Chapter 516 – Events to Nomination 4 – Greater Challenges yet
“I would say that,” John agreed and walked towards the secret entrance that had opened after the boss had been defeated. He had been somewhat preoccupied and thus missed when and how exactly, but none of that mattered anyhow as he only wanted to get out of here. “Note to self: no more sex on grated surfaces,” he mumbled, rubbing his ass, currently looking like there was a laser grid running over it.
He was about to leave the dungeon and wouldn’t have bothered to put his pants back on, only to take them off once home. Since he still had to cross the green fields and risk running into Magoi with a revealed cock, however, he opened his inventory and did it regardless. Then he went to check out what this extra room business was about.
Logically speaking, it could only have been the Treasure Room. Everything else was cleared already. His deduction was rewarded with truth as they entered a room where the walls were plated with gold, the lights had a normal level and the sci-fi-aesthetic vitrines displayed a number of treasures.
Most of it was pretty uninteresting. A large amount of screws, nuts and bolts, just the standard drop from the enemies in the dungeon, but in absurd amounts. Some money that John deposited without even counting or checking how much his inventory amount had increased. He was really past the need for that. Two items with the Revealer of Secrets attribute, which he took with him quite happily. When he got to the last two glass displays, he found something properly rewarding.
That was the second he found of these. Although he hadn’t even had a use for the first one yet, he figured that they, like most premium currencies in games, would be something he would be clamouring for once the later Tiers of his Guild Hall rolled around.
Lastly, he got an item that was much in the same vain.
Not much to say about that, it would rest in the Guild Bank with the two Focusing Ornaments until he had a use for it. That done, he went and visited the Loot Basin, the room created by a Fateweaver Perk where natural drops were gathered over the course of a grinding session.
It was a very odd space, reminding John of a mixture of a depot and a small, family-owned supermarket. The simple, metal shelves were stacked exactly as high as John could still reach. Plastic rails were attached to the front of every level and had tucked within them a piece of paper that had the item’s name as well as the number. John Observed the items as he went by.
When he wanted something, he simply had to take the paper sign out and put it in his inventory. Through shenanigans, the paper, inventory space willing, would be replaced with all of the stored items. If John didn’t want it, he had two options.
He could feed the paper to a terminal next to the entrance door, creating an Abyss Auction offer into which he only had to insert his price. Usually he would just put it up for the ‘highest bidder’, without any base price, although that sometimes backfired with people sniping his offers. Not that he was bothered though.
The other way was to throw the sign into a trashcan on the other side of the door. That would, within 24 hours, make the item vanish back into the abyss it came from. As he had tested, this only worked with the paper, so he couldn’t take something he wanted destroyed here and dump it into nothingness.
Items that had nothing done to them for a week also vanished. So, despite this barrier expanding to encompass all the loot John ever got, he couldn’t exactly use it for storage either. Items he brought in from the outside and left here, Gaia would put on the Abyss Auction herself. She informed him about this via a window, all to prevent him from abusing the Loot Basin in any way.
Items offered by the supreme deity were, understandably, sold within three milli-seconds. Some poor sod out there was wondering why Gaia had sold a perfectly normal tea set, a dildo and a copy of Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’. The answer, that the Gamer had wanted a dildo as assistance while on his crusade to fuck at least once in any given room he directly owned, had spent the afterglow time reading The Prince while getting a blowjob and allowed his weaponized maid to leave behind a tea set for future uses, wouldn’t have crossed any sane person’s mind.
Attempts to fuck with Gaia by leaving items like a bag of condoms or a literal bag of trash behind had ended with both of these items suddenly falling on John’s head when he next opened an Instant Dungeon. ‘Just good for me I didn’t actually leave her a glass of cum or something,’ John thought as he gathered the paper signs in two different stacks, one for selling and one for keeping. He very seldomly trashed things.
