Chapter 3: The Shop
The auto-cooking feature literally automatically cooked the snake. It took the snake into a hologram where it was skinned, chopped up, and cooked. There was a little progress bar on the bottom showing me the estimated time until it was complete. I sat down and waited for about five minutes before it finished and transferred itself to my inventory. Skewered snake doesn't sound extremely appetizing but I don't know whether it was the fact that I was literally starving or if the system was just a good cook, but I'd never tasted anything better in my life.
Now that I'm no longer hungry I figure its time to check out the system's shop. It had six tabs: Weapons, Armour, Accessories, Skills, Monsters, and Misc. They were pretty self-explanatory and misc. was anything that wasn't categorized within the others. Now that I think about it, shouldn't I be able to buy a spaceship or something like that?
[The items available to host in the shop will increase as host increases in strength. Currently, at level one, you can only but common-uncommon items. Every ten levels a new tier of items will become available in the system shop.]
Hmm, so if I reach level ten I'll be able to buy rare-rated items as well?
[Yes, at level twenty you'll have access to epic items and so on and so forth]
That's good to keep in mind, but for now, I feel like I'm getting way ahead of myself, after all, I'm still only level one. After thinking for a moment on what to do I've resolved myself to go and level up. Alright, time to get my hunt on. I equipped all my items and stood up. I walked through the forest, spear at the ready. After a few minutes of uneventful walking, I came across a cave entrance. It was a large hole about twenty feet wide and ten feet tall. I was about to go in a bit to check it out when I heard a clicking and hissing sound behind me. My battle sense told me to move and so I did, jumping and rolling out of the way of a large acidic web. I tensed up as I turned around, finding myself looking at three giant spiders. Each of them was easily three feet tall. They had hard carapaces covering their bodies that I had a sneaking suspicion I wouldn't be able to pierce. My 'modified' soul, as well as my battle sense, kept me calm. Then I found that if I focused on them I could very faintly see red dots covering their joints and legs. I figure those must be weak points.
They hissed and chittered at me for a few moments before one of the leaped at me. I let instinct take over as I jabbed my spear in one fluid motion through its head, instantly killing it. It slowly slid off the end of my spear before plopping to the ground.
[Hunted Adult Cave Spider x1, 30 SC awarded]
System, can you show me the experience gains from killing monsters from now on?
[For 5 SC host can enable this option]
Sure, it'll make it so I don't have to guess so I figure it's worth it. The other spiders seemed more cautious after watching their friend go down so quickly. I made use of their hesitation to follow up and ran towards one of them. I jabbed towards his face again but stopped the stab halfway, switching to a slash. I cut off his front 2 legs in one clean sweep before backing off a bit. I was getting tired so I'd have to finish this quickly.
I jabbed at the one on my right before quickly slashing towards the one on the left, cutting halfway through its head and killing it. I pulled my spear out as the other one jumped at me. I used the but of my spear to knock into it, dazing it momentarily before I thrust my spear through its head and into the body.
[Hunted Adult Cave Spider x2, 60 SC Awarded, 60 EXP Awarded]
[Spear Mastery Level Up! (1->2)]
[Level Up! (1->2)]
I sat down, breathing heavily. That fight had taken quite a bit out of me. I took the corpses into my inventory before moving to a safer location and sitting down against a tree. I pulled out the corpse of one of the spiders as well as my spear. I gently pushed the blade of my spear against the carapace and finding that it didn't pierce I slowly added more strength until I was sweating using my full strength to press down and it finally went through.
Huh, that would make good armor... System, is there a way to turn these materials into armor?
[There are a number of crafting functions available to the host. Do you want a list of them?]
Sure, put their prices next to each one as well.
[Material Processor - 250 SC (Upgradeable) ]
[Smithing - 100 SC (Upgradeable) ]
[Alchemy - 100 SC (Upgradeable) ]
[Tailoring - 100 SC (Upgradeable) ]
[These are the functions currently available to the host]
I bought the material processor as well as the smithing and tailoring. The material processor worked a lot like the automatic cooking function. I put the materials into the window and it processed each part of the carcass into something usable. I threw away the eyeballs and organs and such so it processed the meat and the carapace. Here's what I got from processing all three:
[Cave Spider Meat x3 - Uncommon]
[Helps regenerate stamina when eaten]
[Cave Spider Chitin x10 - Uncommon]
[An unnaturally hard carapace has been processed into a material that can be used for armor]
I put the chitin into the smithy and it displayed a number of options for items to make. I selected leggings. As those were being made I checked my status screen.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
CasualWeeb
CasualWeeb Thanks for reading!
By the way I'm thinking of making the automated systems have lower results than doing it yourself with the same level of skill. I'm equating each upgrade to 5 levels in the skill. If you had level 5 blacksmithing, for example you could make better quality gear than the auto-smithing at level 1.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone