image [https://imgur.com/uSkAu6K.jpg]

So, to get all the way up to the beam chamber we’d have to go through a series of gravity lift rooms. Each was at a random location on their respective floor. There were five floors in total, all laid out like a maze of hallways and rooms.

Actually, the layout reminded me a lot of an RPG dungeon!

If you didn't have high security clearance like Uncle and I, you'd have a rough time finding the right path. But since both of us had an internal map of the structure, getting through would be a cinch. It was almost disappointing that we wouldn’t be exploring on our own whims, but this was real life, not a dungeon crawler game.

While I was plotting the most efficient course to take, Indena had a quite reasonable question.

“What’s up with this place? It looks so confusing.”

“That’s the point,” Uncle told her. “The layout is supposed to confuse any invaders and buy time for this Longitude tower’s defenses to do their job.

“You guys design things in a very clever way,” Yamin commented.

It would be much more clever if it was actually working in our favour right now, but as it stood, the pirates probably had a decent lay of the land.

Despite that, there didn’t appear to be any of them on this subterranean level. So navigating it would be very quick for us.

“Follow me!” I said, bolting off down the hallway and heading for the proper path.

We had passed through what felt like a kilometer of empty hallways before finally reaching the first gravity lift. Getting through this wasn’t just a test of navigation, but also stamina and will power. I could imagine the humans would get tired very easily. So far, they all seemed in high spirits.

As we entered the cylindrical gravity lift room, a soft haze of light gently lifted up from a circular platform hovering over a hole in the floor.

My foot plopped down on it and the platform felt all bouncy.

“Woah!” It was kinda fun, like a trampoline or something.

“When you're ready to go up, jump and it’ll lift you,” Uncle said.

Taking his advice, I did one really good jump and landed right at the center of the platform. It lowered deep down into the hole, but then shot upwards and sent me flying!

“Weee!” I cheered as I flew to the upper level.

My vertical motion slowed as I approached an energy shield. Once I passed through, the gravity waves carefully placed me on a ledge next to a hallway entrance.

Yamin was the first to follow my same trajectory, landing next to me and getting the wiggles as she touched down.

“That was like a weird amusement park ride.” She threw a fist in the air. “Kinda fun!”

“I know, right? The ones back home weren’t this fun.” Maybe we could have new ones installed at some point in The Hive.

Anyways, Mella was the next to jump up here, and she looked unamused by the trip.

Right after her came Marek, but he ended up floating here upside down…so he landed right on his face.

“Ouch…” he cringed as we helped him stand.

“I can’t believe he did it…” Indena was laughing the whole way up. “What an idiot! Ha ha!”

Marek gave her a livid glare, the kind someone would give their mortal enemy. “Oh, be quiet! You’re the one who fooled me into doing it!”

I was snickering too much to ask exactly what happened down there. But even Uncle seemed to be holding back a little laughter.

When all our giggles were had, I gave the map a quick glance to see red icons dotting all around this floor.

“Uncle, I’m detecting hostiles on this level,” I mentioned.

“The wasps must be fighting on the upper levels.” He brought up a holographic display and started fiddling with it. “Yeah. Looks like we're dealing with this floor on our own.”

Luckily, it didn’t look like there was much to this floor, but that didn’t mean the bad guys wouldn’t put up a fight.

As we marched on, it was clear that the pirates had done some redecorating. They’d hung up all kinds of boat related items on the walls, such as ores and parts of buoys. I even saw a slimy net scattered across part of the floor. The contrast between Elysian style metal and pirate gear was really weird, but oddly added to that dungeon feel.

“They’re making themselves right at home, aren’t they?” Uncle commented, carefully opening one of the doors to our left.

This next room was medium sized compared to the others we'd been through, but it had a big window that overlooked the sea floor. Such a pretty view.

In the very corner was a pirate messing around with tools at a workbench. From the looks of it, he was polishing up a pistol and hadn't noticed us yet.

“Robbin’ folks from here or there is what I'm gonna do…the sailors from whence or where can never stop my tune…”

He was singing a sea shanty. It was catchy, if I didn't think about the lyrics.

Uncle carefully left us at the door and tiptoed in without making a sound. He grappled the pirate by the mouth, ensuring that he'd stay quiet while a magic blade jabbed into his back.

