When it came to Jordan’s next test, the start of it went as planned. He put the second pre-transmuted arrow into the left slot, and then closed it. Jordan then placed a hand directly on the machine, and focused on using Overcharge.

He watched his Resources and saw that the TP cost was spent. It seemed like the Skill had been successfully used, but there was only one way to be certain. For this attempt, he attempted to imagine the exact same thing as the last time, just to see if the Skill would change the result. Jordan moved over to the output slot on the right after using the machine.

As the Transmuter came to life, it once again began to vibrate. Jordan noted that there was a bit of a difference from before. The shaking seemed a bit more powerful compared to the first time, but only by a little. Just enough to be of note, but not worthy of much concern beyond that. But then, once again, the whole thing died down after exactly four seconds of being active. This time, he made sure to count it out in his head and be sure of how long it took.

Jordan looked at the glass slide. The glass itself was almost black with how heavily tinted it was. The space and object on the other side were only just barely and vaguely visible through it. He put his hand on the handle, hesitating for a moment before opening it.

Well, here goes something. Let’s just hope it doesn’t explode the moment I pull you open, Jordan thought. He hoped that not speaking out loud meant that he didn’t jinx himself just now. Putting on his big boy pants, he just quickly slid it open, his muscles tensed as he was ready to jump back.

For better or worse, however, that tense readiness had been a waste. There was no explosion or some other freak accident that he would have been worried about. The transformed arrow just sat in the cubby, waiting to be picked up.

He grabbed the arrow, and immediately felt that it was a bit warmer than the first test. Like the vibration, it was just barely enough of a difference for him to confidently notice that one even existed. But when Jordan studied the actual features of the arrowhead itself…

Huh, really? The machine definitely felt the Overcharge, but there really isn’t any difference? I was able to make my mental picture of it super close, since I just looked at the first one as a direct reference for the final result. But I guess I was expecting it to end up being… better, somehow? Jordan questioned with a slight frown.

Jordan then checked the machine’s current Charge. Perhaps the improvement came in the form of being more efficient with energy consumption.

Charge: 99.0%

Okay, so that was a no, then. Maybe Jordan was actually just too tired by now, and the difference in the machine’s vibrating and the arrow’s heating was actually just in his head. Considering that he already acknowledged that it wasn’t a significant change from before, that was a valid possibility. He looked down at the notes, and wrote in some more to conclude test two. Once that was done, he just sighed and put it back into his pocket space.

He glanced around at all the space for storage that the System had included. As nice as it was, was it even needed? Until he hit a limit with either the capacity of his pocket space or the size of the objects it could fit, there was no real reason to use anything else. Since the stuff inside the pocket space can only be accessed by its user until that person dies. And when that happened to cause all the things within to then spill out, it wasn’t like it’d matter to him. Since, you know, he’d already be dead at that point.

Probably better to save further testing for the morning after dinner and some shut-eye. I think I’ll then do a repeat of the second test, just to make sure it wasn’t my imagination. After that, we’ll see what ideas came to me in my sleep.

With that plan made, there were just two more things he wanted to check. Both because the Rabbit probably still needed a bit more time to drain, and because he’d be too curious to sleep otherwise. One thing was to see how the upper floors looked and how they compared to the ground level. But the second and far more pressing thing was right close by. Just what was the purpose of the seemingly random door that the System had decided to add?

Jordan intended to find out. With it only being a few feet away, he walked up to it. He then placed his hand on the handle and pushed down to open-

Access Denied!

Insufficient Kingdom Rank

Required Kingdom Rank: 2

“Access Denied?” Jordan repeated with knit brows. “System really decided to give me a crown but not all the keys to my own Kingdom, huh? …Haaaah, fine then. In that case, it is what it is. But how am I meant to get it to Rank 2? I assume it’s by getting the ten thousand Experience, but then how is that supposed to fill up?”

There had been something of note in that department from his two tests. Or rather, the lack of anything to note. Because even after the uses of the Transmuter so far, the EXP listed had yet to increase by even a single point.

EXP: 0/10000

The general knowledge granted to him about the System hadn’t exactly been helpful in this regard. Though looking at it and how the Rank was listed right next to it, the most obvious conclusion would be that it’d hit Rank 2 after accumulating ten thousand Experience Points. The how to do so was still the question left hanging in the air, however.

