The Villain Can't Catch A Break

As Henrietta slept peacefully on her master's bed, Adam looked at the system shop.

He had 1060 CE reserved.

He could buy a B GRADE skill or trait right now.

He chose to hold off on buying any skills until he was rich.

While skills gave a big boost to the player's final damage output, they weren't very versatile.

Adam as a veteran, knew that traits were better than skills in the early and mid-game.

Traits gave the player a steady foundation that allowed their character to naturally be more talented, making the character more versatile with each trait in the long run.

In the game, if you managed to obtain multiple weapon traits of the same grade, those traits would resonate together forming the S rank trait [WEAPON MASTER] that allowed its user to have a sword mastery level proficiency with all the weapons in the game.

If you had gone with an aura-based physical DPS build, you could use aura with anything, including a toothpick if you had the [WEAPON MASTER] trait.

This trait wasn't available in the shop, to get this trait, you needed S rank traits for all primary weapons in the game.

Getting that trait was still just a pipe dream from the future, Adam chose to focus on the present.

Adam chose to buy the [SWORD ELDER]{B} trait.

This trait allowed the host to have their proficiency with the sword, at the level of a 6th tier sword user.

You might think this is an amazing trait that Adam got really easily but, the issue is that Adam is currently unable to use aura.

This meant that the trait that Adam had just bought was only useful to him in the academy or against enemies below level 50.

Once Adam has gained the ability to use aura, that's when this trait will truly shine.

Adam moved his attention to the bonus reward, a pair of headphones that allowed him to listen to any song from Earth.

This might look like a useless reward at first glance, but this reward might just be the most valuable thing that he could have gained when compared to anything else in this game.

In the original game, this was nothing more than a paid item that allowed the user to listen to whatever music they wanted.

However, to Adam, this meant everything.

Adam is an individual who lost his ability to feel emotions.

He doesn't know why or when it happened, he just ended up being unable to feel them anymore.

A lack of emotions in human beings is said to be a mental illness of sorts as it would cause them to become an anti-social element in society.

The same would have been the case for Adam if it wasn't for the existence of music.

Adam couldn't feel emotions anymore but, he could understand the emotions conveyed by the artists of the songs he heard.

It kept him in touch with human emotions that he could have lost all understanding of if weren't for the music.

Music was the rope that he held onto so that he could stop himself from falling into the void and becoming inhuman.

Adam, through his love for music, managed to maintain his sanity. In this life, if he had no music, he would have lost his way, becoming a complete monster.

A true villain.

The Head Butler knocked on the door and called out for Adam.

"Young Master, everything you asked for is here."

"Come in Francis, along with everything I asked for."

Francis came into the room with a trolley filled to the brim with heaps and heaps of different medicinal herbs, along with an alchemy set that had everything in it, including a portable stove that was energised with mana stones, an alchemy pot, and 10 test tubes.

"Would this be all Young Master Adam?"

"Francis, how proficient are you with fire magic?"

"I'm able to utilize fire magic up to the 5th circle Young Master."

Adam pointed towards the corner of the room which had all of his beloved Cassandra memorabilia piled on top of each other and said,

"Burn all of the trash in that corner until it's nothing but ashes. Afterward, clean up the ashes."

Francis immediately stepped toward the pile

of garbage and chanted, "[Eruption] ".

A fire spell is used by mages at the 5th tier, causing a flaming geyser of fire and lava to erupt from a designated point on the floor.

A spell that focuses on burning the target with pinpoint precision. It is the same as a tactical missile.

The only difference is, that this isn't death from above, this is death from below.

Adam gazed upon what remained of his dark history after the flame started to dwindle, with a satisfied expression.

Adam noticed something strange when he thought deeper about the spell that Francis had just used.

If a 5th-tier mage were to use this spell in his room, it would have spread fire to the entire room.

If a 6th-tier mage were to use this spell in his room, he would be able to control the limit of where the fire could spread horizontally but the ceiling would have caught on fire.

If a 7th-tier mage were to use this spell in his room, both the walls and the ceiling would be safe from the fire but, it would have left an ugly black residue on the floor that would have required replacing the entire paneling on the floor since, that black mark couldn't be cleaned by normal means.

If an 8th-tier mage were to use this spell in his room...

That's where things got interesting.

An 8th-tier mage is an enlightened being who has entered the realm of an archmage, one step away from becoming a transcendent demi-god.

The number of people on this continent who have reached this realm is in single digits.

When an archmage uses this spell or any spell for that matter, it is irrelevant to measure the height or the width that the spell will activate within. An archmage can do anything with his magic.

An archmage can designate a 3-dimensional area for any spell.

The spell will not go any further than the designated space, nor will it cover anything less than the designated space.

It was truly fascinating when Adam saw Francis do something that only an 8th-tier mage could do.

'I can only use 5th tier magic my *ss who does he think he is fooling?'

'Well if it were the previous Adam I doubt he even knew the 'M' of magic. Then again, if it were the previous Adam I doubt he would even see this transpire in front of him since he would never burn that trash in the first place.'

