Crystal: 151
Star Stone: 1722
This trip, with the appearance of the Miracle Card, had yielded 70 crystals, marking it as the commission that had earned Chen Li the most crystals at once.
At the same time, his Star Stones had increased by 600.
His Approbations of Sublime Morality had skyrocketed by over 100,000 in a single go.
How many wicked deeds could Sparkle commit with that?
More importantly, Chen Li's novice quests were finally complete!
He successfully obtained a new professional skill—[Allocation].
Its full name should probably be "Reallocation," and its general effect was to allow Chen Li to make more refined adjustments to an Entry's brightness, thereby controlling the final effect of a forged Curio with greater precision.
For example, he could now reallocate the properties of the Ghost Attractor.
The [Attraction] Entry actually had two potential effects. One was like the current Ghost Attractor, which drew all ghosts towards it like cats to catnip.
The other effect was to forcibly suck the target over, like a vacuum cleaner sucking up dust.
When Chen Li forged Curios, the tendency of an Entry's effect had a certain degree of uncontrollability.
While he could solve this by either investing more crystals to manifest both tendencies or by adding more Entries to guide the effect, neither method was cost-effective.
[Allocation], however, could lock in the desired tendency of an Entry.
"I knew it. How could Entries be so inconvenient?" Chen Li was quite satisfied with this new professional skill.
But Chen Li had never liked things that were beyond his control.
He didn't like to gamble; he only liked guaranteed wins.
Moreover, the [Allocation] skill could be used not only on Entries but also on himself.
Chen Li could [Allocate] his own aptitudes, or in other words, his skill points.
He could sacrifice strength to increase speed, sacrifice agility to increase defense, or even temporarily reduce the levels of skills he wasn't using to boost the levels of skills he needed.
For instance, his Cloud Knight Sword Style was currently LV6. Since he also knew many other miscellaneous skills, he could set the levels of those skills to zero and transfer all their original experience to the Cloud Knight Sword Style.
If Chen Li knew enough skills, he could theoretically break the limit of a single skill.
However, there were different conversion rates between different skills.
Reallocating the different tendencies of an Entry was unaffected, as they were originally part of the same whole.
But converting experience from a skill like Lockpicking into experience for the Cloud Knight Sword Style would be far less effective than converting experience from something like Tai Chi Sword Style.
The more unrelated two skills were, the lower the conversion rate.
This allocation could be either permanent or temporary, making it incredibly convenient.
"With this professional skill, combined with the fact that a higher-level Curio Forger learns low-level skills faster, I can theoretically become a jack-of-all-trades. Got it. I'll go learn archery from Elysia, medicine from Mobius, painting from Griseo, quantum mechanics from MEI, prayer from Aponia, and the catwalk from Pardo!"
Now, he truly had too many skills to be weighed down by them.
"This skill feels a bit like [Imperial Privilege] from the Type-Moon world. I wonder if I can learn this inherent skill from an Emperor-class Knight servant," Chen Li mused, stroking his chin.
Imperial Privilege was a skill in the Type-Moon world that essentially let one do whatever they wanted. In battle, its user could, by their own will, temporarily acquire skills they did not originally possess.
"Or... I could just forge a Curio. My current crystal reserves are just enough to forge a one-star Curio." The thought was quite tempting to Chen Li.
But just as he was getting excited, The Guide to Forging Curios suddenly popped up.
"Let's see what new messages I've received... Holy cow, my Fame has suddenly increased by so much. Looks like I really made an impression!"
Every time The Guide to Forging Curios appeared before him in its semi-transparent state, displaying a page, it signified a change in a certain value or the arrival of new information.
This time, the value that had changed was Fame.
Fame: Lv1 (33/100) → Lv1 (70/100)
Chen Li's Fame changed every time he completed a Miracle Commission, but this was by far the largest increase he had ever received.
Last time, when he had cleansed the youkai in Kikyo's world, he had only gained 21 Fame points.
Once he submitted the infinite instant noodles commission, his Fame would increase again, bringing him close to reaching Level 2 Fame.
"I just don't know if this is positive or negative fame..." Chen Li worried for a moment, but quickly pushed the concern aside.
He didn't feel he had done anything wrong in the slightest.
If any person or world knew the full picture of what he had done and still considered his actions improper, then it was the world that was wrong, not Chen Li.
Those worlds should all line up on their knees and let him mow them down!
Extreme? What was so extreme about it? This is how saviors like us have been saving worlds for years, alright?
If you think it's extreme, you should look for the problem within yourself. Maybe you're just blind?
"Besides, I basically gave that world a full-body massage. At least, for its Earth. I hope [WORLD] can be reasonable, otherwise I might have to switch to my main account!" Chen Li clenched his fist.