With that guy dissipating away after Uncle's sneak attack, we all went in and looked for the next passageway. The wasps that were following us went on ahead to try and clear out the rest of the enemies.

“Hmm…” Marek hummed as he gazed at the pistol on the workbench. “I wonder if…”

He reached into his coat and pulled out the one pirate gun we’d found in the sunken ship. Then he grabbed some of the tools and started poking and prodding away at the weapon until it started to look a lot cleaner.

A few twists here, and a dust off there…before we knew it, this pistol was looking even better then the one the pirate guy was cleaning up.

*FWISH* went a sealant spray can.

“Ooh…” I cooed out in awe of his skills.

“I’m not just good with cars, I know a little about firearms and military equipment too.”

That skill really shined through as he polished the gun.

“J'ai fini!” he cheered, showcasing the weapon very carefully to me. “It isn’t loaded, but you are too petite to hold it.”

Even still, I rubbed my palm across the glossed surface. It appeared to have very subtle green swirls glowing all over it.

-Weapon/Item appraisal system now available!-

-Flintlock Pistol (Masterwork)-

-Ranged, Piercing-

-Fair quality-

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

-Ammunition = 0-

-True Shot Lv 1 Enchantment: Shots made with this weapon have a higher chance of hitting target + crit rate up-

“Woah!” I cheered at this revelation. “That thing is awesome!”

I had to explain the weapons stats to him, since he couldn't see them. This was one of the many advantages I got for whatever system dad made in me.

“So this gun can't miss?” Marek asked once I explained the true shot enchantment.

“It has a higher chance of hitting,” I corrected. “It's like aim-assist in a shooter.”

“A shooter?” He looked a little confused. Did they not have FPS games here on the surface world? They must have, I refused to believe it! “Well, as long as it can shoot at all.”

“If it is magically enchanted, it may deal damage to these ghost pirates,” Mella said.

I was detecting more enemies nearby, so I'm sure he'll get the chance to test it out soon enough.

Now I was curious to appraise my own weapon. Seeing as Yamin was resting her legs a little and everyone was taking five, this was my chance to do that.

“Spear of Destiny!” I shouted, summoning my spear into my hands.

“Hmm?” Uncle’s brow curiously raised. “What a curious name…” he mumbled to himself.

-Spear of Destiny (upgradable)-

-Melee/Ranged, Piercing, Slashing-

-Average quality*-

-Charges = 100%-

-Stardust weapon : Powerful against dark aligned foes-

-Elemental affinities = NA-

Huh, what was up with the little asterisk next to the quality level?

To the HELP menu we go!

-(*) signifies extra information is available. Focusing on it will reveal said info.-

Oh…that makes sense.

I went back into the appraisal menu and inspected the asterisk.

-Notice! Weapon quality is dependent on the quality of stardust being used, as well as the user's skill to summon weapons.-

So depending on what type of stardust goes into the weapon, which is electromagnetic energy, it gets stronger or weaker. And as far as skill goes, it looked like something unlocked in the upgrade menu. It said I could upgrade my Stardust Summoning capabilities.

In order to actually upgrade a power or utility, I had to use them enough to apply a skill point, which would progress them to the next tier of strength. (Skill points were received every time I leveled up) If I hadn’t leveled myself up to a certain point, and didn’t practice a skill at all, I wouldn't be able to progress until I hit the right threshold.

I was currently a level 42, which meant I had quite a few skill points to spend here on whatever I wanted.

Using these powers in general rather than just upgrading them also trained up my abilities too, but it's kinda like a stick shift car. Once you've hit a certain speed, you have to shift into the next gear.

Since I haven't used my spear a whole ton yet, I didn't have much to upgrade other than what was initially unlocked. I needed to learn how to use this before I could upgrade.

There were some other interesting things that showed up when I appraised my weapon, like the 100% charges and the elemental affinity. From what the HELP menu was saying, it seemed like the charges related to how much stardust energy the weapon could effectively have left before breaking.

The elemental affinity wasn't as clear though…it said I'd be able to “augment the spears capabilities with elemental power,” but it didn’t say how. So that was more or less a lost cause at the moment.

“Oi, you alright?” Indena waved her hand in my face, bringing me back to reality.

“Oh, yeah.” I nodded.

There was other stuff in this room I wanted to check out. It looked like the pirates used it as a cargo hold for their gear.

“Uncle, can we do some looting?” I asked.

