Collide Gamer

Chapter 121 – Workshop work [Monday 6/7]

“Can I just say.” Sylph exclaimed, the boss monster before them gradually turning into dust, “That the fifth floors have become suuupeeer boring?”

“You can say that but that does not make it true.” John sighed at his wind elemental and looked around. They were in the heart of a great labyrinth of sandstone. The sun was shining down on them with merciless rays. John finally gave into the urge to sit down in the shade cast by one of the walls. An urge that had gone repressed until then.

The reason for this was quite simple: This was the fifth floor of the Wall Shadow I.D., or in other words: sitting down in the shadows was pretty much guaranteed to give one the last hug of one’s lifetime. He had pushed off going in there for a long while. In the end, the First Kill bonus was too important to skip out on.

Unlike what Sylph was insinuating, the Floor/Wave 5 bosses remained challenging. The difference from before was that they could be allowed three to five slip ups, rather than one or two. The problem of getting to them was also a continuous struggle. John had needed two whole days to push through the remaining four basic dungeons because, easy as the first four floors were, he still had to relearn all the bosses, layouts and mobs on his way down to each fifth-floor boss. That took the most time. Once they got to the boss it was hard, yes, but not as time consuming.

As he exited the Dungeon he noticed a window popping up.

“Sweet,” he said and with a smile. He was just looking for another one of those. There was a prospective one in the Quest he had gotten after dealing with the Nathalia situation. To get that, he needed to get ten Waves or Floors deep and he did not expect that to happen anytime soon.

The SEP was needed for Gnome. The Earth Elemental Summoning Skill was about to hit level 100 and with it came the opportunity to evolve her to a higher Tier elemental. Only one problem though, as John checked progress on the Skill, he realized that it was dead stuck at 99. ‘Huh?’ he thought and looked for any hints as to why this was. Unlike Undine, the system did not tell him of a damaged bond. Looking through the recollections of the Skillbook, he quickly found out that they required a ‘bonding experience’ of some variety. Details were exceptionally vague.

Out of frustration he looked into evolving the Skill anyway. He promptly got a detailed warning.

Was there a 3% chance of failure or a 2% chance of failure followed by a 1% chance of it getting worse or how did this piece of math work? John got no answer to that question. Either way, he dismissed the window. There was little need to hurry. He would just hold onto the SEP and spend it when it was safe. It was a bit annoying to lose some efficiency, but John was cautious by nature. Roguelites had humbled him too much with inopportune streaks of bad luck to subject his real life to the whims of RNGesus unless he absolutely had to.

Therefore, to not give the god of chance bullets to shoot John with, he returned to Magoi without pressing the confirmation button. The man was, as always, reading his newspaper.

“Yo,” John greeted the High Fateweaver. No reaction. ‘That’s weird,’ the Gamer thought. Magoi was many odd things. Easily distracted or absent-minded, he had not known him to be. “Hello?” the Gamer repeated, once he was closer.

“Oh, yes, hello,” Magoi responded in a strained tone. “Not feeling well today, why don’t you just look at the stuff you got, I will need to go…do things.”

John looked after the Fateweaver who, after tipping his top hat, quickly walked off. “What’s up with him?” Salamander asked, supported by the curious feeling of Undine and Gnome looking at the now closed door in confusion.

“No idea,” John answered truthfully but as advised turned to his loot. Most of it, like usual, was useless to him. It went to feed Aclysia, who was lagging half a level behind. Progressively, it got harder to sell stuff these days, as her Consumption requirements just went higher and higher. Leveling was still relatively easy, all things considered. Like all games, the sacrifices required to keep advancing were ramping up over time.

“It is about time I did something else!” he decided after Aclysia was done munching through everything he did not need (and after spending the points she earnt doing that).

He walked to the table Magoi had set up and declared it his ‘will-have-to-do’ workbench. “I will finally make some equipment, first things first,” he inspected his Bee. The thing had taken some damage during the Vermintide encounter as it swam in stomach acid for a bit. However, that was quickly repaired for the low cost of 50 Mana.

