While eating his food, Cade was thinking deeply about where he should use his 20 stat points. If he followed his earlier plan, he would increase his luck.

However, his situation at the moment suggested that he should raise his other stats. Cade wanted to increase his luck but he also felt like the toad was becoming harder and harder for him to handle.

Since he arrived on the third floor, he never once fought a D grade big blue tongue toad. All the ones he fought were E grade. The E grade already gave him a lot of troubles and the toad had started fighting in a group too.

If he met a group of D grade big blue tongue toad in the future, he would die. He will immediately be killed and revived outside the dungeon.

He did not want to experience the feeling of dying. Even the thought of that gave him chills and a lot of fear.

“Emm… Should I raise other stats? But I want to have higher luck. Right now, I get many materials and magic crystals. I have lots of equipment too and quite a few skill books thanks to my high luck,” said Cade while he was considering what stat he should raise.

“But I still never once got my hands on any puzzle piece. If I can complete a puzzle, I might be able to raise my stats with it and I don’t need to worry much about increasing my growth potential because I can rely on the puzzle,” said Cade.

Cade continued eating his food and he stared at his stats. After having a few chews on the toad meat he cooked, Cade made his decision.

Cade had gotten used to eating the toad meat. It was a bit hard to eat at the beginning but now, he had no problem eating them as long as they were cooked properly.

That feeling was the same when he first ate sushi. He vomited the sushi but once he ate sushi the second time, he kind of liked the taste and got used to it as he ate more of them.

Once he made his decision, Cade poured all of the 20 stat points on one of his stats. Cade checked his stats.

Name: Cade

Age: 20

Lifespan: 70

Potential: D [0 / 10 000 D grade level 1 magic crystal]

Level: 10

Stat Points: 0

Vitality: 20

Strength: 13

Endurance: 23

Dexterity: 13

Wisdom: 15

Luck: 91

Due to Cade leveling up to 10, his lifespan increased by 10. It was normal for the lifespan to increase for every 10 levels an explorer gained. When Cade’s level reached 20, his lifespan will increase by 20 and at 30, it will increase by 30.

Cade decided to follow his plan by increasing his luck. With 20 stat points, he increased his luck to 91. His luck far exceeded the lucky girl. He can now be called the lucky boy if people knew about his luck.

At the moment, only Shihoon had somehow kind of known that Cade had high luck but it did not look like he would tell others about it. He had no idea how much Cade luck was but he knew it was high.

Though Cade feared a bit that he might not survive further into the dungeon, he still hopes that he will get the puzzle piece to increase his stat.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Now it is time for me to increase my linked equipment,” said Cade and he opened his storage to increase his linked equipment level.

When Cade opened his storage, to his surprise, an empty slot with blue light appeared beside his linked equipment. The empty slot had the same color as his linked equipment slot.

“Could it be?” Cade immediately tried to put something on the empty slot and immediately after that, the system asked him if he wanted to link with what he put on that slot.

Cade remembered the time he just blatantly agreed to link the other equipment without knowing about it. He had so many regrets before but he was quite happy now.

Cade said no and the thing he put on the slot was immediately put back on its earlier slot.

“What should I link next?” Cade thought for a bit and he suddenly came up with an idea. Luckily for him, there were some unused cardboard boxes in his storage.

When he was preparing for his exploration for the big tongue toad dungeon, he bought a lot of things and they came with the box.

Cade was lazy, so he did not throw away the boxes and stored them in his storage. Since Cade decided to take on the character of using the cardboard, he decided to properly go through that.

He even put his nickname on his explorer license, ‘The Cardboard’. He should properly embrace that nickname.

Cade decided to make armor of cardboard. Cade finished his food and took out the cardboard boxes. Cade started making his cardboard armor.

It took him about an hour to finish making the armor. It was just a simple body armor to cover his body. Cade stared at it and thought that he would look sillier with the armor.

However, no matter how sillier he looked, he decided to do it. With the finished cardboard armor, Cade put it on the blue slot in his storage. The system asked if Cade wanted to link with it and Cade said yes.

Nothing magical or mystical happening. Only that the cardboard armor was now on the blue slot permanently. Cade took out the armor and wore it.

He did look sillier. Cade put it back on his storage and started using the magic crystals he had collected since he got into the dungeon to strengthen his linked equipment.

Cade wanted to test on something. The system said that for Cade to strengthen his equipment, he needed to use the level 1 magic crystal.

The sentence was a bit different compared to when he wanted to increase his growth potential and increase the level of his skill. There was no mention of grade.

When Cade used the E grade level 1 vitality crystal, the stat increased by 10. Cade wanted to test if his linked equipment would get more stat points if he used a higher-grade magic crystal.

Cade used a D grade level 1 endurance crystal on his cardboard armor. However, to his disappointment, it only increased the stat by 10.

“So, it is fixed…” Cade felt a bit disappointed. He decided to save his D grade magic crystal for his growth potential. He will only use the E grade magic crystal to strengthen his linked equipment.

Cade increased all of his linked equipment to level 10 including his newly made cardboard armor. They were all roughly had a stat of 250 in their stats.

With his newly added linked equipment, Cade felt like his choice of increasing his luck was right. He did not need to worry about being attacked on his body anymore thanks to his cardboard armor.

With all of his equipment finished upgrading, Cade decided to level up his physical resistance skill. However, before he wanted to close his storage, he realized something weird was happening to his linked equipment.

All the slots where the linked equipment was located in the storage were blinking. It was not a fast blinking like an emergency happened but a slow blinking. The blue color slowly dimmed and then, became bright again.

Cade touched the cardboard round shield slot and a new notification appeared from the system.

[Add anything on the equipment to upgrade]

“… Upgrade? Aren’t I upgrading it all this time?” Cade wondered what happened but he thought that it might be something good. He decided to add something on his cardboard round shield.

Cade remembered the iron round shield he had before, in the beginning, collecting dust in his storage. Cade moved the iron shield and put it on his cardboard round shield. A new notification from the system appeared.

[Added the material?] asked the system. Cade said yes. Immediately after he confirmed his choice, the iron round shield disappeared from his storage. The cardboard round shield on his arm also disappeared and entered his storage.

The blinking slot of the cardboard round shield stopped blinking and a meter bar with the percentage of 0% appeared on that slot. Cade stared at it and the percentage increased to 1% and then 2% and 3% and went on.

It looked like it would take a while for the meter bar to fill. Cade decided to increase his skill level while waiting for the upgrade to finish.

At the moment, Cade’s physical resistance skill was at level 3 with the effect of lowering physical damage done by the E grade opponent by 30%.

Cade poured all of his leftover E grade magic crystal on his skill and increased the level to 5 with damage reduced by 50%. Cade smiled. Half the damage will help him a lot.

Cade checked his upgraded shield and it was at 98%. The percentage increased to 99% and then 100%.

[Choose the new stat to add?]

[1. Def2]

[2. Iron]