Since everything was sorted by rarity, the deeper he got into the room, the more interesting it became. Sadly, the scarcer the content became as well. Common and Uncommon were pretty crowded; Rare had some items; Epic, he was happy if he saw more than three at any given day. He contemplated whether it was even worth his time to look into the consistently devoid Legendary shelf. Always an optimist (in regards to loot accessible by taking only a few steps anyway), John decided to check.
Much to his pleasant surprise, he actually did find something. A spear with a red shaft, covered in winding white decorations, often taking the shape of skulls or other parts of the human skeleton and a white blade the shape of a leaf. For a moment, John dared to hope that he had stumbled over another mithril weapon. On closer inspection, the flat blade missed the silver hue of the legendary metal.
Well, just Adaptor metal, but still pretty good all around. The initial attributes seemed somewhat underwhelming. The base Sharpness was something John had barely ever encountered, never outside of low levels either. Point Reach was new, but could be summarized as a thrusting counterpart to Aclysia’s ranged slashing attacks. Agility +5 was also nothing to write home about.
John whistled, impressed by the choices he was given. All of this was rather potent. The Master Key was the worst though, so that was an easy out. ‘On with the Grind!’ was pretty strong and would add a lot of free experience to his runs. The choice he went with was the leftmost, after some thinking.
Raiding was the pinnacle of difficulty and rewards in practically every MMO and John wanted a counterweight to the constant mob-grind that were Assaults. Although ‘immense rewards’ was a bit loose on the definition side, he expected most it to be powerful items that he could use for multiple purposes. ‘We’ll see what else we get,’ John thought; he would test this out the next day.
‘Hmm,’ John thought what to do with these new GP while he put his newly gained Stats into Wisdom. He had a total of 620 GP right now, that would buy him 25 Skill Levels, if he decided to spend them. He looked at his Stat Screen to get an idea whether that would be worth it or not.
Two things made him heavily consider the option. One being the ever-present Artificial Spirit Skill and the perks that came with it. The other was situational, namely Siena’s Nightmare Elemental Summoning. He could buy her to max with those points. ‘That would be a waste without a SEP, though,’ John realized. Postponing spending those GP until he was guaranteed to get something good out of it seemed like the smart thing to do.
However, even without buying extra points, Artificial Spirit was past the first quarter, so he could get a new Special Perk if he spent the AP now. He decided to get that done really quick, since he was already doing all of this finagling with his windows.
John went with Always Serving pretty much immediately. Although pretty much useless in combat, it allowed Aclysia to start fights with an already full Devotion bar. Given that she now possessed a taunt ability, this had immense value.
For the second choice, he only had 5 AP and was thus basically forced to take Enduring.
Sacrificing a whole Special Choice just to get to the Sexmaid and Lover choices again was a tall ask, but John really didn’t need even tastier food and he really wanted to try the amazing pussy and the command triggered orgasms. Thus, he went with the thing that gave him nothing right now, after consulting with the girl affected.
‘Seems like Gaia is not going to give anymore weighty choices anytime soon,’ John thought, and he could hardly blame her for that. The Artificial Spirits, Aclysia in particular, already had quite a bit of power behind them. Adding more and more potent bonuses would soon make them ridiculous.
Anyhow, now he just had to get done with Beatrice really quickly.
“Are you kidding me?” John asked. This was the third time he got this exact choice. The only thing that changed was the number behind Nimble as that was what he took every time. As he did this time as well.
Yet more recycled choices, but John actually had to make a pick here. The middle was obviously out. Even if he had suddenly changed his mind, John had the tingling feeling that he would actually manage to get Aclysia angry if he knocked up the passive youngling over her devoted self. Since he knew what Angry-clysia looked like from memories of Sylph and scenes involving their enemies, he was 100% certain he did not want to guide that sort of wrath towards himself.
The actual choice was between utility and his dick and, like almost always, he made the choice in favour of utility with a very heavy heart. Inventories were simply too good to ignore.
“You look like you need to fuck somebody’s face... with your cock, not up,” Eliza stated, and was already getting busy with his trousers.