Chapter 11 : Mission Complete

"System, now what?" Lucas said after the duo left while he held the keys to the building.

[[ Mission Description: As a trainee on the path of the Craftsgod, you should have a base of operations. Find and own one within one week.

Overview: Own a building and build a store.

Rewards: An Adventurer's Manual

Penalty: Death.

Status: Completed.

Accept rewards: Y/N

]]

"To be honest, this reward is quite lacking if you ask me…" Lucas sighed.

"Host is also lacking in a bunch of places."

"..."

To be honest, Lucas wasn't looking down on the system's reward. Just the abilities witnessed so far from the items he got from the welcome package were already good enough. So while the reward for his first mission was just one item, Lucas was still looking forward to it. He only made that statement to try and profit more.

Lucas accepted the reward and he received a notification about a new item in his inventory. He opened the inventory and saw a tome in his inventory space with the title 'An Adventurer's Manual'.

Lucas first entered the building before he retrieved the tome from his inventory. As it appeared on his hand, a pop-up showed up right beside him.

[[ Accept input? Y/N ]]

"Yes."

Suddenly, the book began to disintegrate bit by bit into a flow of light that went into Lucas' forehead. It only took three seconds for the entire tome to disappear. At the same time, Lucas felt an increasing pain on his forehead, almost knocking him out on the spot. However, he gritted his teeth and endured throughout the entire ordeal while subconsciously cursing at the system for attempting to murder him. Of course, this was just a joke, as he knew that it didn't intend on doing so.

It took five minutes for the pain to subside and in those five minutes, Lucas felt as if his brain was about to burst. Even after the event, his clothing was drowned in sweat and Lucas had to support himself on one of the chairs in the building.

'What a horrible feeling.' Lucas sighed with relief.

While it was an incredibly painful sensation, the result was worth it. Lucas could feel that there was a new set of knowledge in his brain. It was broad and could be termed as an encyclopedia's worth. The category of knowledge focused on minerals, monsters, and even advanced information about astronomy such as calculating a planet's orbit or direction and so on. Although the tome was termed 'An Adventurer's Manual', Lucas found it hard to believe that an average adventurer would require this much information. If someone did, they would have to be a very very high class adventurer or space explorer.

Apart from all the aforementioned information, Lucas also got to know about the power system of this world, although he already knew that after looking it up the previous day. However, 'An Adventurer's Manual' gave more detailed information than what Lucas got from the communicator, which included how to achieve each level.

Sadly, there was no information for humans on the subject, so Lucas still had no solution to his innate problem.

After going through the information once, Lucas realised that he had spent three hours. He was surprised, as he didn't realise he had spent that long reversing the information in his head, but he wasn't affected by it. In a sense, Lucas was jobless, so even if he spent his time staring at the sun, there was no heavy repercussion, per se.

"Host has finally awoken."

The system's voice sounded in his head.

"What about it?" Lucas replied.

"The building has been recorded in the system's database, and renovations would need to be carried out. Host needs to be informed and grant the system permission to go ahead with planned renovations."

"Oh?" Lucas was pleasantly surprised.

He has previously been worried about renovations and how much it would cost him, but seeing as the system could provide similar services, he was amazed and glad.

'At least that saves me a couple of coins.'

"Can I see the renovation plan?"

"Access denied."

"If I can't access the designs to make amendments, why is my permission even required?" Lucas sounded frustrated by the system's actions.

"As the host gets stronger and the system upgrades, changes would be made available." The system's bland voice sounded in Lucas' head once again.

With a sigh, Lucas granted the system permission to renovate the building.

"Renovation commencing. ETA: 24 hours. During this period, the store would be closed and only accessible by the host and employees. Store activities would be on hold. Please be patient."

"Employees? What's that about?"

"Access denied."

"..."

Despite being mentally old, Lucas couldn't help but curse inwardly as he began to make his way to the top floor.

The two-storey building was formerly a family restaurant. The ground floor [1] was the main serving location, and the first floor was reserved for private rooms and guests. There was also a rooftop terrace that could also be accessed from the top floor, reserved for guests who wanted to have their meal while enjoying the view. However, with the terrible location of the building, being surrounded by taller buildings, and lacking a natural scenic spot, there was no view to enjoy from the balcony.

Behind the main building was a smaller building that looked like a patio of sorts, but it's function was something Lucas was unaware of and wasn't bothered about either. After all, the system would be renovating everything, so what it was in the past didn't matter.

Lucas went into one of the rooms on the top floor and decided to take his rest here. With the system upgrades taking twenty four hours and Lucas not knowing as much as he felt was enough about this world, he believed it was best to stay indoors for the time being and expand his knowledge.

Although he had it in his memory now, Lucas had yet to completely digest the information from the manual. The three hours he spent were merely on perusing the information and just from the fact it took that long, one could imagine how much information was inside it. While one could say it was in his brain already, it wasn't readily available, just like how people experience an event but find it difficult to recall it after a lot of time has passed. The memory exists, but it's not readily recalled.

There was also the communicator, an advanced technology that could aid Lucas a lot in learning more about the world.

As for the matter of food, there was the bread he got from the system and if that wasn't enough, Lucas could simply order with his communicator.

As such, the next couple of hours were spent surfing the KSSI or the intranet [2] and revisiting the knowledge stored in his head until Lucas could completely grasp it.

While Lucas was absorbing information on a large scale, a figure hid in a neighbouring building and kept a lookout for him. The individual was the spy currently in charge of monitoring Lucas. He had been keeping an eye on the latter the past few hours but was slowly getting impatient.

Usually, a professional wouldn't, but due to the pressure from his employers, the tracker felt he was running out of time.

'The boss already asked for an update in forty eight hours but this dude is just sitting. What the hell am I supposed to do now?'

The spy's mission was for him to find out about the source of the Purple Iridium and, if possible, get more. There was also a new side mission included, which was to find out where Lucas came from and how he had defeated the trio from Ramirez's gang. Usually, 2–3 days would be enough to find out something about his target after spying on them for so long, but Lucas was different.

Apart from meeting with the duo from the pub to buy the building, Lucas had spent most of his time indoors, dazing around or on his communicator.

The first made no sense and as for the latter, there was no way for the spy to seize Lucas' device without alerting him. Hacking it was also out of the question.

Communicators were state-of-the-art devices with high-tech security systems and locks. Since they were linked with one's personal information and account, it was only natural that there security was the best. Also, since the KSSI was an intra-network and now an inter-network, this increased the difficulty of hacking since to hack into one's device directly and make a data request, a hacker would have to be able to hack the KSSI first, which was next to impossible. This was a network that served an entire solar system and so there was no doubt that the security was out-of-this world; both literally and figuratively speaking, as the data centers were in space.

'If he doesn't make any move soon, that will leave me with only one option.' The spy narrowed his eyes.