The grand notion of being able to pick what upgrades he spent system points into, was something that Timothy had been craving for a long time now! During the previous few months, the system did a great job at lining up the most appropriate upgrades for him to buy, and this had been part of what had kept him alive, but it simply felt better to have the freedom to choose whatever he wanted to to upgrade! He was very excited about it.

  The system did a complete overhaul of the system tabs that featured his abilities, and separated his abilities into seven, very important categories; Abilities, Dark Abilities, Intelligence Upgrades, Durability & Bodily Upgrades, Multiple Power Casting-Costs, and a whole bunch of New Powers that were available for purchase!

  Initially Timothy was overwhelmed by these seven tabs, but once he looked into them thoroughly, he understood what he was supposed to do if he wanted to improve one of his powers! He looked at his Abilities, for example, and once he explored his ability to shoot fireballs, he figured out that there were two options for him if he was to improve his fireballs.

  The two options expanded, and they had price tags on them. He could either make his fireballs hotter, and more lethal, or he could choose to densify them, so they’d spent less mana upon use! The first option was very expensive, so the latter one was more sensible.

  “15,000 system points isn’t too bad,” He muttered, as he was aware of how many mana points he spent in battles. “If I densify my fireballs, my mana pool will have a field day, it’ll finally be able to relax, hahahaha.”

  Timothy was happy with what he was seeing. On top of having the freedom of choice, these seven tabs were also very informative. For example, on his Abilities tab, he could even see how much mana points each ability of his would spend upon use!

  This gave him a solid idea of which power to densify, amplify, or use a lot less of all together! It was eye-opening, the powers were listed neatly, and comprehensively.

  ~ Fireball = 25,000 MP per use/max

  ~ Thunder Strike = 70,000 MP per use/max

  ~ Extingus Breath = Free to use

  ~ Flaming Fins = 4,000 MP per sec/max

  ~ Freezing Blood = 7,000 MP per sec/max

  ~ Withering Shaker = 15,000 per use/max

  ~ Health Regeneration = 200 MP for 5 HP

  ~ Microshift = 50% of mana pool capacity

  The dark abilities he had were on a separate list, and their expenses were different. Regarding his abilities here that were not dark, it didn’t take much exploring to figure out which ones cost him the most points!

  The Thunder Strike ability was the most expensive one to use. The thunderbolts he could shoot were huge, and they were very effective as their strength were based on his current, adept mana quality! Furthermore, the reason why this ability was so expensive, was because it had never been densified before.

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  If he didn’t densify his Thunder Strike ability now, then he might as well not use it at all, because he would need hours to regenerate the mana he’d spend on a single bolt! He could only regenerate under five-thousand blue mana points per hour, and this wasn’t a lot, not unless he knew how to be savvy with his mana.

  Timothy’s next step was a no-brainer. He densified the Thunder Strike ability, for it to cost less mana upon use, twenty-percent less, to be exact. He could densify it even more than that, but the prices beyond the twenty-percent mark were too steep for comfort, so he avoided them.

  With little effort, and just a couple of confirmations, he started densifying his chosen ability, in exchange for 30,000 system points. It was expensive, but it was worthwhile, because at the end, the Thunder Strike ability would cost fifty-six thousand mana points to use, at most, rather than seventy-thousand points!

  The exchange was worthwhile, and the best part was that the brutal, explosive strength of this ability would remain the same! Its strength was purely based on Timothy’s level-five mana quality so it surely remained powerful, but after the densification process, it would also be cheaper to use!

  The densification process only took twenty minutes, and it was painless to implement, so in the meantime, Tim had browsed across the other seven tabs. He tried to figure out which part of his arsenal to upgrade next!

  “I want a higher MQ, but it's not worth the price. I don’t want to spend a hundred thousand system points, just for a hundred more MQ points!” He muttered.

  The system tab regarding intelligence was harrowing. He wanted to be smarter, specifically, he wanted to be smarter in all things regarding mana, but it simply was too expensive to buy such upgrades! He’d have to slaughter tens of killer whales if he was to accumulate enough points, for example, and he couldn’t find himself killing random, docile whales just for some system points, so most of these intelligence upgrade options were out of the question for now, until he found a bunch of strong enemies to kill.

  ~ Intelligence Quotient = 170 points

  ~ Emotional Quotient = 90 points

  ~ Creative Quotient = 180 points

  ~ Mana Quotient = 500 points

  The latter was the tab featuring his four types of intelligence, and what he scored in each of them. They were all considerably high, except for his EQ, but he didn’t care much for that right now. He tried to decide if he should increase his IQ or not.

  “I can call myself Nikola Tesla now, instead of Timothy Testicles, and that's good… even though I’m just a few hundred inventions short in comparison. I’m pretty smart, but still, an IQ of 200 points wouldn’t hurt!” He thought.

  Timothy’s intelligence was largely influenced by what species’ form he assumed, and considering that he grew accustomed to the body of an Aqus Goblin, or goblins in general, he tried to make himself comfortable in this form. A higher IQ would definitely help him feel more comfortable, and it was a lot cheaper in comparison to an MQ upgrade if he chose to buy it. The upgrade only cost twelve-thousand system points, so after some thinking, he decided to put it on the list of upgrades that he wanted to buy!

  Aside from this upgrade, he also wanted to densify his Flaming Fins ability, or in this case, it would be called the Flaming Feet ability. This one wasn’t too expensive to use, but he almost always dualcasted it with the Freezing Blood ability, and this tended to get expensive, considering that he spent thousands of points every second upon their use!

  Timothy had densified the Freezing Blood ability already, so he was excited to see how much the average expenses would drop after his latest decision. He chose to densify the Flaming Fins ability by twenty-percent, and it was only to cost him fifteen-thousand system points!

  After this upgrade, the ability would at most cost thirty-two hundred mana points per second to use!