green object in his hand that held the promise of infinite possibilities, he was shocked to see an ominous black speck bloom on its surface, quickly spreading like smoke until the entire card had turned into an inky-black rectangle that seemed to swallow any light that touched it.

Bai Zhi's eyes darted to one of the first items in his Inventory.

[ Item Name: Shadowland Perpetual Deed ]

[ Type: Special ]

[ Class: None ]

[ Description: The Owner of this Deed may receive a plot of land in Shadowland and perpetual rights to its use ]

[ Requirements: None ]

[ Auto-bound to Player ID, Cannot be Sold, Cannot be Dropped, Untransferable ]

This was one of the loot rewards for defeating the little boy who had trapped people by stepping on their shadows, and also the only item with a class of None. Naturally, he had looked for information on such a unique trait when he got it, but the effort had proved futile.

Could this item be the culprit? If it's damaged my card somehow...

Mentally preparing himself for the worst, Bai Zhi grit his teeth and inspected the jet-black card.

[Skill Name: Shadow ]

[ Type: Special ]

[ Rank: Perfect ]

[ Effects: Shadow Manipulation, Shadow Enhancement, Shadow Sneak ]

[ Consumption: 10/50/100 Spiritual Energy per minute ]

[ Requirements: INT 15, PER 15, CHA 15 ]

[ Note: Main Skill of Shadow Mastery ]

[ Cannot be Sold, Untransferable ]

This is... a Perfect skill?

Bai Zhi's pupils shrank in alarm at the unexpected information displayed before him.

The fact that the card had granted a skill 2 ranks above Rare was one thing, but more concerning was the requirement—normally, no requirements were needed to learn skills from the cards earned from clearing the Newbie Run. Having requirements would only make it impossible for at least 90% of the Players to make use of such rewards.

In Bai Zhi's case, the requirements were daunting indeed—to achieve Intelligence, Perception and Charisma of 15 each, even a gifted player would have to be at least Level 10, assuming they spent all their precious growth stats on these three attributes. That meant neglecting their other attributes, which could play a crucial role in ensuring their survival. And survival was of utmost importance.

...15 Charisma! What dumbass would put points into Charisma in the early game?

*Reference to this manga/anime.