Hearing this, Su Mo finally snapped out of it—without even realizing, he'd already arrived at the gates of the Great Xia Guild.
Su Mo thought for a moment, then said, "I want to check out what kind of skill scrolls you guys have here."
The sales assistant handed Su Mo a catalog and said, "Here's a list of all the skill scrolls our branch has. Take a look!"
Taking this fancy-looking book, Su Mo opened it right up and started flipping through.
[Flame Emblem Mage Ability User can learn. Requires level 23. Price: 360,000.]
[Vajra Indestructible. Requires Defense Attribute: 200 points. Price: 490,000.]
[Slaughter All Enemies. Requires Strength Attribute: 300 points (to be used with a mount). Price: 720,000.]
Just glancing over a couple entries, Su Mo was immediately floored by the prices.
Seriously, even the most basic skill runs at hundreds of thousands.
No wonder those gears he looted earlier sold for 8 million—a haul like that, and even with all that cash he was still cutting it close.
He kept flipping through page after page, checking out all kinds of skills, but nothing really caught his eye.
If this was before he scored Mountain Collapse and Earth Split or Destructive Strike, maybe he would've bought himself a single-target or AOE attack skill or two.
But now? He didn't need them at all—and they cost an arm and a leg anyway.
What he really wanted though, was a skill that turned defense into attack.
Mostly because once he realized just how OP the gold-tier really was, his "low DPS anxiety" got way, way worse.
Even though he hadn't even hit level 10, his mind was trapped on how to get gold-tier power—that was straight-up pipe dream territory for most people.
But Su Mo had Absolute Defense. His Absolute Defense didn't have a stat number—you could think of it as maxed out, or basically infinite.
And half of infinity is still infinity. Even 1% is still infinity.
If he could somehow convert that, he'd be straight-up unstoppable!
Every time he thought about this his blood would start boiling with excitement.
Absolute defense plus absolute offense—could anything beat that?
All he'd need would be to dump the rest of his attribute points into strength and speed, and he'd officially be a pentagonal warrior.
He kept flipping further and did find a couple similar skills, but they didn't really work for him.
[Desperate Battle. Passive Skill. The lower your HP, the higher your attack power...]
For Su Mo, this skill was just a joke. With Absolute Defense, he simply couldn't get hurt, so how was his HP ever gonna drop?
[Attack and Defense Conversion. Passive Skill. When your defense is broken, all your defense attribute gets added to your attack...]
If his defense even got broken, how would it still be "Absolute Defense"?
And it's a passive skill too. If only it were an active one, Su Mo would've called it a god-tier skill.
[Life Transformation. Instantly lowers your defense attribute by 20%, restores HP...]
The other skills were more of the same—they all required some specific condition to trigger.
Lower HP, lower defense—those kinds of trade-offs.
There was even one that turned attack into more defense, which was even worse.
I mean, he already didn't have enough damage—why sacrifice attack to stack more defense?
I already have Absolute Defense, why the hell would I want even more defense?
Su Mo checked every skill, and really, they all either made you drop your life, or required your defense to be broken.
But with Absolute Defense intact, his HP wasn't ever dropping.
So yeah, stuck in an endless loop.
The sales assistant next to him seemed to notice Su Mo wasn't satisfied and quietly offered:
"Sir, are none of these skills to your liking? We've also got the entire skill database for every shop in the Great Xia Guild across the country,
If you can tell us the name or type of skill you're after, I can help you search for it."
Hearing that, Su Mo's eyes lit up: "Then do you guys have any skills that convert defense attribute into attack attribute? I don't care if it's just a little."
The sales assistant paused for a moment and replied, "Please wait a moment, sir. I'll go check for you."
Su Mo saw she was about to start searching and quickly waved her off: "No rush on that—can I get your mount catalog first?"
The salesgirl handed him another booklet and smiled sweetly: "Of course, sir. Anything else I can help you with?"
"Nah, just check if you find anything like that skill for me."
After that, Su Mo started looking through the mount catalog in his hands.
Right off the bat, he saw a magnificent, imposing tiger—the "king" mark on its forehead showing it was the King of Beasts, and it had a pair of pure white wings unfurled behind it.
Just looking at it once, Su Mo's mind went wild: if he could ride this thing out and hack down monsters, he'd look like the most badass boss ever.
But then, the moment he read the full description, his jaw dropped.
[Golden-winged Heaven-Swallowing Tiger. 3m tall, 5m long. Level 16. Flying Series mount. Dungeon drop from Mist Forest, southwest border. Skills: Like a Tiger with Wings, Tiger Roar in the Forest, King's Dominating Aura, Intimidation. Price: 98,000,000.]
What the fuck, just this level sixteen mount and it's almost a hundred million? Are they trying to rob people?!
Actually, with these prices, even robbery wouldn't get them money this fast.
Bunch of damn crooks!
Even though he really liked that Golden-winged Heaven-Swallowing Tiger, the second he thought of his bank account, he had to keep flipping.
Next up was a snow-white, gentle-looking horse with a single unicorn horn on its head radiating holy light—looked cool as hell.
Su Mo imagined himself riding this white horse, swapping his horse-cutting saber for a spear—White Horse, Silver Spear, Zhao Zilong!—no, White Horse, Silver Spear, Su Mo!
Perfect! Seriously, too perfect! Then he checked the price and fell silent again.
[Unicorn. 3m tall, 5m long. Level 15. Speed Series mount. Dungeon drop from Mist Forest, southwest border. Skills: Holy Charge, Holy Light Shines, Healing, Animal Affinity. Price: 90,000,000.]
Goddamn, the Golden-winged Heaven-Swallowing Tiger can fly, so I'll let the 98 million slide, but why is this unicorn 90 million too?
Are all these things this expensive?!
Su Mo kept flipping through five or six more pages, and just glancing at the prices made his head spin.
Even the ugliest wild boar mount—the one Su Mo wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole—still started at 20 million at the cheapest.
Forget the others, he couldn't even afford the cheapest wild boar, and honestly, if he was forced to ride a wild boar out onto the battlefield, he might as well just die of embarrassment!
And God help him if he ever became the strongest and someone dug up his black history of riding a war boar—just imagining that scene, Su Mo's toes could probably dig out a whole three-bedroom apartment!
"Sir, I've found two skills for you here that can convert defense into attack. Would you like to take a look?"
(And because of how the system works, only the most recent chapter gets the author paid, so staying up-to-date is really important.)