My meditation was broken when I heard a knock on the door followed by my mother's voice. "Son your friends are here and apparently they're here to deliver something to you." I hop off of my bed and went to my door.
I opened my door and saw my mom standing there. "Thanks, mom, I'll go see them." She gave me a nod and went downstairs. Following her downstairs I saw Sanae and her two goddesses sitting around the kitchen table. I raised an eyebrow at the rather large ornate wooden box sitting on the table. Suwako raises her hand in greeting. Meanwhile, Sanae and Kanako gave me a silent nod.
"Here's the accessories you asked for." She opened up the box and my eyes widened. Inside the box were dozens of rings, bracelets, necklaces, and even anklets. Most were made out of gold while a few were made out of this silverish-colored metal and all were studded with various gemstones. Picking one of the silver-like metals I asked what it is.
"That necklace is made out of platinum, it is one of the densest metals in the periodic table," Kanako explains. I simply nod in response. With the accessories here I could now begin enchanting. Suwako began placing the jewelry on the table. Lining them up in rows for each type. In total there were fifty "How long would you take to enchant all of these?" Kanako asks.
"For Sanae's?" She shakes her head.
"No, including the rest of the jewelry." I furrow my eyebrows. I haven't used observe on them yet so I don't really know how much many they can hold. Though I could guarantee they would probably hold a lot more than just silver.
"I have no idea, I need to place a storage enchant first and fill it out before I can make a guess." I half lied. Technically I could see the max capacity of the ornaments but without the storage enchant on I have no idea what the true max is.
"I see, then we'll leave you to your work." I nod and bid them farewell. Sanae grabbed the box and followed Suwako and Kanako out. On their way out they shut the door behind them. With them gone I turn my attention back on the various accessories on the tables. I was about to grab them and take them to my room when I felt my mother's presence. Turning to look at her I saw she had a stunned look on her face.
"Uhh, mom are you okay." I'm sure she was fine but who knows she might have a heart attack seeing the massive amounts of jewelry on our kitchen table.
"I'm I'm alright Akarui." She gulped as she stared at the neatly lined accessories. "So is that what they brought to you." I nod my answer causing her to place a hand on her forehead. "Why, why did they give you all of this stuff."
"Uhh mom, I made a deal where I." For the next minute, I explained what the situation was. My mom was still anxious but she visibly calmed down once she knew why Suwako gave me a bunch of jewelry.
"I see then don't let me bother you." I wave my hand.
"It's fine, anyway I'll take these to my room." With that out of the way, I grabbed all of the ornaments and brought them to my room. Once I got there I began carving the storage enchant on all of the accessories. An hour passed by the time I finished carving the last ornament. I laid my chisel down on my desk which was now my de facto workstation.
"Finished." I sigh while rubbing my rather stiff wrist. "Now how much mana can you hold." I grabbed one of the platinum rings and used observed on it.
Platinum ruby ring- (0/131,452)
Enchantments- Storage
"Damn," I mutter the amount of mana this thing can hold was insane. It was good but at the same time, it presents a problem. It would take too long to fill this up to capacity. this single ring alone would take fifteen days to fill and there were fifty-nine more to go. But that is if I only use the mana I get from sleeping. I could simply eat a lot of food to restore my mana. But that would take a lot of food and it would be super uncomfortable. I glance at the pile of jewelry, I sigh guess that's my only choice.
Explaining to my mother that I needed to eat a lot of food just so I could gain more mana to then transfer it into the jewelry that a goddess gave me was probably a surreal experience for my mother. But she accepted surprisingly though I had to help her by buying the ingredients and being her assistant. I also gave out five of the accessories just to cover the cost even though I had no idea how much those were worth anyway. One hour later I watch as my mother places plate after plate of food on the table. Already I was regretting my decision.
Once my mother placed the last plate of food, I begin. After the third plate of food was finished I notice something was off. I wasn't getting full. I felt satisfied sure but I feel like I could eat more. It was then I remembered that my body could instantly digest food. When I ate the Ametaratsu fruit I instantly absorbed the mana inside it. For Sanae, it took a while. Anyway, this was extremely useful since now I could eat without getting full. Once I finished off all the remaining food. I checked on my mana, and yup it was at capacity.
