System Change

Hearing Derek’s question, Alanah quickly pulled out a map from her storage ring. After unfolding it, she marked some spots on it, then passed the map to Derek. Derek took the map from her and began examining it.

“These are…” he started.

“Those are the three dungeons that I wanted to run in this kingdom,” Alanah replied.

“I see,” Derek said. One of the dungeon that she had marked was the golem one that they just finished. So, ignoring that one, he looked at the other two. Surprisingly, one of them wasn’t too far away from where they were, but the other was on the other side of the kingdom—close to the border of Indria and Indaria. “Why these dungeons specifically?” he asked.

“Look at the reward for the closer one,” Alanah replied.

Derek took a good look at the dungeon reward and almost snorted when he saw it. “Really?” he asked.

“Really,” Alanah answered.

“Why?” he asked.

“Well, like you already know, I’m not really doing these dungeons for me,” Alanah answered. “There are no rewards in the dungeons worth my time, really. I’m just doing all this to get back into the swing of things. So, the dungeons I have picked are the ones that may help you—think of it as me paying you for taking care of Stella while you are still here.

“So, my standards for choosing dungeons this time are whether the rewards can help you, and whether the dungeon may be fun or challenging,” she explained. “So, an avian beast dungeon that rewards ingredients would be perfect. Well, it may not be the perfect dungeon for you, but I can think of someone that would very much want the rewards from it.”

“I… guess,” Derek relented. “But if there are a lot of beasts, I may level too fast.”

“Who said you have to fight?” Alanah asked. “You don’t have to worry about any of the enemies. I will take care of them myself. They are all level 250, but this dungeon is classified as one of the easiest max level dungeons around.”

“If it’s so easy… won’t there be a lot of people lined up to do it?” Derek asked. It was obvious that such a dungeon would be treasured amongst restaurant owners and those with cooking classes.

“It is…” Alanah replied. “Usually,” she continued. “However, I only need to send one quick message, and the dungeon will be shut down for two days. I thoroughly vetted all the dungeons in the days before I picked you up, so Ryven is standing by, waiting. As soon as he hears from me, the dungeon is ours.”

“I… see…” Derek replied.

“You may consider this a slight abuse of my power… and it is,” Alanah said. “But I’m probably not going to be here much longer, and, quite frankly, we deserve it.”

“Fine,” Derek finally said. “Why not… I could go for some fried chicken…” he muttered almost silently to himself, causing Alanah to give him a side eye. “What?” he said. “Fried poultry is one of the greatest foods you can eat. And almost nobody would turn down the chance to have an infinite amount of it for whenever you get the hankering.”

“Whatever you say,” Alanah replied. “Now… you said something about your stats?” The siren’s question reminded him of what he planned to do.

“Right!” Derek nodded, then, he looked at his stats, then his free stat points. With a quick selection, he tossed 210 of his 526 free stats into dexterity, then he confirmed his decision.

Derek felt his skin, muscles, tendons—almost every place in his body—tighten once he accepted the change. He closed his eyes, preparing for the pain, but it turned out not to be nearly as bad as he had imagined. A few of his bones creaked under the pressure, but they stopped just before they reached the point of cracking. His taught skin loosened back to its original tightness, as did his joints and muscles.

Finally, the breakthrough ended anticlimactically. Just as he did when his bare fists received their swiftness update, Derek threw a few punches. This time, his shadowboxing included feet movement as well. He couldn’t believe how light he felt on his feet. And the agility and reaction time felt like they had gone through a massive upgrade. This is much more pronounced than just the swiftness upgrade. Derek wasn’t regretting his decision to level dexterity before strength one bit.

“Dexterity?” Alanah asked from the side as her eyes moved up and down his body as if examining him.

“Yup,” Derek answered. “For having such a mild breakthrough, dexterity seems like it comes with some of the best upgrades,” he said.

“Interesting,” Alanah replied. “All my speed and agility comes from my class skills and transformation,” she said. “I very much look forward to one day breaking through with my own dexterity,” she explained. “Though your body transformation doesn’t seem like one of someone who has only just broken through with dexterity. You’ve not done anything to offset the lack of balance between your strength and dexterity stats, yet your body seems to have gone back to how it was mere minutes ago…” she said. “Or is your strength almost at the breakthrough limit already?”

“Nope,” Derek said. “I haven’t added to my strength stat just yet. I’m about to though.” The lack of much or any of a physical change is probably because of the void evolution thing that the Origin System did to me, Derek thought, but he knew that talking about his evolution was one of the things that could get him in trouble. “I guess I’m just lucky…”

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“Lucky…” Alanah rolled her eyes. “You wouldn’t believe the things I had to do—the potions I had to find—to get my body looking like this again when I broke through with my strength stat,” she said with a huff. “I’m usually not one to get jealous, but you are making that very hard for me right now. Even Avery had to go around as nothing but a twig when he broke through with his dexterity until he was able to get his strength stat to match it with free stat points and Void Beast meals…”

“Well… nothing I can do about that,” Derek said with a shrug, then added the rest of his stat points into strength—his body fluctuated almost imperceptibly a few times, but that was it.

“I guess not…” the siren sighed.

Derek threw a couple more punches and grinned like a kid in a candy store as he listened to the sound they made as they cut through the air. Endurance and vitality were both really needed, and it’s pretty much the same for wisdom and intelligence, but man… dexterity is definitely the fun stat…

he thought.

“Are you almost finished?” Alanah asked with crossed arms.

“Almost,” he said, then threw one last punch and listened to the whoosh that sounded out. “Okay… I’m done.”

“Good,” Alanah said. “Is there anything else you need to do before we leave?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Derek said. “There are a couple of things, actually. Wait right here. I’ll be right back.”

With those words, Derek opened a portal with his Void Travel skill, covered his storage items in the void, then jumped in. With a quick look via Void Sense, he found his destination and traveled to it. Finally, he opened another portal and stepped out.

“Derek!” Brandi called out as his feet hit the ground.

“I hope I didn’t interrupt you,” Derek said as the girl gave him the ever familiar hug he always received when coming home after being gone for a bit.

“You didn’t,” she said. “Besides, I’m used to the weird feeling that comes with you. I like it, actually. It’s like an alarm that lets me know you’re back.”

“Is that so?” He smiled.

“Why are you back?” the young smith asked. “I thought you were going to be away for a long time. Or… did you…” The girl’s eyes brightened as she looked at him with greed in her eyes.

“Guessed it in one,” Derek said, then tossed the storage rings with all the high level golem cores to her. “We just finished doing some golem dungeon runs. I thought you would like a re-up on your golem cores.”

“Really?” Her greedy eyes brightened even more. Then, she took one of the cores out and the greed turned into pure shock. “These cores… they’re amazing. They are nothing like the last ones. I… I don’t know if I can do anything with them yet. I don’t think my skills are high enough.”

“That’s fine,” Derek said as he ruffled her hair. “Just save them until you are able to. You can never have too many materials.”

“That’s right!” Brandi nodded with excitement. Then she ran to her workstation and put the rings away.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a couple large, empty storage rings, would you?” Derek asked. “Those are Alanah’s rings, so I would like to return them.”

“Sure!” Brandi said, then took out some other storage rings from a drawer on her workstation. She then went about moving the cores from Alanah’s rings to her own.

Derek counted the rings. Obviously, they weren’t empty, but the young smith had a lot of them. Just how many storage rings has Malorie gotten for her? I mean… it’s fine because I’m sure they contain a lot of the gear she’s made, but still… that is a lot of rings. Soon enough, the girl was able to move the cores over, then came running back and gave Derek Alanah’s storage rings back.

Derek wasn’t all too worried about his own rings. He had Void Storage and other rings inside his storage bracelet. Besides, if he really needed to, he could just travel back to his shop at almost any time and exchange some rings with Brandi. Actually… “Hey, Brandi…” he said.

“Yeah?” she asked.

“Would you mind preparing some more rings? If you don’t have any that you can spare, could you talk to your mom about getting more? Now that I think about it, we’re probably going to need a lot of them by the time we finish farming dungeons. Alanah and I… well… we move pretty quickly through the dungeons, you know? So that comes with quite a bit of materials and rewards…” he asked the girl.

“Sure!” Brandi said with a nod. “That’s easy! Well… it’s not easy because storage rings are still rare… but it’s also not that hard if you have enough money.” Brandi grinned big and nodded her head toward her workstation.

“You’re pretty spoiled, aren’t you?” Derek asked with a chuckle.

“Of course I am!” Brandi said. “That’s why I have to work even harder.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” Derek laughed. “Alright, you do that and keep up the good work,” Derek said.

“I will!” Brandi replied.

Derek then decided to do the other thing that he came back to do. With a thought, he sent to Silvi, ‘We’re about to go run some bird dungeons with ingredients as the rewards if you want in.’

‘Ingredients!?’ his companion replied via their bond quicker than she ever had before. ‘When? Where? How many?’

the bunny, who didn’t really like speaking via telepathy, sent back question after question.

‘It shouldn’t take us too long to get there… maybe half an hour or so. It’s a dungeon in Indria—the place with all the elves that you are not allowed to make burgers from. From what I know, it’s a kill dungeon with a bunch of level 250 avian-type creatures. You should be able to get quite a bit of poultry,’ Derek answered each question in order, then added even more information.

‘How long will you be there? Baking cake. Can’t leave with Malorie to watch… she’ll eat it,’ Silvi sent back.

‘We’ll probably be there for a while. We’ll definitely still be there by the time your cake finishes cooking,’ Derek responded.

‘Will come after cake finishes baking,’ Silvi said.

‘Great,’ Derek sent. ‘I’ll see you there.’ Derek shook his head. Glad to see she has her priorities straight, he thought before making to step back through his portal, but was interrupted by his companion before he made it.

‘Warn me next time you upgrade,’ Silvi said. ‘You said you would, but didn’t. Made me slice strawberry crooked. Had to eat it so nobody saw the ugly thing.’

‘Sorry,’ Derek said. ‘I wasn’t thinking. It won’t happen again. I’ll do my best to remember and come to you before I breakthrough in our strength.’

‘Kay,’ Silvi replied. ‘Bye.’

‘See ya,’ Derek said, then, “See you later, Brandi,” he called out over his shoulder as he stepped through his portal.

“See you soon!” she called back.

Finally, Derek closed the portal behind him and moved back through it before coming back out by Alanah. When he stepped out, he saw a dead animal laying in front of his portal with a rope tied around it. He looked up at Alanah and asked, “What’s this?”

“Saw a wolf and decided to see what happens…” the siren shrugged. “It’s not pretty.”

“No… no it’s not,” Derek said as he closed the portal. He could barely believe that the corpse he saw was that of a wolf. He shook the thoughts out of his head, then tossed Alanah’s rings back to her. “Here you go. I unloaded the cores.”

“Great,” Alanah said. “You ready?” she asked.

“Yup,” Derek said as he put away his chair. “Race you there!”

“You’re on,” Alanah replied, then transformed into her siren form.

With his new found speed, Derek kicked off the ground and took off. He’d see just how much faster his new breakthrough made him.