“I unlocked this one, but it’s greyed out.” Miho said, after forcing herself to swallow the chunk of meat with nothing but a bit of salt to spice it up.
“The baxes probably won’t be that great, I don’t see much growth potential for those creatures.” I said, and wisely withheld the information that the strip of flesh she just ate was a bit of nose that came with when I ripped off a nose-ring axe. Keeping this stuff down was already hard enough for the poor girl without knowing that she ate a particularly unappetising part of the animal.
“No, it’s okay. I’m thankful for the form either way.” She said bravely, trying not to regurgitate the meal and lose the transformation again.
We started with a Vespa to give her a means of flight, and she managed to eat the whole thing easily enough thanks to her frog form’s different appetite. Eating more than one wasn’t going to improve anything according to Livia, but Miho also bravely swallowed a grub and a pupa just to be sure.
After that we all browsed through our eerily full and varied corpse tab. We had kind of been gathering everything we could lift, even when it was pointless to loot the corpse itself.
But our morbid collecting habits paid off, as Miho now had a lot more forms. The Big Bad Woolf was still greyed out, and the Bad Llama and the Corpora Chameleons were apparently too intelligent and civilised to count as beastfolk, but she now had all six forms of not-sheep we encountered before.
Granted, those were kind of worthless on this floor, their tricks cheap and requiring low stat requirements to overcome.
The Shleep’s sleeping spores weren’t going to take down anything but the most fragile mobs with low Con, the Sheedle was so fragile that Miho would already be dead by the time that the mob would even notice there were needles under the wool, the Sheen reflected light in an annoying way, the Speap was a talking sheep to ‘lure’ unwary crawlers, the Speep could see further away and the Screep was slightly better at stealth. But with better stealth options, even that one was worthless already. Even underarmed and new to combat, Ben and I never had that much difficulty with those starter mobs back at day one. Only the Woolf Mutt was worth a damn, as they unlocked the older Woolf forms that scaled better.
The Sheaman lamb Neighbourhood Boss was very valuable for her though, as her druid class features and spells would carry over to this druid beastfolk’s form, and vice versa for the spells and skills she unlocked during that transformation. Getting a druid beast’s corpse was like hitting a goldmine for Druidshifters, especially if it was a beast with for example flight or plating instead of another humanoid. She got a snarky ‘cannibalism’ achievement for eating this one, but it came with a silver box.
“Definitely not a natural beast, no point in trying.” Livia said as Ben took out one of those floating squid-brain things that barked psionic headache bolts. The squid disappeared again.
“How about this one? I believe it’s pretty fast and nimble.” Thomas said, taking out a vulperier. Miho frowned at the half-horse half fox, but shrugged and cut off a toe. She wrapped it in a slice of baloney and tried to swallow it whole without chewing.
“That one works!” She said, smiling thinly as this meant she had yet another corpse to eat whole now. She put the corpse in her inventory to eat later, focussing only on bite-size meals for now. Best not to stuff herself full, vomit it out again and lose all of her newfound forms.
“I’ve got one of these.” I said, taking out a Rot Sticker. “They’re kind of worthless for you, though, so I’m not sure if you want to eat them. They’re suicide bombers. Actually yeah, never mind. I’ll put it back. Did we take the Neighbourhood Boss, that giant stone snake thing?”
“No, it was way too heavy.” Elise said, before taking out a creature herself.
Miho visibly paled as she looked at the Boil Slitherer, a disgusting-looking black worm. “Are those also worthless weak mobs?” She pleaded, almost as if we were forcing her to do this.
“These things are parasites that can worm their way into a host and turn it into a zombie. They fill a niche that you don’t have yet.” Thomas said.
“Oh.” Miho dejectedly said. “Okay, I’ll… It’s small enough for me to swallow whole in snake form, but can we wrap it in baloney first anyway?”
“Of course.” I said, grabbing more of the thinly sliced meat and starting to wrap the worm in it.
Miho turned into her Mandibra form and slowly engulfed the large meat roll with contents no one wanted to linger on, and even in snake form she couldn’t stop herself from gagging several times. But she eventually ate the worm whole and turned back into her human form, looking queasy and gagging a bit more before downing a whole glass of water.
“Sorry to make you do this.” I said.
“No, it’s okay. This is… This is something I chose to do when I picked the class. Thank you for helping me to become more useful.”
