Day eight.
Alvian couldn’t fight today.
His body told him that before his brain did. The calf wound had healed thanks to the VIT surge. Red webbed patterns crawled across the whites of both eyes. His muscles ached in a deep, fundamental way that had nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with cellular reconstruction.
Level 19 in seven days was miraculous. It was also violently traumatic. His body needed time to accept what the System had done to it.
So he sat in his cramped apartment, door locked, and did what he did best. He studied the System.
Leo was at Academy orientation. Martha slept under the thin blanket, her breathing steady but shallow. The grey patches on her fingers caught the dim light whenever she shifted.
Alvian opened his status panel and began manually allocating EXP from the Bank. He pushed five thousand EXP into STR.
[STR: 18 -> 20]
The increase was subtle but real. His forearms felt denser when he flexed them. His grip on the edge of his mattress was noticeably firmer. He pushed another three thousand into AGI.
[AGI: 17 -> 19]
His reaction time sharpened. The dim apartment felt slightly more defined, edges crisper. Not dramatically, but enough that he could measure the difference.
Then a new notification chimed. A sound he had never heard before.
[Ding! Karma Point threshold reached (20 KP cumulative).]
[System Shop unlocked!]
[Spend KP on consumables, upgrades, and Probability Modifiers.]
[Browse? Y/N]
Alvian nearly fell off his bed.
’The System Shop!’
He had been accumulating Karma Points blindly for over a week, hoping they would amount to something. Hoping the garbage rolls and their pathetic consolation prizes were building toward a real reward.
"Browse," he said immediately.
The interface expanded. A full catalog materialized in his vision, clean rows of categorized items scrolling across a translucent blue display.
At the top, his KP balance pulsed softly.
[Karma Points: 17]
Below it, a smaller notification flickered to life.
[NOTICE: System Shop permanently unlocked.]
[Cumulative KP Earned: 20. Threshold requirement: 20. ✓]
[Current KP Balance: 17.]
[3 KP lost to Karma Decay.]
[Trigger: Three consecutive rolls above 5x.] [The cosmos giveth. The cosmos taketh away. Shop access remains regardless of future balance.]
Alvian’s eyes locked on the word "permanently." Even if his balance hit zero, the Shop stayed open. The threshold was cumulative. He had earned 20 total, lost 3 to decay from his lucky streak, and the System had been tracking every point silently in the background this entire time.
He filed that away and started scrolling.
The inventory was limited but every single item made his pulse jump.
CONSUMABLES:
[Minor Health Potion (restores 30 HP): 2 KP]
[Minor Essence Potion (restores 20 Essence): 3 KP]
[Ironjaw Bait (attracts Rank 2 rodents): 1 KP]
UPGRADES:
[Skill Proficiency Boost (advances one Skill by one proficiency tier): 10 KP]
[Weapon Reinforcement (permanently increases one weapon’s durability by 25%): 5 KP]
[Flesh Limit Expansion (temporarily increases safe EXP absorption by 500 for 24 hours): 8 KP]
PROBABILITY MODIFIERS:
[Minimum Roll Floor: Set the minimum multiplier for the next roll to 10x: 15 KP]
[Re-Roll Token: Re-spin the roulette wheel on the next roll: 20 KP]
[Pity Accelerator: Double KP gain from low rolls for 24 hours: 5 KP]
Alvian stared at the Probability Modifiers section for a long time.
Fifteen KP for a guaranteed 10x minimum on the next roll. Twenty KP for a re-spin token. These were not just items. They were tools that let him influence probability. Not control it. Influence it.
His mind immediately started running calculations. The expected value of individual rolls with weighted probabilities was roughly 37.5x per kill. With a Minimum Roll Floor of 10x, the floor shifted upward, meaning even the worst possible outcome was ten times the base EXP. On a pooled Gambler’s Delay with 195 base EXP, the minimum guaranteed return would be 1,950 EXP instead of the 195 a 1x roll would produce.
The Re-Roll Token was even more valuable. It didn’t guarantee a good result, but it doubled his opportunities. On a high-stakes Gambler’s Delay, a single re-spin could be the difference between a wasted pool and a jackpot.
He didn’t buy either of them. He couldn’t afford them yet. Seventeen KP wasn’t enough.
But he could afford the Pity Accelerator.
Five KP for twenty-four hours of doubled KP gain from low rolls. The logic was simple. Bad rolls generated KP. Doubled KP meant faster accumulation. Faster accumulation meant reaching the Re-Roll Token and Minimum Roll Floor thresholds sooner.
He bought it.
[KP: 17 -> 12]
[Pity Accelerator activated. Duration: 24:00:00]
[Double KP gain from all rolls below 5x.]
The timer began counting down in the corner of his interface.
Alvian sat back on his mattress and let the strategic implications settle in. The System wasn’t just a slot machine. It was an economy. And every economy had loopholes.
The loop was self-reinforcing. Pity Accelerator plus low rolls equaled more KP. More KP equaled Probability Modifiers. Probability Modifiers equaled higher rolls. Higher rolls equaled more EXP. More EXP equaled higher stats. Higher stats equaled deeper Warren dives. Deeper Warren dives equaled more base EXP for Gambler’s Delay pools.
