CHAPTER 56: DAMN!

Back to Leon, "The Supreme Thief"

As the crystal remembered all this (excluding the fillers—the fighting angels, and the Old Cultivator), it sighed internally.

"That was about three million years ago... The reincarnated master is still naive. He doesn’t know who he is... or the dangers that are waiting for him."

"So, System... why was the starter pack given to me now?" Leon asked casually, completely unaware that the crystal had just been lost in an ancient memory.

"The starter pack is for this dungeon. It’s a reward for entering and completing the Level 7 Dungeon."

Leon noticed something... odd.

The crystal’s tone had changed lately.

It wasn’t as cold or sarcastic as before. It almost seemed... reflective.

Still, he shrugged it off.

"And what’s with this ’Nightmare Mode’!?"

"That’s the highest—and hardest—mode of this dungeon. Its purpose is to push you to your absolute limits, to temper your body and hone your skills in the shortest time possible. It’s different from the standard dungeon model."

Leon blinked.

"So I’ll be able to choose it...?"

"No way I’m choosing Nightmare Mode," he muttered to himself. "I’ll go with Hard Mode."

He wanted to take the easiest route, but he also knew better.

He needed strength—real strength—if he was going to survive what lay outside.

Choosing the easy path might save him now, but it would cost him later.

Besides, he already had a reminder of how dangerous Nightmare Mode could be...

He had lost an arm the last time he faced it.

"No," the crystal corrected flatly. "You won’t be able to choose Nightmare Mode. It’s default. It only applies to select dungeons. The beasts in this one are nearly twice as strong as beasts at the same level elsewhere."

Leon paused, eyes narrowing in thought.

"Hmm..."

Then he asked:

"What if I want to choose it now?"

"Huh...!?" The crystal was a little bit shocked as it was not expecting this question—at least not now.

However, it did not waste time in sending the message.

┏━━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━━┓

Choose the Mode of this Dungeon

EASY MODE. [CHOOSE]

NORMAL MODE [CHOOSE]

HARD MODE [CHOOSE]

DIFFICULT MODE [CHOOSE]

N-I-G-H-T-M-A-R-E - M-O-D-E

[C-H-O-O-S-E]

You would not be able to choose the nightmare mode.

┗━━━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━━━┛

Looking at the blue panel in the air, Leon found himself smacking his tongue with great expectations. He knew the system had already told him that he wouldn’t be able to choose the nightmare mode, but he tapped on it first—just to check things out.

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓

ACCESS DENIED!

┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

Seeing that things didn’t go the way he wanted, Leon smacked his tongue in disappointment and waved away the prompt message. He was disappointed, even though he had expected an answer similar to the one he just got.

After he had swiped it away, the former message reappeared, and he tapped on the Difficult Mode without wasting any more time playing around.

┏━━━━━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━━━━━┓

All dungeon attributes are being set to DIFFICULT MODE.

The dungeon is being updated.

Update time: 1 hour

┗━━━━━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━━━━━┛

Seeing the notification, Leon nodded his head, obviously understanding what the message meant. There was no need to ask foolish questions to the system.

He decided to check his rewards while waiting for the timer to finish so he could step into the next dungeon.

┏━━━━━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━━━━━┓

TOTAL REWARDS for finishing the Nightmare Mode dungeon within one hour and forty minutes:

10 + 30 Stat Points (40 stat points to distribute)

10,000 Gold Coins

Starter Pack

Ability to choose the mode of each dungeon.

┗━━━━━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━━━━━┛

Looking at the rewards, Leon nodded subconsciously. He decided to check his Starter Pack.

"System! Open the Starter Pack!"

┏━━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━━┓

STARTER PACK

•─────⋅☾ Contents ☽⋅─────•

20 Stat Points to distribute

15,000 Gold Coins (15 pouches

of gold, each pouch containing

1,000 gold coins)

Supreme Thief Skill

┗━━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━━┛

Seeing the contents of the Starter Pack, Leon got a little bit excited. What excited him the most was the Supreme Thief Skill.

"At last, a skill given by the system!" Leon exclaimed excitedly. All the skills he had were created by him, so he had great expectations for this one.

’I really do hope it doesn’t disappoint me...’

’Supreme Thief Skill,’ he said through telepathy to the system, with the will to know more about the skill.

┏━━━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━━━┓

SUPREME THIEF SKILL

•─────⋅☾ SKILL DETAILS ☽⋅─────•

Light Steps

LVL 1

Fulfill hidden requirements to level up the skill

•─────⋅☾ EFFECTS ☽⋅─────•

WEIGHT REDUCTION: About 50% of weight would be reduced upon activation of this skill.

INCREASED SPEED AND AGILITY:

50 stat points would be temporarily added to the agility stat, giving the host a significant boost in speed and agility upon activation.

