#082 – And that’s how I met my beloved weapon

#082 – And that’s how I met my beloved weapon

Once I got my daily required dose of Jeoff trolling and recovered a little, I went ahead and opened the big boss chest, my flaming glove lighting the way.

Four items greeted me inside. A pile of crystalline scales, a small ring, a new type of system ticket I hadn’t seen before, and–

I gasped in delight.

“Chat! Look at this beauty!”

I didn’t hesitate and snagged the large war-axe into my hands and looked it over.

The main shaft seemed to be made out of the same cyan crystal as everything else in this dungeon, only smoother and more pleasant to the touch. The blade itself seemed to be a combination of the crystal and some kind of black material at the edge, smoothly transitioning from one material to the other – which made me wonder how the hell this would have even been made.

It was also surprisingly light. I would probably have trouble holding it with just one hand, but with both of them, I could swing it fairly easily.

How much did this thing weigh? Was it just naturally light or had I gotten stronger than I thought?

Eh, irrelevant.

“Well, that’s perfect! I was looking for a weapon to use! I don’t even know what it does, but this is definitely going to be my third Soulbind Item when I get that upgrade.”

Jeofffff: bruh at least wait to appraise it

I rolled my eyes.

“Of course I’m gonna appraise it first. It’s not like I’m gonna get all the nineteen skill points I need for Triumvirate before the cooldown is up.”

Still, even without Appraisal, I could do a pseudo-appraisal by poking and prodding it with my Ether just to see if it had any hidden functions like most magical weapons I’d used.

Sure enough, there seemed to be two distinct sets of pathways for Ether inside this thing.

What was with this dungeon’s rewards and them having two modes of function?

Anywho, I tried carefully pouring Ether into one of them and the edge suddenly got even darker in the already oppressive darkness. I had to squint and shine my flaming glove from a different angle to better see what was happening.

The war-axe’s edge seemed to be covered in a thin layer of the same black flames the boss had used. When I poured a bit more Ether into it, the flames got larger and seemed to consume the surrounding light just like the sparks.

Huh, neat.

Hold up. Didn’t that mean that I could now use pretty much every attack the boss had used? Fire Breath, a psychic attack, black sparks from the glove, and now the black flames?

Heh. Classic video game design. Stealing the boss’s stick after defeating it. Although it would have been nice if I could get that psychic attack on an item as well, rather than relying on Rend.

Anywho, since chat kept insisting, I tried lifting the axe, pouring a bit more Ether into it, and then horizontally swinging it.

I almost accidentally launched it into the darkness since I wasn’t used to swinging it yet, but I managed to hold onto it. In the meantime, the black flames left a sort of afterimage of the cut I’d made through air. There was no fancy cut-shaped projectile, unfortunately, but this was still pretty cool.

Of course, I still didn’t really know what the black fire could actually do, but if it really was the same stuff the boss had used, then it could at least annihilate the crystal shards from my gun. So that was something.

“Huh. Neat... Wait. Why can I see this? I don’t even have Appraisal equipped! Did I transcend the system and am able to use Appraisal even without having it equipped now?!”

My eyes immediately snapped to my glove instead and I wished really hard to appraise it, even trying to pull at the mental switch just like usual.

That switch just wasn’t there, though, and no system window appeared.

I frowned.

Eclipsoon: system items can probably be appraised by anyone

Eclipsoon: to make it fair for other races

“Hmm... I guess that would make sense... Yeah, actually. How would races without Appraisal even know what the system stuff does? Still weird, though...” I shook my head. “Anyway! This thing sounds really useful! Now I won’t have to worry about being caught with my pants down. I could have really used this for that boss so I could swap Rend in...”

Actually. Was that the reason why I’d gotten this ticket as a reward? Was the dungeon mocking me?

Jeofffff: yoooo you can safely try that title now

“Title?” I blinked. “Oh! You mean the fire thing I got in the water park? Hmm...”

I quickly went and opened up its description.

Immolator:

You killed over 500 living beings or dungeon monsters using fire, and you killed 100 or more living beings or dungeon monsters in the span of ten seconds or less using fire.

Having this title equipped grants the wielder major fire resistance, and increases the power of all fire-based attacks by 50%.

[INNATE] skill: Immolate - Use a variable amount of Ether to immolate any target you or your weapon is touching from the inside.

“Ooo, right. I completely forgot about this thing... Why did I call it useless again? Right, because swapping titles has a month long cooldown and I didn’t want to risk getting rid of my phoenix skills...”

But now I could swap to it and if I really needed to, I could use the instant cooldown ticket to swap back. It would be a waste of the ticket, but...

Well, in the first place, back then, I hadn’t wanted to swap to it because the phoenix skills had been my main source of fighting power, right? But nowadays, I had my gun, my clothes, my new axe... I didn’t necessarily need the phoenix skills that much. Sure, it was nice to have them, but... Immolator also gave me a potentially useful Innate skill and I still had the flamethrower in my gun self, which combined could maybe replace the phoenix skills.

And this was all assuming that the phoenix skills would just get disabled once I switched the titles. Some chatters theorized that only equipping the skills would become impossible, but any phoenix skills I already had would be good to go.

Hmm...

I could totally experiment with that.

...Probably not right now, though. I’d already screwed up once by getting a skill upgrade with uncertain effects in the middle of a dungeon. I wasn’t about to do that again in a dungeon where I knew monsters could actually respawn.

“Okay! This warrants some more investigation at some point. Later, though.”

I shoved it into my backpack with the rest of the loot, hopped off the chest, and as the chest vanished into smoke, I lit up my hand on fire to use as a torch again.

I looked around the pitch black darkness and... realized that I had no idea which way I’d come from. The fight must have taken me further down the hole, and because of the gravity shenanigans, I couldn’t even tell which way the ground was inclined. If it even was inclined at all at this point.

I huffed.

“Chat? Which way did I come from? I kinda wanna look around a little more... See if there’s any secret rooms and whatnot.”

Too bad I’d lost my map. That would have been super useful in this place. Oh well.