Chapter 9: Chapter 9
As soon as Darius was given the choice he unhesitantly agreed to soulbind the System Brand without wasting so much as a second to consider any negative effects such an action might bring. The very idea of someone stealing it from him while he was asleep or unaware had made him shiver deep down.
[Congratulations! The System Brand is now soulbound to you!]
Now that he had assessed all the cards granted to him to survive, Darius was ready to explore the world of Faust. He had a premonition that Vena, the Goddess who had spawned him here for sport, was only patient so far because today should be considered his grace period.
If he continued to sit around crafting detailed plans on how to most efficiently go about becoming a Supreme, she might just run out of patience with him and end his journey before it ever began. As such, Darius opened the main map and checked the nearest settlements around his location.
'Hm. There is a large homestead to the south, a town to the east, and one of the five cities to the far west. To the north is a patch of abandoned territory called the Plains of Death. Apparently, anyone who goes there never returns… interesting.'
Darius was naturally excited and intrigued by all of this. The urge to explore and develop upon new lands was hardwired into the genes of every human. In the 22nd century, many leading psychologists had agreed on the theory that one of the reasons why most people from Earth had been unhappy deep down was because the land had already been cut up and divided, with nothing left to be truly explored.
Coincidentally, that was also a big reason fantasy media and the like had remained popular for all those years, if Darius remembered correctly. Now, he got the opportunity to live out such wild fantasies in person, and he had to admit, there was a strange anticipation in doing so.
Darius stood up and casually gazed around the cottage. He took it that this was supposed to be his spawning area and could act as his main safehouse for the time being. According to its location on the map, Darius was certain that it was impossible to find.
As such, he had no worries when he left the cottage and the entire glade. The surrounding trees were packed tightly together and the overall forest was quite dark due to the closely-knit leaves leaving barely any space for the sunlight to poke through.
Barely enough to see where he was going, but not enough to make the journey smooth or calming. Darius wasn't exactly a coward, but very few could walk through a dark forest that was only marginally noisy in terms of wildlife without feeling some fear, unless they were familiar with it.
Luckily, the dark section of the forest turned out to be not that big. In merely 5 minutes, he had traversed the close-knit canopies and entered into a wider and more hospitable segment, with many trills, tweets, and oinks all around.
Darius looked behind him and felt his breath catch when he saw that there was no light whatsoever. There was only endless darkness between the nearest trees, but he was sure he had been able to see much more while he had been inside.
It took him a while to calm his beating heart down as he reasoned that this might be something created by Vena. Nevertheless, it felt less like he had left his home for a stroll and more like he had walked out of the depths of a horrid abyss and into the light.
Suddenly, Darius heard a loud snort and turned to see a boar glaring at him. The animal appeared angry at him for the cardinal sin of existing too close to itself.
Knowing exactly how violent wild animals can be when one enters their territory, Darius didn't plan to play around. Immediately, he used his Inspect skill on the boar to assess his fighting chances.
[Wild Boar - Level 1 Beast
HP: 5/5 MP: 0/0]
Darius was dumbfounded. If that was the case, then 5 casts of his Sparks spell should be able to kill the beast. It was either that Sparks - or magic in general - was more powerful than he had imagined or the various species in this world were much weaker than he had expected.
The Wild Boar began to grind its hooves on the earth, clearly getting ready to charge. Darius had no intentions of letting some animal get the initiative over him, so he stretched his hands out and mentally prompted the Spark spell to fire out.
He half expected it to fail, but was surprised when a stream of electrical sparks flowed out from his outstretched fingers and struck the boar which had been a few meters away.
The Wild Boar squealed and fell to its belly, body twitching slightly as it foamed at the mouth.
'That must be the stun effect of the lightning damage that Caesar had mentioned.'
However, the stun didn't last long as it was back on its feet by the next second. Alas, before the Wild Boar could start its charge, it was once again blasted with a stream of sparks that rendered it immobile for another second.
This scene repeated itself three more times, after which the Wild Boar could not stand anymore, as it had been killed. Darius stood where he had been during the entire… 'battle'… with a frown on his face.
He was sure that this was not how magic was supposed to work. If all mages could spam spells endlessly with no cooldown, they would have been the Gods of this world, with all other species and people bowing at their feet.
Nevertheless, while mages enjoyed a high status in the Andrato Kingdom, they were not at the top. In fact, according to the knowledge Darius had received from the Infoblock, the main reason mages were so respected was the difficulty of their achievements.
Just like how lawyers had been respected on Earth for the difficulty and complexity of their occupation, the same could be said about Faustian mages. The country still favored warriors and more physical combatants over them as their fighting force, though.
Darius thought about asking Caesar for clarification but quelled that thought. He could reason that since the Magus Class had been bestowed upon him by the Supreme Quality Class Initiator, the class was of the same quality.
The other choices of Broker, Pugilist, Spellblade, and Craftsman would have likely resulted in something as special, capable of overshadowing all other classes of the same type in the world of Faust.