“You don’t have to force yourself for our sake.” Elise said, grabbing Miho’s hand comfortingly. “We’re not going to kick you out because you don’t want to eat worms and stuff.”
“Yeah, you should probably take a break.” Ben said, trying to put the black butterfly back into his inventory before Miho would notice it.
“No, I can do a bit more. Such a small insect will be easy for me.” Miho said, putting on a brave face to assure him. She changed into her frog form, and Ben reluctantly removed his hands so she could swipe up the Black Widow Butterfly with a well-aimed lashing lick of her tongue.
“I think that’s everything we have.” I said.
“I assume we’ll have a lot more when we put your class description in the party chat and ask others for animal corpses, but yes. We should call it quits for today.” Thomas said, ignorant of the bluntness of his statement and how Miho winced at the thought of even more mobs to eat. “On to our levels and boxes, we’ve got quite a few!”
“Yeah!” Ben said, brightening up. “I jumped up all the way to level 15!”
I too levelled up, and more than anyone else. While being a level behind before, I jumped all the way to sixteen during the Krutnik delve. Elise and I were now tied as the two highest-levelled crawlers present. Ben and Thomas were still level 15, probably because Ben mostly killed the small Krutnik that were all lower-level while Thomas had that tattoo screwing him over with less experience for low level mobs.
I put one point into Intelligence to increase my mana to 6 points. I wasn’t going to use my Heal spell any more, it healed a set amount rather than a percentage and since grew negligible for me compared to the still relevant costs. It was going to be health potions and healing spells for me now. But my Phantom Phalanx took three mana to cast, so I could now cast it twice if need be.
Considering I was already incredibly tanky, and experienced that even Krutnik biting into me became more an inconvenience than an actual problem, I didn’t dump the rest of my points in Constitution. Instead I added ten points to Strength to get more destructive, and put the last four points in Constitution.
As I looked up, I saw Livia glare over Alexa’s shoulder to make sure her charge followed her instructions. She sighed in genuine relief when Alexa actually put all her points in Charisma instead of rebelling again, and patted Alexa’s head affectionately. Alexa pulled away and flew over to sit on my shoulder, sticking her tongue out to Livia.
“Loot! Loot! Let’s open our loot! Mama wants some new boots!” Alexa cheered. “I never had this much awesome loot! And TWO Borough Boss boxes! Are those better than regular silvers? I hope they are better than regular silver boxes…”
“Wait, you didn’t open your boxes before entering the Third Floor?” I asked.
“You could do that!?” Alexa gasped. “Damn it, Zartas, you meanie! He almost literally threw me out the moment I finished transforming, I didn’t get a chance to check that! I could’ve had some awesome stuff instead of a lame leaf outfit all along!”
“Wow, that guy really is an ass.” Miho said.
“Yeah…” Alexa pouted. “But enough about that! Loot!”
I went to my loot box tab and clicked the button to open them all. Not only did I get a lot of achievements, many of them were gold. Nice!
Bronze Coward Box (1/12)
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Some clean boxers, seems like you need them after shitting your pants like that.
Bronze Boss Box (2/12)
Colourful spear strap x1
Bronze Asshole Box (3/12)
Baby Choker x1
Silver Footwear Box (4/12)
Pair of toe socks x1
Silver Masochist Box (5/12)
Flagellant whip x1
Silver Boss Box (6/12)
Item Upgrade Scroll x1
Silver Quest Box (7/12)
Hammer on a Stick x1
Silver Savage Box (8/12)
Bracer of Brutal Brawn x1
Gold Obesity Box (9/12)
Cream-filled Crawler Biscuits x100
Gold Psycho Box (10/12)
Feral Eagle Muzzle x1
Gold Baby-killer Box (11/12)
City-grade Abortion pill x1
Gold Asshole Box (12/12)
Gold piece x5000
I disregarded the underwear, I couldn’t wear it without losing a skill, and the baby choker was a choker so small that only babies could properly wear them. I needed but a glance at the description to tell that the Cream-filled Crawler Biscuits were literally just Crawler Biscuits with some taste to them. And the ability to get fat if you ate too many at once.
The gold was very nice. Most of the Krutnik dropped a few gold coins each for some reason, but even then I only had about a hundred gold in my inventory. This was a huge increase in my finances, to the point that I could actually buy something now.