With my mana full I went to my room and began transferring mana to Sanae's equipment. It didn't even take ten seconds for my mana pool to be empty again. I sigh, I could take a nap to restore a quarter of my mana but there was one problem. My ki has also fully recovered and I'll be wasting it if I do nothing with it. So I went out to my secret training area to burn off my ki with the added benefit of gaining experience in ki control.
I arrived home several hours later. Once I was in my room I took a nap and then placed more mana in the accessories. By the time dinner arrived, I once again asked my mom for another large meal. Again, I was still not full which gave me a rather simple idea. I went to my mother who was cleaning the dishes. "Hey, mom can I ask you something."
"Hmm, what is it?" She puts a newly cleaned plate onto the dish rack.
"Can I continue cooking food into the night, I really need to fill up those accessories" My mother furrows her eyebrows.
"Son, I know you need to do that since you made that deal with that goddess." I opened my mouth but I shut it when she glared at me. "When I agreed in cooking up those meals for you I expected that you wouldn't be able to eat even a quarter of the food I cooked for you." She throws her arms in the air, a frustrated look on her face. "No, instead you managed to eat them all without even feeling full." She shakes her head. "I don't even know if you used your magic or not." I gave her a sheepish grin.
"Actually I don't even know how my body managed to put all that food into my body." I shrugged. "It's like my body instantly absorbed all the food immediately." My mother sighs.
"Right, so what other ability do you have that I don't know." My mother sarcastically says, her hands on her hips. I was unresponsive for a moment, unsure of what ability that I should tell her.
"Well... I don't actually need to sleep anymore." She narrows her eyes.
"Oh really, I still see you sleep from time to time." I scratch the back of my head.
"That's true but it's mostly because I need to recover my mana." She nods.
"Okay, so what else." I furrow my eyebrow.
"Well, how about this," I quietly opened my inventory and pulled out a candy bar. My mom's eyes widened as she saw me pull out a candy bar from nowhere... well from her perspective at least.
"What where did that come from." I gave her a smug smile.
"I pulled it out of my own personal pocket dimension." She rubs her head.
"I don't even understand anymore, making fire with your magic is pretty simple, but being able to create an entire pocket dimension is just insane." I shrugged. It wasn't really my magic from what I could tell. I don't even know how the inventory system works and it wasn't like how I cast my magic. Anyway, this conversation diverged a lot and I really needed to know if I could make recovery meals.
"So can I cook?" She sighs.
"Yes, but promise me that you won't overexert yourself okay." I nod.
"I promise." She smiles.
"Good and also you're going to be the one cleaning the dishes." Well, it's only fair after all I'm the one who used them. "Oh and before I forget here." She gets her purse from her pocket and withdrew ten ten thousand yen bills. "We actually run out of ingredients." I nod and took the money. With that out of the way, I went to one of the nearby supermarkets. After half an hour I returned home with the groceries in my inventory. Thankfully I knew how to cook a lot of different meals so I didn't have to eat a single dish. I may not be able to be full but I can still get tired over the same taste.
After two hours, several dozens of plates full of food, and a barely dented stock of ingredients. I was finally done. The food was stored in my inventory so they could stay warm. With this, I can finally begin. By the time the sun rises, I barely managed to fill the ring. Holding up the ring I muttered observe to see its effects.
Platinum ruby ring of vitality- (131,452/131,452)
Enchantments- Storage, Vitality
Provides: Increases max hitpoints by 3,726
I nod, while not a lot compared to my own hp pool even without using my ki it was still a magnitude better than the silver bracelet. Feeling curious, I slip the ring onto my finger to see how different it is from the strength-increasing bracelet. Turns out it was the same with the only difference being that the mana increased my health instead of my strength. I sigh and glanced over to the rest of the jewelry. Now only ten more to go.