It can’t be gaining Experience while I gain some. If that was the case, it should have done it just earlier. Hmm. What if I just put my hand on the Transmuter again and then try to focus on it? That might give me an answer, he thought.

Taking just a few steps over, he placed a hand on his side. Jordan then thought about the question while focusing. After a few seconds passed, his eyes suddenly widened, before quickly narrowing instead. When Jordan pulled his hand back, he wore a conflicted expression. On the one hand, he had his answer now. But on the other hand…

Damn, it’s basically an Experience vampire. I have to directly deposit my own Experience into it. And as far as it let me tell, there’s no way of getting it back once it’s in there. That’s… hmm. Man, I don’t know. If it were maybe just a thousand Experience, then I’d be willing to bite the bullet. But ten thousand? Even resetting myself all the way back down to Level 1 still wouldn’t be enough. But hey, the silver lining is I’m not the only one that’s going to screw over.

Jordan darkly chuckled to himself as he imagined the top guy of the Mightiest Individual leaderboard seeing that requirement. From the name, he pictured Wilfred Wilbur Wyndham III as being just a generically rich-looking British dude. The kind that probably had inherited land from an ancestor who was an earl or something hundreds of years ago. And probably had a family tree in their mansion that could prove that they were somehow distant cousins with the British crown.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

From what the imprint of new information had told him, it’d suck for everyone competing for the highest Level. Because they couldn’t just have any random person make the sacrifice of putting their EXP into increasing the Rank of their Kingdoms, assuming theirs also all worked the same way. Nope, only one person and one person alone would be allowed to do it. That was whoever got to say that they were one in charge of the Kingdom itself.

He then looked down at the hand where the tattoo of the crown had imprinted itself. When Jordan focused on it, he could vaguely sense all the powers it gave him that related to the Kingdom itself. How he could pull up the screens detailing the exact size of his territory again. Or now that he looked carefully, he didn’t even need to touch the Transmuter to pull up its screen. That was just something he could also make appear at any time now.

But from all the screens and statistics about the Kingdom that he very quickly skimmed through, one thing was missing. He couldn’t find an option to simply pass the crown to somebody else. Since when it came to the Experience giving, the easiest work-around would be to just have someone become the Kingdom owner to do it and then swap back. Granted, that would take a bit of trust that not everyone would be willing to give, but if it were an option, then it’d undoubtedly be abused by someone.

However, Jordan couldn’t say for sure. This was due to another screen that made him doubt if the option would even have been available to him if it did exist.

Kingdom Population: 0

Apparently, he did not count toward this stat. Which did at least support the idea that the Kingdom’s ruler was not of the Kingdom, but placed above it. Yet if there wasn’t anybody around that he could pass ownership to, then it’d make sense why that option wouldn’t even present itself. So until he got that number up to one, he couldn’t say anything about that idea with absolute certainty.

Well, even if it’s an option, it isn’t all bad. Ten grand is equivalent to resetting a hundred back who’d just reached Level 2 back down to the start of Level 1. So even if it’s possible you other got to sacrifice the Levels of several top performers, or a bunch of other people that would all need to be convinced. Here’s hoping that it’s a little while before anyone else gets ahead of me and reaches that point first, Jordan concluded.

But with that matter at least temporarily settled, the mysterious door would sadly need to be put off for later. For the time being, Jordan made his way toward the ladder and popped up to see what the second floor was like. Then, after taking a brief look around, he went up to the third floor and repeated the quick inspection. Then the fourth, and the fifth…

Hey, if there was one thing he didn’t skimp out, it was the building’s height. Being 82 feet tall, that would have made it a respectable height for a building in some city’s downtown area. Not including the roof, the main base for Industry had a total of seven floors. Which was definitely a sign that it was meant to be enough room for a fair number of people, and not just one guy and his now always-summoned pet drone.

As for the floors themselves, there wasn’t a whole lot to say about them. Each one was basically just a copy and paste of the first floor in terms of the general layout. The only difference was that the first floor had the machine and mystery door on one end, while the other floors just had a blank space. Maybe the System just hadn’t bothered to fill that in with more stuff, or maybe it’d been intentionally left alone to give him some wiggle room for custom usage.

