CHAPTER 178

Tom stepped into the system room. As he transitioned, he held his intention to find out about the lair clear in his mind.

He was once more in his familiar, comforting room, surrounded by metal walls. The wall he was facing was covered with text. Tom read it, genuinely interested in what it contained.

Congratulations a party you are part of has successfully cleared a lair. Please vote on the loot and experience allocation regime.

* Ignore Lair Status: Extract raw materials from bodies and experience is assigned based on GODs allocation on a per kill basis.

* Maximise Loot: No experience will be assigned and the energy will be funnelled into maximising loot.

* GOD’s allocation: The split of experience and loot will be assigned by the system. Every person will get the same percentage split.

* Maximise Experience: No loot will be assigned and all rewards will be directed into experience.

Tom read the options with interest.

Ignore Lair Status was clearly the worst choice. There wasn’t anything in a FleshEarth’s corpse that was salvageable. It didn’t hurt at all that allocation under that method would also grant him the least experience. After all, if experience was awarded on a per kill basis he would only get credit for minor contribution to the first kill and potential a thirty percent rating on the last kill of the elite rank sixteen monster. The benefit he had provided to the wider team for tanking the boss for so long would be irrelevant. The only thing that would matter would be the damage he had inflicted that had not been healed.

Basically, he would only get credit for the blows he landed in the last moments.

Luckily, no one was going to select that option because they would all want the corpses to disappear. With a shrug, he chose GOD’s allocation, figuring that as a group they needed loot and experience.

Congratulations. Maximised Loot has been selected with five votes in total.

Loot portal has been created in the centre of the former lair.

Tom chuckled and returned to the real world to see the bodies evaporating away. “Maximise Loot,” he called out to prevent them all individually checking.

“Who the hell went for that?” Michael complained.

“I did,” Clare told them, unrepentantly. “It’s clear I need an edged weapon or hiking boots.”

“And me,” Thor admitted. “I figured twenty fate can be directed to get a decent to good upgrade and I need to improve my gear and abilities.”

There were mock grumblings from others, but Tom ignored them and followed them into the cave. Now that he thought things through, he was annoyed by this assignment, and he should have voted to maximise experience. He had been hoping to finish his second potion tonight, but if he had to use fate on the loot portal, he would have to delay another day.

The cave when they entered was more than suitable for their requirements. The FleshEarths being designated as a lair instead of roaming monsters was a blessing. All the bones, faeces and other horrible things that would have been in the cave had vanished when the GODs had taken the bodies and assigned the loot. What they were left with was an unoccupied, large, spacious cave with a sandy floor which would have fit twenty people comfortably. It even had a small freshwater spring in the corner.

“Tom, Keikain, when you get a moment can you check and close any entry points into here.” Michael ordered.

No one moved to obey him. All their attention was on the glowing portal in the middle of the cave.

“Let’s do this.” Thor proclaimed. He concentrated for a few seconds, his eyes closed with his face looking constipated. The man’s fate immediately bottomed out. With a smile, he strode forward and thrust his arm into the loot portal, searched around momentarily and pulled out a stone. He looked at it and a frown flashed across his face, then a quizzical expression. “Maybe it’s possible …” he muttered doubtfully, “it could be useful.”

“What is it?” Michael asked.

“It’s a tier two electrified armour.” Thor did not look impressed with what he had received.

“At least it matches your Thor theme.” Sven said.

Thor chucked at that reminder. “I know it’s not a bad spell… it’s just not.” Thor pointed at Tom. “Fate’s supposed to work better than this.”

“I don’t make rules…” Tom defended himself.

“Get more fate and it would have,” Everlyn interjected. “I reckon if you had Tom’s fate you would have ended up with an electrified weapon spell and then you could have done your role playing properly.”

There was some laughter.

“Come on,” Michael interrupted. “As fun as mocking Thor is, we all need to keep moving. Cycle through it so the portal will disappear. The damn thing’s distracting.”

One by one Tom watched as each person went up to the portal. There was a puff of fate before each of them thrust their arms into the glowing distortion felt around for a moment before emerging with their items. The stuff they were pulling out was useful and ranged from mid-tier three quality down to Thor’s electrified armour spell, which had only been low tier two.

Everlyn stood next to him, her side pressing up against him. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking I go random.”

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

“I was going to suggest the same thing.” She admitted. “You’re probably contributed enough to get something high tier two or low three item. I don’t think anything in that range helps you. You’ve already got some pretty valuable loot drops and it might be better to keep your powder dry for when it would make a difference.”

“Can’t always be lucky or the world will take notice.”

“Yep. And I’m sure at some point soon you’ll be thrusting your hand into a portal that will be primed to deliver a tier six item.”

“Yeah right.”

“It might happen, and not using fate now has its own benefits.”

“Yes, it lets me do the evolution potion tonight.”

“That one’s not so important.” Everlyn told him. “Upgrading today or tomorrow…” She caught his expression and laughed. “You’re like a kid with a present.”

“I’m not that bad.”

“I’m sure you’re not.”

“How about you? Are you putting fate against this?”

“I’m going random too. My contribution was even less than yours, so there’s no point using fate for a tier two item.” She nodded at the portal. “Come on. It’s our turn.”

Keikain was currently standing next to the loot portal, holding a weird shaped wooden contraception. He held it up for all of them to see. Tom couldn’t tell what it was for.

“This is what I get for not using fate.”

“What is it?” Clare asked.

The earth mage shook his head. “It’s a magic toilet designed for a Qotopoc. It’s enhanced with magic to make toileting forty percent faster.”

Clare burst out laughing. “That’s your fault for going random.”

“Karma.” Everlyn whispered at the same time next to him.

