Volume 8 Chapter 1 PaRT 6
What to do, what to do? Go for a guaranteed one hundred thousand Nars, or place my bet on the probability of obtaining one million Nars?
For now, I enter Labyrinth with Yellow Magic Crystal in tow and start accumulating magic, but I wonder if maybe I should change it?
Green Magic Crystal can easily be turned into Yellow Magic Crystal before the auction and sold for one hundred thousand Nars, but there is no guarantee at all that I will be able to turn the Yellow Magic Crystal into White Magic Crystal and sell it for one million Nars before the auction.
Well, if push ever comes to shove, then I guess I can always merge the two Magic Crystals that are already in my possession with one another. Yeah, that sounds like a plan. For the time being I’m going to focus on trying to turn my Yellow Magic Crystal into White Magic Crystal via the natural methods, and if it doesn’t change into White Magic Crystal by the time it’s going to be time for the auction, then I am going to result to merging the two that I have together.
If I had just merged all the Magic Crystals in my possession into one and worked on increasing the amount of magical power stored in the Yellow Magic Crystal, then it would have definitely turned into a White Magic Crystal by now, but there is no need for me to be in a rush, since there is still some time left before the slave auction, and during that time, I will definitely earn more money than what I have on me now.
If I can’t turn the Yellow Magic Crystal into White Magic Crystal before the auction, I can just sell the Green Magic Crystal that’s going to be turned into Yellow Magic Crystal for one hundred thousand Nars. Or if I’ll still feel the need for getting one million Nars, then I can also merge the crystals into one and then aim for White Magic Crystal all the same.
There’s also another option available to m: selling two Yellow Magic Crystals for two hundred thousand Nars, that is.
See, I have options! And the more of them, the better!
That also means that working on gathering the magic power in the Green Magic Crystal would be the smart thing to do. After the Green Magic Crystal turns into Yellow Magic Crystal, then I should just leave it as it is. If the Yellow Magic Crystal doesn’t turn into White Magic Crystal before the auction, I can either sell it for one hundred thousand Nars or I can work exclusively on it making it White. And it’s definitely going to be better to work on it exclusively rather than just selling it, because that won’t allow me to maximize my profits.
However, there is one problem with all those plans and strategies that I have just mentioned, and that problem is the one related to Skills. Or to be more exact, the way that I have distributed my Bonus Points and the Bonus Skills that I have obtained thanks to them.
Currently, I have my Bonus Points invested in Bonus Skills that increase the amount of EXP that I am getting from the battles against the monsters and the ones that decrease the amount of EXP that I am going to need in order to Level Up my Jobs.
As a result of that division, I had no choice but to neglect the 「Crystallization」Bonus Skill, the one that increased the amount of magic power that I would absorb into the Magic Crystal from every single defeated monster.
If I intend to earn more money before the auction by selling Magic Crystals, then I definitely have to invest my Bonus Points back into 「Crystallization」to make the process of gathering magical power as efficient as possible.
Slave auctions are being held roughly four times a year, during the designated holiday of every season, so if there’s even a shadow of a chance that I could obtain some promising new harem members by participating in those auctions, then I have to use that chance and not squander it. And to do that, I have to make sure that I’m fully prepared, especially in the financial sense of the word. Initially I wanted to devote all of my time and effort into becoming an Adventurer as fast as possible, but now the circumstances have changed a little, and the situation demands me to put those plans on a backburner for the time being.
And with that, my policy for the upcoming day has been sufficiently established.
I am going to be replacing「Increase Gained Experience」Bonus Skill with 「Crystallization x64」.
I also equip Alba, and dressed like that, I then went to challenge the fifteenth floor of Haruba’s Labyrinth.
As long as we’re talking about making money, then there is one more option available to me that I haven’t considered before. And that option…. Is to try and farm the Whole Fish on the twelfth floor of Bode’s Labyrinth. Fortunately though, there’s going to be no need for us to go to such lengths this time.
On the sixteenth floor, the maximum number of monsters in a group will increase to five, and if I want to accumulate magic power in the Magic Crystals as soon as possible, then the higher the floor, the better for us. With the Bonus Skill 「Crystalization x64」, it’s going to be as if a single monster was actually worth sixty four monster’s worth of magical power.
And besides, even if we went and tried to earn money by farming the Whole Fish and then selling it, then I know of at least one person in my harem who would be extremely dissatisfied with such a course of action, and I think it would be best if I stayed on her good side instead of giving her reasons to pout or openly dislike me.
I also donned the Alba, which is actually a knee-length robe similar to the uniforms that the priests of the Catholic Church would wear when they were having a mass. On a side note, this outfit looks kinda sorta like an apron… which means that now that I am wearing it I look as if I was wearing an apron.
Okay, putting the matter of its looks aside, let’s actually try fighting in it and see how am I going to perform with it on.
We tried fighting against the Sarracenias, and I managed to kill them with three uses of 「Fire Ball」after taking out the Bitch Butterflies with five shots of 「Breeze Storm」. Based on my observation that the amount of Spells needed for me to defeat the enemies on the current floor, I can most certainly confirm that Alba’s 「Increase INT x2」Skill is working exactly as intended and that it does increase the power of my Spells. I wouldn’t say that fighting the enemies while using magic has gotten braindead easy because of it, but it has definitely gotten easier than it was before, and that’s all that matters for me for the time being.
The only downside to this new equipment is that this one item alone was not doing much in the way of helping me reduce the overall duration of the battles that we were fighting, but all in all, I feel like I should be grateful that a piece of equipment that is not even a weapon was able to increase the value of my INT stat, even if only by a little.
「I have to say, I totally look like a wizard now.」
「That’s right, master. That’s why I think that I’ll have to be more careful while guiding you towards the monsters.」
「Yeah, definitely. Also, maybe I shouldn’t use my staff and rod so frequently now? You know, to reduce the risk of people realizing that I can use magic?」
That might not be a bad thing to do, especially since you don’t actually see that many Adventurers or Explorers wearing Alba’s, so if anyone was to ever see me looking like that, I would probably stick out like a sore thumb, so I should better be careful.