The First Ring

(Day 9)

5.31 A.M.

Today is Saturday, August 26, 2023.

There are 2 more days until the beginning of Arc 1.

I also need to prepare more things to deal with that day.

Yesterday I decided to practice Mana all day, and it finally got to F+.

----Potentials----

[Mana] (F+) (!)

Description: You are a beginner in using Mana

-Mana Concentrating (Lv.2 → Lv.3)

Efficiency (+7 → +10%)

-Mana Transforming (Lv.2)

Efficiency +4

-Mana Infusing (Lv.2 → Lv.3)

Efficiency (+2.5 → +4%)

-Mana Maintaining (Lv.1 → Lv.2)

Efficiency (+5% → +7%)

----------

Even my [Basic Mana Core] trait has ranked up to F+ rank after 2 hours of patching up some of its gaps.

But I've only fixed the biggest gaps, I'll fix the rest gradually.

'But for the time being, it's okay.'

[Store: 11 (F-) → 13.2 (F).]

"Fixing the mistake also increased more than I thought."

[Mana: 40.5 → 41.6 (C-).]

My mana should now be on par with those at the bottom of the school.

But my physical stats are still very far from being matched with anyone in the combat department.

Although I still have to practice more and train my body more, if I increase my Mana, my training speed will also increase faster.

In addition, my [Intelligence] stat is steadily growing.

[Intelligence 2.3 → 2.69 (Unranked).] (!)

This will soon come to realm F as well.

I went to the cafeteria early in the morning to have some breakfast.

After eating, I went right to the teacher room.

Spiral Academy's rules are quite strict.

If cadets want to leave the school campus for a short time, they must have proper permission from their homeroom teacher.

'Ah, my form teacher is Takagi Kenzo, the one who supervised my [Strength] test last time.'

Opening the door of the room, I saw many teachers sitting and preparing lesson plans.

I looked around for a while and saw someone asking.

"Oh, what grade are you in?"

"Yes, sir, I'm an A-class student."

"That's great! Just keep learning and growing, okay?"

"Yes, sir."

"And why are you wearing a mask… do you have any health problems…?"

'Ah, I'm used to wearing a mask these days because I'm afraid of being criticized.'

"Yes, it's something like that…"

"Okay… then why did you come here so early."

"I came to see my homeroom teacher."

"Ah, Kenzo-sensei right?"

The teacher pointed to the far end of the room and said to me:

"Just go out there and you'll be fine."

"Yes, thank you, sir."

"Nothing, nothing."

I followed the direction the instructor pointed out.

As I walked, I looked around here. This place is much larger and cleaner than my high school.

'Even though I only went to school for nearly a year, I stopped, but I was also the class president, so I went there quite a lot.'

"Are you Amemura Ryoshu?"

Oh, that is exactly the voice that I heard the other day.

"I am Takagi Kenzo, the homeroom of Class A this year and of course for the next four years. Haha"

"Good morning, sir,"

"You did really well on the test, Amemura cadet."

"I'm still really weak, sir."

"It's alright, practice makes perfect. And your accuracy is super good already so just keep working on it."

"Thank you, sir."

"So why did you come here?"

"I'm coming here to get permission to leave school."

"Oh, you have something to go outside? Here, let me write a permission letter for you."

The teacher used Levitation Magic on 5 pens and wrote using all of them at the same time.

In just a few seconds, the permission letter was done already.

It proved that his ability to control Mana must be very high to do so.

Not to mention he can also write quickly and beautifully with his Levitation Magic.

He controlled the paper to fly onto his hand and he gave it to me:

"Here you go."

"Thank you."

"Remember to come back early!"

"Yes, sir."

My goal today is to find the blood-sucking ring.

A special ring capable of draining the user's life point.

Because I have a plan, of course.

Then I'll go explore the hidden dungeon to find the ring that heals the user continuously.

When combining them, my vitality will continuously decrease and immediately refill at the same time, that way I won't die but just feel kinda uncomfortable.

In return, my [Endurance] will skyrocket!

This stat will help me survive a lot longer since my body is very weak now. It can't even stand a body slam of an E-rank slime right now.

That's the plan for this weekend.

* *

11.31 A.M.

I went to the city cemetery.

This is where I got the first ring I needed.

'The life-sucking ring will be in the grave with the name of Minamoto Hokori.'

This is a message of gratitude to a person.

In the online community, they also said that maybe it was a person who also founded the company and died of cancer.

If that's true then I also feel quite sorry, he is also rumored to be quite young but already has an incurable disease.

I looked around and saw a lot of graves.

Most of the graves here are full of people who died in the World War 3.

'Just like in the game.'

'Here is Minamoto Hokori's grave.'

They hid the ring right on his grave.

But no one took it because no one else was here, to begin with.

'May I have the ring, please?'

It is a ring filled with hatred and bloodlust - Vampire King's Ring.

There are many mysteries behind this ring Players could not answer yet.

Although this sealed item had been discovered a long time ago, no one has unsealed it.

'I wonder if I can open the seal?'

But first thing first, I will use this ring to grind my [Endurance] stat.

----Equipments----

[Vampire King's Ring] (?)

Sealed.

----------

'I have the item now, let's just go.'

In my dorm room, I stored most of the ingredients or things I didn't need, thus now my ring had a lot of extra space.

I put the ring inside another ring... That's trippy.

I found my way back.

Although the chance of being caught is quite low because few people are guarding the grave, I should still be more careful.

It would be tiring if I were caught by the police right now...

"Hey, who are you to come in here?!"

'Oh shit, I forgot about my shit luck…'

The other police officers also heard it and came out to me.

'What should I do now?'

'Let's run!'

I started running.

"Hey! Stop running!"

"You thief!"

