I Never Run Out of Mana Chapter 5

I went straight to the dungeon after lying that I have to go to the library at the crack of dawn.
The hip sack I prepared was pretty full.
I didn’t eat or drink anything except for the breakfast that my mother prepared.
But I didn’t feel anything like hunger or dehydration.
I once again realised how frightening human greed is.

It was about 9 pm when the sun was going down.
14 hours of continuous hunting… and the hip sack which was as big as my excited heart!
Going back, my footsteps were light rather than being heavy.

On the way home, I go to a busy  ‘Awakened Market’ street and entered into one of the stores.
A place which trades ‘blood stones’ and sells Awakened weapons, armour, and such.
It’s a place that I had never paid any attention to… but now, I wonder how many of them there were.

“Welcome!”

The owner who is wearing a neat suit greets me.
I can clearly see that his gaze towards me, who looks pretty young, isn’t nice.
He’s definitely viewing me as a brat who will touch this and that and ask annoying questions.
I observe that two robust men are standing next to the owner.
People who use this place are mainly Awakened. By using their powers, they could harm the store’s business, so those two are probably hired bodyguards.

“Yes, h.e.l.lo.”

I give a simple greeting, untie the hip sack and place it on the counter.
The owner’s eyes become big as he looks at the puffed up hip sack.

“I’m disposing of all this.”

I say as I raise my head up.
The owner, who looked at the hip sack’s contents more closely, slowly shrinks back.
His disappointment is clearly shown.

‘Eh? This isn’t the scenario I envisioned would happen?’

The owner doesn’t even give me time to panic and opens his mouth.

“You got this all from a level 1 dungeon right?”
“Yes.”
“It’s all F rank, and there’s 1 transcendent F rank one too.”

Anxiousness a.s.saulted me with the owner’s expression and words.
I didn’t know the commercial rate of the ‘blood stones’ and just constantly hunted.

“45 small ones! And 1 big one!”

I quickly reply like a child who’s pleading for innocence after being unjustly accused of something.

I went to around 30 dungeons today.
I counted all the stones one by one and carefully put them in the hip sack.
It might look like I’m a miser, but counting all that wasn’t annoying! Or hard! Or confusing!
Therefore, I could only feel down in front of this harvest after all my effort.

“It looks like you just Awakened and hunted all this time to get all this… F ranked essences don’t go for that much.”

This piece of dog s.h.i.+t!
I regain my temper and carefully ask.

“Then how much would it all be?”

My chin that didn’t know how tall the sky was raised itself and quickly found its proper place.
The owner who touched his tablet PC once or twice replies.

“Let’s see… The current price for F rank is 20 thousand won, transcendent F rank is about 50 thousand won. If what you said about the amount is correct…”

The owner keeps talking while punching numbers on a calculator.

“It comes to be about 950 thousand won.”

Ah… no…. It’s only 20 thousand won, 50 thousand one per…
It’s only 950 thousand…

TLN: 100 won = roughly 1 USD. Well, that’s what it was last time I checked. So the MC’s total comes to $9500.

Eh?!
Did this guy get heatstroke or something? Cheap?!
You cosplaying as Mansour?

TLN: He’s referring to Sheikh Mansour the billionaire, owner of the English Football Club, Manchester City.

Disappointment quickly turned into  joy, and I felt a thrill from the top of my head to the tip of my toes.

“So, would you like it in cash, or do you want it in ‘Awakened Credit’?

The store owner asks while putting the blood stones in a stone counter.
The counter splits the small stones and the big stone up, and quickly figures out the price.

“Eh? What’s… that ‘Awakened Credit’ thing?”

The look he had towards me when we first met is all gone and he now has a look towards me as if saying I was cute, and asks:

“Really, you haven’t been an Awakened for long huh?
“Yeah, haha…”

I take a wipe-your-nose-with-your-hand pose and make an embarra.s.sing smile.

“The a.s.sociation doesn’t even explain things like this, freaking governments.”

The owner, who mumbles to himself speaks to me.

“You have your ‘Awakened Certificate’ right?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“You can use it like a debit card. Give it here.”
“Ok, here you go.”

