280 Complete Integration of Attributes, Contemplation About The Future
Meanwhile.
Back at the Coliseum.
After a tight battle against the coordinated offense and defense of Great Sword Dien and Fortress Defender Manock, respectively, Randy finally managed to get his perception and other attributes to fully integrate with his body. To be more precise, he had fully integrated all basic attributes into his body.
Even though he had already defeated all of his opponents on stage, concluding the Giadiator match, he still failed to increase his intelligence and magic limit attributes.
While he was pondering what was going on, the umpire took off his Power-Restraining Bracelets.
Suddenly—
[Intelligence +70]
[Magic Limit +70]
This instantly left Randy dumbfounded. He didn’t expect it to be this easy, or rather he didn’t expect to get all of these attributes at the same time, and out of nowhere. After all, he had to integrate all the other attributes bit by bit throughout the match. Yet, he got these attributes in one go right after the match ended.
.....
‘Were they not increasing earlier because of the Power-Restraining Bracelets?’
Randy made a conjecture, which he found to be most likely the case. After all, he had been under the effect of power suppression due to the Power-Restraining Bracelets, so it made complete sense that he couldn’t obtain attributes related to supernatural power.
With that settled, he briefly glanced at the twenty Gladiators, including Great Sword Dien and Fortress Defender Manock, who were lying on the floor of the platform breathing heavily and groaning in pain before walking away through the door that led outside. He didn’t jump up the platform to the seat he was sitting on earlier because he would have to jump over some people to reach that seat.
Jumping down was easy, but jumping up might lead to some unintentional accidents, so he decided to take the same path every Gladiator took out of the platform.
Eventually, he met up with Gutz outside, who was spurred on by his outstanding display of fighting and proceeded to shower him with words of praise.
Afterward, Gutz said passionately: “Randy, I want to challenge some people here to integrate some of my attributes from my previous increase in level. I plan on following in your footsteps by challenging multiple people at the same time. I want to experience my own limits!”
Randy didn’t particularly care what Gutz wanted to achieve by challenging multiple people like him, so he only nodded and watched him issue challenges to the other Gladiators.
A while later, Gutz fought against two Gladiators, and he barely managed to win against them, but he seemed to have run out of steam. He looked completely worn out and couldn’t carry on with the subsequent match.
Therefore, he had no choice but to quit the match and take some rest before issuing the next challenge to four Gladiators at the same time. However, he couldn’t even last a minute before being defeated helplessly by three of the four Gladiators’ coordinated attacks.
After losing this match, Gutz’s admiration for Randy shot up many notches. He thought that Randy was amazing to fight against twenty people and still come out on top.
Through his observation, he came to believe that Randy’s fighting style and combat strength was way beyond normal human cognition.
Furthermore, he also noticed that Randy didn’t seem that tired nor was he sweating profusely as one would expect from his intense fight. On the contrary, his expression was relatively the same throughout the match.
…
A few minutes later.
After watching Gutz compete in his second round of matches, Randy went up and informed Gutz, who was beaten to the point that he was resting in the infirmary with a swollen face, about heading out to walk around the city to get some fresh air.
Hearing his request, Gutz was worried that he would get lost as he was still new to the Imperial City. However, Randy insisted confidently that he had already memorized the path to the Coliseum, so he shouldn’t worry about him getting lost.
Gutz was then reassured and told him to make sure to come back to the Coliseum in about an hour, as he would be waiting for him there. After all, they still needed to head to the Society building to report their presence.
This was something that Gutz had promised Vairon before taking Randy to the Gladiator’s Coliseum. As such, he kept it in his mind all this time.
Randy readily agreed with his decision and went out by himself. However, before leaving, Randy asked Gutz a few questions regarding the Dungeons in the Imperial City. After he got answers to his questions, he left with a pondering expression.
…
On the streets of the Imperial City.
Randy walked by himself as he thought about his plans moving forward. He had already achieved his goal of coming to the Imperial City with the conclusion of the Gladiator’s match.
As for what he should do from now on for the remainder of his stay in the Imperial City, it was the same as before coming to this world through the dimensional rift, which was to get stronger faster and learn the secrets his parents were hiding from him.
Before leaving, he wanted to at least attain the highest level possible in this world, which was level 99— the exalted level of power.
With that in mind, he wanted to continue increasing his level using this world’s system of strength acquisition.
However, what troubled him presently was that after he asked Gutz where to find dungeons that met his current level in order to increase his level in the Imperial City easily, he told him that he would have to join the army as a reserve soldier as a prerequisite. Only then would he be able to gain access to those higher-level dungeons.
That prerequisite made him hesitate about his decision. He didn’t want to get entangled in this world’s affairs, not to mention a war that had a high chance of him losing his life.
Although he was confident that, with his current strength, which could even overwhelm some of the strongest soldiers in the Gladiator’s Coliseum, as long as he was careful enough, he should be able to easily survive participating in the war without losing his life helplessly.
Regardless, he didn’t want to take that risk if he could help it. Therefore, he thought deeply about how he should handle the situation without depending on the Royal Family or joining the army.
The first thought that came to mind was to clear low-level dungeons to slowly increase his level. However, he immediately shook this thought out of his head.
There was no need for him to think about employing this method at all. As for the reason why he chose not to employ this method? That was very self-explanatory if one thought about it carefully.
While clearing low-level dungeons would not put him under a restriction from the Royal Family, he knew very well that it would take him an exceedingly long time to increase each level. It could take him weeks, months, or even years to increase a few levels, much less reach level 99.
Aside from that, he didn’t have much time in this world. At most, he had a couple of months. So far, he had only spent about two weeks or so in Acruxia.
He might not necessarily need to stay in Acruxia for the whole duration of the time he had left due to the time difference not being stable, according to his system.
Aside from that, there was even a chance that increasing his level using low-level dungeons may become ineffective at some point.
With all those possibilities in mind, he decided against using this method for the time being.
With that sorted out, Randy deliberated on his other choices as he wandered the streets of the Imperial City, and at some point, he bought some food from a random food stall. He had roasted bird meat with some spices that he had never seen before.
Aside from the salt-like substance added, there were also some other condiments that were applied to the bird meat that complemented it very well. The bird meat was cut into multiple pieces and poked into a thin stick like a kebab, looking quite tender and succulent.
Though he had no idea what the sauces applied to the roasted bird meat were, he still enjoyed their taste very much. Thus, he bought a few more of those roasted meats with different flavors before leaving the food stall.
As he walked aimlessly while memorizing the paths he took, he suddenly found himself back in the alley they walked past as they made their way into the city. He saw some kids in rags as he walked through the alley, and after pondering for a bit, he gave out the extra roasted bird meat he bought to the kids.
These kids were all children whose parents were killed in the war and left homeless as a result. One kid, in particular, was very wary of his kind gesture and hesitated to take the attractive meat as he looked at Randy full of doubts.
This was a young boy who was about 8 to 10 years old. Eventually, he couldn’t fight back against his natural urges. His hunger overwhelmed his skepticism, and he quickly took the kebab of bird meat from his hand.
The kid said thanks to him momentarily before hurriedly running away as though he was afraid that he would take back the roasted meat from him with some excuse. At the same time, the other kids also left for their usual hideouts, which were all in different directions.