Chapter 63: From rich to rags

The finances Shane could see on the holographic screen were much more than he initially planned to accumulate on his first month within the Primordial Dimension, and he couldn't even control his eyes, as saliva formed in his mouth.

Gulping down his saliva, Shane couldn't think straight and he imagined wonderful times coming towards him with some relaxed cultivation and body refining as some noises intercepted his dreamlike thinking.

Umbra caused havoc on the table and demanded more food, even though his one-meter-long body looked like it would explode any moment.

Handing out more dishes, Shane thought he would have to purchase a large stock of food in the future if Umbra's gluttony would increase.

If everything came to the worst, he would tell Umbra to eat the beasts they hunted instead of the dishes he purchased with their hard-earned wealth.

Trying to come back to his senses, almost a whole minute passed and Shane couldn't control his emotions right off the bat.

Full of expectations, he immediately took a look at the price for the [Mortal-(Mythic)] Body refining manual.

With more than 900 gold coins, he was confident in purchasing the [Mythic] body refining manual as it was only at the mortal stage, the lowest possible stage.

Even so, Shane was shocked to see that the perfect body refining manual for the Mortal physique to be priced at 500 gold coins.

Adding the price for Umbra's quality upgrade, Shane would have to pay around 730 gold coins solely for his body refining technique and the 5xtier-2 mana stones with darkness compressed within in addition to four Daylight peony.

His mood immediately soured in an instant.

In the end, this meant Shane could at most use 230 gold coins for himself, which would most likely suffice for three higher-tiered manuals for his mana gathering, purifying and a higher body flawed body refining, Shane would have to use before he would be able to do the mission for a [Apprentice-(Mythic)] perfect body refining technique.

Calculating the additional price for cultivation resources, nutrition solutions, and so on, Shane could only frown deeply, as his two days of effort vanished almost immediately, without him being able to purchase a single skill or something like that.

It felt as if his fortune never existed as he disgruntledly purchased the [Mortal-(Mythic)] body refining manual for 500 gold coins.

Somewhat Shane felt more sad than happy to have purchased the Mythic body refining technique, which should not have been the case.

Nevertheless, the feelings of a young man with wide dreams were always different to normal thinking people and Shane could be considered a special case even among them because his way of thinking was extremely complicated and sometimes somewhat stupid.

The [Mythic] manual was directly bound to him, like every skill and technique that could only be obtained after fulfilling certain individual requirements and mission which included every manual at and above the platinum quality in addition to special skills like the Taming skill, that had certain requirements one had to fulfill before one could learn them.

Passing on these manuals and techniques to others was impossible, because of this binding, and Shane learned the manual without celebrating anything at all, with a notification popped into his head.

[Host learned [Mortal-(Mythic)] Body refining manual. Congratulations!!]

Even the system was more hyped than Shane was and he ignored the message after reading through it once in order to look at the Primordial Shop to search for the materials required to upgrade Umbra's quality.

Fortunately, he received wyvern blood from Uncle Max, otherwise, he wouldn't know how to fulfill the requirement for [Blood of a Dragon] and Shane could only thank the system that it accepted wyvern blood as dragon blood, even though the bloodline was most likely extremely thin.

Nevertheless, he still had to purchase five tier-2 mana stones [Darkness] that were similar to Darkness attributed crystals, but still somewhat different and four daylight peonies.

The Shop he found before was still there, but Shane wanted to find something cheaper as he didn't want to pay that 220 gold coins for Umbra's upgrade.

Unfortunately, even the shops of other races were rather unsatisfying with their offer, as the race surcharge presented the biggest hurdle.

In the end, Shane bought four daylight peonies for 25 gold coins each with a transfer fee of 10 gold coins, while the tier-2 mana stones [darkness] were priced at 20 gold coins each.

Paying 220 gold coins, caused Shane's already bad mood to become even worse.

With 243 gold coins left in his pockets, he would have to think carefully about what to purchase for his future progress.

There were still 11 days left until the academies would either approve of his application or decline him, which was unlikely.

However, he still had to change his application slightly.

He wanted to reach the 10th Mortal stage for his mana pool cultivation, while his physique would lack behind due to the need for a perfect tempering.

In the end, Shane decided to edit his application via the system in order to show his accumulated wealth in addition to his two cultivation stats.

While he allowed the system to update his cultivation, he turned the same function for his accumulated wealth off.

Having accumulated 1200 gold coins should be more than enough to make the examiners curious about his strategy and strength.

Thinking about what to purchase now, Shane wanted to eat at the same time, as surfing through the system shop could be done solely by thinking, when he noticed that his dishes were eaten up.

Umbra looked like he ate a whole pig with his whole body of one mether enlarging by two to three times which looked disgusting, causing him to shake his head disappointed.

Meanwhile, Umbra looked at Shane innocently not knowing why his master was dissatisfied with him, as he wanted to ascend onto Shane's shoulder.

Unfortunately, it couldn't even leave the table with an elegant movement, and rather than jumping onto Shane, it would more likely fall to the ground like a walrus.

As such it coiled up and began to cultivate in order to avoid any embarrassing situations.

Seeing that, Shane took out a few of the mana crystals he mined to support Umbra with his mana gathering to hasten up the process.

It would take a long time for Umbra to gather enough mana to evolve into the strongest possible evolution path and Shane wanted to help him, with his fullest capabilities in order to receive a strong companion.

Taking out two dishes he would eat by himself, Shane continued his research as he wanted to use his remaining funds perfectly without wasting them.

There were two paths he could walk down right now.

The first path was to purchase three top tier-1 techniques which included a flawed body refining technique that Shane had to use after he finished building up a flawless Mortal stage physique in addition to a 28% mana purification manual and mana gathering technique.

While the second path would allow Shane to think about his future development. This would allow him to purchase a single 60% mana purifying technique with a silver tier-1 mana gathering technique without considering his physique.

The second path allowed him to purchase a 60% purity manual without the need of renewing his manuals every few days, but it would neglect his body refining, as the highest grade he had was the tier-1 bronze technique, allowing him to reach the 3rd Apprentice stage at most.

Shane was somewhat unsatisfied with both paths and he wanted to find a way to satisfy all his needs when he remembered a somewhat stupid but also kinda smart path he could take.

With a smile emerging on his face, Shane began to continue his research with much more motivation as he finally found what he needed.