novelraw Chapter 221
Chapter 221
Chapter 221
‘What the hell….’
I nearly let out a curse without realizing it.
And for good reason—no matter how much I scrolled down the special reward log, it just wouldn’t end.
‘Well, I did take down a lot of things.’
The Monster Wave itself was supposed to be a catastrophic event that occurred near the finale of the original story.
Of course, what I went through felt more like a “downgraded version.” In the original, even members of the Divine Race—like the Titans or demigods—were mixed in en masse, and New Valhalla City almost got completely wiped off the map.
This time, though, it was just a horde of lower-tier enemies, and I didn’t even need to protect a city, so clearing it had been relatively easy.
‘But thinking about it now, Aaron Stingray’s early death in the original had a pretty major butterfly effect.’
If Aaron Stingray had survived in the original story, wouldn’t he have at least cut the damages by half and successfully repelled the large-scale invasion of the Mystics?
Well, that’s just a “what if” scenario.
Anyway, after scrolling for quite a while, I finally got through the entire list. I started calculating the rewards with assistance from my internal processor. Since the special reward system didn’t total things up for me, I had to count everything manually.
This is one of the perks of cyberpunk, honestly.
In the original world, I would’ve had to open a calculator app and manually input numbers for settlement. But here, I just had to vaguely think of the numbers in my head, and the system would calculate everything for me.
But something felt off with the final number.
When I added the remaining points I already had…
‘102,500 poi— huh?’
Wait, did I read that wrong?
I doubted my processor's accuracy and recalculated the rewards. But the result came out the same.
‘One hundred two thousand five hundred points!?’
A hundred thousand?
I had never seen a figure that high before. Even after completely monopolizing everything from Act 1 to Act 4, I hadn’t seen a total like that. What the hell…
If I still had Module Level-Up Tickets or Compatibility Boost Tickets, I could probably turn a talentless normie into a better living weapon than myself with that amount.
‘Is… is this the power of a protagonist?’
I realized that up until now, I’d been receiving incredibly stingy rewards just because I was Aaron Stingray.
Wait a second, that’s kind of annoying. This whole balance is a joke.
‘Then again… maybe not.’
I only feel that way because I’m seeing things from my perspective. Other players probably wouldn’t see it like that. Aaron Stingray could have decapitated every other character from the very start of the game if he wanted—if he also had growth potential, that would’ve been broken.
But now that I’d taken on the role of “protagonist,” some of those restrictions were lifted, and it wasn’t really a problem anymore. The only issue I had now was…
‘…Where the hell do I use all this?’
It was nice having a fat wallet, but now I had no clue where to spend it.
Module Level-Up Tickets had already been discontinued, so was there even a way to further upgrade my specs?
The only thing I could do was check the shop interface, which had leveled up by two stages.
‘Let’s see. What’s new here…’
The first thing that immediately caught my eye was how ridiculously good the exchange rate had gotten for Point → Credit conversion.
‘Ten million credits per point!?’
Before, it was practically worthless for me, even if it might’ve helped other Transmigrators. But at this rate, it became very significant.
A quick calculation: I had 100,000 points. If I converted all of it to credits, that would be a billion credits.
With that much, I could personally start my own megacorp. Or if I dumped it all into Militech stocks, I could even influence a corporate power struggle.
This was a massive weapon in itself.
Thanks to the Author dumping all these episodes on me, I’d keep raking in reward points regularly. Even if I blindly exchanged all of them for credits, I wouldn’t be at a loss.
Of course, one concern was how the actual exchange process worked. If this amount of credits suddenly rained down from the sky and entered the market, the city’s economy could go nuts.
‘Well… that’ll probably work itself out somehow?’
Not really something I need to worry about. Whether it’s the will of the world, a balancing force, or the Author—someone else will take care of it.
The important part here was that I no longer needed to rely on the Stingray Chairman when it came to money.
Right now, most of the credits flowing into my pocket every month were from my salary as Chairman of the Stingray Foundation and the dividends from the massive amount of Stingray shares I owned.
In other words, it was all basically tied to the Chairman’s goodwill.
No matter how secretly I operated shadow accounts to manage my funds, I’d always be somewhat vulnerable to that old man’s influence.
But now I’d gained the power to offset that vulnerability to some extent. Just that alone made this shop level-up incredibly valuable to me.
‘What else is there?’
If the credit exchange rate was that good, other items were bound to be interesting too. With rising excitement, I carefully scanned the rest of the listings.
And sure enough, there were a few things—questionable in usefulness, but definitely eye-catching.
The first thing that caught my attention was an Orange Hunting Ground Ticket.
If Red was the highest difficulty, then this must be the second-highest. It meant I could now buy this tier of ticket with points. The price was suitably high at 2,500P.
‘Not sure if I’ll actually end up buying one, though.’
I was still skeptical about the Hunting Grounds.
In this world’s settings, my drop rate in the Hunting Grounds was set to the lowest level, so unless something special happened, I had no intention of going there.
To be honest, I even questioned whether I needed to use the tickets I already had. The higher the tier of the Hunting Ground, the exponentially harder it got—and there wasn’t much to gain from it.
To me, the Hunting Ground tickets were nothing more than emergency teleportation tools. No more, no less. So if I had to buy one, I’d choose a low-tier one I could enter anytime without much concern.
‘Though now that I’ve become the protagonist, maybe it’s different?’
