Chương 1: A Matter of Attributes

The Ashwood Forest. A dense canopy formed an impenetrable vault overhead, smothering the moonlight. Every whisper of the wind and every chirp of insects echoed unnaturally through the dark woods. My head... hurts. Consciousness slowly returned. His blurred vision sharpened, and the world gradually came into focus. Where... am I? Zelier blinked in confusion and looked around. A lively campfire crackled before him.

A weathered tent stood nearby, while three people sat around the flames, resting after what looked like a long day. A textbook adventurer's campsite. The problem was... Why the hell am I here in the middle of the night?! His heart skipped a beat. As the last traces of grogginess vanished, an overwhelming flood of memories crashed into his mind. Several long minutes later, he finally pieced everything together. In short— He had transmigrated. He was no longer an ordinary nobody from Earth.

He had become a novice adventurer in another world. His name was Zelier.

"... Uh..." Almost instinctively, he reached up and touched his face. Smooth skin. Firm. Youthful. Nothing like the body he'd lived in before. Which made sense. This body was only sixteen years old. He was a teenager again.

"Spacing out again, Zelier?" A man casually dropped down beside him and threw an arm over his shoulder. Zelier quickly searched through his newly inherited memories. The man's name was Grey, the swordsman of their party. Although... Compared to his swordsmanship, Grey's talent with women was far more impressive. His shoulder-length golden hair framed a carefree grin that never seemed to leave his face. He was exactly the sort of charming rogue who could effortlessly sweet-talk his way into a woman's heart.

The party also had a ranger named Vaelis. Apparently, he was part elf. Though after staring at him for quite a while, Zelier could only barely notice the faint point to his ears. Just how many generations removed is that bloodline...? Then there was the party leader— Marcus. A broad-shouldered giant with a buzz cut, dressed in hardened leather armor. A small round shield rested on his left arm, while a heavy battle blade hung in his right hand. The kind of man who inspired confidence simply by standing there.

And finally... There was himself. Zelier. Sixteen years old. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. A rookie adventurer. Still green. His class was— His eyes lit up as two words surfaced from his memories. Mage. He was actually... A mage. Seeing him sit there in silence, Grey assumed the kid was still overwhelmed. He gave Zelier's shoulder another reassuring squeeze.

"Relax. No need to be so tense. Once this job's over, I'll take you to the tavern in town so you can unwind." Grey flashed a mischievous grin.

"Who knows? You might even leave as a man instead of a boy."

"Tch." A cold snort came from across the fire. Vaelis looked at him with open disdain.

"If you have that much time and money to waste, you'd be better off improving your skills." Perhaps it was his diluted elven blood, but Vaelis always wore an expression that practically screamed Keep your distance. The moment Zelier looked at him, an inexplicably authentic Shanghainese phrase surfaced from somewhere deep in his inherited memories.

"Damn short-lived races... and you think you're worthy of comparing yourselves to us elves?" He almost laughed.

"So," Grey said with a teasing smile, "are all elves this uninterested in romance?"

"I heard your father was quite the ladies' man." He leaned back with a grin.

"You've probably got a whole army of half-half-half-half-elf siblings running around by now." Vaelis's face immediately darkened. He despised womanizers. Just as much as he despised his own father.

"Enough." Marcus's deep voice cut through the brewing argument.

"We've spent five days searching around the Ashwood Forest."

"Our supplies are nearly gone."

"It's time to head back." He looked toward Zelier.

"You take first watch." Then at Grey.

"You've got the second."

"We leave at first light." Night settled over the forest. Stars slowly filled the sky beyond the sea of branches. As he organized the memories he'd inherited, Zelier gradually gained a basic understanding of this world's magic. Every mage possessed something known as a Fountain Seed within their Mindscape. Mana was born from that seed. To cast a spell, mana had to flow through a complete Spell Matrix, forming a perfect circuit. A Spell Matrix was, in essence, something very much like an electrical circuit diagram.

Every spell possessed its own unique matrix. Mana had to trace every line with absolute precision. Only then would the spell activate successfully. At present... Zelier knew exactly one spell. Fireball. He slowly exhaled and closed his eyes. Mana flowed out from his Mindscape like a gentle stream. It circulated through the Spell Matrix inside his mind. The next instant— A tiny flame danced to life above his fingertip. So... Magic is real. He stared silently at the flickering fire.

For someone who had grown up on Earth, the sight was genuinely breathtaking. This wasn't some street magician's sleight of hand. He had literally created fire from nothing. Real magic. Of course... This was about the limit of his abilities. One couldn't expect much more from a sixteen-year-old boy born into poverty, whose magical education consisted almost entirely of self-study.

The previous Zelier possessed neither the extraordinary talent needed to attract famous archmages nor the wealth required to hire a proper tutor. After both of his parents passed away, becoming an adventurer had been his only realistic option. Earn some money. Then figure out the future later. This mission itself wasn't particularly difficult. Their objective was simply to cull the wild wolves roaming the Ashwood Forest and reduce attacks on nearby settlements. It sounded dangerous.

In reality, wild wolves weren't even considered monsters. Besides, everyone except Zelier was fairly experienced. So far, nothing had gone wrong. Zelier focused his thoughts. A translucent interface only he could see slowly materialized before his eyes. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Name: Zelier Level: 1 (99/100) Level Up Reward: +4 Attribute Points ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Basic Attributes (1 point per upgrade) Strength: 65 The go-to attribute for physical fighters.

Directly increases raw physical power.

Want to punch through an iron plate with your bare hands? Strength is your answer.

Synergy: Every 6 Strength grants +1 Constitution.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Agility: 60 Determines speed, coordination, and body control.

Thinking of becoming an assassin? No one's hiring someone who can't even climb a wall.

Besides, running away is much easier when missions go south.

Synergy: Every 4 Agility grants +1 Strength.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Constitution: 68 A Vanguard's best friend.

Represents your body's toughness and endurance.

Simply put: The higher your Constitution, the harder you are to kill.

Synergy: Every 4 Constitution grants +1 Strength.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Spirit: 67 A mage's lifeline.

Increases the maximum mana your Mindscape can store, allowing you to cast more spells.

Also improves the quality of mana produced by your Fountain Seed, making every spell more powerful.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Intelligence: 66 Don't misunderstand.

This isn't IQ.

An idiot is still an idiot.

Intelligence improves comprehension.

Warriors learn combat techniques faster.

Mages can understand increasingly complex Spell Matrices.

As for Vanguards...

They mostly just need to stand there and get hit.

Synergy: Every 4 Intelligence grants +1 Charisma.

Smart people are naturally more likable.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Advanced Attributes (2 points per upgrade) Perception: 30 Expands your awareness.

At high enough levels, it may even reveal an enemy's weaknesses during battle.

An assassin's dream.

... In theory.

At the very least, it slightly improves your odds of surviving a sneak attack while sleeping.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Charisma: 45 Oh?

Now here's a wonderfully versatile stat.

It won't help much in combat.

In everyday life, however...

The possibilities are endless.

Maybe the cute girl next door starts bringing you gifts.

Maybe a wealthy noblewoman from the Imperial Capital falls hopelessly in love with you.

Congratulations.

You're now living comfortably as a kept man.

Highly recommended for casual-life players.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Ultimate Attribute (4 points per upgrade) Luck: 41 Ignore me, and next time you'll choke to death drinking water.

... Just kidding.

Luck is an extremely mysterious attribute.

It influences every event governed by probability.

In a sense...

If you're lucky enough, 99 Luck and 1 Luck might end up making no difference at all.

If you truly believe you're destiny's chosen one, you're probably better off spending your points elsewhere. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━