Even though I ran a little ahead so I had a slight advantage, they still ran much faster than me.

When they almost caught up, I quickly thought of another way.

Look out at the road where traffic is moving.

'Here's the chance. It's kinda dangerous, but!"

I forced my body to do parkour based on my old memories from my previous life.

Now that my body is also considered much stronger than normal people's. Thus, these actions feel much lighter to do.

Thanks to that, the movements are quite easy to perform.

I parkoured past cars running on the road. And the police could only look at me helplessly.

[Thanks to performing Parkour movements with quite high perfection!]

[Created technique "Parkour" (Apprentice).]

'That's amazing!'

I climbed over the fences and the post office.

The other police officers who saw I was being chased and also ran after me.

"Stop that guy!!"

I turned around and saw that there must have been nearly a dozen people chasing me.

But I was a bit careless so when a car passed by, I almost got hit.

After running a while, I felt very tired.

'My [Stamina] was still terrible so I couldn't completely cut them off.'

'At this rate, they will catch me really soon!'

So I had to climb up the building right away.

I climbed the stairs.

'They are probably running right after me.'

I dumped potted plants on the road to create obstacles so they couldn't catch up.

But I didn't expect that when I got to the top floor, there was no place to continue.

And right after that, I was surrounded.

"Hey stop!"

"You are being cornered now!"

"Don't you dare run!"

'They ran a lot faster than I thought.'

I had to jump over the tall building opposite.

The building is really high and the gap is so large.

'I almost could feel my death already.'

But like I was saying, I had no choice.

Huff.

I mustered all my courage to take a jump.

My [Strength] is still really low so I could not land properly on the staircase.

However, I still could catch the bar of the exit staircase.

'What a narrow escape from death.'

My hands were trembling intensively.

'Wait, that sentence sounds familiar.'

Huff.

I used all my strength to jump over the bar.

And I started running again.

I thought while running upstairs.

But it's the same this time.

As soon as I got to the rooftop, I was surrounded again.

'I didn't expect the game to be so realistic.'

In the game, I outran these guys very easily.

Being surrounded on the rooftop like that left me with no other choice.

'I have to use the dart rope.'

'I noticed a while ago that I could use it to wrap around the pole flag that protrudes from the building.'

'I will use it to swing to another building.'

But I also have a fear of heights.

So every time I stand in high places, my body will tremble crazily.

The police officers were pointing their guns at me and were forcing me closer and closer.

"Don't run!"

"Surrender now and your crime will be very light!"

"Don't fight back."

Even though I'm scared, I still have to deal with this.

'First, I have to get away from this place.'

'Appraisal.'

'Fortunately, their rank is still somewhere around my rank with the highest being F-.'

I've prepared a pretty good plan.

"Fear!"

I activated the new function I discovered of the [Hidden Mask].

The police officers suddenly froze.

'Now I have 2 seconds!'

I ran straight behind them and pulled out the [Iron Dart Rope].

I was running and swinging the dart rope to have enough momentum to throw to the pole flag.

'Charged Attack.'

Running to the edge of the building, I gathered all my strength and courage to jump.

The air was running past me while I was still swinging the dart rope.

"Bullet Time!"

While I was in free fall, I threw the dart rope using the [Aim Assisting] skill so that I could hook it properly to a flag protruding from a certain house.

Once the rope was hooked, I grasped the chain and swung with it.

Because I was quite high in the sky, when I was swinging a little closer, I bumped my foot into a truck on the street.

I bent my legs all the way up.

'Damn, that was scary as hell.'

The scene was scary, but there was also a part that was quite stimulating for me.

As I was swinging up, I activated it again,

"Bullet Time!"

Then I retrieved the chain that was now also unfastened.

I took advantage of the chain's properties.

So that when I was swinging, my weight would help the part of the chain above it press on the chain below that I had already wrapped around the pole flag.

So when I was swinging up, I just needed to push the chain I was holding hard towards the hook, the upper chain would loosen and the chain below would also quickly release.

After [Bullet Time] ended, I just needed to retrieve the chain by pulling the chain back.

'Then I'll catch it with [Lightning Reflexes] and that's it.'

It's a really easy plan...

"But unfortunately, I can only use [Bullet Time] three times per hour."

"So I couldn't use this skill to swing through the city all day long."

Then when I was free-falling, I was quite panicked.

However, my SS+ rank [Alteration] helped me regain my composure and I threw the emergency escape ladder of another high-rise building again.

But I forgot I would smash straight into that wall with this momentum.

"Oh my god, I will definitely crush my bones again if I crash into the wall."

"I have to do something!!!"

And then my head bounced.

I waited until my face was about to touch the wall.

"Bullet Time!!"

I let go, took out the bow from my ring, and got into an archery stance.

But quickly after that, I put the bow in the ring again.

And when [Bullet Time] ran out, I lightly touched the wall without the slightest injury.

There is a bug called "Fall Damage Cancel" that causes falling damage from above to be canceled because I interrupted the charged attack animation.

I could do all the above thanks mainly to my unusually high [Alteration] stat.

Without it, I wouldn't have been able to adapt quickly to a situation like this, and I wouldn't have been able to think of a method to swing the chain, let alone do it.

And even [Bullet Time] also had played a huge part, otherwise, I wouldn't be able to do the above.

["Bullet Time" (Lv.1)

Upon activation, the time will be slowed down by 5 times in 1 whole second.

Usage: 3 times/hour. (0/3)]

Even if I think about it, I couldn't do it because when I was falling, I was very stressed.

And I couldn't remember about that fall damage cancellation bug.

There was also a notification that I didn't pay attention to because everything that just happened was so stressful.

'What is this?'

[Achieve the initial potential of "Kinesthetic Awareness" (F-) through the process of using the body with high intensity and efficiency in a short time.]