INCREASED INTELLIGENCE AND PERCEPTION:

5 stat points would be temporarily added to both intelligence and perception stats upon activation.

•────⋅☾ MANA CONSUMPTION ☽⋅────•

This skill consumes about 100 wisps of mana per minute.

Level up to reduce mana consumption.

•────⋅☾ SKILL DESCRIPTION ☽⋅────•

The aim of all thieves is a silent and quick steal.

Their goal is to be as quiet as possible during raids.

When caught, a thief should be able to think clearly—without panicking—for ways to escape.

With high agility, speed, intelligence, and perception, all of the above becomes possible.

┏━━━━━━━━━━┓

GET SKILL

┗━━━━━━━━━━┛

┗━━━━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━━━━┛

Leon was shocked by what he saw. Even though he expected something along these lines from the name of the skill, he was still surprised.

The name of the skill explained everything. From its name alone, Leon immediately understood that it was a movement-type skill.

But what he didn’t expect was that the skill would increase not only his agility—but also his intelligence and perception!

Giving all three stats a massive leap!

He knew this skill could help in many things—not only in stealing but also in assassination.

The silent movement would reduce his chances of alerting a target, thereby increasing the likelihood of killing the target with one silent, precise strike.

That’s what made assassins so dangerous. They possessed numerous movement techniques that increased their speed and agility manyfold, while also suppressing their presence. Less sound. Less trace. Less chance of being caught by tracking.

He tapped on Get Skill, and immediately after, an excruciating pain assaulted him—threatening his very existence.

It felt like he was being poked with millions of blazing, red-hot needles, again and again.

"AAAARGH!!!!"

He grunted loudly as he tried to endure the pain. If it had been his past, unleveled self, he’d be rolling on the ground by now.

But he stood—without falling—enduring the agony. This wasn’t the first time he’d gone through such torture for strength.

For the sake of getting stronger, he had to endure this pain no matter what.

After two minutes—two long, torturous minutes that felt like centuries to him—he finally sighed, heaving a heavy breath and wiping the sweat off his brows.

Once the pain stopped, he got a notification saying he would have to wait thirty seconds for the skill to properly bond with him and the system.

"Now it’s time to check things out!"

Though he was itching to activate the skill, he decided to first check his stats to see the changes he got from the rewards so far.

┏━━━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━━━┓

Supreme Thief System

•────⋅☾ HOST’S DETAILS ☽⋅────•

Name: Leonel Dragovic

Title: Supreme Thief

Fame: 56 (in this world)

Physique: Supreme Thief Physique

Level: —

Hp: 3,000

Mp: 3,500

•──────⋅☾ STATS ☽⋅──────•

Strength: 40

Stamina: 40

Agility: 40

Defense: 35

Intelligence: 40

Perception (Hunter’s Instinct): 35

Luck: 5

(Available Points to Distribute: 60 [40 + 20])

•───────⋅☾ HALL OF SKILLS ☽⋅───────•

Hall of Skills (6)

Skill Points: 0

•────────⋅☾ DUNGEON ☽⋅───────•

Dungeon: (Host is in the Dungeon)

•────────⋅☾ MONEY ☽⋅───────•

Gold Coins: 25,000 (10,000 + 15,000)

Silver Coins: 250

Bronze Coins: NIL

•────────⋅☾ SHOP ☽⋅───────•

Shop (Locked: Reach Level 15 to unlock)

•────⋅☾ MISSION HALL ☽⋅────•

Tap to see more

┗━━━━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━━━━┛

Seeing the changes on the panel, Leon was happy. The system had been benefiting him a lot recently.

He decided to test the waters,

But before he could do it, he got a sudden notification.

He looked at the timer and saw that both timers were—

Ding!

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓

The dungeon has been updated to the DIFFICULTY MODE!

┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

Seeing this, Leon sighed, smacking his lips in disappointment. He looked toward the far north of the place, spotting a white vortex appearing.

Though he wanted to stay in this safe zone for a little longer, he knew there was nothing he could do. The 1.5-hour break felt too short for him—he wished he could spend more time in this place.

But suddenly, something crept into his mind. His heart began to palpitate at the fear of that discovery being true.

As much as he loved being in this place, he did not want to waste time... but before he could even question the system about it, the system answered—as if it had heard his thoughts beforehand.

"This place is not affected by time, so the law of time does not run here. As soon as you step out of this place, you start from the exact time you stopped... Got it."

Hearing its answer, Leon grinned, having just gotten some ’evil thoughts’.

According to what the system said, it meant this dungeon had a big loophole...

And he wasn’t going to let it go to waste... Could he?

But suddenly, his ’evil grin’ turned into a frown as he received an unwanted response.