Chapter 191: The Difference Between Hard Work and Smart Work

Ten.

Twelve.

Fourteen.

I was doing one-handed push-ups on the floor of my room at seven in the morning, and I was doing them easily, and by the time I hit 15, I stopped, but not because I couldn’t go any further.

As I lay flat on the floor with the ceiling above me, a full, unhinged laugh couldn’t help but burst out of me

Because twelve hours ago, I could not have done one of those without my arm giving out, and I had just done 15, and my arm felt already recovered.

[Let’s see how we’re looking...]

-Ding!

{

[Protocol: Chronos]

Name: Nico

Race: Human

Circuits: 9

Affinity: Infinity, Time, Ice, Nature, Metal

Level: 12

EXP: 4 / 135,996

Status: Normal

Stat Points: 0

Stats:

STR: 2

AGI: 1

END: 3

DEX: 1

MP: 65 / 65

MP Regen: ∞

LCK: ERROR

Magic:

Ice Pebble (Common) [2 MP] (Optimal at 2 Circuits)

Ice Reinforcement (Common) [5 MP minimum] (Optimal at 6 Circuits)

Nature Manifestation (Unquantifiable) [Varied] (Varied)

Dominium Radicis (Epic) [2MP minimum] (Optimal at 3 Circuits)

Metal Manifestation (Unquantifiable) [Varied] (Varied)

Ferrum Knight (Epic) [10 minimum] (3 Circuits)

Skills:

Precognition (Legendary) [2 MP/sec] (Optimal at 2 Circuits)

Temporal Step - Aevum Trace (Rare) [60 MP] (Optimal at 5 Circuits)

Eyes Of Relevance (Epic) [50MP] (Optimal at 5 Circuits)

Trace (Unquantifiable) [Varied] (Varied)

Gear:

Credits: 23

Tabs: [Shop] [Inventory] [Map] [Crafting] [Familiars]

}

STR at 2. END at 3.

Both of them had been at 1 and 2, respectively, last night.

[It works!] I cackled at the ceiling.

-Ding!

{It does.

Note that assimilation provides diminishing returns. The same MP infusion per session will produce smaller gains over time.}

"Got it," I said, still lying on the floor. "Once 5 MP per section stops producing decent results, I’ll move to ten... Keep incrementing in fives. Now, what is the actual math behind how the stats scale with each other?"

-Ding!

{STR and END scale together. For every 2 points gained in both, you gain 1 point in AGI. For every 2 points gained in AGI, you gain 1 in DEX.}

"So everything is linked..." I said, sitting up. "Strength and endurance go hand in hand, agility follows at half the pace, dexterity is half agility’s pace."

I sat there nodding sagely at this information when-

-Knock-Knock-

"Young Master, are you awake?" Peko’s voice from the other side of the door.

"Yeah, coming," I called, got up off the floor, grew the ice leg, and walked to the door. "Morning."

"Good morning," Peko replied, with a small nod. "Would you like to join us for breakfast? Nom-Nom went ahead to the lobby."

"Gimme two minutes."

Nodding, she turned and walked back down the corridor, while I ducked into the bathroom and handled the minimum required functions of being a responsible adult before heading downstairs.

The lobby of the inn had a dining section on the left side, with expensive-looking tables, cloth napkins, and proper menus that were written in ink rather than chalked on a board.

The whole place was filled with the kind of guests who could afford to pay about a gold a night, merchants, minor nobles, and a few adventurers who had enough dough to splurge on breakfast.

Spotting Peko and Nom-Nom was as easy as spotting the sky itself.

The tables in a radius of about eight meters around where Nom-Nom and Peko were sitting had been vacated.

The two of them were at a table by the window, menus held in front of them, while the nearest occupied tables were all on the far side of the dining room. Every single person at those tables pretended to have chosen to sit there rather than migrating rapidly away from something.

The waiter standing at Nom-Nom and Peko’s table had his back perfectly straight, chin up, hands clasped behind him, and even from here, I could see the small smile on his face quivering.

I walked over and pulled out the chair beside Nom-Nom.

She looked up from the menu and immediately scooted her chair sideways, turning the menu so I could see it too.

"I recommend the Grilled Gryphon Sandwich," she said, pointing at it in the menu. "It’s really good."

