CHAPTER 130
Tom took a deep breath.
Based on experience this reward would be slightly smaller than last time, which, given his level and equipment was significant. He wondered what he would receive and whether it would be anywhere near as impressive as those tier three pants. Only two-thirds as good according to the allocation of rewards… but.
If only he had fate. A hundred fate and he might force a chest piece that performed to a similar level as his pants which would mean that for the first time on Existentia he would possess equipment that carried him as opposed to well… what his current gear achieved.
Instead… Tom checked his fate balance. There were three points left. That was it and all of them had regenerated since his last fight. During two out of the last three battles he had zeroed out his fate but sometimes it was worthwhile taking that risk if it meant you could land a killing blow.
Invest or not? He touched the magic pants he was wearing. It was long odds anyway, but just in case he invested those last points. Hopefully, they could shift the odds of the loot portal.
He was not hopeful.
Random chance might deliver something perfect occasionally. That was why a fate injection against loot portals was so effective. Fate helped improve those chances of the object being effectively tailored for you, but if it was used not once but three, four, five times in a row? It did not take a professor of mathematics to know that those repeated positive outcomes became more and more unlikely. He had got something spectacular last time and so this time it would require more than three measly points to weigh the statistics in his favour.
It was not enough to change things and in the tutorial, Tom wouldn’t have bothered, but the value of the potential prize drove him to make an attempt. It would be a tragedy to get something useless out of this opportunity. The desire formed in his mind. An item that would provide benefit. It didn’t have to be perfectly tailored to his build or immediately obvious in its use. But something that one day could prove useful.
Tom hoped that by limiting his request to such a vague concept of value would let the tiny amount of fate make a difference to the outcome.
A worthwhile gamble.
The energy left him and sunk into the loot portal. Hopefully off to generate luck. Tom looked at the alluring bright portal. He would plunge his hand in and it would emerge with something amazing.
Tom shook his head.
Nope, even trying to hype himself up wasn’t working. While sometimes random gave extraordinary outcomes usually… well usually it did what its name suggested and delivered an item which would make you look and then scratch your head in confusion. There was lots of stuff out there and only a small fraction applied to creatures as strangely shaped as a human.
“And?” Everlyn asked.
Tom chuckled. “Just procrastinating. Worried.” He pushed his arm into the portal and kept going until it was in up to his shoulder. His fingers bumped into an object. All he had was touch and his brows furrowed in confusion as he explored it. He traced the shape of his loot. It was not a stone, stone, jewels, armour or weapons.
It was an intricate piece of rock without even a single tingle of energy within it.
If it wasn’t magical.
Mentally, Tom cursed at the range he was apparently receiving. Three fate had done nothing. He kept exploring, waving his hand around in the portal to see if there was anything else, but it was empty. He returned to the first object his probing fingers reported the same information. There was no doubt it was a sculpture.
With a sigh, he pulled it out.
He held the statue still just outside the portal and probed it with all of his senses. There was no fate associated with it and his magic senses confirmed it was also non-magical. It was some sort of animal, six legged and four armed with what looked suspiciously like a reproductive organ which adjusted for the creature’s size was a substantial piece of manhood. Unfortunately, a section of the member had had been chipped off.
“What the?” He whispered and triggered identification.
Statue of a Caboona about to enter the second stage of mating.
This sculpture is an authentic statue from the Caboona master sculpture Urrigak, and it radiates a slight feeling of primal lust. The chip on its erect reproductive organ has reduced its estimated auction value of over a million credits to a little over a hundred thousand if sold to a trader who recognises the statue’s provenance.
This statue delivers no tangible benefits or buffs.
With a thought, it vanished into his inventory as he considered what the identification had said. It was valuable if he could place it on the right market. It was Tom admitted more useful than some if the items he had received from portals in the tutorial. Often objects would come already soul bound. If they were then incompatible with either anatomy or build, then they would have zero resell value. This statue, at least, could be sold, though finding a merchant to recognise the value proposition might prove challenging. The human auction market supplied by DEUS was unfortunately not the place. Not a single human would be capable of recognising the statue’s provenance. On there, he would get cents for the dollar in value.
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Despite its potential worth, it was a hold till he found someone to sell it to. All he could hope was that three fate meant that the opportunity would present itself sooner rather than later. For the amount invested. Maybe those furry paws belonged to a Caboona. He could just imagine the shock that producing the statue would cause to an alien coming to speak. They would see savages and then sit down and be presented with an erotic sculpture from one of their own masters.
The nominal value if he found a buyer was great, but in some ways an item worth twenty thousand that he could sell now would have been preferable to this. An object filling up his inventory for years and potentially decades before he could find someone interested in taking it off his hands was almost a negative no matter how much he could sell it for in the future.
Everlyn patted his arm in sympathy. “I saw it. That’s the problem with loot portals without fate investments.”
“At least the other competition races get hit harder.”
“Maybe,” Everlyn said cautiously. “We know what DEUS has given us, but we do not know what the other races got. They could have something that effectively invests fifty fates into every loot portal they receive for free.”
Tom frowned at that thought. It was unlikely, but so was receiving such a useless statue.