Each piece fed the next. Bad luck wasn’t punishment, it was investment. Good luck wasn’t free, it was the return on that investment.
He spent the next three hours cataloguing everything he knew about the System’s mechanics. Roll frequencies from the past week. KP gain rates. EXP allocation efficiency at different VIT levels. Flesh Limit thresholds and how they scaled.
He built a mental spreadsheet. For farming Rank 1 and Rank 2 monsters individually, consistent low-to-mid rolls provided steady EXP. Low variance, reliable growth. For boss fights or nest encounters, Gambler’s Delay with its single pooled roll offered exponential upside at the cost of massive variance.
For KP farming, the optimal strategy was counterintuitive. Fight weaker enemies where low rolls were acceptable. Every sub-5x roll generated KP. With the Pity Accelerator active, each low roll generated double. Fighting Sludge Beetles in the upper Rift, which he could now kill effortlessly at Level 19, would generate KP faster than fighting Ironjaw Rats in the Warrens where every roll mattered for survival.
The irony was sharp. The path to the most powerful Probability Modifiers ran through the weakest enemies in the weakest Rift.
Martha coughed in her sleep. The crystalline rasp echoed off the thin walls, softer than a week ago but unmistakable. He looked at her hand resting on the blanket. The grey patches on her fingertips had not spread since yesterday, but they had not receded either.
The medicine was holding. Barely. But the underlying crystallization continued its slow, patient invasion of her body. Suppressants fought symptoms. They did not reverse damage. She needed a Purifier, and Purifiers cost thousands of credits that he did not have.
Being poor was truly the most resilient disease of all.
The upcoming Rank Evaluation Tournament offered a 200-credit monthly stipend for top performers. Enough to cover Martha’s medicine for months. But fighting publicly meant exposing his capabilities, and exposing capabilities meant attracting attention from the Academy, from noble families, from people who asked questions he could not answer.
He needed to be strong enough to win without revealing how strong he actually was. A narrow margin that required precise calibration.
The Re-Roll Token would be essential for that. One re-spin on a critical moment could shift an entire fight. But twenty KP was eight more than he currently had. Eight low rolls with the Pity Accelerator active meant four kills with bad luck. Four beetles in the upper Rift, maybe an hour of farming.
He could do that tomorrow. Today his body needed rest.
He allocated another two thousand EXP to VIT, pushing it from 34 to 35. The warmth spread through his muscles, reinforcing tired fibers and accelerating the lingering micro-tears from yesterday’s EXP flood.
[EXP Bank: ~78,650]
He still had a massive reserve. The question was how to spend it. Dumping everything into one stat created imbalances. Spreading too thin created mediocrity. The optimal approach was targeted allocation based on immediate needs.
For the tournament, he needed speed. AGI determined reaction time, dodge capability, and Clearwater Palm delivery speed. He allocated another three thousand to AGI.
[AGI: 19 -> 22]
The increase was noticeable. His fingers moved faster when he flexed them. His peripheral awareness sharpened. The dim apartment felt like it had brightened slightly, his visual processing speed increasing with his neural response time.
He sat in the dark apartment, status panel glowing, and planned. Tomorrow he would return to the Warrens.
Then the Academy. The Combat Assessment was coming, and Darius Magnus had already promised a public stage for humiliation.
He checked his updated profile one final time.
┌──────[ Profile]──────┐
│ [Host]: Alvian Vance
│ [Level]: 19 (Mortal Tier)
│ [Talent]: Clearwater [E-Rank]
│ [Skills]: Clearwater Palm [E-Rank]
│ [STR]: 20 | [AGI]: 22 | [VIT]: 35
│ [INT]: 11 | [Essence]: 12
│ [Karma Points]: 12
│ [EXP Bank]: ~73,650 / ∞
│ [Active Effects]: Pity Accelerator (21:47:33)
│ [System Shop]: Unlocked
└───────────────┘
The Pity Accelerator timer counted down steadily in the corner of his vision. Every second was a wasted opportunity if he wasn’t fighting. But his body needed today.
Alvian closed the interface and stared at the ceiling. Martha’s breathing hitched, then steadied. Leo’s charcoal drawing of the stick figure with the oversized sword stared at him from the far wall.
The Flesh Limit Expansion item lingered in his thoughts. The Shop description said it temporarily increased safe EXP absorption by 500 for 24 hours. That meant for one day, his body could handle 500 more EXP per influx without the Emergency Protocol diverting it to the Bank. On a big roll, that was 500 more EXP going directly into stats instead of sitting in storage.
But the permanent implications were bigger. If the System offered temporary expansions, it might offer permanent ones at higher KP thresholds. The Flesh Limit was the single biggest bottleneck in his progression. Every high roll nearly killed him because his body couldn’t handle the throughput. Raising that ceiling permanently would change everything.
He filed the thought away and closed his eyes.
Tomorrow he would hunt. Tonight he would heal. And somewhere in the back of his mind, a number pulsed like a heartbeat.
Twenty KP. The Re-Roll Token. Eight more low rolls to go.