It wasn’t just that the numbers had gone up either. Even without the raised stats, he objectively was faster and stronger and able to withstand more pain. It’s what happened after you spent two weeks in the densest area of mana you’d ever been in, hunting and training all day long.

He walked with a new confidence, exuding a strength and power that most normal people his age did not possess. He was slender, yet had the tight muscular tone of someone with incredible strength. Sakura had once told him that a stat of ten in the first three stats was the upper limit for most humans in the outer-rim. The only regular non-climber humans who would technically have stats above ten were professional and Olympic level athletes.

After he left the tower that day and was back in the regular tower-zone’s streets, he noticed he was catching the eye of the occasional woman watching him, drawn to him in a way he’d never experienced back in his former outer-rim life. The first few times it happened, he looked over his shoulder, thinking these women were looking at something behind him. They just smiled at him when he did this and went about their day.

Most of these women looked to be a few years older than him and, while he was certainly flattered by the attention, he had more important things to focus on.

Like upgrading his equipment and cashing in on all the loot he’d accumulated while training.

* * *

With his pouch full of loot—yet not weighing any more than the day he first got it—he strutted through Hawker’s Alley, the main market street in the tower-zone. The merchants of Hawker’s Alley bought, sold, and traded items pertaining to climbers and the tower.

He passed by stalls selling impressive-looking swords and other weaponry. There were a few stalls selling mana-infused armor and shields. There were others with an array of rare antiques and trinkets on a red velvet cloth, each item a curiosity begging to be inquired about.

There was one man in front of a stall of glass bottles full of strange liquids.

“Get your potions, get your poisons, we sell the rarest liquids available in the tower!”

Interesting, thought Max. He peered towards the man’s stall to see if he sold mana potions. The merchant did indeed sell such potions, but Max’s shoulders fell when he saw the price: 50 gold each, or as Max broke down the currency, 50,000 copper coins each.

He sighed and continued exploring the market.

The first thing he needed to do was sell his extra copper monster cores, then he’d know how much money he had to work with.

He scanned the market and eventually saw a merchant who had only three items on display at his stall: a copper monster core, a silver monster core, and a gold monster core.

Max hurried over, excitedly.