Keikain grimaced. “No point getting a shiny trinket if I’m dead in a week. There is only one place my fate is going.”

“Most of mine too…” Clare said quietly.

The slight festival air that had manifested around the loot portal drained away.

Quietly, they approached the portal.

“Together,” Everlyn suggested.

“Fine.”

They both thrust their hands in at the same time in a manner that should have resulted in their arms immediately colliding. Of course, that didn’t happen. They each only encountered space even if visually their limbs should have collided with each other.

It was trippy.

Tom felt around in the wide open space and his hand closed on a handle.

Interesting, he thought. He could do with an upgraded knife. With a flourish, he pulled out a….

Fry pan.

Everlyn burst out laughing. She was holding a stone. “You got a pan. I got a spell. I think I might be winning.”

“Did you cheat?”

She shook her head, glanced down at the stone. Then frowned slightly in response. “Unfortunately no. See.” She held it out for him to identify.

Spell: Carapace Shining - Tier 2.

This multi-focal spell will allow you to shine yours or others’ carapace to a glossy shine. At higher spell levels, you can impart low level bonuses and shine multiple carapaces at once.

Tom laughed with her at the ridiculous stone. “I guess that’s stored till we trade with another civilisation.” It was, after all, potentially quite a useful spell in the right hands, just useless to everyone gathered here or at the human auction house.

He glanced at his own fry pan. It didn’t look very practical, being only large enough to cook a single egg at a time.

Fry Pan of Cooking Enhancement - Tier 2

Everything cooked on this pan will have fifty percent higher bonuses capped at the maximum benefit the cook’s level and food properties can support.

“Hey,” Tom waved it around. “This might actually be useful. I think I won.” He tossed the frypan to Keikain so that when he cooked he could get extra attributes applied to their food.

“Hah, you had to give yours away.” She mock cuddled her stone. “I can sell this,” Everlyn said snootily, pretending her spell was better.

“Sure you can.” he agreed and then sat down against the wall and waved Michael over.

The healer came over to see him. “You said that you were going to give me a list of skills that I should purchase to help my exhaustion.”

“Yes.” Michael pulled out a scrap of paper with a list on it. “This was the best package I could come up with. Total cost is thirty-five thousand experience. It’s a bad exchange rate but you can find about half in the Gods shop. The ones with asterisks on them are the important ones.”

Tom read the list.

* Efficient Sleep* - Tier 1 - Cost 7,000

* Instant Sleep* - Tier 0 - Cost 2,000

* Precognition Support* - Tier 2 - Cost 9,000

* Aura Mind Healing* - Tier 1 - Cost 5,000

* Caffeine Jolt - Tier 0 - Cost 3,000

* Toxin Purge - Tier 1 - Cost 4,000

* Truncated Sleep - Tier 0 - Cost 3,000

* Instant Awareness - Tier 0 - Cost 2,000

Tom read the list. “Caffeine Jolt? Toxin Purge?”

Michael nodded. “The first four reduce the impact of True Dreaming. The next four help to deal with the effects of a poor night’s sleep. Truncated Sleep gives you the ability to sleep for an hour less each night but leaves you sleepy and irritable as a backlash. Instant Awareness allows you to function when first woken despite the lack of sleep, and unmentioned in the skill description it also improves your baseline for the rest of the day, slightly at least. Caffeine Jolt is the solution to push you up to functioning normally until you sleep again. You use it to perk yourself up and then Toxin Purge to remove the jitteriness and aftereffects of the first skill. You basically use one and then the other. Initially, you’ll want to cycle them every ten minutes.”

“That frequently!”

“Yes, Tom. initially every ten minutes but as the levels grow, you’ll be able to stretch it to half an hour and eventually to hours.”

“Did you use these?” Everlyn asked teasingly.

Michael looked away, embarrassed. “Absolutely abused those four skills in the tutorial. I keep wanting to buy them here but haven’t been able to justify the expense yet and Caffeine Jolt and Truncated Sleep are not available at all from the Gods’ Shop.”

“Thank you!” he said and offered the paper containing the list back to Michael. “I’m sure everyone wants to memorise that for when they have the resources.”

Satisfied with the advice. Tom went into his system room and deliberately not researching teleport options bought the eight skills that Michael had recommended along with Black Dodge. The ones that were in the GODs shop he purchased from there despite the terrible exchange rate it represented if he did the mathematics.

Skill: Black Dodge - Tier 1

Black dodge has all the functions of the standard dodge; technical skills, faster speeds when dodging, precognition in battle exhibited through a sixth sense feeling with one vital difference. It only works when the attack is going to hit despite the dodge attempt but in those situations it is twice as effective as the standard skill. Damage done from the resulting glancing blows is partially mitigated.

There was a simple reason it was named as Black Dodge. It was because when you used it, you were left black and blue. Apart from that slight drawback, it was a fabulous skill. When it mattered, it let you move faster, and the damage mitigation was significant. Yes, you would suffer hundreds of extra glancing blows, but the skill was not good for a standard fight. It excelled when it mattered. When you miscalculated an enemy’s ability and when its deadly claw that should have split you in two was avoided and only nicks you instead because your dodge was twice as fast as it should have been. That was when Black Dodge was at its best and why he had chosen it.

It had also helped him progress his Touch Heal skill levels in the tutorial, which had been a feature in its own way.

Tom returned to the real world and immediately used Caffeine Jolt. The continuous thumping headache receded. “And how long after the caffeine boost do I use Toxin Purge.”

Michael laughed. “I don’t know. You’ll need to experiment. Basically, you need it kicking in before you get jittery. Caffeine Jolt is powerful stuff.”

Tom glanced around. The fire was just getting started, and he decided he would use the evolution potion immediately rather than waiting until after eating.