Chapter 26: Plan

As Eric left the treasury and met back up with Darren outside the door, he showed him the item he had chosen… one of them, at least.

Darren looked at the bottle of Fatigue Relieving Pills and had an impressed look on his face.

"Why did you choose these pills, instead of the Qi Gathering Pills? Wouldn't having a faster speed of cultivation be more beneficial?" he asked Eric with a smile on his face, awaiting his answer.

Eric replied calmly to this question.

"I already have really high aptitudes, which makes my cultivation speed quite impressive, even without the help of pills. However, having a faster speed of absorption won't help a cultivator who is already fatigued and can't cultivate anymore.

I often tend to cultivate for longer periods of time, but after about 4 hours of cultivating my soul, I feel like my limit has been reached and need rest. This interrupts my cultivation and reduces the time which I can cultivate for in a day.

With the Fatigue Relieving Pills, I will be able to solve this issue and won't necessarily have a slow speed due to my intrinsic aptitude already being the highest, for the soul."

Darren nodded his head as he listened to Eric; he was impressed by how wise the decisions a child of his age made were.

"Very well, then. Now that you have chosen your reward, let's go back to the Miller Estate."

Saying this, Darren started walking away from the door of the treasury while Eric quickly followed suit.

They traced their way back to the original pathway hidden behind the bookshelf in the Miller Estate's Manor and entered back into the large house after a couple minutes of walking and teleportation.

Once Eric was reunited with his family, they thanked Darren, Patricia, Liam, Lily and old Richard for the celebratory lunch and good time in general; after which they left for their house.

***

Back in his room, Eric checked the Scam System for notifications. Since he had scammed Darren and gotten a pretty decent reward along with a mysterious item, he assumed that this would give him enough experience points to level up at least once.

[Congratulations!

You have leveled up.

Scam Level: 3

(350/350 Experience Points)

Level Up Reward: "Mental Energy Gathering Pill (10)"]

[Congratulations!

You have leveled up.

Scam Level: 4

(400/500 Experience Points)

Level Up Reward: Charm +1]

Eric was surprised by the sheer amount of experience points he got, but knowing the mysterious nature of the True Qi Stone, he assumed that was the reason for leveling up twice from one scam, along with the experience points booster of course.

Temporarily taking his mind off of the True Qi Stone, Eric focused on his level up rewards.

'Mental Energy Gathering Pills?' Eric thought to himself as he checked what these pills were.

[Mental Energy Gathering Pill

Tier: 1st Tier

Effect: Aids the user in gathering Mental Energy into their Mental Spheres and consequently increases the speed of Mind Cultivation to double of what it was previously for two hours. These have the same effect on the Mind which Qi Gathering Pills have on the Soul and Body.

Quantity: 10]

Eric smiled as he confirmed his suspicions.

With the Fatigue Relieving Pills which he obtained from the first floor of the Treasure Pagoda's treasury along with the Mental Energy Gathering Pills he had just received, his Mind Cultivation will progress at a rapid speed.

He also checked his communication skills menu to see how much they had increased from his previous scam.

[Communication Skills Menu

Persuasion: 9

Intimidation: 10

Charm: 7]

He had gained 1350 experience points and 15 stat points in his communication skills in general. 13 of these points were because of the 1300 experience points he obtained. The 50 points from this time and 50 from level 2 carried over into one extra stat point; and finally, one from the reward for level 4.

Since he used all three paths of cultivation while proving his aptitude was higher than Liam and Lily's, he got 4 points in all three of the communication skills.

The remaining points went to Intimidation, the reason for which Eric assumed was that he had the highest aptitude in the Soul and that was the only path where he clearly outclassed both of the twins.

Finally, the last point went to the charm stat, as that was what he had received from the level up reward.

While rejoicing about his rewards and increase in communication skills, Eric noticed that there were only 100 experience points remaining for him to level up once again.

He started to think about other people he could possibly scam with the time he had left.

'Right now, it's the evening. At night I will be fully focused on cultivating my mind so I won't have time to scam anyone then. Since I activated the 24 hours booster in the afternoon today, I will have time till the afternoon tomorrow to scam someone.

This leaves me with a couple hours in the evening right now, along with some more time tomorrow in the morning.'

Eric assessed his situation rather calmly and started thinking of other people to scam. Since his double experience points booster was still active, Eric was trying to milk it as much as possible till the very minute it ended.

After a while of thinking, he came up with an idea.

'Every morning, while running around the borders of the forest, I see those kids at their usual spot where I met them first. Qi Gathering Herbs are some of the most basic and easily found herbs, so there is a pretty good chance that at least some of them would have grown back in these couple of days.

I am pretty sure about my hypothesis, but to confirm it, I will have to wait till morning. For now, the best thing to do is cultivate.'

He sat in a meditative posture and started cultivating his soul. Since Eric had been at the Miller Estate for the afternoon, he didn't have much time to cultivate his soul. He decided to make use of the free time he had in the evening to cultivate instead.

Eric had seemed to get more serious about his cultivation after the incidents in the afternoon. In a world where there were arrays which could teleport you and mysterious stones which he wasn't strong enough to know the abilities of existed, it was as if he was constantly reminded of his own lack of strength.

This, however, did not put him off and only increased his determination towards increasing his strength and level in the Scam System. The confused guy from earth who didn't understand what this game world was a few days ago had now blossomed into a young man fully dedicated to cultivation.