Monster Soul Online

After leaving the bamboo hut, Sila went straight to the hotel. He paid 1,000 silver to rent a room for one stay. He didn’t want to go to the Mansion of Secret as that would disturb Bow’s practice. He also didn’t dare to wander in town as he was afraid to encounter some opponents, which would be a detriment to Burapha’s plan.

Sila was fixated on coming up with the answer by himself.

“What am I capable of?” Sila decided to look through his system window. His skills were all the same except for one additional skill.

“Greed Skill?” Sila tried to recall what had happened. He finally remembered that he had gotten it after killing the Water Dragon. He forgot to check it as there were so many things for him to do previously. Sila began to read the description of the card and its skill.

(S) Greed Card – Level 10 (Maximum)

Player obtains an active skill: (S) Greed.

Increases the minimum drop rate of all items to 40%.

Increases the minimum drop rate of cards to 60%.

Increases the minimum chance of coming across a special situation to 40%.

Increases the minimum chance of encountering a hidden boss to 30%.

Increases the minimum chance of benefiting from any randomness to 80%.

Player will earn twice as much money when defeating a monster.

Upon skill activation, player has 0% chance to encounter Mammon – the Demon of Greed.

The chance of encountering Mammon will increase by 30% every time player uses the Greed skill.

The chance of encountering Mammon will decrease by 1% every time player gives 10,000 gold to Mammon.

Player will earn only 10% of all experience points from now on.

(S) Greed Skill

No resource is required to use this skill. Player can only use this skill if possessing Greed Card.

Cooldown time: 30 days.

Can repair, refill, and replicate an item.

Cannot be used on an item that is unique in the game, or personal item.

Cannot be used on an item that has had Greed cast on it before.

Sila didn’t fully understand its description, but it did look like it could increase the quantity of an item. Luckily, Sila had one item that he wanted more of. That item was the bottle containing Emperor Qi Pellets. It belonged to Lone Wolf but he had eaten too many of the pills already.

Sila imitated Lone Wolf by opening the palm of his hand and focused his mind to use Greed skill. The Greed Card instantly appeared, floating on his palm. It was like what Lone Wolf had done. The difference was, depicted on Sila’s card wasn’t a picture of six-winged archangel but a picture of young black-haired prince with a golden crown. He was surrounded by all kinds of jewelries and treasures.

“Greed.” Sila activated the skill.

The card in front of him scattered into dusts. The dimension around Sila began to shake.

A nauseating and disgusting sensation soon filled the room. The air in front of Sila distorted into a football-sized black hole. A hand which clearly wasn’t human pierced through the hole.

Sila swallowed his saliva. The opposing hand opened its palm, waiting. Sila realized that he needed to put his item on this palm. He put a bottle of Emperor Qi Pellets onto it. Once it landed on the hand, the hand slowly pulled back into the mini dimensional portal.

After not even five seconds had passed, the same hand pierced through the portal again. Revealing its palm, there were surprisingly two bottles of Emperor Qi Pellets there. Sila anxiously extended his hand to take them.

The moment he took them, the hand suddenly grabbed onto his wrist tightly and tried to pull Sila into the dimensional portal.

Shapeless Qi automatically activated and concentrated into Sila’s wrist to strengthen it.

“Argh.” The hand squeezed Sila’s wrist like serrated metal and the portal expanded. Sila didn’t have any time to think. He immediately activated Hidden Weapon Firing to summon three daggers into his free hand. He reinforced them with his qi and fired them at the devil’s hand.

As knives stabbed into the wrist of the devil, its grip loosened a little. Sila hurriedly reinforced his wrist with qi and forcefully pulled it back.

Sila’s wrist was finally freed. He took several steps back to stand at the corner of the room. Looking at the red mark on his left-handed wrist, he felt tremendous pain; it was as if it was broken. Sila looked back at the dimensional portal. Its size was shrinking to the original size.

That hand returned to the portal. As the portal continued to close, a man’s voice echoed from it, “Please come again next time.” It came together with high-pitched devilish laughter. Then, the portal completely shut down. The atmosphere inside the room returned to normal.

