Skill Crystal

Although some people were better off than others, in the end, everyone was still alive and breathing.

Leon couldn't help think about those two little kids and checked to see how they were doing.

Unsurprisingly, they had done pretty well.

The boy could be seen wading through a pile of spider corpses before retrieving all the attribute crystals and running to share them with his sister.

Seeing this, Leon just shook his head.

The boy had fought hard but still wouldn't hesitate to split his earnings in half for his little sister, who could barely even swing a sword properly.

But Leon didn't look down on it. The fact that he cared that much about his sister was admirable, but he knew it couldn't last.

Unless his little sister could soon start pulling her weight, it would lead to a situation in which one would end up dragging the other to their deaths.

Throwing these thoughts to the back of his head looked at the new pile of Attribute crystals in front of him and absorbed every single one of them!

But to Leon's disappointment, he found that a spider attribute crystal only added up to be worth half of that of the crystals dropped by goblins.

[ Leon El'Jonson]

-Rank: Grey Stone

-Race: Human

-Innate trait: Incorruptible Soul

-Class: none

-Profession: none

-Title(s): none

- Status

Strength: 15.4 (14.4 +1)

Constitution: 15.9 (12.9 +3)

Agility: 11.7

Perception: 16.4

As Leon was still disappointed at his sad haul, he heard someone approach him from behind.

Turning around, Leon looked to see Lucas walking up to him with a strange, golden glowing crystal in his hand.

"Mister," called Lucas as he approached.

"I got this strange crystal when I killed a spider. It doesn't appear to be an attribute crystal, so can you tell me what it is?"

Leon took the crystal from Lucas and, after closer inspection, couldn't help but chuckle in disbelief.

"You really do have some good luck, kid. This right here is a Skill crystal!"

As soon as Leon said this, the attention of everyone else also seemed to turn towards him

"Like its name suggests, this crystal has the ability to drop random skills. Think of it like a skillbook from an RPG game." said Leon

"These things are dropped and by absorbing them, you gain a designated skill."

"Your luck seems to be very good. It appears to be one of the rarest types of droppable skills, a healing type of skill!"

Leon simply hovered the crystal over stone in his wrist and was soon greeted with a new screen.

Skill: heal wounds

Rank: Grey Stone

Type: healing

Quality: common

Description: stretch forth your hand causing a ray of healing energy to spread out to your desired target

Mana cost: 0.5 per cast

After hearing Leon's description, the crowd instantly began to stir.

A healing type skill!

In a world where most people's aim was to simply survive, a skill like that was simply a godsend!

Lucas also seemed to realise the importance of the skill and couldn't help but feel nervous as he watched Leon roll the crystal playfully between his fingers.

But surprisingly to both Leon and everyone else, other than being slightly surprised at the discovery, Leon seemed to show no more interest in the crystal and quickly handed it back to Lucas.

"You're just handing it back to me like that?" Asked Lucas disbelief.

"Of course." Responded Leon

"What someone else gets is none of my business. As long as you don't take what's mine, I don't care"

"Besides," added Leon with a slight smile

"I'm not that low that I would start stealing from a little boy now."

As soon as Lucas heard Leon's words, he felt both relieved and annoyed.

But before leaving Lucas alone, Leon added on one last thing.

"But if I can add one thing, I'd say that you don't use that skill and instead give it to your sister. Right now, she's nothing more than a burden to you."

"Your desire to protect your sister and keep her from fighting is admirable, but it can't last. You won't be able to keep this up forever. Eventually it will catch up to you and then what?" asked Leon

"Who's going to protect your sister if you're not there or, even worse, dead!"

"I…."

Lucas was left stunned at Leon's words, but deep down, he knew he was telling the truth.

He could feel it.

The gap between him and Leon was only growing with each fight. And not just Leon, he could see the other people around him growing stronger.

But even though Lucas was perfectly aware of this fact, Lucas couldn't bring himself to do it.

He just couldn't force himself to bring his sister anywhere closer to the fighting

Lucas knew he wasn't a normal kid.

When he killed a goblin or anything else for that matter, he felt absolutely nothing.

Even back at the orphanage, they had been saying strange things that he never really understood.

But Lucas didn't care about theses cryptic comments of others or what others thought about him.

He just didn't want his sister to end up like him!

As long as he could protect his sister from this strange state, then Lucas didn't care!

As Lucas was thinking this, he suddenly felt a tug at his shirt.

Looking back, Lucas turned to see his sister looking at him with a pair of glistening blue eyes

"Pl-please brother. I want to be able to help you too."

As Lucy spoke she clutched tightly onto her little brown teddy bear.

Her pink dress was stained with dirt and her originally well kept hair was now messy but she still stared at Lucas with an almost desperate pair of eyes

'Shit!' Thought Lucas

'She-she's just too cute!'

As soon as Lucas saw Lucy's puppy dog eyes, his cold heart instantly melted.

Before he even realised he slowly stretched out his hand patted her head, causing Lucy to let out a soft smile.

He slowly retrieved the ability crystal before placing it in Lucy's hand.