‘Talk about wasting space,’ John thought, raising his hand to leave the barrier and read the remaining windows. ‘At least it’s kinda good?’
“I did wonder about that.” John scratched his head as he headed out. That was another lucky break in this entire thing. Overall, the dungeon had been of middling difficulty. He had needed to burn a few item cooldowns, but only Arcane Ascension really stung in that regard. That it was relatively short, having only taken 30 minutes, was a nice contrast to the previous slog.
The gathered girls also seed surprised to see him back so soon. He ca out of the gate of light and strolled right into a pause. Lydia was gathering her breath, clearly covered in sweat. She was drinking water that had small particles of tal floating in it. She was using it to keep her mana high while also rehydrating, in all due likelihood.
“Seems like I co back at the perfect ti,” he said and stopped. Rather than go towards the house, he made an inviting gesture towards the gate he had co from. “If you’re resting anyway, why don’t we check out what the recent loot has been? I only took a short glance at it earlier.”
“I take your request as you having suceeded in your Quest then?” Lydia asked, while fighting to get on her feet. Realizing his mistake of not helping her, John was ready to resu moving towards them after all, but Aclysia was already next to the queen and offered her hand instead. “Thank you, Aclysia.”
“It is always my pleasure to serve, your highness,” the weaponized maid said fluently. The elentals also approached, chatting among themselves. Beatrice quietly hung around, as usual.
“Please, you no longer need to call such.” Lydia smiled and put a hand on Aclysia’s cheek. “You’re a cherished friend of mine – and much more than that. You are soone I love.”
“Lydia…” Aclysia blushed a little bit, at a rare loss for words, then the two of them leaned towards each other, “…I, as a lover of Master and a woman of character, I too adore you.” Before John’s eyes, two mbers of his harem shared a mont of tenderness, then they exchanged a long kiss. It took almost ten seconds to end and tongues were clearly involved in a semi-aggressive fashion.
Not only was John incredibly happy to see his harem get along incredibly well internally, this also gave him a respectable hard-on. For the latter, he didn’t have ti right now. “Do I have to assu that the training you did while I was gone was a bit more involved than fencing?” he joked, once the two won had put a bit of distance between them.
“Do not assu such silliness.” Lydia shook her head and took a quick sip out of her sports bottle. “Any such activities will be delayed until after the training. Although I will not deny that I would appreciate having Aclysia around more frequently.” She looked over her shoulder. “Or any of you, for that matter.”
“What about , what about ?” Sylph asked and flew around the queen’s head. “Do I get to hang around with you, Lyly? I want to! You have tasty cookies next to sweet tea!”
“I am certain it can be arranged, just don’t distract from work,” Lydia said and a hovering slate of tal slowly pushed Sylph out of the queen’s field of view. “And let see where my stride carries , if you would be so kind.”
“Yes, yay, of course!” Sylph declared and sat down on Lydia’s shoulder. The weakness the royal had once allowed herself, to love John, had seemingly blood into a bunch of related weak spots. As it was, John couldn’t feel too bad about making Lydia softer in this regard. He had a feeling both she and her nation would be happier for it, as the decades ticked by.
They entered the gate and then the Loot Basin. Like always, it felt like they were inside so mixture of a depot and small-town supermarket. tal shelves were stacked five layers high and equipped with plastic rails that could hold paper cards. On those paper cards would be written what the item was and how many of them John had gotten. They were also useful for so other automated processes, naly throwing them away (by throwing the paper card in the bin inside the Loot Basin) or feeding it to the computer, making it create the Abyss Auction pages for him.
While the Loot Basin was, theoretically, infinite, it cleared itself out after a week at the latest, so John couldn’t use it for storage. At the mont, there were only the usual five rows, each dedicated to one rarity.
“Ka-ching,” John made a bad money sound as he took the paper card allocated to the money he had earned in the latest dungeon. He simply threw it into his inventory and, after a short grace period, all the money stacked into the shelf vanished. The paper card was also gone, all the money now residing in his inventory in its place.
Then there were so pretty random things. A silver button, an elegant fork, a children’s book covered in glitter, and other very much sparkly items. Doubtlessly the Shiny Thing that the Magryph could drop. There were also a few feathers and scrap tal from other mobs, but nothing interesting. The next row, for Uncommon drops, contained much the sa. Nothing useful among it.
In the Rare category, they found the Shield of the Ravenlord and one of the swords the Corvus Knights had used. Neither were particularly useful, so John just kept them to feed to his Artificial Spirits for level progress.
Epic was much more interesting.
“Now would you look at that,” John said, walking past the gathered pebbles and to the singular item that caught his attention. It was a gauntlet, although that was selling it a bit short. More accurate would be to say it was a futuristic piece of battle equipnt that attached four blades to the fingers of a gauntlet. Looked at from the front, they had a triangular shape, more like a wedge than a traditional blade, with the edge on the palm side of things.
