'If only it were that easy.'
Ackster sighed. Unlike fantasy stories, where the main characters could just get started with working hard and powering up before facing their next adversary, Ackster would have to put a little more thought into what he was going to do.
At least, now that he had his Nomi card, he could take advantage of the adventurer profession and grow his stats by killing all the monsters he encountered. Well, he could grow three of them, Strength, Agility, and Fortitude.
He wasn't sure what Spirit did. He just knew that it had been more of a supplementary stat for The Hero that supposedly helped with a little bit of everything. He had no idea how to train it, even with the adventurer profession. Ackster didn't even know why he had it on his Nomi.
Only the four base stats of Strength, Agility, Fortitude, and Mana were supposed to show up unless some specific condition had been fulfilled. Ackster was pretty sure that The Hero had it unlocked from the beginning due to the identity of one of his helpers.
But Ackster didn't have anything like that. The only thing that came to mind was his transmigration. Maybe getting a new 'spirit' and replacing the original Ackster had been enough for the Nomi to read and display his Spirit stat.
But, in addition to the Spirit stat, there was another stat that Ackster couldn't train at the moment. He couldn't grow his Mana stat since he hadn't awakened his mana yet.
And while his Strong Body skill wasn't reliant on mana, and he could probably become quite strong with Strong Body as the core of his growth, Ackster didn't want to miss out on an avenue that could make him as strong as possible.
Ackster didn't need to learn magic to use mana. He could use it to strengthen his body the same way knights and warriors did. He also had something else in mind that might be incredibly vital to his growth if his Strong Body were as strong as he felt it would be if he grew it a little more.
But Ackster wouldn't even be able to attempt it if he didn't awaken his mana first, so that had to be his first objective. Ackster realized that he might also be able to use mana to supplement his Strong Body's raging desire for food as soon as he used it a little too much.
However, if he were going to awaken his mana and train it properly, not just rely on the Nomi card's miraculous function, he would have to do it the best way possible. Besides, if he found a profession with better stat growth than the adventurer profession, he also wouldn't be able to rely on that to grow his mana.
He would have to grow his mana the old-fashioned way by training it manually. Since knights and adventurers or mercenaries using mana were pretty common in Badhurst, the country he was in at the moment, Ackster was sure he could find a copy of some training manual pretty easily.
But there were two problems with that. Money, which he could solve by killing a bunch of monsters. It would take a bit of work since he would have to grow strong enough to kill valuable monsters and afford a manual like that.
The second problem was the quality of the manual he would find. The low-quality things he could find in markets in big cities or the slightly better ones he could find in exclusive shops wouldn't be good enough, even if he could scrape up enough money to afford them.
If Ackster were really going to confront The Hero and stop the destruction of the world, he would need something that was at least as good as The Hero's Blessed World Manual.
Technically speaking, since the Blessed World Manual was a gift from the world itself, there shouldn't be anything that could compete with it. But the Blessed World Manual was specifically designed and adjusted to suit The Hero. So, it wouldn't be the best for Ackster, even if he could somehow get his hands on the skill needed to get that manual.
So, Ackster would have to find a manual that was both good enough to compete with the Blessed World Manual and that suited him.
Fortunately, there were a handful of manuals that stood at the very peak of mana training manuals, right next to or slightly below the Blessed World Manual.
However, Ackster wouldn't be able to get his hands on them, even if he toiled day in and day out every day for the next ten years. Well, maybe if Strong Body was good enough and he used another manual to awaken his mana, and if he was as talented in mana as someone with Ackster's potential should be, there might be a chance for him to put his hands on one or two of them.
But it would be too late by then. And it would be useless if they didn't suit him.
Fortunately, Ackster already knew what attribute might be most suitable for him.
It was something that even Melia and Gerrick knew, despite being there when he activated his Nominus Card, since it was something that was only confirmed in the future. It was the fact that the seemingly random light that shone when someone put their blood on the card was an indication of their attribute.
But it was merely an indication, and colors weren't necessarily specific with their indication.
Ackster's color was blue. And the most logical attribute would be water. When one thought of a representation of nature that was blue, water, seas, and oceans came to mind. So it wouldn't be strange if Ackster's most suitable attribute was indeed water.
However, lightning could be blue, there was blue fire in some places of the world, and the blue color could be an indication of Ackster's main attribute being closely tied to that kind of blue fire. The sky was blue. There were a lot of things that could be blue.
However, Andrea Phileam, Ackster's biological mother, was a water mage. It would make most sense if Ackster's attribute were water.
But that still left two manuals that could work.
The Sea God Manual and the Ocean Unison Manual.