Everlyn pushed her arm into the portal and pulled out a pair of boots.
She squealed in delight before shooting him an apologetic glance. “Sorry these are just good.”
Druid Ranger Boots - Tier 4.
These boots have powerful passive enchantments to allow them to travel across most surfaces without leaving marks and make the user far less likely to lose their footing. In addition, it passively increases the effectiveness of all Druid Ranger class abilities and effects by twenty-five percent.
“Better than my pants.” Tom admitted when he read the description.
“Only a little, and only because it’s linked to my class.” Everlyn allowed. She was jiggling on the spot in excitement and Tom doubted she even realised she was doing it.
A cheer and a shout went out. When he looked in that direction. Keikain and a team had rebuilt the first section of the walls. They had chosen the least damaged part, but it had been restored to its former glory. Small strides but important symbolically.
Tom glanced around once more. If they were going to fight another event wave, then the fortification had to be rebuilt. He was hardly an expert, but it looked like seventy percent of their defensive walls had been knocked down, but at least the stone was still there. As for the enhancements, they had all been eradicated.
“Tom,” Michael called while he jogged over. “Can you help with the walls?”
Rather than directly answering, he pointed at the remnants of his golem.
“Golly,” Michael said with a frown. “Did a great job. Bought time for the last of the defenders to escape safely. How bad is it?”
Tom shrugged. “I couldn’t tell remotely.”
“Fix it,” Michael ordered with a snap of his fingers. “It’s proven itself once and we want it working for the next event. The walls can wait. So, how did you do today?”
“Eleven percent.”
“That’s great. I only got a half a percent this time. Stupid allocation method.” He joked with a weak laugh.
Tom chuckled darkly. “It was a harder fight than I would have liked and was touch and go for a while and used all my fate to stay alive.”
“That bad?”
“Yes. I was forced to fight six at once.”
Everlyn pressed against him. “I didn’t know the tracker could–”
“I know.” Tom hugged her back to reassure her. That mistake had cut her deep, and he suspected she would beat herself up about it for a while.
“But you won.” Michael said with fake brightness catching the subtext. “And fate’s there to be used to get you through battles.”
“Yep, but it meant I had nothing left for the portal.”
“Oh, no. What did you get?”
“I got rewarded with… drumroll… a phallic statue for a different species.”
Michael laughed uproariously. “I got a tier one healing focus. At least it’s sort of useful.” He whipped it out. The item was a jewel set in ornamental metal with a long leather strap.
Healing Focus - Tier one.
Place on the physical wound and focus healing spells through it for a ten percent boost to efficiency.
“Better than mine.”
He pulled out the statue and gave the other man time to identify it. Michael laughed harder. “That’s a good one.”
Tom smiled at that. “Yeah it’s pretty funny.” The statue disappeared back into storage. “Random allocation sucks.”
“You go fix Golly up.” Michael said. “And when you’re done come and see me.”
Tom followed the instructions and went over to the remnants of the golem. To start, he examined the strange rock the elemental had used to defend the core parts from artillery spells.
His hand reached out to touch the semi-intact cocoon. The first thing that he noticed was that it was not conjured material it was a genuine stone that the elemental must have been summoning from the ground. The choice made sense as the stone had to weather spells more powerful than the elemental could produce, so conjured stone would have been overwhelmed by the spell quality difference. Utilising natural stone meant that the effect of the attack spells being superior was mitigated even if the material choice would do nothing against the raw power of the longjoule’s spells.
He paced around, examining the shell from different angles. The artillery magic had broken through in sections but had not gone through all the layers. The defences appeared to have worked, which meant it was likely that some of the key components had survived. This wall of stone was not something in the elemental’s power. It had to have been created by redirecting the output of the mana engine at the very least. The elemental from his memories had also stayed around defending the remains of the golem for a prolonged period implying the prison had been protected as well.
After seeing what had been done to the walls, Tom was readjusting his expectations. Having just the mana engine and prison survive would still count as a win.
If those components survived, then rebuilding the golem would be within his price range.
The defensive rock layer peeled back as he focused his power through it. Stone flowed like lava but without heat. The rock cocoon that he had assumed was solid was anything but. It was structured in a series of walls. Hard shell followed by a thin layer of spongy rock and then another hard shell. It was like how he imagined modern tank armour would have been created. Crumple zones to absorb energy along with multiple layers of harder metal to stop bullets and attack. As he pressed further, Tom discovered that there wasn’t two alternating layers but five distinct types.
Tom made mental notes. The construction method the elemental had chosen was genius, and it was worthwhile for him to learn how to generate each component. Who knows, one day instead of a broken golem needing a cocoon, it might be him and Evie. Each of the layers served a different purpose; physical resistance, crumple zone for absorbing kinetic energy, a heat sink, magic resistance and a layer specifically for stopping arcane energy. Each of them created by altering common tier zero stone. He stored an example of each of the unique versions of rock in his inventory. He was definitely going to reverse engineer how the elemental had transformed the stone.
It was a piece of art, but now that Tom had extracted samples to mimic later, he tore through it relentlessly until Golly’s destroyed body was revealed.
His poor golem had been broken.