After all the ordeal Eli went through clearing the dungeon and escaping the Association hunters, he couldn't help but immediately jump into bed the moment he got home.
"Phewww… that was tough… wasn't it?"
Eli directed his question at the two familiars beside him.
"It was indeed."
Kai's tone was calm and decisive.
"Kyaa~ you should rest, Master."
A sweet voice that pleased the ears of its listener came from beneath the bed.
Flare.
"Flare, please just call me Eli. Calling me 'Master' sounds a little bit weird."
Eli spoke, his face showing pure embarrassment.
"Fufu… it's okay to be embarrassed… MASTER!"
Flare replied, wearing an evil-looking grin on her face.
"So Kai! You were a guy?"
Eli avoided the situation.
"Yes, my liege."
Kai immediately responded.
"Huh?? Hold up. What's with the noble tone, man?"
Eli spoke, his face filled with confusion.
"I come from a noble lineage amongst the hounds of the forest, and this opportunity to live and grow in strength is all thanks to you. So you have my utmost loyalty and respect, my liege."
Kai spoke in a firm and stern tone, his eyes showing determination and commitment, sparkling like stars.
"Oh th-that's okay…"
Eli stuttered.
"Hasn't it gotten a little hot in here?"
Eli fanned himself with his hands while looking elsewhere.
"My liege, why is your face red?"
Kai questioned Eli, tilting his head slightly.
"Don't worry, Kai. Master gets all tomato from little words."
Flare wore an even more sinister grin.
"Haven't you had enough?"
Eli pointed at Flare.
"Not even close, KETCHUP."
Flare retorted with a phrase that seemed to shatter Eli's manly pride.
"Ketchup? Where did you even learn that word?"
"That's it! No more TV for you!"
Eli picked up Flare and threw her into his subspace, but before she left, she made sure to scream—
"F@#*&!$ MASTER!!!!"
While the two went about their business, Kai just stared at them, looking totally clueless about what had just happened.
"I think I should go to bed now… I'm stressed out."
Eli suddenly spoke while yawning and stretching his hands upward.
"You should rest up, my liege. I will stand guard."
Kai sat on the floor in front of Eli's bed.
"Oh… thanks?"
"I'm honored that you would convey gratitude to this unworthy servant."
Thud!
Kai stomped his paw on the floor.
"Y-yeah… thanks."
Hehe, I guess he really is of noble blood after all.
27 HOURS LATER
In the cozy room, a loud roar was heard—one that didn't belong to an animal, but to a tired young man.
Eli suddenly stood up.
He checked the alarm clock.
His face showed an expression beyond shock. He couldn't believe how much of a toll one dungeon raid had taken on him.
"Mannn… my back!"
Eli groaned while trying to stretch by tilting his body sideways.
"My liege, you're awake!"
Eli turned toward the voice, only to find Kai, who had supposedly kept watch the entire time.
A warm smile appeared on his face.
"Yes, I am. You should rest, Kai. Thanks."
Eli stretched his hand and patted Kai on the head.
And—
Kai's face turned red. His tail wagged nonstop.
"Ahem… if you say so, my liege, I shall take a nap."
Kai disappeared into Eli's subspace.
Haha… silly dog.
Eli smiled.
"Oh yeah! I better check the loot."
Eli snapped out of his thoughts.
I didn't get the chance to check them because of the Hunter Association expedition team… I just hope they're really good stuff.
"inventory!"
"Ohh, a pair of shoes? That's sick."
━━━━━━━━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━━━━━━━━
LIGHTNING FAIRY'S ONESIES [RANK C-]
PERKS:
AGILITY: +2
STAMINA: +4
SKILL: CLOUD STEPS
Instantly maneuvers around targets
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
━━━━━━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
FAIRY QUEEN'S NECKLACE [RANK C+]
PERKS:
VITALITY: +8
MANA: +3
STRENGTH: +1
SKILL: FAIRY'S EMBRACE
Restores HP to 100% (once per day)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"Dayummm… that dungeon gave me wonderful presents."
Eli drooled while looking at the item descriptions.