Chapter 10: Chapter 10
[You have gained 5 EXP]
If there was supposed to be something else, Darius was not seeing it. It appeared as if the Wild Boar had just been a cannon fodder monster unlucky enough to end up as his practice dummy.
Darius remembered that Caesar had revealed that the value of experience was fixed and relied solely on the level difference between both parties. However, the AI had intentionally left out how much exactly he would gain per kill.
'Interesting, so as long as I kill something on the same level as myself I will gain 5 EXP.'
Darius wrung his lips. He had played a few online games towards the end of his life in order to bond with his nephews and son, Martin. He had never liked the grind-heavy aspects of such games because they had been repetitive.
On the other hand, he had been quite smitten with those management type games… what was that genre called again?… ah right, Real-Time Strategy. Gathering resources, building farms, quarries, and town buildings, training troops to conquer other players' settlements…
Too bad the world cared very little about his opinion on the matter. From this one experience, it became abundantly clear that the mechanics worked similar to the games his young boys had preferred.
In order to climb 1 level, he would basically have to kill another 19 Wild Boars. Not only that, but he had to make sure he wasn't beaten to death himself in these fights. Well, the latter should be easy enough as long as every fight could go as smoothly as this one.
Be that as it may, there might still be a problem with the former. Despite his only spell costing 1 MP, he had been forced to use up 5 points in the previous battle to kill the creature.
His Mana was limited to 21 points at the moment, meaning that he had 16 remaining, in other words, it was only enough to safely kill three of them before he would be at the mercy of whatever came his way, so Darius became cautious.
He first decided to check the carcass of the boar while his mana hopefully regenerated. He crouched and had to cover his nose. After all, the smell it carried was quite off-putting.
Ironically, Darius also sensed a slight smell of bacon. It turned out that the Sparks spell had fried the boar's innards a little, causing that effect.
Darius was not a butcher, nor was he someone versed in outdoors survival. He had been a businessman living in the city, so he wasn't going to cut up the boar and pretend like he was skilled in doing so, especially without any sort of tool at his disposal.
He just observed the body for a bit, checking if there was something he could take, but ultimately found nothing useful.
At the same time, this brought up another issue Darius had pondered about when he had left the glade, which was the lack of survival skills in his possession. He would have loved to acquire an Infopack to make up his non-existent knowledge in that regard, but since nothing like that had been included in the one he had used, it felt like it would be pointless to ask for one.
Darius rubbed his chin and thought of something. He walked over to a nearby bush and plucked out a leaf. It was a lovely green color showing that it was as healthy as could be.
Darius concentrated and attempted to transmute the leaf.
[Would you like to change the conifer leaf into a steel dagger? This will cost 7 Conversion Points.]
Darius frowned. While it was within a payable range, he had a limited amount of points for the day. Still, this was a great way for him to ascertain a standard of value for the Conversion Points.
Darius tried again.
[Would you like to change the conifer leaf into an iron dagger? This will cost 2 Conversion Points.]
It turned out his theory was correct, changing the quality of the final item lowered the cost. Darius further guessed that closer compatibility between two items might similarly result in a lower cost.
For example, changing sand to water should not cost as much as changing vapor to the same element. However, as could be seen, changing an organic leaf into an inorganic piece of forged steel cost a lot.
Darius mentally assented to the conversion. Just like that, he felt the leaf in has palm shapeshift into a sturdy iron dagger with a dark grey hue. It was a bit heavy, but most importantly it was sharp and well-made.
[Iron Dagger - Weapon
Durability: 10/10
Quality: Perfect
Damage: 1-3
Description: A sturdy dagger made of fine iron and the best possible craftsmanship. Created through pure Transmutation.]
Darius swung the dagger a couple of times, trying to get a grip on it. The unskilled person that he was, he naturally just more or less tossed it around. Still, now that he had something to use, he was elated.
He walked up to the boar and began to cut off its tusks. as Darius knew that they could prove to be useful later on. Alas, that was easier said than done, and by the time he completed his task, he was panting weakly.
He had not accounted for the fact that he was no longer a man, but a mere boy at the age of 13. His Strength and Endurance were each 3 points beneath the universal standard, so trying to do something like that had been unwise.
Darius stored the tusks and the iron dagger in his Inventory before he sat down to rest a little. After regaining his breath, he plucked out another leaf and concentrated once more.
[Would you like to change the conifer leaf into a Hunting Infopack? This will cost ??? Conversion Points.]
[ERROR, Infopacks are items unique to the Supreme System and do not exist in the world of Faust. Please try again.]
Darius breathed out lightly, but had expected this. He had merely been testing if there were loopholes in the rules of the Transmutation ability that he could exploit, but it seemed he was unlucky in the end. Perhaps he should have expected as much from a Goddess of Games and Recreation?
Darius was not too troubled though. He knew that he had a method to keep himself alive thanks to Transmutation, even if his survival skills were terrible.
[Would you like to change the conifer leaf into a flask? This will cost 0.3 Conversion Points.]
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
200+ Power
Ranking 
6 Power
stone 
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