Chapter 78 – A Faeriely Good Welcome

The tiny faerie’s bouncy F cups jiggled as she hoisted a loop of string with an old fashioned key attached with great effort. Struggling to fly while holding the weight of the key, she zigzagged her way to me and dropped the shiny platinum key in my hand.

“Gift for human friend~” the F cup faerie said happily, flying circles around my face before hugging me as best as she could with her tiny body.

Being offered a platinum key so soon, wasn’t this too easy?

As I thought about it, I realized that this sequence of events only materialized because I was a gold invitation holder. Both the tracker’s map and gravy in a jar items were needed to… wait, no. If I never read the History of the Natural World tome from the Tomb of the Forgotten King, I would never have gotten the bestiary entry that informed me of rock faeries’ penchant for interspecies culinary exoticism in the first place.

Now that I considered it from this perspective, things were making a lot more sense. Being offered a platinum key was a product of many prior hardships, as well as good game sense and logic to put things together. It wasn’t as easy as I first thought.

Part of me was also in wonder of what exactly a platinum key entailed. Bubs did mention that there would be more amenities for platinum tier safehouses, but what exactly did that mean?

I guess there was only one way to find out. I’d have to find a platinum tier safehouse.

“Hey,” I said to the faerie that was now nuzzling her body on my collarbone. I gently scooped her up in my hand and lifted her in my palm towards the front of my face so she could stand on my palm and speak to me. “This is a really good gift,” I explained while pointing at the key. “But some bad people want to steal it from me. Is it okay if I leave it with you guys until later tonight? I’ll come back and pick it up.”

The rock faerie giggled and nodded. “Okay! We keep gift safe for human.”

“Also, don’t trust other humans. Some of them are bad people, got it?”

“Yep~ Gravy bringer is good human, other humans bad~”

I pet her on the head gently and nodded. “That’s about right.”

Pfft, gravy bringer. Kind of lame when they put it that way, but then again it was a term of endearment so I shouldn’t be complaining too much.

Actually, now that I was on the rock faeries’ good side, it could be a good opportunity to gain some intel, since technically they were part of this region as an environmental hazard, so they might know a bit about the land.

I took a ticket out of my inventory and gestured towards it. “Do you guys know how to get more of these?”

The faeries giggled. “Goddess Titania give us tickets. She said to give to good humans~”

Ah, so the ticket distribution was done by the gods. It was possible that this tournament was designed by the gods as a way to distribute gifts or blessings to the most worthy. That’s why Luxuria and Thor seemed to be participating as well, in their own roundabout way.

It reminded me of greek and roman mythology, where the gods sometimes viewed competitions between humans on earth as proxy jostling. For example during the battle of Troy, Achilles was favored by Ares, and even Poseidon interfered with the war by preventing the burning of the greek fleet at sea.

Poseidon was definitely a factor in this tournament, since his own personal trident was on display in the secret shop for an absurd amount of tickets and even premium tickets. I shuddered to think what kind of monsters needed to be brought down to receive premium tickets for its conquest.

The faeries continued to dance and float around my face and body, while waxing praise for the meat gravy that I brought them. They displayed their affection by rubbing their bodices against me in a rather sexual fashion, and I couldn’t say that I disliked it. After all, they looked just like miniature versions of human females, with extra bounciness.

Suddenly, a rock faerie flew over from the forest and spoke urgently. “Humans coming! Hurt our home!”

The faeries began mobilizing immediately, some of them dipping into the rock outcrop to retrieve tiny weapons and even bows. They looked like toys, but I knew not to underestimate the power of any hostile faction in the hidden challenge, even ones as nice as rock faeries once you got to know them.

“Will gravy bringer help us fight?” a young faerie asked me timidly.

I nodded, brushing her cheek with one finger in an attempt to soothe her anxious sounding voice. “Yes. Your enemy is my enemy.” Anyone that wanted to hurt these adorable little creatures would face my wrath. Remembering Bubs’s words about my predecessor dimension thief, I decided to have a bit more pride in the class that I originally thought was garbage.

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I summoned adamantite poleaxe and escorted the faeries to whoever it was that was disturbing the faeries’ living space.

The hostile players could be heard first, before I even saw them.

“God, what the fuck are these things?” a gruff voice shouted. “Get them off me!”

“Dmitri, do your thing.”

“Can’t right now, they keep interrupting my spell casts!”

The voices were coming from somewhere in the forest, although it was made rather obvious by all the faeries going back and forth from the frontlines. I decided to scope out who the enemies were before charging in blind. Maybe my predecessor Vahlen Hazak was powerful enough to charge straight in and have his enemies run in fear, but I wasn’t quite at that level yet.

Turning on [Blood Sense] for just a moment to locate the assailants, I approached the fight and turned the sense off. [Blood Sense] gave me a lot of tactical flexibility, but sometimes it just felt like sensory overload, and the blood mist ended up crowding out my vision.

