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“…Master, I am sorry. I couldn’t tell you anything about me.”
“Ah, well. Don’t worry ’bout that.”

Look, I was the one who made her talk ’bout it. But it’s really hard to have a conversation. I told her to sleep, but… we’d probably manage a better conversation if we went outside together.

What to do… what to do… This time, I’m the one who ended up with nothin’ to do, didn’t I? Damn… Oh, right. Should I take another look at my status screen to take my mind off things?

“I’m sorry, Rir. I’ll manage my status screen for a bit.”
“…Huh? Alright, understood.”

I wonder what that delay just now was about. At any rate, guess I’ll check my status screen. Yup. Back then, my body got pretty hot, so I’m guessin’ that my level went up by quite a lot…

C-Crazy… Just today, my level more than doubled… I also got a boatload of STP and SKP. My last name also got added without me noticin’…

Now, what to do…?

“Is something wrong, Master? You just said something like ‘whoa’.”

Oops, guess I was so surprised, I ended up thinkin’ out loud.

“Ah… it’s nothin’, I was only shocked that my level has gone up even more than yesterday.”
“Your level… I don’t think that the level is very important… I think what’s important is how much you can improve your SK2 skills, you know? You’re unusual, Master.”
“Huh? Is that so?”
“Ah… I’m sorry, I was just being cheeky.”

If what Rir just told me is common sense, then do the people of this world not see their level as somethin’ important? I should ask her some more.

“Hey, Rir. To give an example, if I either trained with the sword or leveled up… which of those would make me stronger?”
“About that… I’m not super knowledgeable, but… wouldn’t it be sword training? Hard work will pay off… right?”

So, it’s like that after all, my guess was on the mark. If you level up, you gain SKP and can allocate that to SK2 skills. I have several cheat titles… but even without those, levelin’ up seems to be the way to get stronger more easily.

“Gotcha, thank you.”
“…Hm? Well, sure. You’re welcome.”

Welp, with that mystery cleared up, I should start allocatin’ STP and SKP.

STP should be easy. With my fightin’ style, I won’t need D or HP. That said, I probably have enough MP and W. I don’t feel like I need any A currently either. I’ll think ’bout it once MP consumption becomes an issue. Same for D (Dexterity).

In that case, I gotta raise S this time. I’ve noticed that when I use magic, the speed spells fly at seems to benefit from S. Besides, it also helps with movement speed. I’d like to invest 400… no, make that 450 points, into it.

I’ll allocate 50 each into the remaining six stats… which leaves me with 260. I’ll leave those as they are for now.

Next is… SKP.

Lookin’ at God of Fire… I got enough points to blast past the second stage and max it out directly. Probably a bad idea to do that so quickly… Still, since I’ve become an adventurer, it’d be much appreciated for that work¹. In that case, I gotta allocate 1500 points into it, don’t I?

Once I brought God of Fire to its final stage I received a message.

When I checked my status screen, my titles had indeed increased by two. I investigated the effects of said titles.

“Sovereign of the Miraculous Blaze” didn’t have any special effects. It seemed to be purely cosmetic.

As for “Fire Controller”: it had the effect of enabling a slight control over the fire attribute. To give an example, when hitting a Goblin with a Fireball, I could prevent the surrounding trees from going up in flames. It allowed me to narrow down my targets. However, it said that people and animals couldn’t be excluded².

More amazing that the titles were the effects of God of Fire at max level.

First, it reduced the cost for evolution and synthesis of skills related to fire by 9/10ths. MP consumption was also reduced by 9/10ths (with a minimum cost of 1 MP).
Second, if I was hit by a fire attack from someone else, half of the damage I would’ve taken normally instead healed my HP, and the other half restored my MP.
Finally, it strengthened the power of fire abilities even further than stage 1 and 2 did, and it allowed me to freely adjust their power.

Also. As a bonus for maxing the ability out, it apparently increased both my MP and W by 1000, though that didn’t seem as outrageous compared to God of Fire’s effects.

It’s only been two days since I’ve come to this world, but… I feel like I’ve gotten super strong.
But I still have SKP left.

In that case, it’s already clear where I’ll put ’em. Evolvin’ Fire Magic to the next level.

I opened Fire Magic and picked the newly added “Evolution” option. When I did that, it opened a special screen where I was asked whether I wanted to evolve it. When I chose yes, Fire Magic turned into Improved Fire Magic. I had the leeway to invest the required 60 SKP to max it out, which caused me to learn the “Fire Emission” spell³.

At this point, I got a little lost.

After usin’ my SKP in this manner for Fire Magic, I probably should do the same for Water Magic. Since Fire Magic uses… well, fire, it ends up damagin’ the corpses of magic beasts. My current goal is to make a livin’ while lookin’ for Kanata and Sakura, and gettin’ stronger ain’t my first priority, so the latter might be better.

I invested 12 SKP into Water Magic to max it out, evolved it into Improved Water Magic, and maxed it out once more. While I was at it, I also learned something called Ice Magic.

…I got 60 SKP left. I still ain’t done. As it is now, I can probably learn somethin’ higher than Improved Fire Magic.

I evolved Improved Fire Magic even further, turning it into True Fire Magic. True Fire Magic required 150 SKP to max out, so I could only get it to the first stage by investing 30 points. Then, thinking I should do the same with Water Magic, after all, I evolved it from Improved Water Magic to True Water Magic. Finally, I allocated 30 SKP in each of those two skills and learned the “Cannon” spell of both elements.

Phew… With this, I’ve reached a good stoppin’ point. Getting’ stronger is kinda fun, ain’t it? I wonder if that was how Ayumu felt, when he was playin’ video games.

“Master, you look satisfied for some reason,” Rir told me.

Does my face look that contented? In the past, I once asked Ayumu “Is it that much fun to reach level 99?”, but… Now, I kinda get how he felt.

“I managed to get stuff done with my status screen in a satisfying manner. That made me pretty happy, y’know.”
“Is that so…? That’s good, then.”
“Yup.”

…Now, what should I do next?

Author’s Note:
Shuu’s Status screen at the end of the chapter:

TL notes:
And with this status screen centered chapter, we jump into volume 10.

As we’ve seen before in Alim’s chapters, there seems to be this deeply rooted belief in Anazumu’s natives that levels don’t matter. I remember Alim mentioning in chapter 109, that you need stats of about 100 to double your abilities as an adult in that area (maybe the effect is more noticeable for children).

You reach this at level 20 (ignoring the STP gains, so you could reach it earlier if you focus on one attribute) and unless you’re dungeon grinding like Alim, it takes some time to reach that point, as we’ll see in a future chapter, so I guess it’s understandable how the natives would reach such a conclusion.

1. Going from burning his targets to vaporizing them doesn’t sound like a good way to improve his earnings, but I guess it’ll help against the random superboss showing up.
2. Dang, no “sculpt spells” for you, Shuu.
3. The last part was originally in the previous sentence, but you don’t learn the “Emission” spells until getting it to the first stage after evolution.
4. The original here is just 炎の帝王 (“sovereign/emperor of the blaze”) instead of the 灼炎の帝王 (“sovereign/emperor of the brilliant/miraculous blaze”) earlier in the chapter. I guess one of those is a typo. I kept the one I liked more.