Chapter 114 – End of day results

At the end of the second ‘day’, he had reached two more levels. It was harder to reach them and progressively got worse but he was fairly certain that he could grind out at least one level per day if he moved up the ranks accordingly and aimed for first kill bonuses.

This meant that he should clear all of the other kinds of dungeons at least once as well. The experience from the First Kill bonuses would make up for the time lost and scattering things between different kinds of dungeons would allow him to scout for other interesting Loot. Therefore, he made it his goal for the next day to clear all of the Tier 8 Bosses from the other kinds of Instant Dungeons.

However, he had other things to worry about first. He stepped from the door of light and into the open field. Lots of things had changed in the last two days.

Because the sun was still moving at the speed outside of the barrier, it was still daytime inside the barrier (the two days inside equalling about 7 hours outside). In order to provide them a place to sleep in, Magoi placed two houses near the gates. Both of them were a carbon copy of John’s home. “It was easiest this way,” the High Fateweaver had explained.

The good thing was he could sleep with shut curtains inside his own bedroom. The even better news was that Magoi copied John’s home with all of the electronics running and connected to the internet. The bad was that there was no food and neither was it inside Magoi’s contract to provide any. Therefore, John had to go through with the costly endeavour of getting his food through the Abyss Auction.

He turned to the neatly segmented basin, where Magoi stored his loot. The High Fateweaver was standing there as well, scratching the chin of his raptor skull mask with one hand while turning a CD in his hand with the other. “Interesting,” he said to John once he stepped into his field of view, “I inferred that your Ability was copying things that existed, but instead this album confirms that it also creates things without precedent. Truly fascinating, you are.”

Ignoring Magoi’s wonder, John looked over the stuff. The common drops ranged from money to cheap jokes, which set the tone for the rest of the drops really. He put the money into his inventory, kept one of the albums, there were some good songs on there, but decided to sell the Navy Membership Cards on the auction. Surely somebody was interested in a very finely crafted paper card that just said, “In the Navy!” with the music scores of the song printed on it. There was always someone with a bit too much money and a bit too little self control.

He also got three Kryptonite Doorknobs. They were, unsurprisingly, useless but he needed to feed Aclysia something to keep her level equal to his, so he put them aside for her. The Brush of Black was a brush that could only paint black, no surprise there, and also completely useless. The “Beat(ing) it!” Item was something he might have appreciated in older times. It was a fleshlight of likely good quality but there was no reason to keep it. ‘Aside from feeding it to Aclysia and making her reshape her pussy out of it,’ he realized and put it on her pile. It was the first somewhat lewd thought he had had in two days.

Fish. There was a fish. Two to be exact. Two fresh Barracudas. John knew what he would be eating today but that didn’t make it less weird. Everything about Radio Head was weird. Weirder though, was that this confirmed his ability could create live entities beyond the monsters inside the Instant Dungeon.

Then there was a stick of dynamite. That was really all there was to it. He would sell it on the Auction and consider the moral implications of the fish being born out of nothing another time.

Rare Items, these should prove to be a bit better. First to look at that “Spirit of the Radio”.

Good, but boring, but good. He should start to assemble some kind of better equipment in the future anyway so this was nice. He stored the two of them that had dropped in his inventory for later use. What was next?

Confused, he put it on. Well, the world was a shade darker thanks to the helmet but otherwise nothing changed. Sylph burst into laughter, “What is that, what even is that, hihihihihhi.” Salamander and Gnome giggled as well, Undine sent him some amused vibes and even Aclysia seemed to smile slightly. Sylph’s loud laughter also revealed what the helm was for: whenever he heard something, the helm visualized it with sound bars. This item was trash but would probably sell for good money.

‘Jane would love this,’ he realized as he put it on the ‘Sell’ pile. Needless to say, saving her had a higher priority than hoarding gifts.

The next drop he had four of, hopefully they were any good.

‘Bad joke.’ John thought and gave one of the daggers to Aclysia. She had still one Slot open in Adaptive Bladery and no really short-range weapon so this was probably a good investment, especially as they were about to go into the Skaven Under-Empire again tomorrow, where both the Cleaver of Streets and the Sword of Glory would prove too big to use. He would either sell the other three or feed them to Aclysia if she needed more to level up.

Last, he had one of these things:

He had no idea what ‘Revealer of Secrets’ actually did. So he turned to Magoi with that question. “No idea.” The High Fateweaver answered truthfully, “Probably something connected to your unique dungeon constructing powers? May I urge you to look at the remaining two items? I am itching to find out what they do.”

John was as well. There was his guaranteed Epic Drop.