Trying to be as sneaky as possible, I crawled up to an elevated position to better examine the fight. I suddenly realized why I never tried to use my [Pickpocket] ability, despite technically being a thief. It was because I was missing some sort of sneak ability that would enable me to get in range to use [Pickpocket]. Traditional thieve classes usually provided some sort of straightforward sneak ability, but not the dimension thief. [Shadow] was more of an escape ability, and [Dimension Room] could only be used when there were no enemies around.

I peered over the top of the ledge, to see the rock faeries swarming the hostile players as best as they could, swinging their small swords and shooting their little bows at them. The miniature weapons did a surprising amount of damage to the players, and all of them were missing at least a seventh of their health now.

It was a bunch of goons wearing some sort of guild emblem, although I was not sure which one. I had a pdf file saved on my interface with all the top guild emblems, but right now the rock faeries were in trouble so it wasn’t time for me to manually scan the entire file for a match.

There was a level 80 spellcaster and a level 82 with a sword, possibly a basic warrior. Both were marked with wolf icons. With the rock faeries’ help, I could definitely engage these two. As sneakily as I could, I walked towards the pair that were preoccupied being harassed by the busty faeries with miniature weapons. I managed to make it to about a meter away before I was detected.

“Huh? Who the fuck is that?” the mage cried after seeing me.

I darted forward and sank my adamantite poleaxe in the mage’s stomach, piercing his cloth armor.

170 damage.

Pulling the spearhead of my poleaxe out of his body, I swung down at the mage and embedded the axe into his shoulder, as the mage let out a pained scream.

140 damage.

The warrior swung at me with his sword through the faeries pelting him with arrows, clipping me on the side of my ribs. Not good.

-95 health.

The mage tried to cast a spell, but one of the rock faeries poked him in the eye with her spear, causing him to howl in pain and clutch his eye. Noticing that the mage was nearly within execution range, I threw my adamantite poleaxe at him and then rushed forwards with dimension ripper activated on my left arm. The poleaxe landed on his foot, dealing just enough damage to put him in execution range of heart ripper. Plunging my left arm into his chest, I crushed his internal organs and soaked in as much blood as I could, before pulling my arm out in triumph as the mage fell to the ground.

[You have slain a player]

[You have gained 8 tickets]

The mage class really wasn’t suited for fights like these. Mages needed time and space to cast their abilities, and they were blackline fighters in the first place with low defenses.

But getting flanked by an assassin class while having their spellcasts constantly interrupted by faerie assault? That was a worst case scenario for him.

FIRST BLOOD!

[You have received 50 tickets.]

The announcement rang quite loudly through the forest, startling me. In the sky above, the words FIRST BLOOD formed.

Now that I thought about it, first blood was taken by either Bubs or the dragon yesterday, so the bonus didn’t go to a player.

I could also see why tickets were no longer being used as a culling metric today. It was because all the surviving players had more tickets now, so it was not as good of a barometer of performance when compared to yesterday where everyone started on even ground.

It was similar to the battle royale mechanics where after the first circle or two are completed, most of the loot was consolidated in the hands of fewer players, so the average loot level was much higher than before simply because there were fewer players to split it amongst.

“Wow! Gravy bringer strong~” one of the faeries shouted enthusiastically.

“Yep, big brother gravy is coooool~”

The warrior swung his sword around blindly. “The fuck are these things saying?”

Laughing, I brandished my adamantite poleaxe and jabbed him in the torso, but the spear point was deflected by his heavy black steel armor dealing damage in the tens. Actually, on second thought…

“Love whip, summon.”

The whip appeared in my hand, and I immediately let go of it and telekinetically directed it to attack the warrior. Checking my interface briefly, I saw that my telekinetic control was currently level 4.

Something else caught my eye when I checked my skill status screen. Theft, which was sitting stubbornly at level 0, was now up to 8.8724% progress on level up. That was a significant increase than before, where it was at .8066%. But I didn’t steal anything recently, did I? Unless… monster kill steals were also counted in theft. There were no other possibilities–it had to have been the kill steal on the fog demon. Now that was interesting.

I rather lackadaisically commanded love whip to attack the warrior, allowing me to stay at a safe distance and attack without endangering myself. The rock faeries really made it impossible for the warrior to advance on me, and every step he took towards me, I kited another step back.

12 damage.

9 damage.

14 damage.

I was landing hits here and there with the svelte dominatrix whip, but the experience bar for telekinetic control didn’t budge at all. Tch, that meant that telekinetic control experience only increased with more fine tuned motor control over the whip as it gained levels.

To put it in other words, I could gain experience on telekinetic control just by flailing it around randomly when it was still level 1 or 2. But at level 4, the standards for gaining experience were that much higher. Simply flailing it around telekinetically like an idiot was no longer going to grant experience.