Slade stood only a few meters away from Nova, his expression as aloof and cold as always.
Neither Erevan nor Jack, the former having known him all his life and the latter for a few years, expected him to lie to them and follow Nova. It was unlike him to do so.
What they hadn’t taken into account was his state of mind and the defeat he had suffered at the hands of the person now standing in front of him. It was a defeat that should never have happened, and it weighed heavily on him even after all these years.
It was one thing to lose to Erevan, someone who came from the same place as him, or to secretly praise Jack when he wasn’t present, but losing to a native of a backwater civilization when his own strength was clearly higher was another matter altogether.
Nova looked at him as seconds passed, but after those three words, Slade didn’t speak again. Annoyed, he said, “First you tell me to stop, and then you don’t even talk? Whatever. I really don’t have time to waste on these theatrics.”
He decisively turned around and was about to walk away when Slade’s voice rang out once again.
“You were weak back then, you’re weak now, and you will always be weak in my eyes. You and I both know you didn’t deserve to win back then, and if you weren’t so pitifully weak right now, I would’ve already fought you but that would be bullying the weak. Since that’s the case, I’ll wait until you’ve grown more powerful before settling our old account,” Slade said coldly.
If anyone who knew him were here to witness this moment, they would be dumbfounded by how long winded he sounded.
Nova turned back to face Slade just in time to see the latter turn around and leave, offering a few parting words.
“Never stop struggling, for that is your life. The life of an ant.”
He watched Slade’s figure slowly disappear from view, and once he could no longer see him, he snorted. ‘Stand-offish prick.’
Then he turned back around and walked toward his room like nothing ever happened. When he said he didn’t have time to waste, he meant it.
Now that he had settled down here, learned the three books given to him by Erevan, and had firsthand experience with the kind of training he would undergo in the future, it was time to spend his hard-earned Gold coins.
Gold: 7,529,164
Nova entered his room and sat down. After taking a breath he thought, ‘Store.’
His mind was quickly filled with the window of a store, full of categories. He browsed through them as he thought, ‘Strengthening the base, such as my body and soul, should be the best course of action, followed by acquiring passive skills and lastly active skills.’
‘Oh, right, since I’ve already strengthened my insides, I can also increase the level of my elemental cores. I should be able to endure a rank 4. Though I’m not too hopeful about that, last time I went through the Store, I didn’t see any such items.’
Back in the Purple portal, Nova, despite his strong body, had been forced to give up from further increasing his cores’ rank because his insides were too weak as they could barely withstand the pressure his rank 3 cores gave off.
Now, he thought it wouldn’t be a problem to raise them to rank 4, and who knew, he might even be able to push them to rank 5.
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Thus, he began scouring through the Store.
The first things he looked for were, of course, items that could strengthen the body and the soul.
Days ago, when he purchased the herbs listed in the booklet Erevan had given him, he hadn’t spent much, which made him think that strengthening his body again would only cost a few hundred thousand Gold coins.
Only when he saw single herbs priced at several hundred thousand Gold coins, while the rarer ones started at millions for a single stalk, did reality hit him.
‘Are my seven and a half million worthless?’ he thought with a bitter smile.
As for using the same cheap herbs again? They would have no effect now that his body had already advanced to this stage.
Before committing to anything, he first noted a few of the herbs in his mind in case he didn’t find anything better, then moved on to the next item on the list.
After herbs, it was the passive skills’ turn. They, too, came in the form of booklets but when he reached the section his hand froze on the very first page.
His gaze locked onto one of the books.
Regeneration.
3,500,000
“What the actual fuck,” Nova blurted out reflexively. He couldn’t believe a passive that had accompanied him almost since the beginning cost this much.
For a moment, he wondered if it was just a coincidence and only shared the same name, perhaps with a better effect. But when he read the description…
‘It’s the same.’
He thought dejectively. He gave a quick look at the skills below it, but there was nothing he needed, and the prices only increased.
‘Maybe I’ll have more luck with the active skills.’
He opened the window for active skills, and barely a second later, he closed it, his lips twitching.
‘What’s the point of putting such high prices on stuff? If the Universe has no intention of helping, it might as well just say so. Who can afford this?’
Nova was in the middle of a sigh when his eyes landed on another section of the Store.
[Insights]
Curious, he selected it, and more options appeared: weapons, crafting, arrays, musical instruments, soul, body, elements…
Everything that existed and could have some kind of insight was listed there. He didn’t go through each one. After a quick scan, probably missing most of the names, he chose weapons.
Another long list followed, but this time Nova didn’t even bother to read it and he selected spear as soon as he found it.
There, he saw booklets, scrolls, even letters on sale.
‘Who would even care to read what these people wrote to each other?’
As he thought that his friends came to mind, and he muttered, “Yeah, them and their fellow gossipers would love this.”
For fun, and without much expectation, he read the description of one of the letters but then his expression froze.
The description read:
[Personally written by a Spear King in his spare time. The calligraphy isn’t the best and partly faded, but it carries traces of his Spear Force. To those who love the spear, this letter provides countless inspirations on the spear path, some even priceless. To collectors, this is a valuable addition to any collection.]
It took a few minutes before Nova could tear his eyes away, finally exhaling deeply.
“If I’m not mistaken, this is similar to what Nox found in the Purple portal, an item written by an expert using Force that retains its profoundness and greatly increases the speed at which one can understand Force,” Nova muttered, his brows furrowing.
“But what’s a Spear King? Is that a title, or is it based on strength? And how strong is a Spear King?”
He didn’t have an answer, but wanting to find out more, he checked other similar items.
What he found to be disappointing was that everything above Spear King was locked, he couldn’t access any information about those items.
Still, thanks to the other items listed in the Store, he found what probably came before Spear King.
“Spear Lord is most likely below Spear King, but there’s no information about what comes before Lord or after King. What I still don’t know is whether the names represent strength, titles, ranking, or all of the above,” he whispered, trying to make sense of what he had just discovered.
Nova smiled wryly as he continued. “What I do know, though, is that this Spear King letter costs 6,700,000 Gold coins. To make matters worse, it’s also the cheapest item there is with Spear Force. It must be because of the slightly faded calligraphy, or else I just can’t wrap my head around it.”
At first, he couldn’t quite believe how items related to Spear Lords started at 20 million Gold coins, while this Spear King item was only 6,700,000. The wide gap made him think that Spear Lords were higher in status and strength than Spear Kings.
But then he saw it.
A second Spear King item. This time, the description didn’t mention any faded calligraphy, and the price certainly reflected that as it went as high as 335 million Gold coins.
This raised a question in Nova’s mind.
‘How exactly damaged is a “partly faded” calligraphy?’
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