Later the same day, I was walking over to the shrine with the ring in my pocket. Unlike last time I visited, Suwako and Kanako were there seated on the shrine's porch. I raised my hand in greeting before walking over. Oddly enough Sanae was nowhere to be found. "Hey, I finished one." Grabbing the ring from my pocket, I presented it to Kanako. Narrowing her eyes she took the ring from my palm and looked at it in detail.
"Only one? I assume the others are not finished yet." I nod.
"Yeah, the rest I can make in the next ten days." Kanako hummed. "Each of the jewelry you gave me can contain roughly about ten times more mana than the bracelet I showed you."
Seemingly satisfied, Kanako pockets the ring. "I can definitely feel the impressive amount of mana contained within it but there's something I'm itching to know." I raise an eyebrow.
"Uhh, what is it?"
"How did you manage to channel enough mana into this ring." I felt my stomach drop. Shit, how do I explain this?
"What do you mean by that?" She sighs and points to my chest.
"The mana I usually feel from you is far weaker than this here ring, While I can easily believe you could have just regained your mana through rest, the fact that you manage to eke out enough mana to fill this here ring would be impossible." I quietly listened as she explained. Internally though my mind was racing to think of ways to explain how I manage to fill the ring in such a short amount of time.
"So how long do you think it would have taken me." Kanako thinks for a bit, as she did I was still trying to think of an explanation but I was drawing blanks.
"About ten to fourteen days give or take." I nod. Her calculation was pretty spot on considering that was how much time it would have took me if I only used the mana I gained from sleeping. Before I could respond Suwako spoke up.
"Hey, maybe you only felt the mana that he has remaining after he trained." Kanako and I look towards Suwako. Suwako was quiet during the conversation till now.
"Possibly, but that would imply that he." Kanako points her thumb at me. "Has more mana than what I felt by an impossibly large margin, at least a magnitude higher or more." Before Suwako could respond, I cough drawing their attention.
"Actually, Kanako was right I didn't fill the ring in one go." Kanako furrows.
"Then that means you recovered your mana completely several times within the same day." I nod, she's technically right but she didn't know the method on how I did it. Kanako ponders a bit before asking me another question "Ai, does your body naturally produce mana."
"No? I only get my mana back from eating or sleeping."My answer seems to stump Kanako.
"That shouldn't be possible, you can't recover that much mana from eating and resting alone especially in the timeframe of one day." I shrug.
"But it's true I recover a lot more mana from what you're implying." Kanako rubs her face.
"So we can chalk it up as Ai special ability to replenish his mana reserves quickly by eating." Suwako pipes up beside kanako.
"I suppose so." Internally I sigh in relief.
"Anyway if there's nothing else for you two to ask me, I'll be going now." They didn't, so I left after a quick bow. After I arrived home from the shrine I didn't waste any time and headed straight to transferring my mana. I've been stuck in level twenty-five for long enough and I would like to start gaining stats again. Picking up a ring, once I'm done maybe I should take a day off of training. The constant repeat between cooking, eating, transferring my mana, and training was starting to get to me. And I have to do this for another nine days. I grimace, but the effort would be worth it.
The next five days were a blur. I was halfway finished with the sixth accessory. Currently, I was burning through my ki to up my ki control. Once my body was nearly empty I stopped. A pop-up appeared in front of me.
Ki control (Expert) 1/10
My first expert ranked skill, I would have thought mana control would be the first one to achieve it. But there was also something else I was excited about.
Quest complete: Ki mastery III
Reward: 10000 experience. + 10 to strength, vitality, agility, +50 growth points
I can barely hold myself from grinning. The reward was simply amazing. I looked at the pop-up for a few more seconds before finally dismissing it. To my surprise, there was another one.
You are now level 25, every level from now you will gain Ten stat points
Oh, I guess I should have expected this considering adept was capped at twenty-five. Closing the pop-up I went back to work. By the time I finished the rest of the jewelry the sun was still high in the sky. Thankfully it was Saturday so no school which meant I could relax. Speaking of school I really wish I could drop out so I could spend more time training. But mom said no since apparently, it's illegal not to send your child to school. Not like I could do anything about it though, So I'll just wait till I could legally drop out without getting my parents into jail.