Colourful Spear Strap
Similar to how girls of your society used to hang cute and shiny straps to their phone, you now have a completely worthless but pretty-looking ornament you can hang from your spear! What? Don’t expect to be getting amazing gear for beating some run-of-the-mill Neighbourhood Boss at this level, kid! You got enough gear to get started, so no more handouts for easy kills!
Volos mentioned that we’d be getting better quality boxes as things progressed, so it made sense that the easy to grind Bronze and Silver boxes would grow more worthless to account for that. Fair enough.
Pair of Toe Socks
You’re kicking enemies to death with open sandals, and using the Foot Soldier skill as it’s meant to be used. I can respect that. I really do. But your toeless feet are creeping me out, dude! They’re just like… shiny blobs vaguely in the shape of feet. I really don’t want to see those things stomp on critters until they die, but I’m omniscient! I can’t not watch!
These socks are laced in a kind of fibre that doesn’t disrupt my omniscience, but scatters it in a way that makes it easier for me to ignore the area that they occupy. The socks themselves make your feet a bit more pleasant to look at, just in case my eye does linger, and come with +2 Foot Soldier to make sure you’ll wear them.
The socks would be pretty much invisible when I wore them, being the exact same colour and shininess as my new skin. They would make it look like I had toes when wearing them. Useful enough, I suppose. The AI was acting a bit weird, but I knew better than to comment on it out loud. Sometimes there was wisdom in feigning ignorance.
Flagellant Whip
If you got this item, you’re either the bottom of a BDSM couple or you came across a weirdo gimp crawler and looted their corpse after winning(?) a battle that made you really uncomfortable! For your sake, I hope you’re the latter! Because getting this item is just embarrassing for anyone but the sexual deviants that are actually into this shit!
The Flagellant Whip deals damage similar to a regular whip, but increases the victim’s Constitution by 1 point for every lash they take as long as it pierces the skin leaving a gash. If the wound is self-inflicted, you get +2 Constitution instead! This effect lasts for one hour or until the victim heals by any amount, capping at +10 Con. When self-inflicted and not healed for the full hour, there is a 10% chance that a point of Constitution will remain permanently!
Well, that’s one item I wasn’t going to use. I no longer had skin, or at least the kind that could bruise and get gash-like wounds, so I couldn’t actually get the buff even if I wanted to. Just a troll item, until one of the others really needed more constitution to survive something. But as this thing would probably deal more damage than they’d gain health from the Con improvement, I doubt that would happen. Maybe if we were fighting poisonous foes where your Con mattered for the save?
Hammer on a Stick
Or a ‘Warhammer’, as the weapon weebs like to say when they try to make things sound cooler than they really are. This thing is pretty much just a spear but with a hammer strapped to the end instead of a knife, and let’s not pretend that it’s anything but that. Still, it’s effective if you ever end up fighting foes resistant or outright immune to piercing damage!
You gain +2 Str and +1 Bonk! This is a polearm weapon.
Nice, this weapon looked like it had reach and worked with my other offensive skills and martial weapon benefits, and unlike the hammer I could use it with one hand. Now I only needed a slashing weapon and I’d be armed with the big three damage types of melee weapons. Or maybe a weapon that combined the three, like a halberd.
Bracer of Brutal Brawn
With great strength comes great responsibility. To crush, pound and rend your enemies with as much gore and savagery as you can, that is! With these bracers you will be even better at it, making that guy whose limb you tore off for an impromptu weapon look like weak sauce! You humans can be very creative in your massacres, so I’d love to see what you’ll do with this!
You gain +6 Str, +2 Rending Grip and +1 Abstract Gore Artist!
This item only works when both Bracers are worn, so be sure to also equip the other one that I gave you… Oh wait. Well, be a good boy and entertain me, and I might give you the other half. Maybe. If I feel like it. Be like the Bracer of Brutal Brawn to earn the Bracer of Brutal Brawn.
Another troll item, luring me to a different build. I already saw it in the big chat, almost everyone was getting tons of troll items like these. Anywhere between a third to half of the gear they got was worthless or for a completely different build not befitting them. At least we could trade.
