Chương 89: The System Goes on Strike Over Stats Too Absurd to Display

Lucian sat on the windowsill of the field lodging room, soaking up the morning sun filtering through the snow-covered pines. He stretched and snapped his fingers.

"Open status panel." Ting. What appeared before his eyes wasn't the usual neat rows of figures. A dim black interface panel appeared, at its center a giant, slowly blinking lemon-yellow question mark [?]. At the same time, a distinctly mechanical sigh echoed clearly through his mind. Phhhhhhh... Lucian narrowed his eyes.

"What's this, lag?" The panel flickered once, the question mark vanishing, replaced by lines of white text appearing at a stuttering typing pace. [HOST STATUS PANEL: LUCIAN VANCE] Level: 41 Rank: D — Elite (technically speaking, on paper) [BASE STATS] Physical Strength: 443, 328 (enough to punch down a city gate, assuming nobody's watching). Speed: Faster than the Host's own rate of dodging his obligations. Endurance: Tougher than the Host's nerve when collecting debts from wounded veterans.

Mana: 784, 882 (pathetically normal). Spell Power: Field calibration pending; sufficient for current operations. - Spell Control: 95, 236, 428, 816 (absurd to a degree the System would rather not repeat). - Learning Rate: 1, 295, 928. [OVERALL COMBAT POWER:] [The System declines to provide a specific figure, as it undermines the seriousness of the Fantasy genre.] [Estimated equivalent conversion: 14, 000 heartbroken, enraged dragons.] Lucian crossed his arms and stared at the last line for a full ten seconds.

"Are you a leveling-support System or my hater?" Ting. [WARNING: If the Host continues raising Spell Control uncontrollably, the System will automatically switch the entire interface to Microsoft Excel to better reflect actual reality.] This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Fine, honestly Excel might be easier to read anyway," Lucian muttered. At its core, the System was a pre-war civilization's source-code analysis and compiler engine. After years accompanying Lucian's pragmatic, lazy, money-obsessed way of thinking, this once-serious analytical engine seemed to have contracted a kind of "cultural infection," gradually drifting from a dry statistics board into a hopelessly exasperated virtual assistant. Click. The door pushed open slightly.

Astra walked in, carrying a wooden plate with a peeled red apple, sliced into perfectly even pieces. She wore her modest floral dress, her ash-grey hair neatly brushed. Seeing Lucian sitting on the windowsill, waving his hand at empty air, Astra tilted her head and held out the plate.

"Lucian... are you talking to your ancestral spirits again, asking for a land-tax exemption?" Lucian pulled his hand back, took the plate, and bit into a slice.

"No. I'm arguing with a piece of software with a broken algorithm." He chewed the sweet, crisp apple, glancing down at the stone windowsill, where a small black flake of graphite from a carpenter's pencil lay beside the frame. Spell Control: 95. 2 BILLION. Lucian lifted the graphite flake, no bigger than a pinhead, with his right index finger. He channeled the tiniest sliver of fire-element mana — smaller than a millionth of a match's spark.

But under the regulation of ninety-five billion points of Spell Control, the flame compressed down to the molecular level, shifting from red to blue, then into a pure white streak of light that radiated no external heat whatsoever. Extreme pressure and heat compressed the carbon lattice structure. Click. The white streak of light vanished. Resting on Lucian's fingertip was no longer an ordinary flake of graphite.

It was a perfectly round, flawless artificial diamond, scattering the dawn light into a brilliant, five-colored spray. Crafting time: exactly a tenth of a second. Energy cost: 0. 0001 mana points. Astra stood beside him, eyes wide, staring at the glittering diamond on his fingertip.

"Turning scrap graphite into a gemstone... no forge, no forbidden art needed..." She pressed her hands together in front of her chest, looking at Lucian.

"Lucian, that is the most terrifyingly profitable craft I have ever seen." Lucian tucked the diamond into his coat pocket and scooped another handful of graphite dust from a small workshop jar into a glass vial.

"Nothing divine about it. I'll compress this whole vial of graphite into diamonds and export them to Countess Carmilla in the Demon Realm — easy thirty thousand clean gold in my pocket. This is what you call manufacturing a luxury good from cheap raw materials." HOOOORN... HOOOORN... HOOOORN! The bronze horns of the Royal Knight Corps suddenly rang out from the gates of the field camp at the base of the mountain. The thunder of hooves mixed with the clatter of a hundred thousand soldiers falling into formation.

Eleanor's voice carried through the magical megaphone, echoing across the snowy valley.

"All forces, move out! The victorious army of the 4th Legion... RETURNS TO THE CAPITAL!" Lucian brushed apple crumbs off his sleeve, hopped down off the windowsill, and turned to Astra.

"Pack up. We're heading back to the capital to collect our reward money."