#094 – Maybe he has a work phone I could try?

#094 – Maybe he has a work phone I could try? The chest wasn’t a mimic. A true shocker to everyone. Especially Jeoff. Anyway, the grand reward for beating the guy who’d destroyed my gun self and had almost killed me? A pair of sandals. That was it. Now, I had no idea whether they did anything interesting, but considering shoes were already a part of my outfit, I had no reason to wear them until I had a chance to either test them or appraise them and find out more. Now, the chest they had been in was the same kind of chest I’d gotten after boss fights in other dungeons, so... I opened the door I’d come through while wishing to continue with the dungeon. I saw a new room. A big round table with a giant map on top of it and a bunch of scribbled notes all around. It was surrounded by chairs made out of the black stone and at the head of the table, there was a throne-esque chair, looking grand and fancy. I closed the door again and palmed my face. “...It’s not over yet, chat,” I groaned. The dungeon continued. Of course, it did. How long was this damn thing? Was that throne a sign that the next floor would be the last? Would I be fighting the demon queen again? Ugh... Well, obviously, there was no way I was going to keep going right now though. So instead, I just left the dungeon, beaten and battered, with my broken gun self in my Soul Pocket, and made my way to my crappy little camp to rest. I collapsed onto my little grass bed I’d made for myself and almost instantly passed out. When I woke up again, my chat was flooding with messages about me being dead again. “Not dead... Just tired,” I murmured with a small sigh after I woke up. God, my head still hurt like hell... Probably from using all that Intra in the fight. With Heat Vision, Rend, and Skill Snatch... Yeah. I lay there for probably a few more hours in a half-asleep state before I felt my head clear enough to think again. Once I did, I had just one question on my mind. “...What now?” I murmured. That was really the question, wasn’t it? I had relied on my gun self a lot in all of my fights and to not have it anymore was... well, not good, to say the least. Sure, I still had a lot of other options, between all the melee weapons I’d collected, the plasma bow, my Rend skill... But by far my most powerful option had been the gun. And now it was broken and I had no way to fix it. Hell, how would I even go about fixing a magical item fused together from a bunch of other magical items? By fusing more magical items into it, maybe. I sighed. My main problem right now was that I probably wasn’t going to beat the city dungeon in my current state anymore. Not only had I only barely scraped my way to victory against the last guy, but now my best weapon was broken. If things kept getting harder, how the hell was I going to beat whatever came next? So, I had a few choices... One, I gave up on beating any more dungeons for now and went for the Limit Break straight away. Two, I went to the office building dungeon and tried to beat that. Three, I tried clearing the crater dungeon again. Four, I went all the way back and either did a second run through of the water park, hoping to get back my gun or just something more useful for clearing the city, or tried tackling the spaceship dungeon to take revenge on the damn killer robot. Or both, if I stopped caring about getting back in time to finish the city dungeon before the retrieval quest expired. Now... One made me anxious and I felt like it was a bad idea. Two would mean tackling a dungeon much harder than the city dungeon, if the feeling I’d gotten upon entering it was of any indication. Three and four... seemed like the best options. Three was probably the safer bet, but... it also had a zero chance of helping me get a new water gun. But it wasn’t like the rewards from that place were bad. Hell, the ring was freaking insane. The axe and the flamethrower were also nice. But... it just felt like the water park dungeon had way better loot than all the other dungeons for some reason. Maybe because it was a Tempor dungeon? Or maybe because there was a cooldown on the whole place, unlike the crater dungeon? Either way, it just felt more enticing... at least if I didn’t have to trek an entire day to get back there. And then there was the spaceship dungeon. While I didn’t expect to get a water gun out of there, I could easily imagine getting some kind of laser gun instead. Sure, it would probably be much harder than the city dungeon as well, but I didn’t necessarily need to clear the whole place to get some of its loot. Even if it would feel wrong to leave halfway. I sighed again. I had actually been debating my options with chat this whole time while I thought things over, but ultimately, the opinions were split on what I should do. So, of course, there was just one thing I could do. Poll: ‘What now?’ Crater dungeon: 0%(0) Water park rerun: 0% (0) Revenge on the spaceship dungeon: 0% (0) Office building dungeon: 0% (0) Close poll No, I didn’t include an option to do the Limit Break right away, because I didn’t want to. Sure, I didn’t need to mindlessly follow the poll’s results, but... yeah. I closed my eyes and let the poll run for a bit as I continued to rest. I briefly opened my eyes and glanced at my arm to see my wounds slowly but surely closing. ...Yeah. This was not a human body, was it? No matter what my status screen said, this wasn’t normal. Or were those just the effects of magical energies on the human body? Were those three – Ether, Intra, and Tempor – behind the system as well? Or was the system just using the energies that have always been around? Or did the Fate Weaver create all of these? If only I could ask them. Hah, asking them... ... Wait. ... “Too soon.”“Call after the third.” ...Hold on, speaking of the phoenix... Could I call her? What would her handle even be though? Just ‘Phoenix’? No, wait, she spoke a different language. Her handle was probably something in that different language, ugh... I shook those thoughts away. I probably wasn’t going to get an answer to any of my questions anytime soon anyway. “...So, how’s our poll doing?” Poll: ‘What now?’ Crater dungeon: 30.59%(345 687) Water park rerun: 34.29% (387 521) Revenge on the spaceship dungeon: 26.49% (299 427) Office building dungeon: 8.63% (97 562) Close poll “...Alright! I guess we have our game plan now, chat!” I forced myself to cheerfully exclaim. “Time to trek back and run back the water park! Heh, maybe I can try speedrunning it! What do you all think?” Jeofffff: oh hell yea Jeofffff: speedrun time repeaeaeat: probably safest to do that KaiEbikoOfficial: you could also just take a break again repeaeaeat: you already know the dungeon and you’re much stronger than before GeorgeDoshington: re we just gona ignore the horor monster tellin u to fuck off? I hummed. “Well, I could take a break, but...” I brought up my quest list and narrowed my eyes at a specific line. ‘Lost and found’ Side quest Time left: 3d,20h,49m Main objective: Get your items back from the dungeon. Side objectives: Complete the dungeon in one attempt. Rewards - 2SP Penalty for failure - 4SP debt “I only have a bit over three days left for this, so... If it takes one day to go to the water park dungeon and another day to get back here, it’s gonna be really tight...” Granted, I could just fail the quest, but it would feel wrong to not even try and complete it. “And shut up, George. What am I supposed to do about the big bad admin shooing me off, huh?” I sniffed. “Anyway! Here’s the plan then. Today, I rest and tomorrow, I’ll go back to the water park. Then I’ll clear it, hope I get another water gun, and then come back here to totally steamroll the city dungeon!” Jeofffff: might as well swap skills now Jeofffff: appraise shit I hummed. “You’re right, Jeoff. I won’t need Rend for the water park and by the time I return here, it should be off cooldown again... Yeah, alright. Time to find out what these sandals do!” Replace [Rend] with [Appraisal]? Note: [Rend] will not be re-equippable for 48 hours. Y/N I clicked confirm and then began pulling out all the items I’d gotten in the dungeon and hadn’t appraised yet. There was the cutting board and rolling pin from the first floor, the... severed arm of the archer, the wheel of cheese – which I had already cut a bit out of already – from the merchant, the red sword from the adventurer guy, the colored feathers from the maid, and finally, the sandals from the invisible lizard demon. But then, I tried taking out the pots I’d taken from the merchant guy and the sacks of vegetables from the kitchen and... found out that they weren’t there. “What the heck?! Where is it?!” Jeofffff: told u cant steal stuff from dungeons I harrumphed. “That’s bullshit! Why even let me stuff it into the backpack if it’s gonna vanish when I leave the dungeon?!” repeaeaeat: what if you fuse it while still inside? I narrowed my eyes. “You think that would work? I don’t know if that would even work... Heck, it might just eat the fused item when I leave. I dunno if I wanna risk trying that...” Although, I could test it by taking a random branch from outside or something and then fusing some random pots inside the dungeon... What the heck would that even make? “Whatever, we can test that later, I guess. Now it’s time to appraise all the juicy loot I actually got to keep!” It was a lot of stuff, but a lot of it was pretty mundane. The cutting board and the rolling pin were literally just that and while it was cool to know that the cheese had been made out of thorncow milk, it was still just cheese. Now, the severed arm...? Dryad wood Wood from the flesh of a dryad. ...Yeah, I had kinda expected this, but wow did it still feel disturbing. Next up were the feathers. Rainbow Wing feathers Feathers from a Rainbow Wing. From the way it was capitalized, I could only assume that Rainbow Wing was the name of the maid’s species. Quite fitting... but also kinda disturbing, like the arm. Now, the sword. Crimson steel sword A sword made out of crimson steel. “Look at this pretentious material name, chat. It really feels like a fantasy world now.” It didn’t seem like it had any special properties, but I still tried to prod it with a bit of Ether to see whether it would react in anyway. It didn’t, unfortunately. “Well, I guess it’s just a sword then. Kinda lame...” Unless this Crimson Steel had properties that Appraisal wasn’t telling me about, at least. Anyway, last thing, the sandals. Ninja sandals Sandals that allow the wearer to jump higher, stick to surfaces, and walk on water by using Ether. I blinked. “Wait, seriously...? That sounds... awesome!” I glanced down at my fancy boots that were part of my outfit and briefly wondered whether something bad would happen if I took them off. But then I remembered I’d stored, dropped, and even broken my gun self and was still fine. There was no need to worry about this. So with some reluctance, I took off the fancy shoes and instead put on the sandals. Jeofffff: why not just fuse them? “Gotta test it first, Jeoff,” I absentmindedly said. “Don’t wanna fuse just anything I find, you know? Or rather, I promised myself not to just shove random junk into my soul because it sounds cool!” KaiEbikoOfficial: I’m glad you’re listening With the sandals on, I walked out of my little shelter, hopped on one foot, then the other, felt around with Ether, and found what I thought was the mechanism inside the sandals. “Okay, I think I got it...” I glanced at the nearest tree, narrowed my eyes, and then ran at it like a maniac. I jumped, my feet touched the bark, and I channeled my Ether through the sandals to stick to the tree. It worked. I took one step up the tree trunk, two steps, three... And then I slipped, squeaked in surprise, and fell back down with an oof. I lay on my back, staring up the tree in a bit of a daze. I could climb walls like a ninja with this. That ought to be useful, right? Right? ...But I needed to learn how to do it without slipping. I’d thought it would be automatic since I already knew how to channel Ether, but there seemed to be more to it. “...Chat,” I spoke after a minute of silence. “Resting just took a backseat today. I need to figure out this spider ninja thing first.”