"Huh, then I’ll take that," I replied, noticing how her voice sounded softer, missing its usual chipper.

Last night’s conversation was still probably sitting with her, even though she was doing her best to be herself, and she was mostly succeeding, and I was going to let her get there at her own pace.

Nom-Nom turned to the waiter and said, "Two Grilled Gryphon Sandwiches."

She said it the way she said most things, directly and without particular ceremony, but I caught the look hidden deep in her eyes, and the subtle way she held herself while she was looking at him.

The bone-deep draconic awareness was there, clear as anything, the instinct that she was speaking to a lesser being.

She was actively working to look past it, keeping her voice even and her expression neutral, and the effort itself was visible to anyone who knew what to look for.

While Peko, being a Phoenix herself, bothered with no such pretences.

Setting the menu down, she looked outside the window and spoke just one word, "Omelet."

The waiter wrote it down, smiled, and speed-walked back toward the kitchen at the absolute fastest pace that could still technically be called a walk.

Nom-Nom watched him go and then leaned in toward me close enough that she was speaking directly into my ear.

"Look at her. Ordering an omelette..." she said, keeping her voice just loud enough that Peko would hear it clearly. "Bet she’s salivating inside. That damn cannibal."

-Pfft-!

Laughing out loud, because, coming from a Wendigo, the irony was insane. I turned towards our resident Phoenix, thinking she too would find his just as funny as I did, only to be met by a death glare.

And within one second before that laugh converted it into a cough, while I tried to compose my face into something that I hoped read as neutral, and held it there while Peko’s eyes moved from Nom-Nom to me and then back to Nom-Nom with a gaze that said, she was not going to forget this.

Breakfast arrived, and just as Nom-Nom advertised, it was good.

Nom-Nom herself practically inhaled her sandwich.

Peko, meanwhile, ate her omelet with forkwork I don’t see myself doing, like ever.

Chewing on the sandwich, I looked out the window at the morning street outside, feeling pretty good about myself, given the amount of results I had generated just last night.

Just as we finished eating, my eye landed on the reception area.

Garek was at the front desk, talking to the receptionist, who was pointing in our direction.

Beside him was Mitsuki, and behind them, Berant and Selenne, all geared up, which meant they were ready, which meant Garek had someplace to pawn off the gold I had given him, which by extension meant, I too now had someplace to pawn off the gold I can make out of thin air.

I got up. Nom-Nom and Peko were already rising from the table, which meant they had clocked the Vanguard at the same time I had.

Garek saw us coming and met us halfway across the lobby, with Mitsuki beside him and Berant and Selenne behind.

Selenne was a cat-folk woman with black hair and green eyes, and the commanding way she held herself back at the mine was no where to be seen. She looked just as skittish as an actual cat.

Berant, on the other hand, was the guy I poured the bowl of porridge over. He was looking at me the way a man looks at someone he owes a grudge to while being fully aware that the someone in question is standing next to a Greater Dragon and a Tier 6 supposed elder sister, and has an eye patch, a badass scar running across his face, and a leg made of ice that is taking more mana per ten seconds that he had in his entire capacity.

Exchanging some, frankly, pointless pleasantries, we began our little march to the Adventurer’s Guild to get our contract notarized.

It was a few kilometers from the inn, through the mixed streets of New Shinkotsu, where the morning vendors were already out, and the street noise was already in full swing.

The ten-meter radius of open space that followed us everywhere followed us there too.

The Iron Vanguard were watching this happen for most of the walk, the split traffic, the quick sideways glances, and the children being gathered up by their parents, while I sneaked peeks at their faces as they processed what our normal experience of being in public is like and all that it signifies.

The Adventurer’s Guild was recognizable from a block away by virtue of being louder than everything around it at nine in the morning.

The moment we walked in, the entire place went quiet. Half because of Nom-Nom and the other half because of me.

I had become a pariah in this guild the last time I was here. After all, I had quite publicly and very thoroughly humiliated the Chief, the strongest and most respected dude in the circle.

It was a reasonable response to what I had done, not that I lost sleep over it because that also meant nobody would bother me with... well, anything.

So that was nice.

As we walked to the desks on the other side of the hall, where my most favourite person at the guild sat, the bartender from the left called my name.

"Nico." He went, wiping a mug, "The Chief wants to see you. He’s upstairs."

"Huh..."