He also repaired Aclysia’s equipment. Her three blades were in different states ranging from ‘barely used’ in the case of Rock and Wind to ‘barely usable’ as the Sword of Glory was little more than a blunt piece of chinked metal. This took a bit more of his mana but nothing he would not regenerate soon.

And then he inspected all the crafting materials he had gathered in the past six days. He had the two Spirit of the Radio and that one Warpstone Jewel that he wanted to use and on top of that he also had five floor bosses (The drops of “normal” bosses were scarcely worth tosh these days) drop the following two items that he could use:

Not a really impressive display but he was in need of some equipment so he would do his best. Now, what piece of equipment did he want to make? Weapons were out, he did not have the appropriate kind of material and he did not see himself holding a staff or anything. On top of that his Equipment window did not have a Slot specifically for weapons, only left and right hands. It probably wouldn’t matter whether he wore an enchanted staff or gloves. ‘Gloves, yeah, that sounds good.’ John thought with an eye on his materials.

With the leather he could create the basic things and then use the other materials he had to reinforce and enchant the thing. Speaking of other materials, he turned to Aclysia. “Can you give me a bit of Entherium, please?” he asked. “Of course, master.” Aclysia obeyed and about a minute later placed an orb of a silvery white metal on the table, which she had formed out of her own body.

Turned out that, with all the magic stuff Aclysia had been eating recently, Refined Body II had created something new from Titanium and Mana. At least he thought that it was new, John had no idea about all the magical alloys that might float around in the Abyss, chances were the metal already existed there but he hadn’t been aware of it until recently.

As one could see, it was not all that great, but it also was not all that bad. He piled the Rage Wolf Leather, Entherium and Warpstone Jewel together and used Craft. He only got the option to combine so that is exactly what he did. While having the mental image of a pair of gloves he clicked the option. 500 Mana instantly vanished and the items on the table melded together, there was a flash of light and then the gloves laid there exactly like John imagined them.

They were made of the dark-grey leather, soft to the touch yet very durable, Entherium protecting the backside of his hand and fingers with small, segmented plates. In the middle of the biggest plate at the back of the gloves, half of the Warpstone Jewel was inlaid. He got a pop-up asking him which of the two Warpstone Jewel bonuses he wanted, the Mana +100 or the Mana Regeneration per minute +6, he chose the former. John was much less concerned over his Mana Regeneration than his Mana Pool at the moment.

Now he still had the Refined Ectoplasm and Spirits of the Radios to use. Therefore, he took hold of these and used Enchant.

Well, he only had one slot free, which was a bummer to say the least. Well, he could always use the Spirit of the Radio on other clothes and Mana was more of his primary concern. He clicked on Use Items, chose the Refined Ectoplasm and added the Mana +50 to the list. That cost him another 200 Mana but he had it so no worries. He named the end result “Power Gloves Version 1”

Next, he used a Spirit of the Radio on his shirt and pants. As he found out, or rather as he was told by Gaia, there was a slight problem here though.

Okay, so he only got Agility +10. Good enough in his book. He put on the gloves and turned to his companions. “So, I say we try our hand at a sixth floor today,” he announced.

Sylph immediately raised her hand in favour. “Yay, something new, something new!” she chirped and bounced up and down in the air, like an overexcited bunny. “Way overdue, I was getting soooo boooooreeeed.”

“I mean, I can burn whatever, so I don’t care that much…although I prefer a real challenge, so I guess I agree with the dunce over there.” Salamander said and also raised her hand. “If Master deems it necessary.” Aclysia said and timidly raised her hand. Undine had no opinion on the matter and just wobbled about while Gnome only reluctantly agreed, “We ought to be careful and patient,” she reminded everyone even while raising her own arm.

The decision was made. They would venture to the sixth floor of whatever dungeon they were to choose.