With all contingencies now in place, Ludwig finally had time to digest and think again about what had happened.
It's not what he wanted after walking to Tempest. It's his first break in a long while, so of course he wanted nothing but to stay in Tempest and do whatever leisure activity that didn;t involve much thinking there. Away from the restaurant, away from politics, and away from this inter-dimensional mumbo jumbo.
But, seeing his restaurant so wrecked like this, he simply couldn't bear to walk to Tempest again. It would be selfish of him, and it wouldn't look well.
Ludwig pulled a bottle of whiskey from the shelf and poured it into a glass. What started as a way to commemorate something now became a source of comfort amidst the chaos.
Half of the negotiation was done. The matter regarding Claire should also be resolved with Ilea's help.
So now, maybe it's finally time to do one thing he finally remembered to do.
Status Window. He said without letting out any sound.
「Name: Ludwig
Race: Human.
Attribute(s): [Strength: 103] [Agility: 128] [Vitality: 119] [Intelligence: 177] [Willpower: 122] [Perception: 150] [Charisma: 122]
Attribute point(s): 277
Unique Skill: [Mana Manipulation] [Space Manipulation] [Time Manipulation] [Weaponmaster]
Skill Function: [Otherworld Connection] [Currency Exchange] [Interdimensional Shop] [Blessing of The Restaurant]」
Ludwig looked at the new addition of the status window that wasn't there the last time he checked. His Attribute and Attribute Points
Once upon a time, he cursed at this window because it kept the only way for him to get stronger faster locked. Once upon a time, he did everything he could think to open it.
But overtime, he forgot about it. Even without it he felt his power growing with every effort he put in, so he stopped thinking about relying on it.
Yet now, it was here. Not because he had done something the gods would sing about, but because he finally opened his restaurant.
Just like any regret, it arrived far too late. He didn't think he would need it as much as he needed it back then.
But,
After experiencing Konoha, more power wouldn't be so bad. Not for conquest, not for retaliation, just to defend what he called his people and home from any harm that was coming.
He let that thought settle as he stared at the newly opened sections.
Strength. Agility. Vitality. Intelligence. Willpower. Perception. Charisma.
His fighting-style was apparent in the distribution of points on the window. He was not someone who fought with sheer strength, but with everything else. Perception to look around the battlefield, Agility to move around quickly, All wrapped in the necessity of Intelligence and his Wisdom to push through in crucial moments.
Beneath it, two hundred and seventy-seven points sitting unused.
He rolled the whiskey in his mouth, letting the burn occupy the part of him that wanted to shake. The taste grounded him, an anchor in a night that kept trying to drift into worst-case scenarios.
He could pour them into Strength and become harder to move.
Agility and never be caught flat-footed again.
Vitality so wounds didn't decide the outcome.
Perception so nothing slipped past him the way it had.
Willpower so no debufss would get a vote.
Intelligence so his Mana wouldn't run out mid swing.
Charisma so negotiations didn't become a battlefield just because he spoke too late.
He found himself almost laughing at that. As if there was ever just one right answer.
The window waited. So did the future. He looked once more at the wreckage, and then he looked back at the points.
This wasn't about becoming a god. This was about making sure the next time someone had any thoughts regarding his home, they would stop thinking about it a second later.
Ludwig thought about it again. His current fighting style was like someone blessed by Mana deciding magic isn't cool enough and took upon the way of the sword. Nevertheless, it worked wonders.
With the points, changing his focus to a more well rounded one wouldn't be hard. More power on each and every of his swings would put him in a more favorable position. If it happened back in the war, he wouldn't have to use his tricks to get into the skin beneath the heavy armor of the Demon Generals.
But…
He had become too comfortable and used to that way of fighting. It had been ingrained in his muscle memory that even if he couldn't cut something at once with his strength, bending time would make him able to do it at once.
Moreover, when an attack came that was too heavy, why should he block it? Just stop the time for a moment and blinked away.
Ludwig took another sip of the whiskey, mind settling into a decision. He was more comfortable to fight the way it was. The only thing that prevented him from doing all that he could do with each and every swing was his Mana.
Therefore,
Ludwig coaxed the System to pour 100 free points into his Intelligence, ramping it up into 277.
The effect was immediate.
For a heartbeat, Ludwig thought the air had thickened, as if the world had gained an extra layer he could suddenly feel. The Status Window didn't flare or announce anything dramatic, but inside him something expanded all at once, like a locked room being unfolded into a hall.
His mana—normally a familiar reservoir with edges he knew by instinct—stretched outward. Not a trickle, not a gradual increase, but a clean, brutal jump in capacity that made his old 'full' feel like it had been half-empty all along.
The strangest part wasn't the size. It was how orderly it became. Channels that used to feel narrow when he pushed Space or Time through them widened, and the pressure vanished like a knot being cut.
He swallowed, and the motion carried a faint echo, as if his body briefly needed to re-learn where to put all that energy. His skin prickled from the inside out.
A second later, clarity hit. The exhaustion he'd been ignoring didn't disappear, but it stopped sitting on top of his thoughts like wet cloth. Calculations—distance, timing, angles—lined up faster, quieter, with less strain, like his brain had been forced to run on RAM from 10 years ago and someone finally replaced it.
Ludwig flexed his fingers. Mana responded instantly, gathering so readily it almost felt impatient, as if it had more room to move and was eager to prove it. He didn't cast anything yet, but he could already tell the difference: the 'cost' of readiness had dropped, and the ceiling above him had lifted.
