First Move, Checkmate: How Will You Respond?

A few hours later, Victor saw that he only had 10% of his mana left and finally gave up on this mana-draining idea.

Now he truly believed Veega was a god.

Veega nodded satisfactorily, perhaps Victor’s actions had satisfied its curiosity.

“Indeed interesting, maybe I should let you try for a few more hours so I can further analyze the mysteries behind your spellcasting.”

Victor silently protested against Veega.

Seeing Victor’s expressionless face, it also let go.

“Let’s stop here, what are your plans next? Are you going to stay in this backyard all day?”

Its deep eyes stared at Victor, seemingly still trying to uncover more secrets from him.

“Going to the market to buy some things.”

Victor tossed out a lukewarm response. The crow still perched on his shoulder, unwilling to fly away.

‘I’ll keep following you and see what you’ll buy.’

Hearing Veega say that, Victor let out a sigh and called for the servant to prepare the carriage.

…

Victor walked into the shop, looking at the dazzling array of various materials. He went straight to a counter.

“What would you like to buy?”

The shop owner naturally rushed out to greet the customer when he saw someone coming to make a purchase.

Victor tapped on the table and said softly: “Lizardmen tails, hobbie feathers, beetle shells…get me a bag of each for these thirty types of materials.”

“Alright! This customer is so generous!”

The shop owner acknowledged while tallying up all the materials Victor had ordered.

“There are a total of thirty bags of materials here, do you want someone to deliver them to your residence?”

Victor waved his hand and rubbed the ring on his hand. All the materials instantly disappeared.

Seeing this, the smile on the shop owner’s face grew even more exaggerated.

“Haha, the customer sure has a treasure on him.”

“You must come again next time!”

After Victor left, a shop assistant went up to the owner and asked: “Boss, who is that guy?”

The owner tapped him and sternly said: “Don’t ask, anyone carrying such a high-end storage ring must have an extraordinary identity!”

Only Victor knew that he didn’t actually have any storage ring, the ring on his hand was just an accessory. He had directly stored everything into his player-exclusive backpack, even Veega didn’t understand his actions.

Veega spread its wings and croaked in Victor’s ear with its hoarse crow voice.

Victor just listened quietly, his eyes completely focused on the various craftable items flashing before him.

He had bought a pile of materials specifically to craft items needed in the early game.

According to the original game settings, every player of any class had an extremely rich and specialized crafting list that they could bring up as they wished. As a player, Victor could naturally freely access these interfaces.

Victor returned to his residence satisfied, carrying all the materials, and went into the basement of the mansion, digging out a pile of glass bottles from some corners.

‘What are you trying to do?’

Veega’s heart trembled on his shoulder, its instincts telling it that Victor was about to do something again.

The god’s intuition was very accurate. Victor started kneading the various materials together with his hands, and bursts of light continuously shone from his palms, with more and more crackling sounds.

‘What are you doing? Stop!’

Veega felt like he was going crazy. What was he trying to do in the basement? Make explosives?

Victor didn’t listen to its words at all, and became even more spirited instead.

After a bright flash, the empty bottles on the table were filled with red liquid. Seeing so many health potions before it, Veega couldn’t help but complain:

‘You really are abnormal, making health potions as dangerously as if you were building bombs.’

Victor chuckled softly, staring at the pile of red potions and nodded in satisfaction.

【Minor Healing Potion】: Restores 300 health points per use.

Indeed, seeing the numeric representation of the materialized potion was the best way for Victor to feel at ease.

Looking at the pile of healing potions on the table, blue flames flickered in Veega’s single eye.

The red potions were slightly blackened, the deeper the red color, the stronger the healing effect.

Veega flew off from Victor’s shoulder to the table, uncorked a bottle and gulped it down.

It felt a slight daze, clicked its beak, and looked back at Victor:

‘You really made these potions yourself?’

Victor admitted it, but Veega fell into contemplation.

‘What’s going on with this kid? The richness and effects of these healing potions can completely rival the low-level healing spells of the Goddess of Healing. Could there be some hidden divine power within him?’

On second thought, it wasn’t a bad thing that Victor had this ability. After all, they had already signed a contract, at the very least he now had a relatively powerful potion-maker.

Veega suddenly asked: ‘Have you considered selling some? The quality would definitely fetch a high price.’

Victor shook his head in refusal. These were all to be kept for his own use, he didn’t lack money at the moment and had no need for that.

His hands instantly unleashed dazzling blue light again as he likewise produced a pile of mana potions.

Each time he saw Victor produce an item, Veega’s heart felt a slight shock.

Even master-level artisans couldn’t craft items with bare hands.

Could it be that what he had awakened was actually the one-in-a-million creation magic?

It was only attracted here by this human’s soul, but now, Victor was becoming more and more incomprehensible to it.

As a mage, mana potions were definitely more important than health potions.

Although Veega had an infinite mana hack, providing assistance didn’t mean doing so without asking for anything in return. Victor still didn’t know what the price would be.

It was still best to stock up on some mana potions and rely more on himself.

After a while, a voice sounded:

【’Crafting’ skill leveled up, current level: LV2】

With the breakthrough in level, Victor stopped hand-making potions and saw some new things appear in his item crafting panel.

He looked up at Veega on the table, silent.

The crow was startled by his gaze until Victor spoke:

“You should be a crow, right?”

Veega: “Huh?”

Victor got what he wished for and plucked a jet black feather from its body.

【Magic Creature Hair and 6 Magic Stones】

“Need magic stones, huh.”

He still remembered quite clearly that magic stones were a relatively rare item, possessing the abilities to record images and voices, and even store spells.

However, the magic power within magic stones would gradually dissipate over time. Some had tried using stored spells in magic stones as explosives before, but failed.

Magic stones were extremely expensive. If one had that kind of wealth, it’d be better to just make some real explosives instead.

After gathering the materials, he was ready to start crafting the item.

The materials instantly liquefied and conglomerated. Right before their eyes, it quickly solidified into the shape of a glove, with several transparent magic stones embedded on it.

A single fingerless glove appeared before Victor.

The crow shuddered again: “You can even craft equipment with your bare hands?”

Victor didn’t want to bother with it, just staring at the glove in front of him.

Several transparent magic stones were embedded on it, flawlessly clear.

【Mage’s Glove】: Tier 2 crafted item, can store six different magic attributes and enable quick activation without casting time.

This item could handle some emergency situations and was a must-have for top mage players early on.

He channeled magic power and slowly infused spells of various attributes into the magic stones on the glove.

Each stone changed color after having a spell infused into it.

Victor finally stopped after continuously injecting different spells into the stones, all the magic stones now glowed with different colors.

Veega, who had watched this whole process, was no longer too shocked. It said to Victor: “Can store various attribute spells? And no need for incantations? How did you make something so amazing?”

Mad blue flames flickered within its single eye as it thirsted for more knowledge. But Victor just shook his head in response.

“Trade secret.”

“How petty.”

Veega complained, it couldn’t believe that a measly human would deny a noble evil god like itself such teachings, how embarrassing it would be if its peers ever found out.

Victor ignored it simply because he couldn’t expose his identity as a player.

If his technique of crafting items with bare hands spread, it might attract some ill-intentioned people to investigate, which would complicate matters.

It was best to exercise more caution, even for his own sake.

“Milord, Miss Gwen is here.”