Sila still felt shocked at what had just happened. If not for the pain on his wrist and the fact that there were two bottles of Emperor Qi Pellets lying on the floor, he would think that what he had experienced was a dream.

Sila circulated Immortal Qi into his wrist. The pain soon subsided. The bones seemed to be healed too.

Five minutes later, Sila took both bottles of Emperor Qi Pellets to see their contents. There were five pellets in each of them. He threw them into his system window. Now, the problem of returning the items to Lone Wolf was gone. He even had one more for himself.

The experience he got from using Greed caused Sila to not want to use this skill ever again. He neither wanted to see that hand a second time nor experience the nauseating feeling that the portal filled the room with.

He inspected the status of Greed Card again. The chance that Mammon would appear had gone up to 30%.

He decided to leave the problem for later. What was more important to him right now was the answer to the old man’s question.

Sila sat on the bed. Usually, when facing this kind of question, he would always seek an answer from others. But this time, his teacher explicitly stated that he must come up with the answer by himself.

Almost ten hours later, Sila, who didn’t eat nor sleep, was still sitting on the bed motionlessly. He was still completely unable to find out the connection between the terrible soup and Montra.

The system alerted him that it was time to log out. Sila closed his eyes and logged out, having yet to find the answer.

***

Sila opened his eyes to the same hospital room. There was food placed on the table next to him. He got up from his bed and ate his last hospital meal. It was a rice congee mixed with shrimp that automatically warmed itself with the help of a high-tech bowl.

Sila ate several spoonfuls of it until the door of his room opened. Uncle Rashane and the doctor entered his room.

“Have you been awake for a long time?” greeting Rashane.

“No, Uncle; I just woke up not long ago.”

“Finish eating, then change your clothes, okay? I have prepared some for you.” Rashane handed over a paper bag to Sila.

Sila opened it and found that there were several casual clothes inside.

“They’re my clothes from the old days. Is that okay? I can buy new ones if you don’t like them.”

Sila hurriedly rejected, “No need to do that, Uncle. I can wear anything. These ones are fine.”

“Is that so? While you’re eating, please let the doctor examine your body again for the last time. While you do that, I’ll ask the employees to move this life-supporting device.” Rashane walked toward the door and beckoned two staff members to come inside.

Sila got up from his bed and sat on the sofa. Meanwhile, the employees quickly disassembled the device with expertise and neatly collected its pieces into a box. Sila was impressed. He himself wasn’t good with machinery at all. In his dojo, except for an old computer and a keyboard, there were no other technological devices at all.

The doctor examined Sila’s body and agreed to let Sila out of the hospital. Sila hurriedly finished his meal and changed his clothes. Meanwhile, Rashane pardoned himself to pay the hospital bill, while Sila quickly followed. As Rashane took the bill, Sila sneakily took a glance at the amount on it.

‘230,000 Baht.’ Sila felt guilty. If he had performed physical therapy earlier, the amount might have been much lower than this. Sila decided to not cause any more problems for his uncle. He would stop at nothing to clear the debt of 15 million.

“Let’s go, Sila. The staff will carry other things for us later. My car can’t carry all of them.”

Both of them went to Rashane’s dark-brown car, waiting for the staff to move things to a pickup truck next to it. Sila just noticed that Varee hadn’t come with Rashane.

“Where is Varee, Uncle?”

“Varee is playing the game. Good grief, it’s true that her grades didn’t drop, but maybe she’s playing too much.”

“Where are we going?”

“We still can’t find Mora so Sila, you should stay with me for now. I believe we will find him soon. I would feel uneasy if you lived alone. My house has a vacant room anyway.” Rashane’s eyes were filled with sorrow when saying this, but Sila didn’t notice it.

“Has there been any progress with the investigation?” Sila asked, to which Rashance shook his head.

The staff came to them to inform that they had finished packing things. Rashane and Sila got into the car to drive home. It took them around two hours to arrive at Rashane’s house. Only now did Sila realize how far Rashane’s house was. Despite that, Rashane had still visited him almost every day. This showed how much Rashane cared for him.