He breathed out slowly, watching dust drift in the dim light of the ruined restaurant. If he stopped time now, if he bent space now, it wouldn't be a desperate gamble measured in heartbeats and leftover reserves. It would be a choice. One he could afford to make more than once.
The whiskey sat forgotten beside him, untouched. For the first time since he'd walked back in and seen the damage, the fear at the base of his spine loosened—just a little—not because the world had become kinder, but because he had finally become harder to break.
At that moment, he could feel a prickle of a gaze falling at him. When he traced the source, a woman with ash all around her was looking at him, smirking.
Of course. If there's someone who could learn about my level up, it would be her.
Ludwig raised his glass at her, and drank it. He simply didn't have enough time to talk with her right now. He still had one hundred seventy seven points to allocate.
He set the glass down with more care than it deserved, the clink of it too loud in the ruined quiet.
One hundred seventy seven points.
He didn't need the System to tell him what his instincts already knew. Strength was honest, but honesty wasn't what kept him alive. Not against Demon Generals wrapped in armor thick enough to laugh at steel. Not against shinobi tricks that turned shadows into knives. Not against the kind of enemy that didn't square up, didn't announce themselves, didn't fight fair.
He won because he saw the fight before it fully started. Because he moved where he wasn't supposed to be able to move. Because he stole moments.
Trickster of Time. That title wasn't an ornament. It was a confession no matter how embarrassed he was by it.
Ludwig's eyes slid back to the numbers, and this time he didn't look at them like possibilities. He looked at them like a battlefield map.
Perception first.
If he was going to bend time, he had to know when to do it. If he was going to cut someone down in a single stolen second, he had to know where the opening truly was.
Perception wasn't just sight. It was the difference between reacting and deciding.
He could feel the woman's gaze still there, amused, patient, as if she had all the time in the world.
Ludwig didn't spare her another look.
"System…" He thought, the word landing in his mind.
Pour eighty points into Perception.
The world sharpened.
Not in the simple way of brighter colors or clearer edges, but in the way meaning rose to the surface. Dust didn't just float, it moved with the currents of air that slipped through broken boards. The creak of wood wasn't random, it came from a specific beam that bore too much weight. Even the silence had layers; the restaurant's stillness wasn't empty, it was full of tiny, quiet signals he'd been too tired to notice before.
And then he understood why he'd always trusted Perception more than Strength.
It made time manipulation cleaner, It made space manipulation cheaper, and It made swordplay crueler because the blade didn't need to be heavier if it landed exactly where it should.
He swallowed once, and his focus didn't wobble.
Good.
Agility next.
He'd seen openings before and still missed them. Not because his eyes failed, but because his body couldn't always cash the check his mind wrote. Time-stop was a crutch, yes. But crutches snapped when the weight was heavy enough. He needed speed that didn't depend on a miracle, footwork that didn't require him to pause the universe every time he wanted to be somewhere else.
Pour sixty points into Agility.
His muscles didn't balloon. Nothing dramatic happened. Instead, his body recalibrated.
Balance shifted subtly, like invisible weights being removed from his joints. The slight soreness in his legs, left over from too many fights and too little rest, quieted. When he rolled his shoulder, it moved smoother. When he flexed his ankle, it responded faster. Even his breathing found a rhythm that felt better suited for violence.
He could already picture it. A blink through space paired with real speed. A stolen second of time paired with a body that could exploit it without hesitation.
No wasted motion. No stutter-step. No reliance on 'Just freeze everything' when a cleaner answer was simply to move.
That left thirty-seven points.
And then he realized where the fear lived.
Not the loud kind that made a man run. It was the quiet kind of fear that whispered about accidents, ambushes, andthe one strike you didn't see because you were busy seeing everything else.
About poison, curses, backlash, things that didn't care how clever you were.
He'd built himself into a duelist who lived in the cracks between moments. But even a trickster died if his body couldn't take a hit.
Vitality.
Not because he planned to be hit, but because planning wasn't the same as reality.
Pour twenty-five points into Vitality.
Warmth spread through his core, steady and deep. It wasn't the sharp expansion of mana he'd felt earlier, but a slow reinforcement, like timber being added behind walls that had already been standing too long.
His heartbeat sounded more confident in his ears. The bruise-colored fatigue in his limbs didn't vanish, yet it stopped feeling like something that might betray him at the wrong time.
Twelve points remained.
Willpower now.
Because Time Manipulation wasn't only mana. It was nerve. It was concentration when the world screamed.
Pour twelve points into Willpower.
His thoughts settled.
The edges of his anger didn't dull, but they stopped cutting into him. The anxiety that had been prowling behind his ribs didn't disappear, yet it lost its teeth. He could feel the difference immediately: the next time he reached for time, it would be steadier. The next time he pushed space, it would be cleaner. The next time someone tried to shake him, fear, intimidation, killing intent, he would not flinch inside his own skull.
The Status Window had been updated when he looked at it again.
「Attribute(s): [Strength: 103] [Agility: 188] [Vitality: 144] [Intelligence: 277] [Willpower: 134] [Perception: 230] [Charisma: 122]
Attribute point(s): 0」
Zero.
For a moment, Ludwig just stared at it in an understanding that he'd finally made a choice he couldn't take back.
He lifted his eyes, not to the woman, not yet, but to the ruined room itself. The restaurant was still broken. The night was still dangerous. But the next time someone tried to turn his home into a lesson, he wouldn't need to gamble on probability.
He'd have more time.
He'd have a stronger space.
And now, he'd have the senses and speed to make those miracles count.
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