As I hand over the certificate I feel embarra.s.sed at my non-existent knowledge, and yet feel proud that I’m experiencing a world that not all people can get into.
As the certificate is put into the card terminal some information about me comes up.

“Do you remember your pa.s.sword that you made?”
“Yes! I remember.”
“Ok, put the pa.s.sword in here.”

‘1004’; you probably think that this is simple and dumb right?
But this number is the most important number to me.
My mother’s birthday is on the 4th of October.

TLN: In Korea it’s mm/dd/yyyy I believe.

As I enter in the pa.s.sword it displays the information about my latest card usage, and the amount of money I have in it.

The market owner says this as he puts his credit card into the other side of the terminal.

“Item price 950 thousand won, I’ll transfer it.”
“Wait! Do you have the Lightning Spray Skill Book?”

The owner once again looks at me as if I was cute.

“Even if you buy it you can’t use it. The mana cost is abnormally high. Hm… Do you want me to suggest you something different?”
“No! I’m buying it as a gift.”
“Oh, well then…”

The price was 1 million won.
It’s a bit higher than the online price, but the owner gave it to me for 900 thousand won while saying ‘Please keep coming.’
After finis.h.i.+ng the trade and checking the money left in my card, I get out of the store confidently.
The Skill Book ‘Lightning Spray’, which I thought I would get ages later, was bought on the first day of dungeon hunting.

“Unbelievable…”

Only a few days ago I got almost beaten to death because of a mere 2000 won.
But now?
It’s like money doesn’t feel like money.
Like harvesting plants from a mountain, all I did was pick up blood stones from a dungeon.
I chuckled and went home.
***
It was 10pm when I got home.
On the first day of the holidays, from the first hunt I got an unbelievable sum of money.
I stare at the ‘Lightning Spray’ Skill Book.
The Skill Book is about the same size as a manhwa.
When I open it up there are indecipherable hieroglyphs.
To obtain a skill, you have to place the ‘Skill Book’ on your chest and wait about 10 seconds.
As I put the Skill Book on my chest, a gentle light comes out and slowly sublimates.

[Would you learn the skill ‘Lightning Spray’?]

“Of course! Absolutely! Yes!”

[You have learned the skill ‘Lightning Spray.’]

Kim Min-Cheol
Level : 7
Exp : [4200/6400]
Cla.s.s : Magician
Special Ability : Mana doesn’t run out.
Strength: 10
Mana : ∞  
Agility : 10
Vitality : 10
Unspent Points : 30
Current Skills
Frost Orb Lv. 8 [1450/12,800]
Lightning Spray Lv. 0 [0/100]

My gaze rests on the name ‘Lightning Spray’ only for a moment.
The 30 unspent points attracted my eyes.
I didn’t upgrade my stats yet.

Currently, I don’t run out of mana, and a mana quant.i.ty didn’t exist.
The mana stat affects the quant.i.ty of mana I can hold and the regeneration rate of mana.
Therefore I had no reason to put points into the mana stat.
Strength upgrades battle speed, stamina, accuracy as well as power.
That’s the reason why Magician cla.s.s Awakened are less popular than Warrior cla.s.s Awakened.
Of course, you can’t select which one you get.

When a warrior and a magician are the same level, have similar ranks of equipment, then the only difference between them are the ma.s.sive difference between their stats.
The only way to close this gap is to have strong skills and high skill levels.
Ah~I forgot something, the thing which allows you to constantly use those skills, the mana gauge!
This is probably why the Skill Books for the magician cla.s.s are expensive.
Anyway, even though I’m a magician I don’t need to put any points into mana.
Therefore I feel that the most important stat right now is strength.

Even though casting spells at a range is relatively safe, as the dungeon level goes up a high level monster could possibly be able attack me once.
Let’s say that I raised my agility, and avoided most of the attacks. But what if I get unlucky and get hit once?

‘Few days later~ few days later~ meet him across the Jordan River!’
I ignore the strange voice support and use the 30 points I got from levelling into strength.
Because it’s hard to reset your stats, I put them in cautiously and carefully.