“Looting?” Uncle’s brow raised. “What do you mean by that?”

What sort of dungeon would this be if we couldn't loot it? I wasn’t wearing this pirate hat for nothing, after all!

I walked over to a crate and opened it up. Indena peeked over my shoulder.

“This one’s got some junk in it,” she said, gazing into a glittering pile of gold coins.

She couldn’t have been more wrong! There were at least fifty Pier Tokens inside!

“Like I said, it’s junk.”

I collected all the Pier Tokens into my virtual INVENTORY. They quickly disappeared from the box. Suddenly I had 56 of them in total, including the ones from before. I still wonder what they're used for.

Yamin took a look in another crate. It had two white beams of light shooting out of it.

“I found clothes,” she claimed.

I was like a moth to flame with those glowing pillars of light. They looked like the same light show that would appear after killing a monster out in the wild.

There was in fact clothes in here, and the beams of light were spawning out of two different outfits.

“Oh, these beams of light must indicate the rarity,” I took a pretty educated guess on that one. The HELP menu confirmed my hypothesis…

These items had a white rarity. That was the first most common colour. It went : white, Green, gold, red, blue and purple. The rarity was based on some algorithm that would determine the effectiveness of the item from a mechanical standpoint.

“What lights?” Yamin asked.

“Yeah…” Indena agreed with her. “I don’t see any lights.”

“You guys can’t see the lights?”

They were pretty obvious. But then again, my systems were showing me things that weren’t actually in reality. It was just interpreting things and displaying them as if my life were a video game.

“You going schizophrenic on us?” Indena questioned.

“I’m not schizophrenic!” I retorted. “Gah, never mind…”

A dialogue box opened up in my field of vision. It asked me if I wanted to access the inventory of the box.

I selected -Yes-.

Two items were in there. They were called: Nazalian Mage Tunic and Nazalian Armour. Both pieces of armour digitized and entered my virtual inventory.

I went into my USER IDENTIFICATION tab and swapped over to my equipment screen. I was wearing the Eighth Star Battle Dress and pirate hat. I decided to un-equip both on a whim.

My armour and hat suddenly disappeared from my body.

“Huh?” Indena commented. “Where'd your dress go?”

“My inventory,” I passively answered, focusing on my system.

I equipped the Nazalian mage tunic. Suddenly blue robes with pale gold leather trim appeared around my body. It had a few swirly decorations all over it.

“Wow!” I cheered, thinking how wizard I literally looked!

“That was very strange,” Yamin uttered, watching clothing spawn around me like nothing.

“Oh, dude!” Indena cheered. “That’s sick! You can just change clothing like that?” She looked at Uncle. “Can you do that too?”

Suddenly his suit changed into a lighter form of his crystal armour that he used for combat. So this is how he’d been doing it!

“Unfortunately, you humans don't have the same ability,” he replied.

“Ahh…crap.” Indena stomped her foot. “Whatever.”

Anyways, giving these outfits a look, it was clear why they didn't hold much value as white rarity items. From just a brief glance, they were comparable to starter items you’d get when you first play an RPG. They did however have some interesting effects…

The Nazalian armour gave a very slight buff to strength and defensive capabilities, meaning I'd be able to dish out and take slightly more damage.

The mage tunic gave magic powers and stamina a boost, while weakening strength and defense.

My Eighth Star Battle Dress overall had balanced abilities as far as how it enhanced my performance, but these outfits gave a little more power to their respective fields then my dress did. It might be worth swapping them out depending on the situation. Say, I need to use a magic power, I'd swap to the tunic. Or if I needed a boost in strength, I could use the armour.

My dress was still the best overall thing to wear, since it was balanced, but it seemed like it was upgradeable, so I'd have to look into that later.

Like I said though, these were white items, so there wasn’t anything super special about them at all. Purple was mythic rarity and more desirable, and speaking of which...

Woah…my spear was mythic! I knew this thing was special!

Marek’s weapon was green though, which was better than white, but not desirable if something better was available.

As I continued to learn about my equipment related systems, Yamin did one really big stretch.

“I think we’ve seen everything here.” Yamin said. “Should we keep going?”

While I was messing around, it seemed like they’d inspected the rest of the room. There wasn’t anything else of note in here.

“Yeah,” Uncle nodded. “Let’s move on.”

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image [https://imgur.com/VNB7SMa.png]

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