Chapter 21: A Wake Up Call

' ': speaking to himself

" ": regular talks

[ ] : status and store related sections

<Fireball> :silent activation

<Fireball !!> : voiced activation

*...* : action

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After the initial memory exchange, the newly formed group sits down near the firepit and they start talking about their experiences Talking part is mostly done by Arthur and Helen while Ashena gets head pats from Arthur until she decides to woof occasionally to give her opinions about their talks.

The topic of Arthur and Helen's talk was about some blurry parts of each other's life that they couldn't make sense of while they were viewing their memories, although they saw each of their past in the memory exchange, it mostly consisted of major moments of their life and was focused on the large emotional outbursts.

While Arthur talks about the world they in and the important people and various events gonna happen in the future, Ashena just chose to keep laying her head on Arthur's lap and take a nap while Helen silently listened to him.

Listening to Arthur's explanation about his power and how he trained his skill, Helen frowned a little without him noticing and decided to interrupt him before long.

"Arthur, you shouldn't act like something you do not suppose to be."

Surprised by what Helen said. Arthur gets anxious and start thinking about if something he said hurt Helen or maybe she misunderstood something he said, but without him getting a chance to ask what happened Helen start explaining herself.

"Arthur, the way I see you act like a system user, not like a person who actually has its superior, gamer ability."

Arthur once again surprised by her words but he kept his silence and counting to listening her.

"As I saw in your memories system users in those novels are all about getting more expansive powers, items, or bloodlines from their system to make themself stronger. but for you, you get stronger with each skill you get and combining those skills with the ones you had before."

Taking a deep breath, Helen kept explaining what wrong with his former behavior.

"Those system users look like they know skills they get but they are able to use the most basic and fundamental effects of those skills while achieving minor results before they can afford better things.

But for you, as long as you keep training your techniques, no matter how useless the skill is in the low levels, you can achieve unimaginable results with enough mana to support it when you maxed out its level." said Helen

"But that's what I've been doing all this time," said Arthur this time with a little tint of frustration

"Master, the way I see, the reason why the gamer ability is better than a system is what you call ' the grinding part. Yes, you've been doing it but you doing it wrong. Although with your use of shadow clones are impressive, you are not using these clones to their full extent and most importantly you holding back yourself with your stinginess." said Helen

"Stingy? I'm not stingy I've bought dozens of skills just today!!" said Arthur while thinking that maybe Helen might misunderstood the extent of his powers.

"No master, You bought those skills because you want to became a master martial artist, you bought them because you think fighting with your bare hands is way cooler than fighting with a weapon and those books were really cheap, all of these books combined cost less than 1000 coins," said Helen and kept counting with her explanation.

" The moment you got the book of summons from the dungeon boss you decided not the buy any expensive book in case it might fall from the monster as loot and you would lose some coins. You didn't even buy the most basic mana manipulation technique which would lower the mana cost of your spells immensely," said Helen, while getting angry with each sentence because of Arthur's petty actions to save some coins.

"You didn't even bother the change your mana cultivation skill which actually can improve your training speed. With your ability, you can possibly practice two cultivation skills at the same time. but NO you spend 5000 coins on it so you should use it until you reached 250 in your intelligence stat just like the skills description says because you don't want to throw that 5000 cons into the trash."

"You didn't even bother to create other elemental magic because you can just use fire to burn a forest so that fire grows bigger and eventually kill some zombie. What about using earth magic to create a giant hole, then you can use the skill taunt and amplify your voice with mana and make those zombies fall into the trap you make. After you capturing them, you can either close the pit with earth magic and crush everything inside or use some other skills to grind some exp and level them up, but again No although you can create the earth magic under 2000 coins, the taunt skill cost nearly 5 times of that, why should you waste money on a skill that would fall from the boss monster .... eventually ... maybe in couple months. These are the exact thought you have just a two days ago master. How can you say you are not stingy? "said Helen angrily and waking up the sleeping Ashena in the process.

The formerly scary-looking giant wolf was turned into a little pup and was resting on her master's lap, hearing the loud noises she wakes up from her sleep and starts paying attention to what happening around her.

As for Arthur himself, he was actually embarrassed by his behavior. he realized that his stinginess was actually results of how he used to play RPG's. He would travel around the towns and hunt bandits or monsters to get himself new equipment, either taking them from bandits corpse or crafting them from the loot he got and unconsciously he carried that behavior to the One Piece world.

He looked down and start patting Ashena's head while Helen kept scolding him.

"Arthur, your ability will only start shining when you have multiple overlapping passive skills and with a massive section of active skills that can be used in various situations. Although I must say with the existence of shadow clone skills you can make up the time you lost, hopefully before meeting this potentially dangerous werewolf tribe" said Helen.

"Are you sure they could be a danger to us? I mean although I'm not strong as someone at my level supposed to be but I don't think I would get killed by a cannon fodder with my current powers, and if they are actually a threat that I can't overcome I can just enter an empty dungeon. and by the way, do you really have a method to increase my training speed? " asked Arthur

"Werewolves are known to get easily angered. You let them know your healing capabilities trough that kid but things might not go as you planned instead of becoming their guest they might try to capture you as a slave and keep you as their healer by force, so we need to get ready ourself for a fight against these werewolves as fast as possible," said Helen

Arthur didn't think about the possibility Helen just mention him and he felt a little uneasy about fighting and probably killing someone who is actually not a zombie but remembering Helen's feats while she was fighting in her home realm he thought why she couldn't just stop these threats for him. Since she is a higher dimensional being well acquaintanced with fighting.

"But what about you? I thought you were the second strongest warrior in that higher dimensional spirit world? Can't you just help me out with werewolves, if they decided to do something foolish? " asked Arthur

"I thought you noticed that before Arthur but to be able to get out of my prison I used my powers to turn my body into a bomb. The silhouette you facing right now is my soul manifestation. I am only able to this with the help of the mana you currently supplying me. I thought you were aware of that. Right now you are constantly losing your mana while talking with me and giving head pats to Ashena." said Helen with a surprised look on her face.

"Well, I didn't really notice it until you said but I know that think about it, I don't have enough mana to supply both you and Ashena to fight alongside me in the first place," said Arthur.

(2/5)