Future plans

Continuing my inspection of skills, I focused on the wealth which showed a huge zero. I fumbled into my pockets to find a few copper coins but still the wealth remained unchanged. This meant the system did not take count copper coins as wealth.

I sat back on the bed and tried to recall what I had learned about different currencies in this world from my memories. There were copper, silver, gold and spirit stones. 1 gold coin was equal to 10 silver coins and 100 copper coins.

Spirit stones were nothing but condensed mana stones. Some people who had huge mana reserves but no fighting skills or courage would release different attribute mana into different colored spirit stones. The basic element stones were cheaper compared to rare stones of light or dark elements.

The spirit stones had different uses. Normally earth mages would buy earth stones and go into meditation chambers built in towns to use the earth stone to release mana. Then even with less affinity, due to high concentration of earth elements in air, they could increase the circulation of elements in body which would improve their magic level.

Another popular use of these spirit stones was in magic tools. Magic tools industry was the core industry of this world. It touched all aspects from farming with plant mana stones which released plant magic to healing tools using light mana stones and even wars.

These two reasons had lead to rise in adventuring in this world, to go into the forests, kills beasts to find their mana cores then sell them.

The beast cores could be made into mana stones which was one of the way mana stones were made.

Other were mana farms using with people pumping mana and condensing it into stones. these were the artificial mana stones with less concentration of mana than beast cores.

I was thinking of a way of gaining money and with his reload skill, he could make artificial mana stones without a hassle but the problem was, he did not have the equipment to store mana.

While I could theoretically provide mana stones, he would gain undue attention to himself if I provided a lot of them. Maybe, I would be captured and dissected as a lab rat.

I decided that since he did not know enough about this world, he should not be hasty in forming a plan with this knowledge.

Just as I was thinking about what to do, my stomach reminded him to eat something. I looked around and found a cup and that had a last night's broth. seeing it, my appetite reduced instantly.

I remembered how MC's in other novels would open restaurants and stuff. Well, I didn't cook much in my last life with all the ingredients and food videos, so I won't in this life.

recalling the memories, I knew that there were restaurants which provided delicacies and it was just that I was poor that I had to eat broth everyday. People with lands could eat vegetables or drink milk, the food culture was not much different from that of Earth.

As I had nothing to do, I focused on the system panel and turned on elemental sight. the elements in air, I could force them into me. I was thinking of releasing mana from my body and forming mud dagger since I could use Earth Magic but I couldn't from a brick. I could only manipulate the earth which was already there.

But in my memories, I saw people chanting words and releasing fireballs. I needed to enquire about this. I focused on the earth magic on panel and it expanded.

Earth Magic ( level 1 - upgradable - not enough wealth)

I got excited thinking about this feature. doesn't it mean I can upgrade any skill as long as I have money.

If you ask me, I had a premonition that this wealth was the spirit stones but I had never used one.

I decided to go next door to ask Mike who had woken me up earlier about the priest. I hoped to get some more information about magic and earning money.

Mike was a few years older than me. He had fire magic affinity and he could shoot fireballs. He had joined a hunting group with some other men from the Brown town slum and they went hunting into the great forest that bordered Brown town.

The old Bruce had given up on life after realising that he had low magic affinity but that was not the case for me. Still, I decided to stay as low-key as possible since I remembered an old Chinese proverb about how the tallest tree gets blown away by the wind.

Before going up, I using an old metal utensil to see my face since I did not have a mirror at home. I looked the same as I used to in my teenage years in the last life. At least, the face felt less foreign to me than this world.

I needed a loan to buy the mana bottle to sell artificial mana stones.

I tidied up my clothes and went to find Mike. Just outside was a narrow street filled with drainage water. It should smell like shit but maybe my nose had adapted to the place that I did not feel the extreme repulsion that one could feel.

The houses were square shacks built with Earth magic with wooden roofs. Some houses were a bit better like Mike's house looked a lot better. It was on a raised platform of solid mud with solid roof instead of the leaky wooden roof that my house had.

While I did come from an advanced world, it was not me that had caused its advancement nor I was an architect. I used to a software designer who got an MBA in sales and marketing in later years after being fed up with coding.

When I reached Mike's house, it was empty, I remembered he had called me to remind me about the priest.

Then, I remembered that church priest would often visit the slums to check aptitude of children to recruit the rare ones while also healing some people who could not afford it.

So, I moved towards the ground where everyone had gathered.