That was an all around superior option to his bird. He could still use both, although he struggled to imagine a situation where that was helpful. Also, these puns started to physically hurt him. He landed the verdin on his hand, cancelled Possession, and used it on the Bee instead. He was even smaller now and the new way to flap his wings would need some getting used to. Aside from that the experience was the same, which he was thankful for. He had no desire to experience the way Insect eyes worked.

The last item on the list was Legendary. Yes, he had finally dropped one. It had taken aeons and the murdering of countless bosses but he had finally done it. The only other legendary item in his possession was the Necklace of the World Ender and that was stupendously good so he had high expectations of this.

‘Ehm, I am not sure what to think of this’ John admitted to himself.

“What does it do?” Magoi wanted to know, “The mana it radiates is impressive.”

Was it? John didn’t really look at auras all that often, especially after he had found out that he could toggle it off with a mere thought. It was like looking through multi-coloured fog most of the time. Now that he did use it again though, the Fateweaver was proven right, the collar did exude a strong golden aura. John relayed what it did as shortly as possible. “Truly magnificent, an item containing its own separate dimension.”

John was not that convinced of the item's greatness but he would try it out, maybe the rewards were good enough to warrant such a high rarity. That aside however he still had other things to do today. After ordering Aclysia to start munching on the items he didn’t need (and allowing her to grab stuff from the sale pile in case she needed more than he had provided), John started to ponder about the next thing on his bucket list: The Skill Evolution Point he had gotten.

As none of the Elementals had a golden + yet they were sadly all out. Evolving Gnome into a higher elemental was probably his best way to gain power but doing it at the risk of turning her into a crippled or tainted elemental was just not worth it. That left two other good choices for him: Mana Ray and Mana Shield.

Mana Ray was extremely powerful as it was. It was costly, sure, but also reliable to aim, had strong offensive power and a very good range. There was little need to fix what wasn’t broken. Mana Shield ,on the other hand, sucked and if it would only be good at higher levels it was better to reset its level right now instead of grinding it up until he got a new point. Therefore, the decision was to evolve Mana Shield.

In John’s mind, this was an easy choice. Mana Fortification was out the window immediately. He could see applications, like hiding inside a reinforced earth wall, but why use one of his Skills for that when he had Gnome and Undine?

Next, Mana Force Field sounded nice but he had Mana Shield because he wanted a defensive skill he didn’t need to think about. He already needed to control 2 (3 counting the bee that didn’t consume one of the Possession charges) other bodies as well as which elemental his mana was going to AND being the field strategist.

Mana Protection was just an upgrade of what he currently had Mana Shield for. Entering combat with a shield was just good. Sure, it would never really get the chance to regenerate once combat was in full swing, but until it was broken it would be reliable.

Yep, that was pretty good. It effectively doubled his HP, as long as he charged it at the start of each day, for the remaining 26 days of this grinding session. Now, to spend his points. With the 10 he had, he reached exactly 100 Intellect, so it was best to do so.

Jesus, that skill was good. Not right now of course, but given the traditional scaling of his abilities this would eventually lead to a 100% increase. He should probably increase his mana based arsenal in the future if that was the case. Seemed like he was some sort of Elemental-Arcane-Puppeteer-Mage now. ‘My class doesn’t make much sense… well, as long as it works,’ the Gamer thought. ‘Wonder if I will ever get a proper Class system? Would be nice to make specializing in certain directions easier.’

Aclysia had now eaten everything she needed to catch up to his level, which turned out to be almost everything he wanted to sell (save the Navy Memberships and CD’s of course). This made him slightly annoyed. The emotion was calmed easily. If that was what it took for Aclysia to remain effective, then that was just what it was. Ultimately, this cost him nothing.

The Kryptonite Doorknobs apparently weren’t eligible for giving bonus Stats, so he was only faced with the decision of where to put his points. Luckily, increasing her strength was the easy choice as crossing 75 once again made her stupid high regeneration jump even stupidly higher.

Yep, that was… not okay. The events of the day had shown that he should raise her Endurance next. Even if her regeneration was incredible, she was too susceptible to burst damage. So his next goals were probably getting that and her Agility to 50.

For himself, Intellect had sorted his mana situation out very well, so maybe it was time to look at Strength and Endurance again? With this much MP, he also had the option to expand his Skill repertoire again.

“Aclysia, you prepare something to eat, I will go run for a bit. Call me when it’s ready,” he instructed. This was his way to try and get ‘Muscle of the Operation’ to increase again. Every free Stat Point counted and there was nothing else to do while she cooked. So far, he had not succeeded.

“Affirmative…” Aclysia more mumbled than said, bowing her head slightly. As he jogged away from her, he caught a glint of worry in her eyes. He discarded it. He had more important things to achieve than to think about her worries.