Although Chen Li didn't have a "main account," The Guide to Forging Curios did.
To this day, he still had a usable but never-activated title—"World Destroyer".
World Destroyer: When you select a world as your target, no matter how minor your actions, they will cause the world to gradually descend into an irreversible abyss of destruction.
It was nearly impossible for an ordinary person to destroy a world. But with this title, as long as one lived in that world long enough, theoretically even a pig could bring it to ruin.
---o---
After sorting through his gains from the trip, Chen Li stood up and used his [Allocation] skill for the first time.
"Let's see... do I need invincible power, or invincible wisdom?" After a moment of thought, Chen Li immediately chose invincible wisdom.
He figured it would be more appropriate to wait until he was smarter before deciding what he should choose.
After selecting himself as the allocation target, Chen Li could see all his aptitudes and skills transform into a highly abstract form of "points" floating before him.
Stamina: 42
Agility: 33
Spirit: 78
Chen Li once again had a direct view of his stat growth. In less than ten days since becoming a Curio Forger, his stamina had nearly doubled. His spirit growth wasn't slow either, with agility being the laggard.
Besides these basic attributes, Chen Li could also see various hidden attributes.
Wisdom, reaction speed, willpower, luck, appearance, health, sanity, inspiration, comprehension, soul strength...
Countless attributes, some he had seen before and some he hadn't, were all listed in front of him, and many of them seemed redundant in his opinion.
What particularly surprised him was that he seemed to have... "a lot" of talent for cultivation.
But none of that mattered now.
Super Wisdom! Activate!
"Cough, cough!" The moment the [Allocation] was complete, Chen Li could feel his thoughts instantly become much more active, but his body had also changed into a state he didn't recognize. A surge of exhaustion washed over him, causing him to collapse directly onto the sofa.
However, putting all his points into wisdom was far from the tenfold increase in IQ he had imagined. It merely made his mind much clearer and more rational, as if he had entered a state of post-nut clarity.
He even started recalling knowledge he had once forgotten...
"Snap!" Chen Li snapped his fingers. A water cup, originally some distance away, suddenly floated into the air and wobbled towards him, right until he reached out to steadily catch it...
Seeing the cup fall to the floor, completely missing his hand, Chen Li realized just how much trouble an imbalance between wisdom and power could cause.
Moreover, rather than a rapid IQ boost, his current change felt more like he had developed his brain's potential, successfully granting him the ability to interfere with the outside world with his mind. Its current manifestation was psychokinesis.
And he could also "see" the reason why it had only changed this much.
On the light screen floating before him, the value for [Wisdom] had indeed increased, but once it crossed a certain threshold, all the numbers turned red.
It was a warning.
It meant those values were usable, but he had to decide for himself whether to unlock them.
"Because excessive wisdom would make me no longer myself." The unusual activity in his mind allowed Chen Li to instantly grasp the situation.
Absolute wisdom would create absolute rationality, and excessive rationality would lead to emotional apathy.
At that point, family, love, and friendship would all become mere embellishments that could be discarded at any time.
The plan must be achieved; anything outside the plan could be abandoned.
Before his wisdom value exceeded the limit, Chen Li was still Chen Li. After exceeding the limit, perhaps only the "Curio Forger" would remain.
For example, from an objective standpoint, helping Tonghua by forging a Curio to create a miracle would yield far fewer crystals than forging Tonghua herself into a Curio.
Elysia wasn't strictly necessary for the Previous Era either, because Chen Li could completely replace her with a Curio.
Every one of Chen Li's past clients could be repurposed, because "protagonists" were the best forging materials.
All it would take was to be a little more rational, a little more logical, a little more ruthless...
In his current state, Chen Li could begin to understand the possibilities after breaking the wisdom limit, but his own wisdom was also warning him—your thinking is still too naive!
The coldness and ruthlessness of a genius were never something an ordinary person could imagine.
"Very good. My super wisdom tells me I should choose super strength," Chen Li made his choice.
Because even if breaking his physical limits turned him into a monster of brute strength who couldn't control his own power, the worst that could happen was that he would no longer be human.
But if his wisdom broke its limit, the consequence was that he would no longer be "Chen Li."
"Hey, little Li, are you in the workshop? I just finished a mission and I'm free. Want to come learn bow combat arts with me?" A knock sounded at the door, followed by Elysia's head peeking in.
"You could have just barged right in, but you still chose to knock first before barging in. You're just too gentle, I could cry," Chen Li said, deeply moved.
"Mhm, Elysia is always this considerate. So, are you coming?"
"Let's go!"
Chen Li's super wisdom told him that what he should choose right now was super comprehension.