In any case, the final stop was the roof. The ladder system did provide him access to it, so he might as well check out the view and see if there was anything up there. As Jordan finished the climb up, a moderately stronger breeze hit his face first. The air was cold, and made him internally wish that his starting equipment had come with something to cover his face.

When Jordan stood up on the roof, he glanced around. There was nothing of note up here, but when he then looked to see the view instead, there was a sharp inhale. The forest of giant trees still took up the bulk of his field of vision. Their huge trunks seemed to extend toward the sky for what had to be dozens upon dozens of more feet, at least. Perhaps even a couple hundred before it became the canopy of intersecting branches and their many leaves.

Yet, from the vantage point, it did allow him to see something that seemed to be far away. Something that he might have never noticed on the ground, due to all the trees that would have blocked his line of sight at any time. But from up here, it was easier to look through the gaps between them and get a better angle.

The distance was hard to estimate because the forest was so dark. But the thing appeared small and far away. And it most certainly wasn’t natural by common Earth standards.

“What the…?”

Jordan saw what at least appeared to be a perfect sphere made purely of purple light. The sphere seemed to be still near the ground, at least for now. From his current perspective, it appeared to be the size of a quarter. Though if it was hundreds of feet away, that meant it’d be pretty large in reality. Yet, with how it was the only glowing object in an area blanketed in the darkness around his base’s clearing, who could say for sure? He just at least felt that it couldn’t be too far away, or else a tree would eventually block it anyway, even with his heightened lookout.

Yet after climbing up several dozen feet of ladder, the exercise only reminded him that he could be eating something right now. Plus when considering his currently exhausted condition, venturing out to check the unknown on a whim would likely not be a good idea.

With a somewhat regretful sigh, Jordan decided to play it safe. While he finally ate dinner, he’d at least send his land drone over to check it out. Without any orders to shoot anything, just to keep going and then desummon itself when it reached the strange ball. At least that would give him a more accurate measure of how far it actually was from him.

As the drone immediately responded to his will, it was time to have dinner. First, he would need to remove the Rabbit’s organs before cooking it. But after that, he would at least have some hot food in his belly.

When Jordan then climbed back down, it didn’t take him long to remove the organs in question. Letting the carcass bleed out had resulted in less blood loss than expected, based on how not that much had drenched the leaves underneath. But he was too tired to care about that for now. And then he just cut open its front to remove all the organs he saw, rather than take the time to sort them out.

Once the Rabbit was prepared, he skewered it onto the spit and then slowly rotated it over the fire for an even cook. As he did so, Jordan felt the ping of his drone eventually desummoning itself. Unfortunately, his TP regen now being higher than its upkeep meant that he couldn't just use the cost over time to keep track of how many minutes passed. So, for the time being, Jordan had been forced to switch back to the old-fashioned way of just manually counting it out in his head while turning the meat.

From the drone’s speed and how long that took, I think that it’s somewhere around two and a half miles away. Opposite direction from the river, so at least it isn’t right between me and the group heading for the water. If that thing whatever it is, is still there by the morning, then I’ll think of what do then, Jordan decided.

When the Rabbit appeared to be a nice golden brown, he tore off a bit of meat. While he wasn’t sure how to judge the meat’s internal cooking compared to chicken and such, it looked fully cooked without getting too dry. Jordan’s mouth had already been watering for the last several minutes as the smell of cooked meat had fully awakened his appetite. So without any further hesitation, he consumed the torn-off hunk of Rabbit, barely even chewing before swallowing the still-hot piece down.

Despite the fact that it should have been too hot and punished him with a burnt tongue, Jordan surprisingly felt fine. It was hot, yes, but not nearly enough to feel even the slightest bit painful. Was it just a lower temperature than he expected, or had the increase in physical Stats actually made a difference in how hard it was to burn himself?

But before Jordan could wrap up the night, he ripped off a leg and stood up. Before taking his meal inside the base, there was just one last thing he needed to check. Taking quick steps around the walls of the building, he moved to the opposite side from the entrance and campfire.

Ahhh, of course. I should have expected as much, huh? Jordan thought to himself. The mysterious door from the System, just based on its placement on the wall, should have lead outside. But now, looking at the other side of the wall, there was no evidence of the door.

Biting into the leg, Jordan now had food, but also a lot more food for thought to end the night with.