[Inferior Health Potion - Consumable

Durability: 1/1

Description: A poor quality creation of Alchemy that restores 5 points of Health.]

[Inferior Mana Potion - Consumable

Durability: 1/1

Description: A poor quality creation of Alchemy that restores 5 points of Mana.]

[Inferior Stamina Potion - Consumable

Durability: 1/1

Description: A poor quality creation of Alchemy that restores 5 points of Stamina.]

[Rusty Iron Sword - Weapon

Durability: 0.5/0.5

Damage: 0.1-0.4

Description: A poor quality bastard sword that has been ruined by endless battle and lackluster craftsmanship.]

Darius' face turned sour when he read through the descriptions of the loot he had been granted. While he hadn't expected much from a weapon with the 'rusty' tag, this was a bit too…

This weapon was so bad its stats were represented in decimals, which was the first time Darius had ever seen something like this in Faust. He decided to continue walking towards his destination while inspecting what else he got.

The potions were passable. He hadn't had big hopes for potions with an 'Inferior' tag, but 5 points were actually not bad given his current level and stats. While the health potion certainly couldn't bring him back from the brink of death and he had yet to find a way to measure his stamina, the mana potion was already useful.

With currently 50 mana at his disposal, 5 points did not seem a lot, but in a pinch, it could allow him to fire off Ember or Sparks spells 5 additional times.

Darius compared his iron dagger to this rusty iron sword and frowned. It was true that items produced with his Transmutation were at the pinnacle of their specific grade/category, but the discrepancy was truly shocking.

Darius also inspected the common health potion he had received from the fight with the Grey Bear earlier.

[Common Health Potion - Consumable

Durability: 5/5

Description: An average quality creation of Alchemy that restores 25 points of health when drank.]

'So that one can literally refill half of my current health. It would definitely be supremely useful in battle henceforth, but first I should try to fully grasp the limits of my Transmutation ability,' Darius decided to experiment a bit more.

His previous tests had been basic and skewed slightly since he had been mostly converting materials of different types altogether. However, he was now interested in checking the costs of converting materials of the same type into higher quality.

[Would you like to change the Inferior Health Potion into a Common Health Potion? This will cost 0.0001 Conversion Points.]

Darius rubbed his chin with excitement. This confirmed his theory that the base version of an item played a major role in the resulting cost and now he knew that it was cost-efficient to convert upwards.

Why did he care?

Well, it was simple. When Darius entered a town or city, he could head to the local general/potion store and buy up all Inferior potions cheaply, then manually covert them into the highest quality instead of purchasing those straight up.

Every merchant's dream!

Along with that, he could even rebrand and re-sell, because the elitist Transmutation technique would recreate the converted potion with the best possible technique for that stage of quality, meaning that Darius's goods were guaranteed to be far better than competitors on the market!

His mercantile instincts were shivering in ecstasy from the sheer opportunities and utilities of this ability, but he calmed himself down. First things first, he converted all his potions into the Common grade.

Then, he held the rusty iron sword and concentrated.

[Would you like to change the Rusty Iron Sword into an Iron Sword? This will cost 0.01 Conversion Points.]

Well, the points required were slightly higher for it. It made sense since the creation, composition, and size of the sword was greater than for the liquid inside the small potion bottle. Still, it was cheap enough that Darius couldn't complain.

This time Darius refused the change. He had to carefully think about what physical skills he wanted to have and what weapon would best assist him in that.

At the end of the day, as Caesar had said, classes were just a guide for assisting his growth. The fact was that his Supreme System allowed him to freely learn any skill he wanted. He could define his own path based on his needs.

Darius considered learning either the spear, the sword, or the bow.

A spear had good range and exemplary variation, but its weakness would be his skill and difficulty of learning it. Both could easily be negated by investing AP into Agility and SP into a spear skill.

The sword was the most common weapon and the one most developed. It boasted speed if one used one-handed variations or strength if one used two-handed variations. However, its weakness was the short distance and the extensive counter-knowledge on sword techniques.

The first weakness wasn't that easy to negate unless Darius found a special skill to that end - or created one himself - and the second was also difficult to negate unless he used a whole new brand of swordsmanship not seen before.

The bow was a semi-common weapon that was the best for ranged fighters. It boasted accuracy and safety if one could get into a superior position. Its weakness was close combat and the limitation on ammunition.

The first would not be easy to negate unless he could invest AP in Agility and Intellect, while the second was negated by his Inventory.

Hm…

Darius ruled the sword out straightaway. Even though it pained the inner boy in him who had at one point dreamt of wielding (or dual-wielding) two legendary swords with amazing, as well as flashy skills, practicality won the day.

He had to choose between the spear and the bow. Both had their pros and cons, especially when linked to his subclass as a Magus. With the spear, he could strike foes physically and if he encountered someone with too strong of an armor, hit them with a spell point-blank.

With archery, he wouldn't even need to confront an enemy. He could just fire an arrow with a spell attached to it or follow right behind it to double the power.

So, which one to go for?