"Ohh, there's more?"
Eli scrolled through the list but couldn't check everything at once.
Then—
He remembered he had an interactive system window.
"System! Sort out all the useful items and show me."
The system immediately got to work.
After some time, it displayed two items.
"Just two, huh? Let's see…"
━━━━━━━━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━━━━━━━━
FAIRY QUEEN'S BELT [RANK E]
STRENGTH: +1
MANA: +1
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"No skill? But it looks kinda dope though."
Eli placed his hand under his chin.
━━━━━━━━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
FAIRY QUEEN'S RAGING CLAW GAUNTLETS
[RANK A]
PERKS:
STRENGTH: +10
AGILITY: +10
STAMINA: +5
SKILLS:
FURY CLAW THRUST (ACTIVE): Temporarily increases
agility by 20% and delivers a powerful claw strike,
amplifying claw-based skills.
MAD QUEEN BUFF (ACTIVE): Temporarily increases
strength and stamina by 25% and amplifies
berserk-type skills.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"It's an A! It's an A!"
Eli screamed so loudly that the neighboring stores swore at him.
"Whoaaaa… two skills! Even the window got longer from the descriptions."
Eli spoke in awe.
Where do I even start reading from?
Five minutes later, Eli finished reading the item descriptions.
When he got bored, he started checking the rest.
Then—
He found another A-rank item.
Another A-rank item? Why did the system filter this one out?
━━━━━━━━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━━━━━━━━
CALCULUS (UNAWAKENED) [A RANK]
It is said to be the staff of a wise fairy
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"That's all?"
Eli stared in confusion.
Well… with King's Physique, I could probably use it… but mages always have insane mana and something called affinity…
…I should sell it. This stick could be worth millions.
He thought deeply, hand under his chin like a scientist facing a problem.
"Meh… I'll just give it to someone who can awaken it. Probably my future guild member… because I'm going to create a guild!"
Eli stood on his bed, pointing forward in a heroic pose.
"I should start uploading the junk items to the system's black market."
"System, upload all items except the A-rank staff to the black market."
━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━
AFFIRMATIVE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Two hours later, all the junk items were sold.
Eli watched the money flood in, almost losing his mind.
"Ahhhh! 500k Sys??? That's something that would normally take me years to earn!"
Eli's eyes glimmered with green Sys symbols.
"I pray another dungeon appears… I'm gonna be filthy rich, baby!"
He jumped like a superhero preparing for takeoff.
In his imagination, he wore an expensive suit, a Rolex, and drove a Bugatti.
No! Spending money isn't everything… I need to get stronger…
Eli nodded frantically.
"But is there a hero that doesn't need funding? Bwahahaha!"
Meanwhile, in the Garden—
Flare stared at Eli with contempt.
"Can you see that? Disgusting."
Kai tilted his head.
"What is this 'money' or 'Sys'?"
"Trust me, bud… you don't wanna know."
Flare replied, still watching Eli—the money monkey.
LETTER OF APOLOGY
Dear Readers,
Hello COC fams, how are you all doing today? I hope you've been doing great. I want to sincerely apologize for not posting a new chapter for the past 23 days.
The truth is, I fell seriously ill and had to be admitted to the hospital multiple times. I was also advised not to stress myself mentally. I even tried sneaking away to write a few times, but I got caught—funny, right?
After I was finally discharged, my dad fell ill as well and had to undergo a major operation. It was a very difficult time for my family, and we were all really scared. Because of that, I had to postpone writing and uploading chapters.
On top of everything, our SKY-P WRITERS Facebook page, which had over 10,000 followers, got hacked and deleted. So right now, we're starting again from scratch.
I truly ask for your understanding and forgiveness. The past few months have not been in my favor, but I'm back now and fully committed. I promise to be more consistent with updates moving forward.
I also hope you'll continue to support us as we rebuild SKY-P WRITERS. Let's rise again together, because our motto remains:
"Soar with your pen and imagination by your side."
Thank you all for your patience and support.
GRM GRANDE NEGRO
Founder of SKY-P WRITERS