I got out of my chair and stretched. I let out a sigh as my bones popped. Thankfully winter break has started so I have a lot of free time to train if I wanted. Right now I could just go to the shrine and turn in the jewelry, but that can wait. Doing the same repetitive things for ten days was starting to wear me down mentally. I wasn't actually tired mentally or physically but the thought of eating any more of the food I prepared repulsed me. It's not like I couldn't prepare good food but I simply made the most efficient meal that can replenish my reserves. It just so happens that it tasted bland. I plop down on my bed. Ever since I started working on that jewelry I haven't had to sleep for the past ten days.
Not like I needed to since I only ever slept so I could recover my mana and ki. Which made me wonder what other things changed about my body. My stomach's ability to instantly digest and absorb food was another one. It pretty much allowed me to finish this quest in ten days. If I didn't have this ability it would have probably taken months. Another less useful ability was my body's recovery time in terms of stamina. Pretty much I could take a moment to rest and I'll recover completely. Of course, the only downside was that I needed to have full hp for this recovery to work. Along with having nearly zero ki, but as long as my ki doesn't drop to the point where my physical abilities get a debuff, my stamina regeneration should be fine.
My train of thought ended with somebody knocking on my door. I raise an eyebrow, mom usually didn't bother me during this time of the day. I hopped out of bed and went to open the door. To my surprise, Hiroki was the one knocking. "Hiroki? what are you doing here." Not that I minded him being here. I was just curious.
"I was just coming to check on you." He looked around my room and saw the pile of jewelry sitting on my desk. He gained a curious look but he returned his attention to me. "It's been a while since we've last met and Renjiro mentioned that you've stopped coming to the village ten days ago." I nod, right it's actually been more than ten days since I last talked to Hiroki.
"Oh yeah, about that I've actually been pretty busy this past few days." He nods and his gaze turns to the jewelry.
"Does it have something to do with those?" He points at the pile of rings, amulets, and bracelets.
"You're correct, you see twelve days ago I discovered that I can imbue effects on objects." He nods not speaking a word letting me continue uninterrupted. I went to my desk and grabbed one of the amulets with the enchant that boost agility. "This amulet increases your reaction time." I hand it over to him. He grabs the amulet and wears it. His face shifts from surprise to focus as the mana enters his body. After a few seconds pass I asked him how he felt.
"Other than the energy spreading around my body I don't feel any different." I nod, this would require a more physical test.
"Okay then, take it off I want to see how much of a difference the amulet makes." Following my instruction, he takes the amulet off. I gesture for him to move to the side. Once he did I went full force in activating my ki without the penalties. Wasting no time I made a single punch. The air was thrown to the side and a sonic boom followed. Returning my fist I deactivated my ki so as to not waste it. "Were you able to catch it?" I turn to Hiroki.
He shakes his head. "Barely, it was a blur for me but if I used my ki I should easily dodge it." I raised an eyebrow at his confidence. Last I checked our stats were relatively equal. Deciding to investigate Hiroki's confidence. I used observe mentally. Hiroki twitched before giving me a look, probably from me using observe.
Hitpoints: 82,862/82,862
Ki: 85,750/85,750
Strength: 772
Vitality: 914
Dexterity: 153
Agility: 512
"What the heck," I mutter. How did his stats grow so quickly from last time? I remember Renjiro mentioning that Hiroki was finally putting effort into his training. I didn't realize how little effort Hiroki puts into training. Another thing I wondered is if anyone else had a growth cap. The more I think about it the concept of a growth cap is absolutely ridiculous. I could be steadily gaining points into a stat and then all of a sudden I reach a cap and all growth stops. I'm pretty sure anyone who regularly does physically intensive things would quickly realize how quickly they've grown. In about a week they can probably double their physical stats unless they hit their cap of course. But even then there wasn't any news report about humans with superstrength which obviously means that the only person with a growth cap was me.
I blink as I realized a hand was waving in front of my face. "Hey Ai, are you okay you've been spacing out for a while." I cough and took a step back.
"I'm fine, I just thought of something." Hiroki had a worried look on his face.
