Taking the next step

With very high expectations, he opened the dungeon panel to see how many resources he gathered.

Looking towards his storage, he saw that his current crystal count is about 400 to 500 units higher than it was the last time he checked it.

And from this information he was capable of inferring several things about his current situation.

Firstly, is that the daily income generated by 20 skeleton thralls is about 500 mana crystals, since he must take into consideration that he didn't put them to work at the very start of the day and 10 mana crystals is the upkeep of the bone totem.

Which means that the production of each worker with 50% effectiveness is close 25 and a minion with 100% would therefore produce 50 resources daily.

So with each thrall costing 100 crystals to summon, it would take roughly 4 days for them to pay for themselves and start making a profit and 6 days to pay for all the previous expenses such as the blueprint for the mine, constricting the mine, the totem, the upkeep of the totem and the expansion of the new room.

So in the end of the 10 days, he'll have 2000 extra crystals to work with.

It ain't much but a small profit is still profit.

So while he puts what he'll do with the extra crystals in the back of his mind. He turns towards his next plan.

He builds a stone quarry and an iron mine which costs together 5520 crystals and 240 wood to start gathering those resources.

He isn't in any particular need of them, but considering that the only cost is the daily upkeep of the totems since the rest can be refunded for 100% of the cost, he doesn't have much to lose.

And as for why he hadn't left it to gather resources from day one? There's a few reasons.

First is that those resources weren't seen as being as important as the mana crystals. So he wasn't worried about gathering them as soon as possible and was considering if the 200 crystals that couldn't be refunded were worth spending.

And second is that he actually need the resources to experiment and start planning the development of the dungeon. A result of those experiments being the technique to dismantle bought buildings for cheaper materials.

So in his mind, being one step ahead in planning and knowledge is more important than a small economic gain.

But after a full day, he's pretty much settled in what he'll need for the dungeon, so having a bit of funds in reserve is no longer necessary, allowing him to invest it all.

With that, he's pretty much free from any further resource related worries, since all he can do now is wait and let the buildings do their job.

With this matter out of the way, he turned his mind to what was left for him to do.

He doesn't need to start the construction now since there's still some time to tweak and review his current building plan.

He won't summon any subordinates that cost food until the end of the protection period since it would mean wasting it on upkeep when he's not in need of it.

So the only matters that he needs to deal with now are using the tome and tokens he still holds in storage and continue to train himself in preparation for whatever lies ahead.

And after taking most of a day to train and discover the limitations of his new body, he's gained a good idea of what he currently lacks so there's no reason to delay the use of two in particular.

The tier 3 summoning and building tokens won't be touched for the reasons already mentioned, but he could already use both the skill tome and weapon token.

He's already decided on the weapon he'll be using from now on and is practicing hard with it. While using the kusarigama, his proficiency has reached the point where he doesn't need to worry about harming himself at least thanks to his great dexterity, so he can start training with the real thing instead of a training version.

And he's confident in not wasting the skill now that he has more knowledge, besides he needs to have some time to practice with whatever he chooses, so it's better to do so early.

So without further delay, he opened the storage space and fetched the weapon token from within it. Doing so made a small token materialize in the palm of his hand.

Holding it then caused a holographic message to appear in front of his eyes.

[Do you wish to use the token?(This item cannot be refunded.)]

'Yes' He confidently thinks.

And obeying his command, the token vanishes from his hand. Now showing yet another holographic window in front of him.

This time it was a list, containing various weapons for him to choose. Showing everything that was available at the store and more.

He was momentarily tempted to browse through it, but he was already aware of what he wanted so he decided to not waste more time than necessary.

So using a very convenient search function, he filtered the shown options to only those that interested him, reducing the options he had to consider from hundreds to less than 10.

Among those options there were a few that he absolutely wouldn't pick like the training version of the weapon which he already has and the lower quality options.

Much like minions, the equipment is also separated into tiers which reflect their quality and overall strength. But even among these tiers there seems to be an enormous discrepancy in quality between what's on the top and bottom of them.

So despite all the shown options being tier 0, there are options that are objectively better than the rest.

And among those that are within his consideration, the choice will have to be made considering the small differences that exist within the options that distinguish them, mostly about the specifications of the material they are made of.

There is a lightweight material that reduces the weight and as a result the strength requirement to wield the weapon at the cost of damage and durability.

Heavyweight materials that do the exact opposite.

Materials with a special effect like silver, which grants a small bonus against the 'unholy' but are a bit worse overall against other targets.

And what he deemed special cases, like enchanted, blessed or cursed weapons. Those come with their own set of advantages and disadvantages.

Enchantments and blessings are functionally the same and add secondary effects to the weapon with brings with it a lot of possibilities. But they aren't permanent and as they grow weaker one must reapply them, this adds an additional cost not even mentioning that he lacks the infrastructure to do this process.

