The first thing I saw after passing through the rift was the policemen outside. They still had my face fresh in their memory. It had only been a few hours since I entered with Mike.
"You?" one of them said, frowning.
I could tell something was wrong. They weren’t expecting me there.
"Yes," I said, "why? What’s wrong?"
One officer walked over to me, placed his hands on my shoulders, and sighed in relief.
"Your group left earlier, and they said you were dead. I’m glad you’re not."
I thought that Mike and everyone else would try to get some monster crystals before leaving the dungeon. It seemed that wasn’t the case. Maybe they were just too scared after what happened, so they wanted to leave the dungeon and continue their adventure another day.
"I’m good, I’m good."
I left the underground area of the Pike Place Market. It was close to lunchtime, so there were lots of people walking around. So many that it was hard to walk without bumping into someone.
My belly was aching with hunger, but I didn’t stop for lunch. No, I took the train back to the poor area where I lived. I wanted to return to the warehouse as fast as possible to use the crystals I’d just gotten from the dungeon.
Or rather, the crystals that the slime ate and gave back to me 10x. Just thinking about that made me smile.
I got back to the SODO district. The cranes and cargo trains were going full speed, making so much noise that I wanted to turn around and go back to the dungeon. That’s how bad the place was.
The guy who rented me a portion of the warehouse was there when I got back.
A bald man with a chubby belly, probably from too much beer.
"Hey, Vince," he said, beer in hand, "you’ve got one week to pay rent, remember that."
I only nodded and got back to my place. No reason to argue with him. He didn’t say another word to me.
A portion of the warehouse had been turned into tiny homes, basically worse than being in jail. That’s where I lived. Others lived there too. I barely spoke to them. Everyone just kept doing their own thing.
But one thing I was sure of: the other people living there were doing some shady business. The landlord too. I’d seen that guy meeting with weird dudes at 1 a.m. to deliver crates. Definitely not good.
Once inside my private room, with everything shut, I took the slime out of my pocket dimension. The little creature was happy to finally jump around in a bigger space.
"Don’t make too much noise," I told it, "no one can know about you."
I had to keep the slime, or rather its ability, a secret. That could attract really bad people, and I couldn’t protect us.
Anyway, I let the slime jump around while I picked up the monster crystals sitting on the mattress on the ground.
One by one, I absorbed them. Each one took around 10 seconds, and I had to keep my eyes closed and stand still, so it wasn’t exactly easy.
A blue light formed around my body every time I absorbed a crystal. The place I lived in barely had a window, so no one would see it. At least that miserable warehouse was good for something.
With that many crystals, it would take a few hours to get through them all, but I knew it would be worth it in the end. So I sat there for hours, absorbing all the common monster crystals.
I absorbed a total of 1500. That was a lot. Obviously, their effect diminished as my attributes increased. To improve faster, I’d need higher-grade crystals.
But by the end of it, my stats had jumped. Before, I had 1 or 2 attributes. Pretty shit.
Now?
[Name: Vincent Crane]
[STR: 53]
[AGI: 70]
[VIT: 41]
[WIL: 15]
A massive jump. WILL was harder to improve since it was directly linked to my ability. The higher my WILL, the more I could control and use my powers.
It was hard to raise that stat. It required specific crystals. Gladly, I had a few.
Now, that wasn’t all. I still had 10 crystals that would directly improve my ability.
Those were the ones I was most excited to use. Increasing my basic attributes was cool and all, but improving my powers was exactly what I wanted.
With a rank F ability, how could I even dream of achieving greatness? I’d never get into the New Order Hunter’s Academy with that.
The slime was near me on the mattress, asleep. It had been like that for a few hours. I didn’t think it was hungry or anything, so I just let it be.
Anyway, I took out the crystals and absorbed them. These took much longer than the normal ones, about 10 minutes each.
When it ended, I could feel something different in me. My ability wasn’t as weak as before, same as my body.
I opened the system tab to take a look and was shocked by what I could do with my ability now.