The Author hadn’t explained that part, but thinking about it, it seemed quite likely. There’s no way they’d leave such a useful “bonus stage” like the Hunting Grounds untouched.
‘I’ll have to check it out soon and see for myself.’
Other than that, the shop listings hadn’t changed all that drastically. A few things were gone, a few new ones added.
I was slightly surprised that the “Neo Armstrong Whatever” thing I’d once bought for Miyu was back in stock. Who besides Miyu would ever want that kind of thing?
Besides that, a fairly high-grade Essence of Mystic had appeared in the listings, and a new category for “Cyberware” had been added instead of “Modules.”
They were probably items intended for players rather than Adaptees.
From the looks of it, the performance was decent, but obviously, they weren’t things I needed. Mystic essences could be easily purchased in the market with enough credits anyway.
“This time too, not much…”
Once again, nothing particularly impressed me. The quality of the items had clearly gone up, but so what if I couldn’t use them?
Except for one thing.
Something strangely caught my attention.
[Mystic Index Encyclopedia]
Price: 15,000P
A product I’d never seen before.
Saying it never appeared in the original is an understatement.
Just from the name, it looked like a compilation of what types of Mystics existed and what their characteristics were.
‘Should I buy it?’
I seriously debated it.
Excluding the price, it seemed like a pretty useful item. And considering that the now-discontinued Module Level-Up Ticket had been 5,000P, this might very well be worth it too.
It’s not like I’d encountered all the monsters that existed in this world. And there was no way everything from the original was all there was. If it existed, it would definitely be helpful.
What bothered me a little was the fact that something like this had already appeared as part of the Academy curriculum. Humanity had long since compiled Mystic data into databases, so why spend 15,000 points just to buy something like this?
And my current specs were more than enough to take down most monsters with ease, so even if I had a guidebook, it might end up being useless.
But the problem was…
‘This didn’t appear coincidentally just because the shop reached Lv.4, did it?’
To buy or not to buy.
After some deliberation, I eventually decided to go for the purchase. Even if I didn’t use it myself, I figured it would be helpful if I let my kids study it.
[Mystic Index Encyclopedia] Purchase Complete.
Over 10% of my points were gone in a flash, just for a single encyclopedia. I hoped it was worth that much… I thought as I held it in my hand.
‘Huh. So it wasn’t a book.’
The packaging just looked like a book. But when opened, it turned out to be a chipset that could be inserted into a Socket HUB. That was a relief—it would've been inconvenient to carry around otherwise.
I immediately inserted the chipset, and the Socket HUB began reading the data. And the moment the device recognized the chipset, my jaw instinctively dropped in sheer astonishment.
‘W-What is this?’
The amount of data was absurd.
It hadn’t even finished loading, and it was already in exabyte units. It was taking the Socket HUB quite a bit of time to fully read the encyclopedia.
‘This is the first time loading has slowed down.’
When I opened the data, the screen blinked blankly for a while. It was struggling to process such a massive volume of information.
But eventually, the content began to display little by little, and once I saw what it contained, I was shocked all over again.
‘It’s all here!?’
It was literally everything about Mystics.
Even the Author probably didn’t go into this much detail while writing. No, if by some miracle they did plan things this deeply, then they deserve to be called a deranged setting maniac.
For example, take the common Goblin.
Details like the origin of goblins, their average height, and lifespan were basic. But it even showed where their tribes were located relative to New Valhalla City, and so on.
It also included precise data on traits of Modules that could be granted using Essence of Goblin.
If that were all, I would’ve found it useful—but not necessarily shocking. The part that truly stunned me came next.
‘It’s updating information for each individual in real time…!’
Every goblin entity with names like Kallak, Gulrak, and Byanus—they were all listed. Their current emotions, relationships with other entities, locations—everything.
‘This is… a cheat.’
A cheat?
No, calling it a cheat doesn’t do it justice.
I felt a desperate need for a new word to describe this thing—but frustratingly, nothing came to mind.
I couldn’t even understand how something like this could exist.
‘If this were a normal board game, this would probably be treated as an equipment item that gives buffs for every Mystic encounter or something.’
But as it had become reality, it now held insane functionality as a monster encyclopedia. Well, I still didn’t fully understand how this world was structured, so I couldn’t say for sure.
Anyway.
‘With this, I can do anything.’
The ways I could use it were endless.
I could share the contents with the scientific community and bring about technological advancements, or I could use it to pinpoint where the monsters I wanted to hunt were located.
Or, I could identify the ones that were friendly toward humans and use them to establish channels for interaction with Mystics.
Fueled by uncontrollable curiosity, I continued exploring the encyclopedia. I even found that Evangeline’s name appeared under the Witch category.
‘Hmm… This is kinda awkward to look at.’
No matter what, she was still a girl, and it felt wrong to use a cheat like this to pry into her inner thoughts. I’m sure she had her own secrets she wanted to keep.
As I flipped through the entries, I suddenly became curious about the Dwarves. Come to think of it, I couldn’t be 100% sure this encyclopedia’s data was accurate, so it wouldn’t hurt to do some comparisons.
I began carefully reading about the origin and racial characteristics of the Dwarves. Then I skimmed through the individual personalities and thoughts of the Dwarves residing in this village.
And that’s when I found something strange.
‘Huh? There’s a Dwarf planning to kill us?’