Chapter 14 - Ground Zero

Below shades of trees in a lush forest, a man sits while closing his eyes. His breaths are tranquil, and his minds are calm even though a goblin corpse lay next to him. Once in a while, he opens his eyes and takes another shard of crystals inside a leather pocket, without caring anything around him he grabs that crystal tightly and closes his eyes again.

He repeats those actions again and again for about one hour. There is four kind of crystal he takes from that pouch — reds, yellows, greens, and glowing black crystals.

After finishing his repetitive task, he opens his eyes and takes deep breaths — try to regulate his new power.

"Finally, I consume all runes," he mumbles and then touches his ears, "show me all my status."

*Ding*

A familiar sound ringing in his mind.

Name: Elias

Rank: Colorless

Title: Dungeon Master(Knight)

Points: 0

Strength: 32.3

Stamina: 29.1

Agility: 19.2

Perception: 50.0

Curse: Phoenix Curse(Violet)

Skill:

* Observe (Colorless — 0%)

Elias let out a smile, felt joy after seeing his basic stats increase this much, this improvement is quite high considering each small rune only increase about 0.1 to 0.3 of his stats, while there only about a hundred runes inside the pocket.

His base stats improve and become at least double. Also, he finally can see his perception stats — a stat that quantified all his five senses. Perception runes are rarely dropping, but he's fortunate to get one, and it even has red-level. Usually, ordinary people only have 10 points at perception stat and that stays constant for the rest of their life. However, just now, his perception stats increase by a whopping 40 points after consuming one rune.

He let out a satisfied expression when reading every line of his stats, after all, in his previous life he needs months to reach this level, but this time, he only need mere hours. He knows this improvement mostly caused by Hansoo's gift, but this status is still a real thing, and it'll give him a headstart in this life.

When he still floats in his happiness, a man's familiar voice enters his ears.

"You're lucky that Hansoo collected those runes even without knowing its functions."

Elias wakes up from his daydream and then look at voice's origin, he sees a transparent man floating mid-air talking to him.

"Yes, T'lear. However, that's as expected from Hansoo. Even though he didn't know what these runes ability, he'll still notice its strangeness which of course, made him pick these up to inspect later."

"Hmm, that's true I guess," T'lear mumbles after hearing Elias remarks.

After noticing T'lear not in the mood for further conversation, he focuses again on the messages at his retina. One new category shows up after he consumes a glowing black rune — skill category. He has a guess about his skill function, but he still wants to ask the system to validate his assumptions.

"What is observe skill mean," Elias mumbles after touching his ears.

[Observe Skill(Colorless): A skill to view runes properties or creatures stats in the front owner of this skill. This skill only works with runes or creatures that have the same or lower than its level]

"Well, this is as expected," he sighs because of how ordinary it explanation is. There are many skills to check runes stats like inspect, examine, or analyze — while a basic cloaking skill at higher levels can render these kinds of skill useless. However, what did he even expect from skill in this stage?

"At least I can see both runes and creatures with only one skill," he comforts himself.

He tosses aside his thought and then checks his store, which its catalog is growing after consumes many runes earlier. After he says its command, a sound ding ringing in his mind followed by a series of holographic notifications.

"Open stats runes store," he commands.

Stat Runes store:

Strength rune(Colorless-Small) — 1 point

Strength rune(Colorless-Medium) — 10 point

Strength rune(Colorless-Big) — 80 point

Stamina rune(Colorless-Small) — 1 point

Stamina rune(Colorless-Medium) — 10 points

Stamina rune(Colorless-Big) — 80 points

Agility rune(Colorless-Small) — 10 points

Agility rune(Colorless-Medium) — 100 points

Perception rune(Red-Small) — 4,800 points

Points: 0

He let out a smile after seeing five new items in the list. Even though most of them only derivation of base stats, but looking at these growing list still give him pleasure.

Other than those three basic stats, a new type of rune appears in the catalog — perception rune. At first glance, it looks like a very expensive rune — 4,800 points. However, after thinking about it once again, he realizes how cheap it is. After all, this kind of rune rarely drops in the first place and it only after slaying creature with red-level onward.

Many people will gladly trade 5,000 colorless runes with this one. After all, it's safer to search and kill 5,000 colorless-level monsters than slay one red-level monster which probably doesn't even drop runes they need.

The fact that he can buy this rune only with points is a blessing itself. Many people would kill to get this ability.

After finish seeing at this category, he looks to other categories which don't have any new important information other than how expensive skill runes are. Therefore, he soon closes all of them — ends his window-shopping.

Elias stands up from his place and looking towards the south — his destination.

He stretches his body, prepare to run a long journey. After finished his stretching, he immediately rushes between the trees.

Not long after, he meets with a goblin which wants to ambush him. Looking at this situation, he only let out a smirk and kick the goblin in its abdomen and take its sword. He swiftly slashes it and cut off the goblin's head.

*Ding*

[You slay a Goblin(Colorless): +2 points]