Chapter 60: Rags to riches?

Rain watched Peter walk down the lit walkway toward his building before turning on his heel and heading toward his own block at C-12.

The dorm room was cold and quiet when Rain pushed the narrow wooden door open.

The air inside smelled faintly of stale laundry and the cheap floor cleaner the maintenance droids used in the hallways. A single sliver of pale moonlight cut across the floor from the window. Jansen was already in his cot on the far side of the room, his back turned to the door, his breathing slow and even.

Rain didn’t bother turning on the main overhead light. He kicked off his soaked boots by the narrow entryway, letting them drop onto the linoleum, and walked quietly to the small sink in the corner.

He turned the tap, splashing cold water over his face and scrubbing the dried grime, mud, and crusty black monster blood from his skin. The reflection in the small, cracked mirror showed a pale eighteen-year-old with bruised cheeks, swollen knuckles, and bright blue eyes that looked entirely out of place against the exhaustion etched into his features.

He dried his face with a ragged hand towel, pulled his soaked hoodie off, and hung it over the back of his wooden desk chair. His ribs were still aching, a dull, thumping pain that radiated through his chest whenever he took a deep breath.

His current state was rough. He was sitting at 31 HP out of his maximum, his body feeling like it had been run over by a haul truck, and his Mana was slowly trickling back up from the eleven points he had used during the final fight.

Rain sat down on the edge of his thin mattress, keeping his movements quiet so he wouldn’t wake Jansen across the room, and pulled his phone from his pocket. The screen lit up, showing a single unread text from Nyra sent four hours ago.

Nyra: ’Forty-eight hours started yesterday. Did you clear the rift or am I finding another partner?’

Rain tapped his thumb against the glass, typing a quick reply.

Rain: ’Cleared. I’m in for the party. Meet me at the west gate coffee stand tomorrow’

He set the phone down on his knee. Less than two minutes later, the screen buzzed with a short reply.

Nyra: ’Good. Don’t be late. I already set the deposit for the independent registration paperwork.’

Rain let out a quiet breath, a faint trace of relief settling in his chest. Nyra was pragmatic, sharp, and didn’t care about academy politics or guild lines. Working with her meant having a reliable partner who knew how to handle field pressure without asking unnecessary questions about his growth speed.

He set the phone on his nightstand, leaned his back against the cold wall, and focused his thoughts inward.

’Status,’ he thought.

[Status Panel]

[Name: Rain]

[Level: 12]

[XP: 786 / 1,100]

[HP: 31 / 130]

[Mana: 8 / 14]

[Attributes]

[Strength: 23]

[Agility: 16]

[Endurance: 22]

[Intelligence: 21]

[Unallocated Attribute Points: 15]

[Synthesis Credits: 772]

Rain stared at the floating blue text, his eyes lingering on the unallocated fifteen points. Tonight’s triple level-up had handed him a massive chunk of raw growth, the largest single surge of stat points he had ever held at one time.

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his mind analyzing his current attribute distribution.

When he had first unlocked the system interface, he had been given a direct explanation regarding Intelligence: the system had explicitly stated that Intelligence governed the regeneration speed of his Mana pool, one point of Mana per sixty minutes while resting, and one point per one hundred eighty minutes during active movement, based on his baseline stats at the time.

However, through his own informal tracking over the past few weeks, Rain had begun to notice a second layer to the math. Every time he had invested points into Endurance or Intelligence, his maximum HP and Mana ceilings had shifted upward alongside them. His working hypothesis was simple: Endurance directly expanded his maximum HP capacity, while Intelligence expanded his maximum Mana capacity, in addition to driving its recovery speed.

Yet, as he looked at his numbers right now, Rain acknowledged the tension in his own logic. He hadn’t fully mathematically confirmed the exact scaling ratio. Was it five HP per point of Endurance? More? Was the Mana expansion linear, or did it scale on a curve once Intelligence crossed certain numerical thresholds? The system hadn’t handed him a neat formula sheet for attribute scaling. His mental model was getting clearer with every level, but it was still an incomplete hypothesis, not a proven fact.

’Regardless of the exact ratio,’ Rain thought, staring at the blue numbers, ’I need a higher Mana pool if I’m going to use Flash Step more than three times in a single fight.’

At three Mana per cast, his current maximum of fourteen Mana was a severe choke point. Three uses of Flash Step left him with two points of Mana, completely locking him out of a fourth dash and leaving no margin for error. If he had faced a second phase against the Husk Regent tonight, his mobility would have collapsed entirely.

He needed more Agility to handle high-speed reactions without relying solely on skill bursts, more Strength to ensure his physical blows could bypass calcified armor, and enough Intelligence to raise his Mana ceiling, giving him room for more full casts of Flash Step.

