The finances Shane could see on the holographic screen were much more than he had initially planned to accumulate in his first month within the Primordial Dimension. He couldn't even control his eyes, as he salivated at the prospect of seeing more money.

He gulped down his saliva and looked at the screen again to ensure that he wasn't dreaming. Shane couldn't think straight and he imagined wonderful times ahead for him with some relaxed cultivation and body refining. His daydreaming was interrupted when he heard some noises.

Umbra had wreaked havoc on the table and demanded more food, even though his one-meter-long body looked like it would explode any moment.

Handing out more dishes, Shane thought he would have to purchase a large stock of food in the future if Umbra's gluttony would continue to increase.

In the worst-case scenario, he would tell Umbra to eat the beasts they hunted instead of the dishes he purchased with their hard-earned wealth.

A whole minute passed as Shane tried to regain his senses, as he had difficulty controlling his emotions.

Full of expectations, he immediately took a look at the price of the [Mortal-(Mythic)] Body refining manual.

With more than 900 gold coins, he was confident in purchasing the [Mythic] body refining manual as it was only at the mortal stage, which was the lowest possible stage.

Even so, Shane was shocked to see that the perfect body refining manual for the Mortal physique was priced at 500 gold coins.

If he added the price for Umbra's quality upgrade to the expenditure, Shane would have to pay around 730 gold coins. This would be solely for his body refining technique and the 5xtier-2 mana stones with darkness compressed within in addition to four Daylight peonies.

His mood immediately soured looking at the total coins he would have to shell out that he had earned through strenuous hard work.

In the end, this meant Shane could at most use 230 gold coins for himself, which would most likely be sufficient for three higher-tiered manuals for his mana gathering, purifying, and a higher body flawed body refining. Shane would have to use it before he would be able to complete the mission for a [Apprentice-(Mythic)] perfect body refining technique.

Calculating the additional price for cultivation resources, nutrition solutions, and so on, Shane could only frown deeply. His efforts worth of two days had vanished almost immediately, without leaving him with any funds to purchase even a single skill.

It felt as if his fortune had never existed as he disgruntledly purchased the [Mortal-(Mythic)] body refining manual for 500 gold coins.

Somehow Shane felt more sad than happy to have purchased the Mythic body refining technique, which should not have been the case.

Nevertheless, the feelings of a young man with big dreams were always different from that of the commoners. Shane could be considered a special case among them because his way of thinking was extremely complicated and sometimes a bit reckless.

The [Mythic] manual was directly bound to him, like every skill and technique that could only be obtained after fulfilling certain individual requirements and missions. It included every manual at and above the platinum quality in addition to special skills like the Taming skill, which had certain requirements one had to fulfill before one could learn them.

Passing on these manuals and techniques to others was impossible, because of this binding. Shane learned the manual without celebrating anything at all, as a notification popped in his head.

[Host learned [Mortal-(Mythic)] Body refining manual. Congratulations!!]

Even the system was more hyped than Shane was but he merely read through it once and brushed it aside. He then focussed on his search of the materials required to upgrade Umbra's quality and browsed through the Primordial Shop.

Fortunately, he had received wyvern blood from Uncle Max, otherwise, he wouldn't know how to fulfill the requirement for [Blood of a Dragon]. Shane could only thank the system that it accepted wyvern blood as dragon blood, even though the bloodline was most likely extremely thin.

Nevertheless, he still had to purchase five tier-2 mana stones [Darkness] that were somewhat similar to Darkness attributed crystals, and four daylight peonies.

The Shop he had found earlier was still there, but Shane wanted to find something cheaper as he didn't want to pay 220 gold coins for Umbra's upgrade.

Unfortunately, even the shops of other races were rather unsatisfying with their offer, as the race surcharge proved to be the biggest hurdle.

In the end, Shane bought four daylight peonies for 25 gold coins each with a transfer fee of 10 gold coins, while the tier-2 mana stones [darkness] were priced at 20 gold coins each.

Paying 220 gold coins, caused Shane's already bad mood to become even worse.

With 243 gold coins left in his pockets, he would have to be mindful of purchases for his future progress.

There were still 11 days left until the academies would either approve his application or reject, the latter being highly unlikely.

However, he still had to modify his application slightly.

He wanted to reach the 10th Mortal stage for his mana pool cultivation, but his physique lagged behind due to the need for a perfect tempering.

In the end, Shane decided to edit his application via the system in order to show his accumulated wealth in addition to his two cultivation stats.

While he allowed the system to update his cultivation, he turned off the same function for his accumulated wealth.

Restricting the updates showing his wealth to 1200 gold coins should be more than enough to make the examiners curious about his strategy and strength.

As he browsed through the system shop, he tried to select an item to purchase out of the many options available. Shane felt hungry and was about to eat when he noticed that his dishes were licked clean.

Umbra looked like he had eaten a whole pig as his one-meter-long body had swelled to triple its original size. Shane shook his head and cast a disappointed look at Umbra.

Meanwhile, Umbra looked at Shane innocently not knowing why his master was dissatisfied with him, as he wanted to climb on Shane's shoulder.

Unfortunately, he couldn't even leave the table after eating to his heart's content. He would more likely fall to the ground like a walrus instead of landing gracefully on Shane's shoulder.

As such he coiled up and began to cultivate in order to avoid any embarrassing situations.

Seeing that, Shane took out a few of the mana crystals he had mined to support Umbra in addition to his mana gathering to speed up the process.

It would take a long time for Umbra to gather enough mana to evolve into the strongest possible evolution path. Shane wanted to help him, by all means, possible in order to receive a strong companion.

Taking out two dishes for himself out of his spatial ring, Shane continued his research as he wanted to use the remaining funds cautiously without wasting them.

There were two paths he could walk on right now.

The first path was to purchase three top tier-1 techniques which included a flawed body refining technique that Shane had to use after he finished building up a flawless Mortal stage physique in addition to a 28% mana purification manual and mana gathering technique.

While the second path would allow Shane to think about his future growth. This would allow him to purchase a single 60% mana purifying technique with a silver tier-1 mana gathering technique without considering his physique.

The second path allowed him to purchase a 60% purity manual without the need of renewing his manuals frequently. However, it would neglect his body refining, as the highest grade he had was the tier-1 bronze technique, which allowed him to reach the 3rd Apprentice stage at most.

Shane was unsatisfied with both the paths and he wanted to find a way to satisfy all his needs. As he kept thinking about a way to achieve that, he remembered a somewhat stupid but also smart path he could take.

With a smile appearing on his face, Shane began to continue his research with renewed motivation as he had finally found what he needed.

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