Using Unallocated Points
The moment the heavy, dust-covered tarp was violently pulled back, Arthur Sterling became absolutely certain of what Old Parker had brought him.
This was undeniably a black car.
Sitting quietly under the flickering, pale fluorescent lights of the secluded warehouse was a pristine Porsche 911.
In the grand, high-octane hierarchy of the underground street racing world, it was barely considered an entry-level supercar.
These beautiful machines actually had a surprisingly high circulation in the United States.
After all, America was a world-class automobile manufacturing power, and relying on the absolute global hegemony of the US dollar, the country was essentially a massive price valley for luxury vehicles.
A standard, base-model Porsche 911 in the States cost roughly around one hundred thousand dollars.
Even the absolute top-tier, track-ready configuration didn't really require crossing the two-hundred-thousand-dollar threshold!
Coupled with the dangerous illusion of high-limit credit cards and a highly mature, predatory installment payment market, most American middle-class families could actually afford to park this thing in their driveways.
However, because a low-slung, two-seater sports car simply wasn't practical enough for daily grocery runs or family road trips, the demographics were skewed.
Aside from high-end exotic car rental companies, the largest purchasing group for the Porsche 911 in America was still the exceptionally wealthy.
Generally speaking, this specific model was most often bought by rich executives as a lavish, impulsive birthday gift for their spoiled children or hidden lovers.
Arthur stepped closer, his keen eyes quickly checking the overall condition of the sleek vehicle.
There were absolutely no license plates mounted on the bumpers, but the glossy, immaculate paint job indicated it was at least ninety percent new.
It was almost certainly fresh off a dealership lot or a private showroom floor.
Walking around the driver's side, he clearly saw that the metal around the door lock had been brutally forced and scratched, but peering through the glass, the luxurious leather interior was still in perfect, untouched condition.
At this exact moment, Arthur couldn't be bothered to care which wealthy neighborhood this beautiful machine was stolen from!
He had preemptively put on a pair of thick, heavy-duty mechanic's gloves when he first arrived at the secluded warehouse.
He hadn't taken them off even when he was wrestling with the heavy warehouse door earlier.
Living in the dangerous, highly surveilled cinematic world of Fast & Furious, he was incredibly worried about leaving careless fingerprints or any stray DNA that might cause massive, lethal trouble for him later on.
Picking up his heavy steel pneumatic drill and his meticulously organized toolset, Arthur immediately began to get busy.
Trying to completely dismantle a high-performance supercar like this entirely alone in just a few short hours was absolutely no small task.
Even if he was only tasked with stripping the main, high-value components, it required a massive amount of intense physical labor and precise mechanical knowledge.
Fortunately, over the past few grueling days, Arthur's [Repair] skill had improved drastically through his relentless, sweaty hard work at Old Parker's repair shop.
It had now reached a solid Level 2 and was infinitely, tantalizingly close to crossing the threshold into Level 3.
Combined with the massive improvements to his core physical attributes, he worked with a shocking, almost robotic speed and efficiency on his own.
Two exhausting hours later, Arthur stood back, wiping a thick layer of greasy sweat from his forehead with the back of his forearm.
He had successfully removed all the main, high-value components of the sleek sports car.
Including the plush leather bucket seats, the complex dashboard electronics, and all four massive, low-profile tires, everything of worth was completely dismantled and neatly stacked.
"Done. Just finishing up the last of the mounting brackets!" Arthur muttered to himself, his chest heaving with exertion.
Looking down at the unfortunate supercar in the center of the warehouse, which he had brutally dismantled until only a bare, hollowed-out chassis remained, Arthur couldn't help but feel it was a bit of a mechanical pity.
He knew the grim, inevitable fate awaiting this once-beautiful car: all of its meticulously engineered parts would be quietly sold off individually in the shadows.
America possesses the world's largest used car market, a sprawling, billion-dollar industry that is not only incredibly complex but also comprehensively regulated.
However, it definitely wasn't easy for an entire, intact black car to seamlessly enter that legitimate used market and be cleanly laundered without raising massive red flags.
But if it was broken down into a scattered pile of untraceable parts, laundering the stolen goods became a much simpler, practically invisible process.
Though, this brutal method meant the total sum wouldn't fetch a very high price compared to the whole vehicle.
For example, that Porsche 911 sitting in pieces right now, if it had somehow magically entered the legitimate used market normally before being violently dismantled, it should have easily sold for around one hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
Its trim configuration wasn't low, so there would absolutely be no shortage of eager, wealthy buyers.
Even if it was sold as a whole black car to a powerful underground fence with great, far-reaching connections, it should still easily fetch a solid sixty or seventy thousand dollars in cold, hard cash.
But completely stripped down into a pile of parts?
Being able to fence the scattered components for forty or fifty thousand would be considered a massively successful, lucky haul.
