Earth’s Doom Starts with… Me?

[Stat points: (Yoo Chaerin)]

[Strength: 28]

[Intelligence: 48 (+5)]

[Agility: 20]

[Physique: 27 (+5)]

[Stat points available: 15]

I grinned excitedly upon seeing my stat growth. It wasn't anything major, and I was nowhere near general Zhang yet, but it was nice to see that I could increase my stats this much in just a few hours. Moreover, I still got 15 points to spare, which was nice.

Speaking of which, I should've got a new quest now, right? After all, I slaughtered way more than 5 different monster species during our trip to the spider's nest.

[You have completed your quest]

[Acquired 3000 gold, 5 stat points]

[Quest: claim a throne]

[Reward: ???]

What? How did the quest's difficulty jump this far ahead? Did the creator of this system deliberately set this up so I couldn't speedrun my stat anymore?

"Tch." I clicked my tongue and huffed angrily.

[What got into you? One minute you're laughing, and the next you're angry.] Luke opened one eye to peek at me.

"Ha... Why does something always get in my way?" I sighed.

[That's just how life is. You'll get used to it if you've lived over a thousand years. Obstacles will always be there, and you just have to either get used to it, or get around it.] He yawned and snuggled closer to me for more warmth.

"Yeah, it's kind of like in video games, where you always encounter enemies on your path. If you don't see enemies, you're taking the wrong path," I patted his snake head lightly, "but those are games, and this is real life."

I was about to close my eyes to drift off to dreamland, when I suddenly remembered that I could actually 'get around it'.

"...Inventory?" I whispered in a very hushed voice, so Luke wouldn't notice.

'Ding!'

A familiar screen appeared in front of me, and to my delight, it was filled with new items.

"Huehehehe." Now that I thought about it, the auto-collect system is too powerful, man. Now let's see if there was anything useful in here...

[Stop laughing and sleep, kid. It's midnight.]

"I'm not a kid. You can sleep first if you're that sleepy." I shrugged him off and read all of my items one by one.

Aside from the items that I got from the serpent's lair raid, I got a few useful drops.

[Earth Boar's tusk (material) x20]

[An earth boar's claw. Might be useful for crafting]

[Earth Boar's nail (material) x25]

[An earth boar's nail. Might be useful for crafting]

[Water Duck's bill (material) x5]

[A water duck's bill. Might be useful for crafting]

[Fire Deer's antlers (material) x5]

[Fire deer's antlers. Might be useful for crafting]

[Electric Spider's web (material) x10]

[Webbing from an electric spider. Pretty useful for crafting if you ignore the fact that it came out from its butt.]

[Electric Spider's poison sac (consumable) x5]

[A poison sac that was extracted from an electric spider's stomach. Rapidly decreases user's health.]

Hmm. The most interesting one out of them was definitely the poison sac. What bothered me was, how potent was it, exactly? Could I kill monsters using that? But which monsters? And was it possible to use it on a human?

I rubbed my temples as I thought hard about what I could do with these. I still didn't understand what crafting could do even though the majority of my items were materials.

After weighing my options for what seemed like forever, I finally decided on the most profitable solution I could think of.

I remembered Daeun's words, which went something like, '10.000 won today has a different value than 10.000 won next month'. Simply put, if I had resources, I should try to invest some, rather than just let it sit around and gather dust. The value would decrease, so sometimes, it would be better to invest to get even more profit.

"Shop." I muttered almost inaudibly.

A window popped up in front of me, and I clicked 'sell'. And after a few more clicks, I have put up all of the materials I just got. I kept the materials from the last serpent's lair raid, because they might be hard for me to obtain in the future in case I needed them, while today's materials came from common monsters that I could find nearby, so I figured it was okay to sell.

"Woah!" I gasped quite loudly when I saw the amount of gold they got me. Thankfully, Luke just shot me a weird look and went back to sleep without questioning my sudden gasp.

I couldn't believe those items earned me 1600 gold. Was I a rich lady now? Should I retire and live comfortably in the countryside? Man, at this rate, I could stay up all night finding ways to exploit this system.

Anyway, on to the next step.

I opened my inventory and took out one poison sac carefully to not break it. At first glance, it seemed like a regular purple water balloon. It was only as small as my palm, and the texture was similar to rubber. I was pretty sure this thing wouldn't break easily.

"Hmm... So I can't just throw it to my enemy as it won't spill the poison. Do I have to open it first? But then the poison will touch me, ew." I muttered to myself as I poked the purple sac on my palm.

"Oh, should I just throw it super hard so it breaks on impact?" I beamed, "yeah, yeah! That's a solid plan! I can test it out on that eel when I get back!"

Now that I've decided on its use, time to open the shop and get the other crucial item for my plan to work.

"Hmm, maybe... Poison? Spider? Spider antidote?" I tried several keywords as usual, before finally finding that precious item.

[Would you like to purchase the item 'Spider's poison antidote' for 1000 gold?]

"Hell yeah. But man, this one's expensive... The creator's economy perception is wack." I scratched my cheek. So life-saving items were expensive, but dangerous, life-threatening items were cheap?

"Oh well. Time to eat." I sighed as I opened my mouth wide, putting the poison sac inside.

'Crunch!'