Chapter 18

Crimson sat at the lunch table after Lars had left. He couldn’t go back to working on his [Running] and [Flexibility] skills yet. His Stamina now read [Slowed] instead of [Suspended] so he could probably go back to training in an hour.

“Lena?”

“Yes master?”

“Lars mentioned upgrading Statuses earlier. Could you explain that for me?”

“Yes master, your status, much like your skills or level, can grow stronger. Unfortunately you can’t train it like a skill; you have to get certain monster drops to upgrade it.”

“What can the upgrading do?”

“While not all of them have been documented, there are many useful ones master. Like the one Lars mentioned: the time upgrade. It makes a clock appear in your Status and allows you to keep track of time. Better versions of this upgrade will also have timers and other time tracking functions.”

Professor Lena had returned again. She had even raised a paw into the air and began waving it around like a hand. So cute.

“A really popular and well desired upgrade is the inventory upgrade. It increases the amount of items your inventory slot can hold. The downside to this one is that you can only get it from bosses and elite monsters, so they are hard to get. If you happen to see one go up for sale it could run you 10 whole platinum coins. Which is 1000 gold.

“Another, even more rare, upgrade is one that is used in a ritual for increasing your affinities. Those are the three that are common knowledge. Do you want to hear about some of the secret or undiscovered ones master?”

“No thanks Lena. I would like to leave some things as a surprise and discover them on my own.”

Skill: Level Up [Lena III]

Again? Dang it!

“How far away from me can you get from me now, Lena?”

“40 feet master.”

Dang. Dang. Dang it.

Crimson took another look around the room and spotted Sariya carrying dishes to the kitchen at the back of the room. He quickly hopped out of the chair and walked over to help her.

“May I help you Sariya?”

“Isn’t the question usually: do you want some help?”

“I wouldn’t ask that, it gives you the chance to say no.”

He took some of the dishes out of her hands while they spoke; her pile only had a few dishes while his was now a tower.

“Can’t I say no anyway?”

“I was asking for your permission to help you, not asking if you wanted it or needed it. I’ll help you anyway.”

“And here you are sneakily helping me anyway.”

“Told you.”

She let out a short burst of giggles and nodded.

While they walked over to the kitchens Crimson discovered something rather interesting about his [Balance] skill: it assisted him with more than his body’s ability to balance, it also assisted his sense of balance. That made balancing the pile of dishes much more easy than it would be normally, in fact…

Skill: Level Up [Balance III]

There was an interesting feeling in his body whenever a skill leveled up. It was like he could feel his body grow and stretch to accommodate his increased ability with a skill.

They walked into the kitchens and set the dishes on the counter all the while Crimson was running down all the basic questions.

“Favorite Color?”

“Red. It’s bright without hurting your eyes like yellow.”

“Red isn’t so bad, but I prefer white. Favorite Food?”

“Steak. When I can get it.”

“Is it really so expensive?”

“Yeah, we don’t live near a dungeon that drops slabs of meat so it has to be hunted in the wild. That drives up the price quite a bit.”

“Ouch. Something that makes you happy?”

“The sunrise and sunset. I love how beautiful and peaceful they are.”

"That's wonderful. Fav-"

A cook walked up to Sariya and gave her instructions for her next chore, cutting off Crimson's next question.

“I guess I’ll see you later Sariya. It was VERY nice talking to you.”

“Same to you Crimson.”

He walked away from her and outside with a grin on his face. Time to get back to grinding.