Falsely Accused, I Started Plundering Monster Traits

Lin Yan started with the first option.

[F-Grade Permanent Enhancement: Earthborn Foundation]

[Permanently enhances the user’s overall physical capabilities.]

There was almost nothing to think about.

He was taking it.

Strength, speed, endurance, durability, reaction speed—whatever exactly overall physical capabilities covered, all of it belonged to him rather than a weapon, a consumable or some external tool.

Growing up poor, Lin Yan had spent enough of his childhood on the streets to have been in more fights than he cared to count.

He had learned one thing very early.

Technique mattered.

But the body came first.

Strength, weight, speed, reach, endurance.

A skilled fighter could compensate for a physical disadvantage. That did not make the disadvantage disappear.

Earthborn Foundation improved the foundation everything else depended on.

He selected it immediately.

[Reward selected: Earthborn Foundation.]

His attention moved to the second.

[F-Grade Skill Imprint: Adaptive Combat]

[Instills foundational proficiency with common melee weapons.]

[Improves the user’s ability to adapt to unfamiliar weapons and combat conditions.]

At first glance, it sounded excellent.

Learn a whole range of weapons instantly.

Pick up something unfamiliar and know how to use it.

For anyone else, that might have been the obvious choice.

But Lin Yan kept coming back to one problem.

F Grade.

How much could an F-Grade combat skill really teach him?

And more importantly—

Why the hell would I keep fighting everything in melee?

The moment he got out of here, he was finding a way to get a gun.

A hammer was useful when goblins were five meters away.

A rifle would be useful when they were fifty.

Battle Instinct was already helping with his reactions, and actual combat skills could be learned later.

Adaptive Combat was good.

Just not irreplaceable.

He moved on.

[F-Grade Growth Resource: World-Bound Armament Seed]

[May be fused with one F-Grade or lower weapon.]

[The selected weapon will become bound to its owner.]

[The bound weapon will acquire self-repair and limited evolutionary potential.]

[Compatible materials may be absorbed to support future growth.]

Lin Yan frowned slightly.

A growing weapon.

Under normal circumstances, that sounded even better than Adaptive Combat.

The problem was his circumstances were anything but normal.

Less than a day ago, he had been an ordinary man.

Then Brawn doubled his strength.

Then Trollblood changed his entire body.

His own strength was changing too quickly.

A weapon that suited him today might be useless tomorrow.

Even Gorak’s enormous hammer, which had looked absurdly heavy when Lin Yan first saw it, no longer felt nearly as impressive after Trollblood.

So what was he supposed to do?

Spend resources raising an F-Grade weapon while his own body kept jumping ahead every time he killed something useful?

Possible.

But not appealing.

Then came the fourth option.

[F-Grade Consumable: Lifeblood Ampoule]

[A sealed ampoule containing highly concentrated restorative essence.]

[When consumed, rapidly repairs severe physical damage and purges F-Grade and lower contamination.]

[Single use.]

Lin Yan had never liked this kind of item.

Even in games, he hated carrying some precious one-use potion around for the mythical perfect emergency.

Once something like that sat in his inventory, part of his brain would start treating it as an extra life.

That was dangerous.

There was even a name for it—the Peltzman effect. Give people something that made them feel safer, and some of them would simply use that extra safety to take bigger risks.

Lin Yan had seen his own version of it growing up. Every person he had personally known who drowned had been a decent swimmer. The ones who couldn’t swim barely went near deep water in the first place.

Give someone confidence, though, and sooner or later they started thinking, I can handle it.

Lin Yan had no intention of doing the same thing with a healing item.

And if he ever ended up injured badly enough that he desperately needed this thing, there was a decent chance whatever had put him in that condition would still be standing nearby.

Healing himself once would not magically solve that problem.

Still...

A life-saving item was a life-saving item.

Between this and a growing F-Grade weapon, he would rather keep the ampoule.

Which left the Armament Seed at the bottom.

At least, that was what Lin Yan should have been thinking.

In reality, Lin Yan was standing in the middle of the platform with both fists clenched at his sides, his chest pushed forward and his head tilted back toward the ceiling.

"POWER!"

His voice echoed through the station.

Earthborn Foundation.

Strength.

Excellent.

Adaptive Combat.

Fighting.

Also excellent.

Armament Seed.

Trash.

Lifeblood Ampoule.

Healing.

Even worse.

Why heal when he could simply become strong enough that nothing could hurt him?

"MORE POWER!"

The radio at his waist crackled.

"Lin Yan?" Jason’s voice came through. "What the hell are you doing?"

Lin Yan did not answer.

His free hand was already moving toward Adaptive Combat.

[Pursuant to Article 67 of the Host Protection Protocol: when an equipped Trait exerts cognitive influence sufficient to impair the host’s judgment, the System is authorized to unequip the affected Trait without prior consent.]

[Trollblood I automatically unequipped.]

The change was immediate.

The hormone-pumped bullfrog physique vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared, and Lin Yan dropped the full ten centimeters back to his original height.

His work clothes, which had been stretched tight across his enlarged body, suddenly hung loose around him. The sleeves slipped down over part of his hands, and the pant legs dropped until they nearly swallowed his shoes.

Gorak’s hammer suddenly felt a lot heavier.

The roar inside his head disappeared with it.

Lin Yan froze.

"..."

He slowly lowered his head.

"...What the fuck was I doing?"

[Trollblood I was influencing your judgment.]

Lin Yan remembered himself staring at the ceiling and yelling about power.

His face went blank.

"...Did my muscles just take over my brain?"

[That is not an accurate description.]

"Lin Yan?" Jason’s voice came through the radio again. "Are you okay?"

"I’m fine."

"You were flexing and yelling at the ceiling."

"I said I’m fine."

Lin Yan looked down.

His finger was hovering dangerously close to confirming Adaptive Combat as his second reward.

His expression changed.

"System."

[Yes?]

"This is what you call a minor reduction in cognitive ability?"

He pointed at himself.

"That was minor?"

[Yes.]

"I was screaming ’POWER’ at the fucking ceiling!"

[...]

Lin Yan rubbed his face.

"Whatever."

He looked over the remaining rewards again.

This time, his thoughts stayed his own.

"Regenerate the Armament Seed."

[World-Bound Armament Seed selected for regeneration.]

[Free reward regeneration consumed.]

[Generating replacement reward...]

[F-Grade Rule Artifact: The Real Man’s Revolver]

Lin Yan’s eyebrows rose.

"A revolver?"

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