When Lys woke up, the morning light was already coming through the curtains in thin yellow lines.
For a mont, when Lys first opened his eyes, the room he was in felt weird to him. The Ceiling. The Window. His own hands on top of the blanket. Everything felt weird, like he didn’t knew all of this.
He lay there for a while and let it co back slowly. Slowly, everything that had happened started to co back to him. Like he was watching a recap of everything that had happened after coming to this world.
The crowd in the yard. Sara’s hand flat against his chest. The kitchen table, John’s face in the lantern light, going from fury to calculation and back again. The way the conversation had moved, one wall at a ti, each one he climbed just when it needed to. Selene’s voice saying "okay, I’ll do it" in a tone that gave nothing away about her real feelings but still ant everything.
Everything that had happened to him for the past few days ca back to him.
He stared at the ceiling.
It was definitely weird. He knew the skill he bought last night was too good to be true. But could that have this many side effects just for using it for 1 hour non-stop?! Just as he had stopped using the skill, his mind had basically started a riot for sleeping, and even after waking up, he still suffers from temporary mory loss. How did he not notice that while buying it?
It had worked. He knew that. He’d been there through all of it. But lying here in the morning quiet, and slowly realising the side effects one by one, made him realise this skill might be more costly than useful to use long-term.
He opened the nu.
>
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Strength: 33→34
Stamina: 45→47
Mana: 10/150
System Points (SP): 60
Active Targets:
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[Elara Veyne (Step-Mother)] – Difficulty: SS-Rank | Status: Cooking(Physical contact 0%) | Affection: 90 | Lust: 47%
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[Sara Thorne (Landowner)] – Difficulty: B-Rank | Status: Sitting on the table(Physical contact 0%) | Affection: 86 | Lust: 75%
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[Mira Veyne (Step-Sister)] - Difficulty: S-Rank | Status: Sitting on the table(Physical contact 0%) | Affection: 109 | Lust: 70%
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[Bertha Hale (Maid)] - Difficulty: D-Rank| Status: Overseeing the fields in the absence of Sara(Physical contact 0%) | Affection: 23 | Lust: 34%
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[Nora (rchant) - Difficulty: D-Rank| Status: Setting up shop(Physical contact 0%) | Affection: 31% | Lust: 26%
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Passive Targets: Elowen Valtor
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Skills:
Basic Mana Breathing (Tier 1): Absorb mana through controlled breathing. Generates 1 mana per minute.
Basic Hunting (Tier 2): Improves tracking, stealth, and accuracy.
Basic Herb Knowledge(Tier 1): Gives the user knowledge about herbs with a screen telling him what those herbs do.
Basic Regeneration(Tier 2): Heals the user from small-level wounds overnight.
Enhanced Stamina Skill(Tier 2): Double the natural recovery rate of the user and gives the user more stamina than he currently has.
Appraisal (Tier 1): Displays the market value and hidden properties of items. Crucial for selling those wolf pelts for the maximum price.
Iron Skin (Tier 2): Passively hardens the skin to the density of thick leather, making the host resistant to shallow cuts and bruises.
Persuasion Mastery (Tier 2): Improve success rate in negotiations or de-escalations.
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The blue interface appeared at the edge of his vision, with the familiar view. He found it imdiately, the newest entry, still sitting near the down where recently acquired skills always showed. He focused on the Persuasion Mastery and let it expand fully, the way he hadn’t when he bought it because of the urgency. After all, he’d had approximately forty-five seconds to make the decision before buying this.
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Cost: 450 SP | Duration: Sustained | Cooldown: 24 hrs
Effect: Heightens awareness of conversational flow, resistance points, openings, and pivot monts beco readable 1-2 beats before they occur. Words land harder because timing improves. No new argunts, just sharper instincts.
Side Effects: Continuous mana drain (2/min). ntal fatigue builds over ti. Cognitive fog after 60-90 mins. Forced 3-hr rest on deactivation. Full recovery in 8 hrs.
He lay there and read the side effects section twice.
His eyes widened seeing that. He hadn’t seen any of that when he bought the skill. Well, not that he tried to, but still, shouldn’t there be so kind of warning or sothing? Questions like these were swarming in Lys’s mind while staring at the skill nu.
Now he understood that this is not a skill one could use whenever they want. He has to be very careful before using it.
He closed the nu and sat up, while pushing the blanket back, and dressed without hurrying. Outside the window, the village was already going about its morning, a cart sowhere down the lane, soone calling across a fence, ordinary sounds that had no idea what the night before had been for him.
He ran a hand through his hair and went downstairs.
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The kitchen was full.
Elara at the stove, back to the room, moving with the focused quiet, as she had her hands busy and her mind sowhere else entirely. Mira was at the table, already dressed, chin resting in both hands, watching the doorway with the patient look of soone who has been waiting for sothing exciting to happen.
And at the far end of the table was Selene.
She had a cup of tea in both hands, not drinking it, just holding it. Her clothes were yesterday’s, slightly rumpled, her hair pulled back simply without the careful arrangent it should have. She looked like soone who had slept a few hours in an unfamiliar house and woken up to find that, yes, yesterday was still true.
Sara was in the corner chair. Also with yesterday’s clothes. She also had that particular look of soone whose sleep had been both brief and unsatisfying. She was drinking from her own cup, and when Lys ca in she looked at him over the rim with an expression that said she had been awake long enough to develop several questions and had arranged them in order of importance.
Lys sat down.
"Morning," he said calmly.
"Morning," Mira said, in a tone that contained more than that single word.
Selene glanced up. She t his eyes for just a mont, the sa unreadable steadiness as the night before, then looked back at her cup. "Morning," she said quietly.
Elara set a plate down in front of him without any comnt, and he picked up the fork.
"Where’s Mitsu?" he asked.
"Still asleep," Elara said. "I looked in an hour ago. She was in a deep sleep."
A short silence settled in the room.
Then as if on a cue, footsteps could be heard from the hallway. Light and uncertain.
Mitsu appeared in the doorway wearing the nightdress Mira had lent her, her hair loose, her eyes still heavy with sleep. The bruising along her jaw had darkened overnight, more visible in the pale morning light than it had been by lantern. She stood in the doorway and took in the kitchen, the people at the table, and then her eyes found Selene. She stopped.
Selene had also gone very still.
They looked at each other across the room, and the kitchen held itself carefully around that mont, everyone aware of it but nobody moving.
Mitsu looked down first. Then at Lys, her expression was trying to make sense of sothing too large to take in all at once.
"Sit down," Elara said in her matter-of-fact voice, already pulling out the chair beside Mira. She set a plate in front of Mitsu the sa way she’d set one in front of Lys, identical, without ceremony. Then she went back to the stove.
The kitchen room felt too awkward for everyone present. Nobody knows how to explain all of this chaos that happened last night to Mitsu.
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