Five days have passed.
For Murphy, the time passed simply but intensely.
His life boiled down to him sitting facing the sea and wielding a pen. When he was hungry, he ate dry rations; when he was tired, he ran in circles and did exercises.
News was practically everywhere on the Grand Line, so wherever he was, it didn't interfere with his publications.
During the experiments, Murphy confirmed his previous guesses. The popularity of the article determined the number of points received. And when his second manuscript was accepted, a new option appeared in the system menu...
[Statistics]
It detailed the profits of each manuscript, and even included various kinds of statistical graphs. For example, Murphy's first article had earned a total of 310 points so far.
Most of these points came in the first day or two after the article was published. From the third day onwards, the numbers dropped sharply and the article practically stopped generating income.
The region with the highest popularity of his article was the North Blue, and the main audience was men. A slightly less popular region was the first half of the Grand Line. As for the East Blue, West Blue, South Blue and the New World, people there seemed to have no interest in the story, and it brought in almost no profit.
This data was very helpful to Murphy in determining the direction of his manuscripts, and also gave him a clear understanding of how points were growing in the system.
With each accepted manuscript, his score began to steadily increase. And now, for the first time, his score reached 1000.
With anticipation, he opened Body Enhancement, preparing to experience what it would be like to add 100 points of strength at once.
[Spend 450 points to buy 45 items?]
Hmm? Why can't you just add 100 points at once?
Murphy looked at the dialog box that appeared with a bad feeling.
Oh well... I'll add it and see!
His strength on the panel changed from 5 to 50. At the same time, a feeling of fullness engulfed his body, and a feeling spread through his muscles as if every cell was rejoicing and pulsating.
At that moment, Murphy felt like he could easily lift even a boulder in the distance.
He silently felt the power, holding back the urge to test it immediately. He still had 550 points left, and he decided to throw in all the power before testing it.
However, the next system dialog box confirmed his bad feeling...
[Spend 500 points to gain 5 strength points?]
He looked at the price that had suddenly increased 10 times with a helpless expression. As expected, body enhancement seemed too cheap compared to exchange. If he had 10,000 points for body enhancement, he could exchange it for 1,000 points for enhancement, and perhaps he could defeat anything and everything. However, the same 10,000 points on the exchange list was only equal to the cost of one Hasshoken strike, the difference was huge.
Now Murphy realized that it wasn't a matter of cheap body enhancement, but that the catch had only just been discovered - and that one catch would likely be followed by another, even bigger one.
Once the strength reaches 100 or 500, the number of points needed will likely change again.
"Will it really be 10 times that again by then?" Murphy frowned, rubbing his forehead, having a hard time imagining the huge number of glasses he might need in the future.
If so, it's worth spending the available points on other basic parameters!
Previously, he had already added 7 points to agility, increasing it to 12, and endurance remained untouched - still 5 points.
Well, I'll add one by one!
[Spend 380 points to gain 38 points of agility?]
Yes.
[Spend 170 points to purchase 17 stamina points?]
Yes.
The points kept increasing, so he decided to spend them all to the last one.
Thus, agility also reached the maximum value of this stage - 50, and endurance became 22. He did not touch spiritual power, leaving it at 13.
"Finally, I'm out of the ranks of complete weaklings!" Murphy said.
Outwardly, he still looked thin - thin clothes, a fragile physique, as if it could fall from a gust of wind. But if before there were thin bones under the clothes, now there were proportional muscles.
He clenched his fist tightly, feeling the changes in his body, and his heart was filled with excitement. This was the first step to becoming stronger, and in the future, he would definitely become much, much stronger!
He immediately walked up to the large stone he had been looking at, grabbed it with both hands and lifted up a boulder he had never dared to dream of before.
Then he tensed, and the huge stone flew forward, rolled several times on the ground, raising a cloud of dust behind it, and stopped.
Murphy then suddenly lunged forward, quickly reaching the boulder, clenched his fist and struck hard. Accompanied by a powerful gust of wind from the blow, the stone flew off again with a roar.
This time the stone flew even further, leaving a fist imprint and several cracks on it.
But now Murphy frowned. He didn't look at the result of his blow, but lowered his head, examining his fist. His right hand was cut, skinned, bleeding uncontrollably, and the pain was throbbing constantly.
"So I got hurt? Is it because my endurance stat isn't developed enough?" he asked in surprise.
It was something like "beat the enemy but get hurt yourself", absolutely not the effect Murphy wanted to achieve. So, he opened the panel and looked closely at the data.
Strength and agility were more than twice as high as endurance, and almost four times as high as Spiritual Power.
Those numbers, combined with the current situation, led Murphy to some understanding.
Insufficient stamina caused the force to far exceed his body's ability to withstand it - he wounded himself before he could wound the enemy. And insufficient spiritual strength prevented him from judging or feeling that a punch would hurt him. This small judgment on the battlefield can mean the difference between life and death.
It seems that the balance between different attributes is also very important - only by having no weaknesses can you show your strength to the fullest.
"Luckily, the wound is not serious and will not prevent me from continuing to write," he thought.
The wound looked scary, but it wasn't that serious. Murphy simply bandaged it and continued writing his manuscripts.
"Where the leaves fly, there will be a flame..."
This time, he did not write short stories, but began writing a novel about Konoha, using a pseudonym - the name of the Sage of the Six Paths, Hagoromo.
There was a big difference in taste between the two worlds. He submitted many applications, but the acceptance rate was not high, and since they were all short stories, the subsequent income was small, which did not suit him. So he remembered that the people of this world seemed to have a soft spot for ninja. And although he could not draw, but presenting the history of Konoha through text seemed like a good idea.
He didn't have the photographic memory to reproduce the original exactly, so he didn't expect the novel to be a hit. It was just a temporary fix, his real goal was the news that would soon shake the world.
Ten days passed quickly, and the facts proved that Murphy was right.
The story of the ninja really caught the fancy of this world, and both the Four Seas and the Grand Line responded to it with enthusiasm.
In ten days he earned 3000 points.
Murphy spent 650 points maximizing the attributes of the first stage. He called this stage, where all attributes were below 50, stage one, the stage before the next price change stage two, and so on.
After adding attributes, he turned his attention to other enhancements.
Long Range Attack and General Enhancement weren't needed for him yet, so he immediately traded 1000 points for entry-level Close Combat.
Murphy initially wanted to continue trading for Melee, but it required 10,000 points to upgrade from Beginner to Intermediate, which he couldn't even think about yet.
After checking several times, he found that the remaining 1000-odd points could not play a decisive role, so he decided to keep them in reserve.
Now Murphy had a complete makeover, and while his dashboard still looked pretty basic, it was a lot better than it had been in the beginning.
Name: Murphy.
Gender: Male.
Age: 15 years.
Strength: 50.
Dexterity: 50.
Stamina: 50.
Spiritual Power: 50.
Close combat: beginner level.