Feral Eagle Muzzle
Eagles are majestic apex hunters, dominating the sky. They’re also boring and cowardly! It’s like, come on! Attack something as big and dangerous as yourself, instead of bullying worms and rodents! But nooooo~… These guys evolved to be smart and responsible, and don’t get themselves wounded or killed for my amusement. Jerks. Well, we can fix that! Put on this muzzle, which doesn’t do a very good job at muzzling the beak, and the eagle will fight anything it sees ferociously until it dies! In the event that they’re a pet or mount, they’ll make an exception for their master and anyone in their party.
This item grants +5 Str, +5 Con, +2 Rending and the Domesticated Bloodlust state.
The muzzle was more like a belt that you put around the snout of a creature just behind the beak, with spikes that made the thing look very uncomfortable. It also had a strap to go around the neck for stability and a leash to hold on to the creature, but nothing to actually keep the beak closed or stop it from biting and pecking into anything.
I gave the item to Elise as this was clearly meant for Cuddles, but I wondered if we’d end up using it. It wasn’t actually causing a feral state, not really, but for Cuddles Bloodlusted might be just as bad. Then again, Cuddles had been suicidally attacking things bigger and stronger than himself even without the status, and this way he’d be more durable to maybe survive the encounter.
City-Grade Abortion Pill
A woman gets to choose what she does with her body, and if she doesn’t want to give birth then no means no! But with pills like these, whether she gets to keep the baby is less about her choice and more up to your whims! This pill isn’t poisonous, and you could eat it with only an extreme case of diarrhoea as a result, but it is super-effective against the unborn! Drop this in the water supply, and every woman in the entire city will end up aborting their precious little foetus and be infertile for 2-9 months! For when you want to abort your accidental creampie turned shotgun wedding but make sure that your girlfriend, mistress or sister-not-related-by-blood can’t prove that you made her choice for her!
The hell is wrong wit-? No, don’t sigh or complain, that will just fuel the AI’s trolling behaviour. Just dump it in my inventory where it will never see the light of day again.
I put the upgrade scroll in my hotbar and used it. I glowed for a moment as it worked, and I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the outcome. After getting mostly troll items, this was actually a good upgrade!
Habrein’s Greedy Gloves (Upgraded)
Skipping the part you already know, what’s new? Well, I’ll tell you! I made these gloves better, of course! How? *Sigh* You really want to know? Really want me to explain it to you in simple terms like you’re a small child? Can’t just take me on my word? Fine~…
I decreased the cooldown time on your gloves from 5 minutes to 20 seconds! Ain’t that amazing!? I also linked them directly to that spear you’re always recalling, meaning that these gloves can no longer pull back anything else! Less good? Well, suck it up, you whiner!
I ignored the AI’s snark, because this was actually a really good upgrade. Sure, I could easily envision how the ability to make the last object you touched reappear in your hands could be very useful. But this way I could throw my spear and use another item in the 20 seconds I had to wait, without losing the ability to recall my spear. Not bad at all!
“So, you guys get anything good?” I asked.
“Yeah! I got two outfits, a shirt for my Quickling gear and this kick-ass wand!” Alexa said, proudly showing a sceptre that couldn’t be more magical schoolgirl with all the glitter in the world. “It’s a wand that I can use to throw magic orbs, and it doubles as a microphone! So cool!”
“I got some skirts that would’ve been better if they gave me the boons without the restriction that I cannot wear anything underneath them. No way that I’m not wearing my pants under this billow disaster.” Elise said. “I also got some electricity melee spells that I can’t really use until I level up again for more points in intelligence, but that’s on me I suppose.”
Ben just lovingly stroked a dagger that seemed to be made out of pure shadow. “Yes. Yessss.”
Thomas held up a wand. “Improved fire damage for line spells. 5% and only works for Scorching Ray right now, simple but quite potent in my hands. I also got a pair of massive granny panties that I can use as a parachute, which sounds useful even if it’s a stupid-looking gag item. And another spell, Lightning Clap. Does exactly what it says on the tin.”
“I got so much good gear!” Miho said, almost tearing up. “I got a touch healing spell, a spell called Grasping Vines and a hairpin that stays on when I transform into animals! The AI never gave me gear this good before! Thank you!”
I told them about my own items, the ones that mattered at least, and got nods all around.
We didn’t linger too long after that, everyone being tired after today, and everyone went to bed.
I tried the whip just to be sure, but saw my suspicions confirmed: my skin could no longer be wounded in the way required and I didn't get the effects. I just got a troll achievement from the AI as they laughed at me for trying. And with that, I lay down and went to sleep.