Autophagy

"Huff... Huff..." Song Lei started heaving and gagging as soon as his consciousness came back. He was drenched in sweat as he found himself back on the 16th floor of the Heaven and Hell Apartment. He fell to the ground and laid there for some time. After gaining back control of his body, he took his phone out and looked at the time.

\'It\'s been six minutes in real life since I entered the dream space,\' Song Lei thought while looking at his phone. He wiped some of the salivae that had come out of his mouth while gagging with the back of his hand. \'That\'s weird... Damien had said that it doesn\'t take more than five minutes. Even Old Wolf who had stayed in the dream space for two years had spent three minutes in real life...\'

Song Lei, who wasn\'t sure why such a thing had happened, wanted to bring his stat sheet up. But when he tried to, he was overwhelmed with a lot of notifications. He did his best to separate them from each other by using his hand to drag them around. After managing to somehow organize the notifications, he started reading.

[You\'ve been ejected out of the dream space.]

[You\'ve managed to clear a dream space in the Heaven and Hell Apartment. You\'re the first person to conquer a floor in Hell. For this reason, you get 1x item upgrade talisman.]

[You\'ve cleared a dream space by freeing its inhabitants. Your skill "Tri-force I" has progressed.]

[You\'ve cleared a dream space by befriending its spirit guardian. Spirit Guardians Isabel Fraser and Mia Fraser have committed allegiance to you. You\'ve become the owner of the 16th floor. If this is heard by the apartment manager, he may become hostile to you.]

[As you\'ve become the owner of the 16th floor, you can harvest red blood beads from here every now and then.]

Song Lei read through the notifications. There were some things that left him confused. For example; where would he find the item upgrade talisman he had just got? How would he harvest red blood beads? Although he didn\'t have the answer to these questions, he knew that angering the apartment manager probably wouldn\'t be a smart idea.

After finishing reading through the notifications, Song Lei wiped the sweat off of his forehead. As he felt incredibly hungry for some reason, he took out some canned food and a plastic spoon from his backpack and started eating through it. While doing so, he discarded the notifications and brought up his stat sheet.

[Body]:6

[Mind]: 8

[Soul]: 3 (6)

Song Lei breathed a sigh of relief as he saw that his stats were somewhat unchanged. The reason why his soul stat had fallen temporarily was that Isabel had used him as a soul battery. Remembering the pain he felt when half of his soul was ripped away from him made Song Lei shiver in his place.

Discarding these memories, Song Lei looked at the unspent stat points he had. He knew that spending his stat points smartly was something he was ought to do. Until now, he had almost used all of his stat points to save himself from some kind of bad situation. For example, he had used more than one level worth of stat points on his body stat to heal himself from bad conditions. Although he knew that he was forced to use his stat points that way, he still had to decide on what he would spend his stat points on from now on.

\'I need to keep one unused stat point on me from now on at every moment. I can use one stat point on body and heal a lot. It\'s almost like a health potion from an RPG,\' Song Lei decided.

\'One another thing to consider is stat synergies,\' Song Lei thought. He finished his food and put the empty can inside his backpack. He took out a napkin from his backpack and cleaned his mouth. \'Although I don\'t know what it exactly does, I got the \'Tri-force I\' skill when I evened out all of my stats on 5. There might be further rewards if I keep distributing them evenly.\'

Song Lei looked at his hand for some time.

\'On another side, I might get new skills if I spend all of my points on a single stat too,\' he thought while scratching his cheek. In a lot of RPGs, distributing your stats evenly would be a stupid move. Focusing on one or two stats and assuming a certain role would be the way to go. The problem was...

\'This is not a game though...\' Song Lei thought. No matter what kind of system he had, what he was experiencing was real life. He would need all of the stats equally in the future. If he ignored even one stat, he could meet with very big problems. He kept thinking about what to do about his stats for some time.

\'I will think about it later...\' He decided. He wasn\'t in his best condition at the moment. As he had cleared the floor by beating the dream space, he didn\'t have a lot left to do here. He could go back down after drawing a map of the floor, gathering some information about it, and collecting the red blood beads.

\'Now that I remember, what\'s so different about the hell floors than the heaven floors? Nothing seems to be out of the ordinary...\' Song Lei thought while touching the walls around him. There was no weird smell or feeling. The walls weren\'t swallowing him up or there wasn\'t a death countdown in his system. If he didn\'t know beforehand, he wouldn\'t be able to differentiate a hell floor from a heaven floor.

He left the staircase and entered the corridor.

"Uhh..."

A hot gust of air hit Song Lei and made him raise his hand to protect his face as soon as he entered the floor. As he saw the state the corridor was in, his face went sour.

"What the fuck...?"