Rashane’s house was a white two-storey house made of wood. It was located quite far away from the main city. There was a small dojo next to the house, which Sila looked at with curious eyes.

Rashane ordered the employees to carry things into the house and approached Sila. Seeing Sila’s interest in the dojo, Rashane explained:

“That was my wife’s dojo. She practiced martial arts.” Rashane looked at the dojo with a sad expression.

“I still don’t know how your wife passed away,” Sila said softly.

“It was a car accident. A car was about to hit Varee and my wife used her own body to block it.”

“My condolences, Uncle,” Sila said

Rashane nodded and fell into silent.

“About the room that I’m about to stay in, was it your wife’s room?”

“No, it’s my daughter’s room.”

“Varee’s?” Sila was startled. How was it possible for him to sleep in Varee’s room?

“It’s my oldest daughter’s. Her name is Vata. She left home two years ago, shortly after my wife had passed away.”

“She left the house? Why?” Sila thought that he had heard this name before, but he couldn’t recognize it immediately.

Rashane was making a sad expression again. “It was because of me.”

Sila frowned. How could a good person like Uncle Rashane cause a problem for anyone?

“Why do you think so, Uncle?”

“When my wife stopped breathing, I was in an important meeting with my clients. At that time, the company was facing a financial crisis. I thought that since she was already in doctor’s hands, she would be fine. After I finished the meeting, I hurried to the hospital, but it was too late. She was gone. I still remember Vata’s face to this very day. She was looking at me with resentful eyes, asking me repeatedly ‘Why didn’t you come? Mom kept calling for you the whole time...’”

Tears appeared on Rashane’s face. Those events must have left a big scar on his heart.

“After that, she left home. I couldn’t find her no matter how hard I tried. Sila, I’m not a good person. The reason why I’m helping you is because I know what it feels like to be separated from someone important. Taking care of you is just a part of my selfishness. Hearing of you being admitted to the hospital, it reminded me of my wife. I was afraid to arrive late again.”

Sila fell silent. He didn’t know about Rashane’s problems before. It was too big. He couldn’t possibly come up with any words of comfort.

“You don’t need to be concerned about my problems, though. What about you? You have your own problems, don’t you?”

“Uncle, you can tell?” Sila was surprised.

“Sort of. Tell me, maybe I can help.”

Sila shook his head. “This problem is one I must solve with my own ability.”

Rashane fell silent. He knew that Sila tended to distance himself from others, but some problems are better solved with many people rather than alone.

“Sila, do you know what I do when I’m facing a problem?” Rashane started a topic.

Sila frowned. “Does a skilled person like Uncle… also have a problem?” He had listened to many words of praise from the doctor toward Rashane during his stay in the hospital.

“No one is perfect, Sila. I also have things that I can’t do. For example, that life-supporting capsule? It’s like a foreign object for me. I couldn’t possibly do anything about machinery. Thus, I hired those employees to help us. Those guys are better than me. If I were to do it myself, we would still be at the hospital, loosening the knots,” Rashane said it jokingly.

Sila smiled at Rashane’s word. However, in the next instant, his expression changed.

He finally knew the answer.

“Thank you, Uncle,” Sila said with a bright smile.

“Ah? Did you solve your problem?”

Sila nodded. “Yes. It’s thanks to Uncle. I have finally come up with the answer.”

“If you have found a solution, then I’m happy for you.”

One of the employees came to Rashane to inform that they had finished the installation. Rashane signed his signature on a device to confirm their process. Then, the employees took off.

“Are you going to log in?” Rashane asked.

“Yes,” Sila replied with a smile.

“Then, go. I’m going to work too. By the way, can I ask you to bring Varee with you the next time you log out? Really, what’s with you two? There’s always one of you logged in. Can you two please log out together just once?”

“Yes, Uncle. Next time, I will bring Varee out with me.”

As Rashane and Sila went into the house, Rashane smiled merrily. After his wife had passed away, that smile had left the house. But now, even Sila was able to smile. Rashane was glad that his decision to invite Sila to Monster Soul was the right one.