Chapter 31

Portia was startled by Darius' sudden appearance, but collected herself and said: "Master Darius, I have prepared a new change of clothes for you."

She presented him with a fine green long-sleeved shirt that had embroidered flowers on the back and predatory animals on the front, as well as fitting black pants that were made of cotton.

Darius tilted his head in slight confusion. "How come you have clothes my size?"

It was strange, to say the least. Derek was well built for physical activity in a technology-deprived world. Compared to Darius, who at the age of 13 on Earth had grown up without the burden of doing any chores or working on a farm for his food, obviously, his own physique would be far worse and make him scrawny in comparison.

Portia looked like she had expected this question and bashfully answered. "Actually, they were meant for my brother, to be used in case he ever was to meet noble guests from afar, but I alterated them while you were bathing."

Darius blinked and took the shirt. Carefully turning it inside out, he noticed that there was a second seam set into the side of the original seam that reduced the width of the shirt, making it tighter.

Darius smiled thankfully towards Portia and showed his appreciation with kind words, to which she blushed and quickly played it off as if it was nothing. Despite his amicability on the surface, on the inside, he was frowning heavily.

This seemed to be worse than your average crush. Portia appeared to have already developed an obsession with him in this short time where if the two of them had been classmates, she would have undoubtedly spent almost the whole school day staring at Darius' back.

Alas, it made Darius feel as if he was a beautiful female/handsome male teacher in a class filled with teens, with one of her male/his female students openly displaying attraction towards them.

Unlike in the various fictional media, it was not something to pat yourself on the back about.

It felt… it felt sad, pathetic, and discomfiting to be honest.

If it would be a fellow adult who had fallen for you, it would be something to boost one's ego, but attracting a child with no control over their hormones felt no different from spiking their drink.

Not in the illegal/taboo sense of it, but the pitiful/disgraceful aspect of it. He also felt discomforted because - like any teacher or adult in this situation with actual sexual morals - he didn't want to hurt the young one's feelings.

At puberty, this kind of thing could shatter their budding self-esteem and hurt them emotionally in ways that weren't easy to predict. That was why most teachers/adults who found themselves in such a delicate situation just pretended like they were blissfully unaware of it happening.

In reality, it was very likely that they were all frantically praying it would go away once the teen would grow up and start to notice his/her age-mates, shifting their interest away.

Ironically, Darius was pitiful in the sense that he was her actual age-mate physically, so he had no easy way out to reject her. There was a gap in their statuses that had prevented Portia from being more forceful or direct towards him, but he had no idea how long it would hold her back if her infatuation festered.

Darius scratched his head and sighed. He walked through the hallways with his towel and entered the room Portia showed him, much to the young lady's shock. The house was very large, proving that Darius' memory was quite good if he could remember the way to his room with ease.

Admittedly, while his memory was pretty perfect, in this instance he had just used the minimap to guide his way back. Upon entry, he politely shooed the expectant Portia away and dressed up.

Now bathed and refreshed, Darius began to move to phase 1.5, the short interlude before he started phase 2 of his plan.

Darius had to verify two particular things he had put aside while he had been in the wild because he had lacked an easy solution to them or had required human presence for confirmation.

The first was the limits of the Transmutation ability's 5th rule. The second was his class' default Analyze skill.

[Rule #5: Items that are owned by the user can be converted into Conversion Points.]

This was probably the most decisively utilitarian feature of this ability. It was something that turned the tables and made what was already a very powerful skill essentially unmatchable.

Darius had a hard limit of CP every day. According to Rule #1, it was limited to 10 CP a day at his current stage, but there were many things he desired that exceeded such an amount.

He had used loopholes to get what he needed in the end, though it was not possible for some other things.

Items owned could be converted into CP and those CP were obviously not part of the default 10. Now, Darius had drafted 7 questions from this.

1. Was it possible for him to circumvent the hard limit or was it merely for him to fill it up?

2. If he ended up spending all 10 of his daily CP and added 10 CP from converting owned items down, would he have 20 CP after midnight or would the system count his reservoir as 'full'?

3. If he spent some of his daily CP, say about 5, and added another 5 or more from converting items down, would he have the remaining 5 replaced, or would the whole thing be replaced with the default 10 points like usual?

4. Could he convert specific parts of items down to CP or was he required to convert the whole thing?

5. Was there an expiration date for 'extra' CP gained through this manner. Surely, it wouldn't be discarded daily, but could it be kept for weeks? Months? Years?

6. If he was converting an item and had access to both daily CP and 'extra' CP, which one would be used first, and would he have a choice in the matter?

7. What exactly was the criteria for 'Items that are owned by the user'?

The issue here was that because of question 7, Darius could not even assess the first 6 questions. Up until now, he had been unable to convert anything down, because none of the items he had acquired had fulfilled this criterion!