Some time later I was fast asleep. Well… I was… Before being violently awoken by Luna with a godly punch to the gut that pierced through 4 thick blankets to make my insides turn.
"Why Luna!? Do you want me to die so badly!?" I asked, now fully awake.
"You have guests." Luna responded simply.
"What time is it!?"
"3 in the morning."
"Such an ungodly hour?" I complained as I threw on a red and gold coat and did one of the straps before leaving my room and appearing in the next room where princess Sally and my sister Alex were sitting at the table which had four seats. Luna immediately went off and began preparing some tea while I was forced to sit down in front of the two.
"Why are you here…At this ungodly hour…" I asked drowsily, still having a headache from the knowledge being drilled into me by the system.
"A few things." Sally said. "One. You forgot this." She said, handing over the dragon egg. I hadn't felt it before since it was brung over by one of the auction's servers. Now that I touched it I felt the surface was strangely rough and my core felt somewhat attracted by the egg.
Boom!
Thunder crackled in the sky as I fiddled with the egg. I almost forgot it was apparently the cause of this horrible downpour.
"The second thing is to ask you how you succeed in escaping." Sally continued.
I pondered how to respond a moment before speaking. "Stealth supreme. I fooled your senses into thinking I disappeared and ran away." I answered.
"Virgo said the same thing. What rank are you?"
"Rank-3 maybe. If not, at the top of rank-2."
"I'll take your word for it. Anyways. Whos this?" Sally asked, referring to Luna who had just served tea.
"My attendant. Why?" I asked.
"Just wondering why you brought a female attendant to serve you in such a small apartment. I'm also curious how and why a rank-3 mage is willingly serving you." The princess answered.
"She's rank-3 now? I really should increase her salary." I mumbled to myself.
"See, I told you. My brother balances common sense on a needle. He only seems normal for a few moments at a time." My sister explained, ignoring my existence.
The two mostly chatted with each other and left a while later. That wasn't all though. I suddenly had a strange sense of trouble coming.
Seeing that my core capacity was too small to sustain my time manipulation. I decided to make an investment. 11,469 exchange points suddenly disappeared as I increased my core capacity to 100,000. Another 15,000 were subtracted to raise all my stats to 1000. A total of 26,469 exchange points.
Lastly I upgraded time attribute knowledge from advanced rank to distinctive using the quest reward. The increase in its knowledge also increased my time manipulation skill from intermediate to specialty, making the discovery that certain knowledge and skills were related and would be upgraded together.
Promptly after my strengthening though. I felt as if my body would explode and promptly fainted on my bed before I could even scream in pain.
…
The next morning I was still in incredible pain from the stat increase, felt horribly sick and bloated from the core capacity increase and had a splitting migraine headache from the new knowledge. Even so, I was forced out of bed and into my uniform by the ever diligent Luna.
"It would be a joke for a rank-3 knight to get sick. Stop faking it." Luna had said as she dragged me out of bed while I felt I was dying.
My only solace was my status panel.
[(Specialty) area-sense] , [(Mastery) physical enhancement+] , [(Intermediate) Imperial swordsmanship] , [(Distinctive) Ocean Splitting arts] , [(Mastery) Weapon Aura] , [(Specialty) Mana Manipulation+] , [(Specialty) Elegance] [(Specialty) time manipulation]> [(Advanced) Standard magic formations] , [(Advanced) Elemental magic formations] , [(Advanced) Magigliths] , [(Advanced) Magic theories] , [(Basic) Geography] , [(Distinctive) time attribute]> It was too bad the night hadn't been long enough to completely recover all my mana to its new hundred thousand capacity. Area sense had also been going up in rank, likely due to the mana manipulation skill and massive mana capacity my core had. Other than that though… "I suddenly feel… Troubled." I thought aloud, sitting up on my bed as Luna came in. "I jinxed it." I mumbled, resisting the urge to facepalm. "Milord… There's several powerful presences waiting outside…" Luna spoke reluctantly. "Haizz…" I sighed. "Tell them I've sensed trouble and have gone to save the princess." I said, much to Luna's confusion. At the same time I got dressed, I bought a core energy restoration potion from the exchange store for 80 points, drinking it once I finished getting dressed and threw on a coat to keep off the rain. "Alright. I leave the rest to you." I told Luna before everything around me completely froze and I stepped out the window, jumping down before darting off towards wherever the princess was, ignoring the two arch-knights and the eldest princess who were just heading into the dorms building as I dashed through the completely still rain. I kept running and released the time stop after 10 seconds. The short time had let me get ridiculously far away with my new strength and physical enhancement. However I had also exhausted 10,233 units of mana in the same time. My time manipulation may be powerful, but its mana usage was on par with the 9th arcana, if not greater. Soon enough I arrived on top of a building that overlooked this area of the capital, being doused by the rain repelled by my coat, which was a system product that repealed rain and reduced air resistance, worth 400 points. The princess seemed to stay still for a few moments, but the distance started changing rapidly and I suddenly caught a glimpse of a train going past, heading outside the capital. After estimating the distance it matched the change in distance with the systems quest panel. "Found you…" I said to myself, launching from the building's roof and only changing time by 4 times in order to speed myself up. Any more and I wouldn't have enough mana to fight if I had to, which I imagined I would considering the system rewards tended to reflect difficulty.