After a moment of contemplation, Adam said,

"Francis that was amazing, I have never seen a 5th-tier mage that could use eruption precisely."

For a split second, he could see that Francis had flinched and popped his eyes out with the sudden realisation that he had slipped up and had been caught by the waste of the Dacre family of all people.

As soon as Adam blinked, Francis was back to normal.

Adam continued as he maintained his momentum in the conversation.

"Francis, you're one of the only 3 people in this estate that I trust. That is why I can only depend on you for this next task."

Regaining his composure and understanding that Adam didn't want to probe into his true identity any further, Francis asked,

"What is it that you want me to do Young Master?"

"Francis, the rest of the Count family will return in 4 days, for the next 3 days, bring a ton of meat to my room for all 3 meals on another trolley just like this one."

"It will be done Young Master."

"Other than that, there is nothing else that I need for now, you can go now."

With that, Francis gave a slight bow and left the room. Dinner time had already passed, Adam chose to skip it.

There was no grand reason for skipping it either, he just didn't want to deal with the disrespectful servant's of this household that all looked down on him.

He was too tired and there was another thing that had to be done right now, time was running out.

Adam needed to keep up with the schedule that he had planned for himself.

Adam moved his eye towards the trolley with the alchemy set and the medicinal herbs.

This is an idea that he got when he thought about ways to quickly increase his stats naturally without having to do something too extreme.

One of the ways that they allowed the protagonist to increase all of his stats in one full swoop was by 'coincidentally' allowing him to meet some world renowned alchemist in some remote village that he had saved from the demons.

The alchemist was thankful to the hero for what he did. As a reward for his heroic deed, the alchemist gave Jake the crafting recipe for a marrow-cleansing liquid.

Yes, for some reason the devs were unable to think of creative ways to increase the strength of the protagonist so they ended up copying a trendy cultivation story in the end.

This liquid recipe was only introduced during the mid to late game part of the story.

Due to that, Jake was already plenty strong and only got a +10 stat boost to all stats.

You may think that a +10 stat boost was already amazing but if Jake were to have had the same recipe in the early game when he hadn't developed his body much, the stat boost would have been +50 to all stats instead of 10.

That's how amazing Jake's natural physique was.

Adam went ahead and started crafting the recipe himself.

He had it remembered by heart and made it in a repeat playthrough of the game right in the beginning, when he didn't even have access to the recipe since, it was the early game.

He chopped and removed all of the useless bits of all the herbs and put all useful parts in, crushing them until they turned to a paste, into the Alchemy pot with water in it and thoroughly mixed it .

This weak body of his was already tired of mixing the concoction, it hadn't even been 2 minutes since he had started cooking.

He didn't stop however and kept going, the feeling of soreness on his arms mitigated by [PAIN RESISTANCE], allowing him to focus on the task at hand.

Once the concoction was made, Adam stared back and forth between it and his physique reflected in the mirror of his room.

The concoction didn't look appetizing one bit but, it was about time he said goodbye to the obese,unhealthy and unfit body of his.

A disgusting body like this wouldn't help him much for all the events that would take place in his future.

Thinking back to his speech to Henrietta as he looked at his own reflection in the mirror, Adam believed that if he had his physique from his past life, Henrietta would have already fallen for him.

The difference in the effect that it has on the audience when a fat guy says something and a handsome guy says the same thing was vast.

Human society had always been a congregation which valued superficial traits like looks and appearances.

There are many idealistic individuals who try to deny this fact about human nature, all they were doing was lying to themselves and their followers.

It was always better to accept reality rather than denying it and trying to change it. It was more efficient to plan and make the most with what you had.

With these thoughts in mind, Adam forcefully drank the concoction he had made for himself.

He could feel that [PAIN RESISTANCE] had started doing it's magic.

Even with that trait however, the pain he felt in his body was as if there were swords trapped inside his body that were trying to cut through his flesh and break out of his body, he could feel pain of the same intensity all over his body.

Due to the overwhelming pain, Adam fell to the ground and crawled towards his personal bathroom to prepare for what was about to come.

As soon as he entered the bathroom, the imaginary swords managed to accomplish their goal and burst out from all around his body leaking a black, fat ooze of some sort.

After an hour of dealing with this grueling process, the excruciating pain had finally left his body. The bathroom was covered in the immense amount of thick black sludge that was released from all over his body.

Since it was our beloved Adam taking the concoction and not the protagonist, we all knew it wasn't going to be as simple as when Jake used it.

For some reason Adam had only gained +2 stat points for all his statuses, not even a +10.

Suddenly, a system window popped up breaking him out of his state of confusion.

|| DUE TO THE HOST'S BAD LUCK,THE MEDICINAL CONCOTION HAD TROUBLE TRAVELLING THROUGH FATTY, CLOGGED ARTERIES AND WAS ONLY ABLE TO REMOVE IMPURITIES FROM 1/10TH OF YOUR BODY. ||

It seemed that Adam had to go through this process another 9 times.....