Sina was awestruck. While she didn't understand all of what happened, and even less of the conversation afterwards, she understood the power of even a D rank diver compared to the average person. This person who helped a poor villager like her was stronger than she thought, but he was an honest and humble person, unlike most who grew arrogant and demanding.

Can someone like me even compare?

----------------------------------------

Master seems to be more pleased than normal.

"Of course! A new world has opened before me. A world of soft ears and bushy tails awaits!"

After he explained that Earth was a place far away enough that it could be considered another world, and he was half human, half dragon, she requested to be in his party. Her test placed her at an E rank healer, but it would save him money and/or SP on potions. Not to mention she was a cute nine-tailed fox girl! How regrettable that only one tall was pettable.

"Guehehe"

Master would do well to hide that perverted look in public.

"I'm alone right now, but even so, take a look at how hard it's raining right now."

There's not a cloud in the sky, Master.

"That's how much I care."

I suppose that was to be expected.

"Yup. In this new life, I will be karma. Anything I receive I will return tenfold, good or bad. I like to think of it as lightening the gods workload just a bit."

However, my mind was starting to look ahead. I needed to make some spending goals for the future. The Hermes guantlets were good for now, but they were only C rank equipment. In the future I would need better stuff, but that seemed far down the road. I needed some sort of enchanted armor, as my soul armor could only take two hits per soul, unsuited for a drawn out battle with a strong opponent. C rank seemed to be top grade equipment for this area, so let's narrow the store to C rank armor with flexibility.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

There were a few good ones, but one in particular seemed tailor made for me:

Troll's Skin

When HP drops below 12.5%, mana will be consumed and converted to HP until HP is full or mana runs out.

With mana mastery, as long as there was mana around me, I had unlimited mana, and wearing this could mean I had almost unlimited health. My skill would change 12.5% to 25%, but that would mean an enemy would have to be strong enough to get him to a quarter health. If he needed it, a soul could take fatal attacks, so this seemed like a good choice. The only problem was...

1000 SP, huh? With the discount, it was still 500, but he didn't know how easy it was to earn points. He'd put that aside for now.

Most RPGs had some sort of consumable which would raise certain stats, so he decided to see how expensive that would be. To my surprise, I could exchange points for stats at a ten to one ratio. I had no idea if this was cheap or expensive, but it should come in handy later.

Finally, skills. Unfortunately, every skill looked useful, and even E rank skills cost over ten thousand SP.

Deal with the present problems now, and future problems when they arise. I think if I need skills, I can buy them when time comes. Coming to that conclusion, I closed the shop. Now, what should I do for the rest of the day?

Unfortunately, my flag bearer went and died on me. How inconsiderate of him! At least he was able to give me a class level up as a parting gift.

As I was lamenting over the death of a superb idiot, a knock interrupted my thoughts. What was I thinking about again? Eh, it probably wasn't important.

When I answered the door, Sina was standing there, an eager aura about her.

"Can we go to the dungeon?"

I silently thanked Luck. I had a feeling he was involved in this somehow.

"I was just thinking we should go myself."

Master had no such thoughts.

Thank you for ruining the moment as always, Tryst.

"By the way, how in the world did you summon a talking shade?"

"You mean you can see him?"

"Am I not supposed to?"

A strained smile formed on my face.

"Tryst? Care to explain?"

As a shade, Tryst could be called an embodiment of death meant to inspire fear in others. It wasn't until he saw the look in his master's eyes that he understood the terror of mortality.

"If you want to survive the night, start talking."