Rain focused his mind on the interface, selecting the fifteen unallocated points and distributing them with cold, deliberate intent.

He put four points into Strength, pushing his raw physical output from 23 to 27.

He put four points into Agility, raising his base reaction speed and movement fluidness from 16 to 20.

He put three points into Endurance to reinforce his physical framework and HP ceiling, moving it from 22 to 25.

He put four points into Intelligence, raising his cognitive speed and Mana capacity from 21 to 25.

[Attribute Points Distributed]

[Strength: 23 -> 27] 𝑓𝑟ℯℴ𝓂

[Agility: 16 -> 20]

[Endurance: 22 -> 25]

[Intelligence: 21 -> 25]

[Stat Calculations Updating...]

[Max HP: 130 -> 160]

[Max Mana: 14 -> 20]

[Current Status:]

[HP: 31 / 160]

[Mana: 8 / 20]

Rain watched the numbers adjust. His maximum HP jumped by thirty points, settling at 160, while his maximum Mana pool expanded from fourteen to twenty.

He felt a faint, subtle shift deep within his muscles, a slight tightening of his core, a sudden, subtle clarity in his peripheral vision as his Agility crossed the twenty-point threshold, and a faint cool sensation at the back of his neck as his expanded Mana ceiling integrated into his system framework.

The relationship between Intelligence and Mana pool size was clearly real, but the exact underlying math still had subtle inconsistencies he couldn’t fully map yet. He filed the thought away for later observation.

’Now for the inventory,’ Rain thought, glancing once across the room to make sure Jansen hadn’t stirred. The other boy’s breathing stayed slow and even, undisturbed.

He stood up, walked over to his hoodie hanging on the chair, and reached into the damp front pocket. He pulled out the three Gravewright cores first, setting them down carefully and quietly on the wooden desk surface. They were smooth, dark gray spheres, roughly the size of large walnuts, radiating a faint, dull hum of localized spatial energy.

Rain focused on the cores and summoned the system store interface.

[Inventory Item Detected: Gravewright Core (D-Rank High) x3]

[Sell to System Store?]

[Estimated Value: 95 Synthesis Credits per unit]

The valuation matched the established baseline for D-Rank High cores he had checked during previous store evaluations. Ninety-five SC per core was a fair return for system liquidity, especially since these were unrefined raw drops from non-boss entities.

’Sell all three,’ Rain confirmed in his mind.

[Items Sold: Gravewright Core (D-Rank High) x3]

[+285 Synthesis Credits Applied]

[Current Balance: 1,057 SC]

His banked Synthesis Credits crossed the thousand mark, sitting comfortably at 1,057 SC.

Rain then reached back into his hoodie pocket and pulled out the final object: the Husk Regent’s core.

It was massive, nearly as large as a fist, its surface covered in jagged, geometric facets that caught the dim light of the dorm room. Unlike the dull gray of the Gravewright cores, the Regent’s core pulsed with a deep, liquid crimson light, feeling noticeably heavy and warm in his palm.

He hovered his mind over the system store option to test its value.

[Inventory Item Detected: Husk Regent Core (C-Rank Boss)]

[Sell to System Store?]

[Estimated Value: 450 Synthesis Credits]

Rain looked at the prompt, then slowly shook his head, closing the store interface.

He thought about the Bone Widow core, the one he and Nyra had sold to Gideon weeks ago. Eighteen thousand credits total, even with Gideon lowballing them the whole negotiation and no provenance seal to back it up. This core wasn’t smaller or weaker than that one. If anything, something that had grown strong enough to absorb traits from everything it killed was worth just as much, maybe more, to the right buyer.

Selling it into the System Store for a few hundred Synthesis Credits would be throwing away real money. Synthesis Credits bought him potions and gear tiers he still couldn’t reasonably afford outright, but they weren’t going to pay down his tuition debt or cover rent once he left the academy. Real credits could.

He crossed the room quietly, pulled open his small wooden locker beside the desk, wrapped the core in a spare shirt folded inside, and tucked it into the back corner behind his other belongings.

Rain sat back down on his mattress, stretching his legs out.

The room was silent now, save for Jansen’s steady breathing from across the room. The initial rush of the fight, the long walk back, and the administrative cleanup were all behind him.

He leaned his head back against the wall, closed his eyes, and allowed his focus to rest on the single, silver-bordered window that had been hovering quietly in his peripheral vision since the moment the Husk Regent had died.

[Hidden Mission Complete: The Last Root]

[Special Reward Unlocked]

[View Rewards? (Y/N)]

Rain stared at the flashing prompt in the dark of his room, his heart giving a single, steady thump against his ribs.

’Yes,’ Rain thought.