"If you say so..." Anyway we proceeded to the next part of the experiment. Repeating the same experiment as last time except with Hiroki wearing the amulet. He remarked that the effect was noticeable but it wasn't much of an increase. Which to be fair it only increased his agility by around a quarter. Activating my ki without penalties would increase my stats sixfold. Which made the effect of the amulet minuscule, but that was fine. I can stack as many stat-boosting items as needed.
Hiroki took off the amulet and handed it back to me. "Thanks for helping me out Hiroki." He gave me a shrug.
"No problem." He says afterward there was silence for a complete moment only to be broken by him coughing. "Anyways, what are you going to do now."
"I was just going to relax since I've finished enchanting those." I pointed at the glowing jewelry.
"I see, then maybe I should see you tomorrow then." I shake my head.
"Nah it's fine," I say. Sending him away after he just arrived here was a bit rude. Though I don't really have anything to do except deli-. My eyes widen, I guess we can do that. "Actually since you're here you might as well come with me in delivering these to Sanae." He raised an eyebrow but before he can speak I stopped him. "You see I'm not the one who's going to use these accessories." Grabbing several of the said items I placed them in my pocket. "Ten days ago Kanako requested that I enchant these jewels for Sanae in return I get to keep some of the jewels myself." Hiroki nods.
"I see then I suppose you were going to do this later until I came along." He was almost right.
"It's actually tomorrow, but anyway let's get going." With all of the items in my pocket. The light emitted by the enchants was still visible through the pants. Grabbing my jacket I tied it around my waste completely blocking the light. With that out of the way, we left for the shrine. As we arrived at the shrine I noticed that the shrine was actually full of life. It wasn't surprising considering it was mostly people wishing for stuff and praying. But I imagine Kanako must be pretty happy with the surge of faith that was coming her way.
Sanae was of course at the front of the shrine blessing people while they pray. Once they've finished praying they drop money into the donation box. I tugged at Hiroki's sleeve which drew his attention. "Hey, we should line up." He shrugs while muttering ok. I waved at Sanae causing her to notice us. She responded with a quick smile before focusing back on blessing the people. Several minutes later it was my turn to be 'blessed'. "Shrines pretty busy today," I say.
Sanae's pretty happy I notice judging from her body language and her facial expression. "December has always been our highest point in the year, lots of people praying and donating." She frowns. "Unfortunately even with all of this, they don't really believe that the blessings do anything so we don't really get a lot of faith." Shaking her head, her smile returns. "Enough about that, what do you wish for?" She gives me a wink. Oh yeah, Sanae can cause miracles. I took a couple of seconds to think.
"I wish that I would be able to learn quicker." Sanae raised an eyebrow before shrugging. She started chanting and waving her gouhei around. I can feel the mana inside her stirring up. Once she was finished chanting the mana inside her left her body before flowing into mine. A pop-up appeared though I ignored it in favor of putting cash in the donation box and bowing to Sanae. "By the way, where's Kanako I'm here to deliver the thing." Sanae's eyes widen before pointing her thumb at the shrine.
"Kanako-Sama is in the living room relaxing." I raise my eyebrow before quickly leaving the line. I quickly check on the pop-up as Hiroki took his turn to be blessed.
Status effect given: Sanae Kochiya's blessing
Experience gain increased by 10%, Skills are 10% percent faster to learn
My eyes widen. Excuse me what, I didn't realize Sanae's blessings can do this. The ten percent faster skill learning was meh but the gem was the experience gain. It was then that I noticed that the blessing only last for an hour. I let out a tsk. If it lasted for four hours at least then I can rank up my skills at once and gain the bonus exp. I glance at Sanae who was just finished blessing Hiroki. Nah, it's not worth bothering Sanae for. But wait, maybe I can recreate the effect using my magic. It's just a matter of me having enough mana.
Anyway, Hiroki and I made our way into the shrine. We quickly find Kanako who as Sanae said was relaxing in the living room sipping tea. Even she was feeling happy though it was much more suppressed. I can still see a tiny grin forming at the edge of her lip. Handing the jewelry over my quest was completed. And the bonus was true it gave me an extra ten percent exp. Overall this day was good.