Those wedge-blades were of a simple tallic colour. Nothing fancy like Mithril or the misleadingly plain look of Astrotium, but in between. Just the honest, tallic shimring of refined steel. Each claw was attached to a finger segnt, black tal covering the three sub-segnt and the joints underneath. Notable, the thumb had no blade, only a covering. The palm was made out of a flexible, brown leather, while the back was one thick plate of the sa black tal, trimd with bronze and a sigil in the shape of a raven on it. The gauntlet continued further up, also making up a guard for the lower arm.
It was clearly inspired by a lightning claw from Warhamr 40k, but compromised in size and ridiculousness to be wearable by a human.
John couldn’t resist and put the thing on. The second he had pushed his fingers as deep into the sci-fi weapon as was possible, he heard and felt the internal arcano-tech operate. The entire thing shrunk to fit perfectly around him, plates adjusted their position and the Suit of the Chosen extended downwards, just like it did with Purgatory, to ld with this new equipnt. Cables interwove with the black fabric and added a bit of roughness to the sci-fi look.
John moved his right hand around for a little bit. Making a fist was absolutely impossible, thanks to the length of the claws. The tallic things were themselves longer than the Gar’s fingers. When he relaxed his hand and let it dangle at the wrist, it reminded him a bit of a velociraptor. ‘It did say it had another form,’ John thought and tried to trigger it. Nothing happened, until he tried around a bit more. Only when his fingers were straight and pressed together did the chanic spring to life. The plate at the back of his hand slid back and with it the blades followed previously unseen rails, snapping into position further down.
“Neat,” John humd, now able to make a fist. Thanks to the plate having slid back, the movent of his wrist was limited, he could no longer pull it up, but that was a worthwhile sacrifice for being able to grab things. Grab things in a very limited capacity, it should be said.
The blades still extended a fair bit beyond his knuckles. They would make every punch a very ssy (and effective) experience. It was clear that this was a weapon, designed for harm first and everything else second. Purgatory also inhibited his ability to grab things by virtue of its sharpness, but this also limited his dexterity. The difference in quality was evident, but the Talon of the Ravenlord was still impressive.
‘I suppose this will be a good second hand weapon, outside of Fire and Flow Ascension,’ the Gar thought, wondering if there was a way to set this to automatically unequip whenever that Attribute was activated. Sure, Purgatory’s secondary manifestations didn’t consu any Equipnt Slots, but there was the physical limitation of having only one right arm to wear a gauntlet on.
Upon his ntal inquiry, a window opened to confirm exactly that and he pressed it. Options were a nice thing. “At least I got sothing out of this…” he said and looked towards the rest of the contents. While doing so, he noticed Lydia looking bothered. “Sothing the matter, Lydia?”
The queen was standing next to the shelf segnt that held the Mithril pebbles. Had held the Mithril pebbles, they were currently hovering in front of Lydia. “Six… seven… eight…” she counted out loud. “Eight pebbles.”
“Sounds right,” John answered and dragged his newest equipnt piece into his inventory. “It should be nine, I know, but I took one and put it in the Loot Focus.”
“This says a total of ten were dropped,” the queen retorted and tapped against the plastic rail.
“Oh, nice, another one… but why is it eight then…?” Now John shared her confusion.
“Announcent,” Beatrice chid in from the side, “this paper card declares the existence of 5 Elentium pebbles. Present are only 2.”
“Okay, this is only getting odder,” John said and stepped out of the row, following a hunch. “Look around the other rows,” he instructed the elentals, “alert if anything moves.”
“Why would anything move?” Lydia asked, while she and Aclysia were following the Gar. “Your loot has been strictly limited to items. Not once have your created enemies been able to leave an Instant Dungeon.”
“You’re right about the second part but wrong about the first,” John told her. “First ti I had the opportunity for a live drop was when I fought so rat-wolf creature that was guarding a chest inside my first larger Instant Dungeon.” A chest that had contained Nathalia, funnily enough, but that would have distracted from the point. “Relatively recently, I got a living sli pet out of a dungeon and added it to the nagerie.”
He stepped into the Legendary shelf. If he said he expected it to be empty, he would have been lying. As there were no further items in the Epic category, he knew for a fact that the Firstkill Bonus for Radiohead Mark 2 had netted him a Legendary item. None were around. At least not around the layer at chest height, where items usually were stored first. He did find a paper card for one item nad ‘Children of the Sun’ though.
“John, I have located the missing pebbles,” Lydia inford him and pointed at the lowest level of shelves. She must have used her Innate Ability to scan around for the tiny things. Going down on all fours, John lowered himself to floor level and spied into the depth of the shelf.
A pair of dark red eyes looked back at him. They belonged to a chiric creature, a mixture between a panther and an Australian magpie. A cat tail was slung around its paws and claws, the base of it frad by tail feathers. While the cat parts of it were pure black, the bird parts were all black and white, with the dark parts only slightly dominating the light ones. Holding a silvery-white pebble in its white, black-tipped beak, the Magryph chick tilted its head. Around it lay so more of the pebbles and under it was a softly glowing, golden disc.
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