Arthur didn't know every single intricate detail about supercar pricing, but his enhanced mind knew the exact, undeniable value of the raw mechanical components.
He estimated that after this specific car was sold off in loose pieces on the black market, Old Parker would actually be lucky to fetch a little over thirty thousand dollars for the lot.
But what did those underground economics actually have to do with Arthur?
He was just the hired wrench getting his guaranteed cut.
In fact, entirely through the grueling, physically demanding process of dismantling this complex supercar, Arthur had gained a massive, continuous amount of [Repair] skill experience.
Although ripping it apart couldn't quite compare to the delicate, highly technical precision of directly participating in the actual repair of a broken supercar, the Ferrari 911 was inherently a very complex, over-engineered machine.
Just from the raw, methodical dismantling process alone, he had gained a shockingly large amount of experience points.
So much so that the absolute moment Arthur threw the last heavy wrench into his metal toolbox, the cold, familiar mechanical voice chimed clearly in his mind.
His [Repair] skill had finally leveled up to Level 3!
Arthur impatiently summoned his glowing blue attribute list, letting the holographic interface wash over his tired vision.
[Host: Arthur Sterling.]
[Lifespan: 18/72.]
[Intelligence: 11] (The average value for adult males in the current world is 10)
[Strength: 10] (The average value for adult males in the current world is 10)
[Agility: 10] (The average value for adult males in the current world is 10)
[Physique: 10] (The average value for adult males in the current world is 10)
[Endurance: 10] (The average value for adult males in the current world is 10)
[Free Attribute Points: 1.]
...[Current Skill List]
[[Driving] Lv3 (242/2000):Very good, you are already a qualified veteran driver!]
[[Lockpicking] Lv1 (73/200):You can try picking locks without a key now.]
[[Culinary Skill] Lv2 (15/500):Why not try making some more complex and delicious food?]
[[Reading] Lv1 (47/200):Want to be smarter? Go read a book.]
[[Repair] Lv3 (7/2000):Perhaps you should try repairing more complex things, like airplanes.]
[[Swimming] Lv1 (0/200):Keep it up, you're already faster than a seahorse.]
[[Running] Lv1 (24/200):Don't stop, keep Running, you will gain health and a good body.]
[[Shooting] Lv0 (95/100):American Iaijutsu, keeps you safe.]
[[Card Skill] Lv0 (0/100):Playing cards is fun, isn't it? You'll find it more interesting once you've learned it.]
[[Drawing] Lv0 (3/100):You are still ten Picassos away from Da Vinci.]
...In the past four grueling, exhaust-fume-filled days, Arthur had actually leveled up four more skills one after another, gaining a highly lucrative total of 6 free attribute points.
Without hesitation, he had systematically used those points to raise his Strength, Agility, Physique, and Endurance all to a perfectly balanced 10 points.
And in those past four days of relentless grinding, Arthur had also successively tried to trigger two completely brand-new skills to test the system's limits.
One of them was the [Card Skill], which he had successfully triggered late that night at home when he accidentally found a dusty, forgotten deck of poker cards in a drawer.
Unfortunately, this specific, highly competitive thing required constant, active matches against actual, living opponents to increase its experience points.
Arthur simply had neither the disposable money to gamble nor the free time to sit around improving this specific skill right now.
The frustrating result was that after initially triggering it, he hadn't gained a single, solitary experience point in several days.
As for the [Drawing] skill, it was triggered completely accidentally that day while he was aggressively grinding his [Reading] at home.
Arthur had simply used a cheap ballpoint pen to absently doodle on a character illustration printed in the margins of a technical book.
Unfortunately, he clearly didn't have much of a natural artistic cell in his body, and he also quickly found that manually leveling up this creative skill was far too incredibly time-consuming.
Therefore, Arthur temporarily didn't have the mental energy or the immediate, pressing need to improve it.
Looking back at his glowing status screen, without any hesitation whatsoever, he mentally added the newly obtained free attribute point directly to his Intelligence.
After previously adding two points to his Intelligence stat, Arthur had quickly noticed a massive, undeniable difference in his daily life.
His short-term memory, his technical reading ability, his rapid logical thinking, and his overall situational awareness had all received a certain, highly noticeable degree of improvement.
If it weren't for the glaring, dangerous fact that his body's base physical fitness was previously a bit too weak and fragile to even look at...
After Arthur had thoroughly enjoyed the immediate, powerful, and significant cognitive effects brought by the initial Intelligence boost, he had even seriously thought for a fleeting moment about putting all his future free attribute points exclusively into Intelligence.
Of course, that was obviously an impossible, highly suicidal strategy in this violent city.
With the limitless potential of the proficiency system, Arthur knew perfectly well that the skills he could trigger in the chaotic future would definitely not be limited to just these basic few.
Therefore, improving his core, five-dimensional physical and mental attributes evenly and comprehensively was the absolute best, most logical choice to survive this cinematic world.