Meanwhile cursed weapons have greater power and it's permanent, but their downside is that wielding such weapons brings limitations as one has to deal with the drawbacks that accompany them.

Overall, the choice is mainly about those little details since the functionality remains the same across the board. Which of these little boons attracts him the most? Is the question that he needs to answer.

But going from option to option, neither lightweight or heavyweight materials interest him since he already took his current strength into consideration when choosing the weapon and his current one is perfect for the weapon, not too little or too much.

So the real decision is if I want a plain and effective weapon, a weapon that is a bit better in very specific situations, a weapon that is stronger but has an additional cost or one that has an penalty that must be worked around.

Having some special material like silver that's effective against the undead doesn't seem that good considering the variety of threats is must ward off. And since I don't know how to reapply enchantments or blessings, that would mean that as soon as it goes out I'd need to resell it for 50% of the cost and buy a new one until I get the necessary infrastructure to do so.

Which narrows the decision to either the normal and all-around effective version and the cursed version, so the decision will ultimately be dependant on the penalties of the curse.

And he has two choices when it comes to Tier 0 cursed weapons, them being the following:

[Lesser wandering spirit's lament]

-A pair of chained scythes that have been imbued with a lesser wandering spirit's grudge.

-This weapon can have 5% of its damage bypass all the target's defenses, damaging the soul of the target directly.

-The grudge imbued into the weapon will attack the wielder periodically, causing various mental conditions such as dizziness, auditory hallucinations, loss of motor function and madness. The effect can be resisted with willpower.

[Lesser vampire's fang]

-Weapon forged using materials obtained from a lesser vampire, the weapon still holds the bloodlust that the creature the materials came from had.

-This weapon heals the user for 5% of the damage delt with its attacks.

-The bloodlust from the weapon will cause the weapon to slowly drain the blood of the wielder when in use. Reducing their health at a rate of 1% every minute.

Taking a look at those two options, it didn't take long for him to come to a final conclusion in which to pick.

The 'lesser wandering spirit's lament' may seem to have a very strong effect at first glance, but the impact of the effect is almost nonexistent.

This effect should be the most apparent when attacking a enemy that has high defenses, but the damage in this case would be so low that it wouldn't make much difference, you would still be doing very low damage.

Let's build a hypothetical scenario: Your attacks deal 20 damage, but your opponent has 50% defense against your attacks, you would normally deal 10 damage in that case, but with this effect you would instead deal a staggering...

10.5 damage. (5% of 20 is 1, under 50% reduction would become 0.5 but with this effect it would become unaffected, increasing the damage by 0.5)

So what's the cost of this underwhelming effect? Constant mental issues caused by the weapon, which would instead lower his combat effectiveness. Since it's bound to distract and hinder him when he's fighting.

It is written that it can be resisted with willpower but considering that his is not very high, then it isn't something he can count on. And even if his willpower was very high, it is stated that it only helps 'resist', not nullify or overcome the downside. Leading him to believe that he would still have to deal with it.

In contrast, the 'lesser vampire's fang' is much better for him. The constant loss of health may seem very bad at a glance but it isn't that big of a deal.

His health may be low but that doesn't interfere in the rate at which he loses his health since it's a percentage, it actually makes so he's losing less health overall than someone with loads of vitality.

And him being a glass cannon already means that he wants to end flights as soon as possible, so the weapon won't have too much time to drain him.

And the effect of healing 5% of damage delt is very good since as long as he can deal 20% of his health in damage over the course of a minute then he can basically erase the downside. Which might not be that hard to do considering how low his health is.

So this weapon can effectively increase his survivability as he increases his damage output, which might be just what he needs to lean more heavily into his current all or nothing set-up he has going on.

But it wasn't without its weaknesses, when the last weapon was more effective against higher defense, this one will struggle with it. Since more defense means lower damage and consequently lower healing received from the effect.

So considering all of these points, he chose the lesser vampire's fang as his weapon of choice and as he did so, the weapon materialized in his hands, allowing him to get a better look at it.

The kusarigama had a pair of scythes that have curved very bone-like blades that had indents that looked like veins in them, the handle was dark red as was the chain connecting them.

The weapon was much heavier than the training one since that was made of wood, especially the chain that in the training version was a rope. But it was still very much within what his strength can allow comfortably.

With his weapon chosen, the next step is to choose a skill for himself using the tome.

Getting it from the storage, opening it and watching it vanish. After a process that he already done once before, another holographic panel appears in front of him, promoting him to confirm the use of the item.

Then a list appears in front of his eyes, this time depicting the name of various skills that he can learn. Presenting spells, weapon skills and even skills that are useful in the day-to-day life.

The size of it is overwhelming and this time he didn't have a strong idea of what he wanted, so he would need to spend a lot longer deciding. And he'll probably spend a while doing so.

So for the next hours, he would spend not only considering the skill he should pick as his first, but also already planning for the subsequent ones and trying to find synergies both with his current abilities and between the skills themselves.