Knowing full well that pulling out the whole inventory of a ring of holding was anything but a bad idea, prompted Gerald to opt for the slower route and pull the items up one by one instead.

For even if he was in possession of a pseudo-immortality as he was, it would have meant little if he constantly died due to stupidity. Such as by being crushed under a pile of random objects or by being poisoned by unidentified jars breaking.

He then closed his eyes before focusing on the inventory before pulling up a ghostly object at random amongst the floating debris.

The shadow of the selected item was a slightly long and thin rod with a sphere attached to one end and left Gerald to believe it to be a wand of sorts.

His guess was immediately proven correct as the object cleared up in his inner-vision and revealed itself to be a golden duelling wand that was etched in runes using some silvery metal he was unable to identify and topped with a beast core as its magical focus.

He had no use for such an item as he was not classed as wizard or any type of magic user, but under normal circumstances it would’ve still been a decent item to have just due to its considerable value. For duelling wands were normally the weapon of choice for affluent young magic-casters due to its more mobile nature than the more powerful wizard’s staff.

This price of wands is attributed to the tendency for it to be made from more magically conductive metals than traditional magical woods of staffs that could be safely Delmared to offset the effects of a backfiring spell. Thus duelling wands needed the runes and a bigger beast cores to simulate the same effect of preventing the backfiring of spells which therefore resulted in wands fetching for a higher price than staffs.

This was true until you got into higher ranks where Staffs just generally outclassed wands. Because when a magic user got stronger and hand more control, a bigger staff of magical wood which could fit more magical cores to now supercharge spells rather than act as a failsafe would be the more preferable option than a wand.

So you generally had lower ranked wizards and casters who favoured flashy wands, then when they got older they tended to get big blinged out staffs.

Yet somehow in the middle ground ,Rods were detested nearly universally and only used by eccentric humanoids such as diminutive crab-like Hermitaur mages. Otherwise in his experience rods were only somehow used by lunatics or mass murderers whom referred to themselves in third person which to this day still baffled Gerald.

To his annoyance the wand in his possession was a broken old thing with it’s gold all tarnished along with a cracked magical core that left it absolutely useless to him.

It’s as fucking good ta me as a Chitpulka-shite warrior! he cursed mentally before dismissing the broken wand and sending it back into the inventory. The wand’s outline dimmed before minimizing back down inside the hazy box to join the rest of the ghostly items.

Heck at least it’s a whole rod made o’gold. I can always pawn it off or else give it to the kiddo… he thought before a realization dawned to him.

He was meant to give it to Silky so she could absorb the item for its composite materials and therefore be able to reproduce them.

Heck she might even be able ta create another baby fra’the core of whatevermajig magical beast was used ta’ originally power the thing!

It left him feeling more hopeful for the previously useless item and gave him a new outlook towards whatever else he might find within in the ring.

So with that thought in mind he pulled up another amorphous blob which turned out to be a raggedly and small leather bag with a string sewn into its mouth of which was currently pulled shut.

Gerald tried to be hopeful for whatever the contents of the string purse could be. But even with the thought that the bag would enable Silky to reproduce whatever materials it and its contents were made up of, it still looked to him like a pauper’s purse.

He knew that through the interface he wouldn’t be able to interact with the items and therefore open up to look inside the purse unless he pulled them out from within the inventory. So Gerald willed for the leather-string purse to be deposited into his hand.

The little bag came into being in a small flash of mana before clinking down into his open palm lightly.

A wallet aint gon have nothin’ worth a fart inside weighing like that, he thought before reluctantly pulling the string loose and emptying the purse’s contents into his hand.

Out came three bronze coins; one with a scale on its front depicting it was from the Union, another had the octopus face which belong to the Throne who was one of the three rulers of the tri-divine bloc with a five etched on it’s back and the last coin was simply unadorned except for having a hole through its middle.

The last coin was an Alliance bronze which was more commonly know as Grafter’s penny, of which originated from within the Phoenix alliance that was controlled by the Pheonix Dancer and his wife along with their army of Swallow agents.

Gerald was very familiar with the coin and of the fact that it needed no identification or counterfeiting techniques when it was minted such as the case with the two other coins. Because it was minted by Isaldra herself, for her and her husband’s economical needs. Inside the coin would be a small iota of her mana, one which Silky would not be able to reproduce and thus leaving him confused as to the purpose of the coin.

He was disappointed in the low values of the currency but the fact that penny wouldn’t even be of any use to him or Silky made it even more disappointing.

Maybe we can have a wee mix of both Union and Divine coins ta show whichever loon happens ta comes along first, just ta show ta’ we can gi’ out coins of whatever type to whicheva adventurers come along ta set shop and a’come delving? He reasoned.

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It made sense to him to leave your options open with the promise of being able to mint the coins of whichever nation comes to them first he quickly concluded, even if he really preferred it not to be the annoying Divines and their bullshit theocracy.

But then to him this also meant that wherever Isaldra had chosen for Silky to set roots, must be close to the borders of both of these nations or their agents if she deemed it prudent for him to have the coins of both nations available.

It was too much socio and geopolitical economics for him to handle and left him with sense of daunting foreshadowing, one with the whole future involving the fuckery of dealing with diplomacy.

She’s fucked me arse up real good with this one, he thought dejectedly whilst putting the coins back into the shitty purse. Last of which was the penny which he violently chucked back inside with as much venom as any person could.

But just as he was tying the string a wonderful thought occurred to him.

It’s fucking string! String is made fra’ threads and if I gi’ this ta the kiddo and ask her to make me a big old bag or a even a friggin quilt then I can get meself a bed! I can even go nab me some wool and stuff a fucking mattress!

He then gleefully tossed the purse lightly into the air before catching it and then subsequently willing it back inside his ring. The action was carried out with a toothy smile which was accompanied by his wheezing giggle.

Gerald would’ve even got up and done a wee jig if Silky wasn’t resting upon the side his leg, for he was ecstatic that his third item on his list was going to be easily crossed of so soon.

It had been a long time since he had slept in a comfortable bed that was anything more that just a clutter of leaves or pieces of cloth ripped off dead adventurers.

Closing his eyes with renewed joy Gerald then dived back into his ring’s inventory.

He pulled up a small thin splinter that quickly revealed itself to be a steel hair clip. Finding not much value other than to feed it to Silky he then quickly dismissed the object without even pulling it out.

It wouldn’t do nothing for him other than serving as a big needle or a small shiv in his hands if he had chosen to sharpen the tip. Better to let Silky actually use the material as a base to make him a real weapon such a trident or a quarterstaff.

He then spied another sliver that was very reminiscent in shape to the prior steel hair-pin he had just looked at, before an inkling suspicion started to occur to him.

There was a slight pattern here.

His idea was furthered by the fact that this new item turned out to be an Adamantium ritual-nail with its unmistakable greenish-grey colour. A commonly used yet slightly expensive item of high ranking ritualists and necromancers.

He then willed for the inventory to pull up all the items with the query that were made up of all the names of the level rankings: Tin, Bronze, Steel, Silver, Gold, Adamant, Mithril, Corium, Platinum and Diamond.

The interface then replied by pulling up the duelling wand, the coin purse and the two pieces that were pretty much useless scrap to him that he had just interacted with, these items appeared along with few new items more.

A sense of worry started to crawl up inside of Gerald at the sight of the new additional items which quickly morphed into dread at the revelation of a shiny metallic card. He then willed for all of the items to appear on the dirt before him for inspection except for the card.

Surrounded by a mishappen mess of pencils were the four items he had already dealt with along with: a regrettable empty giant-sized Yootzi! mint-box made of tin, a silver hair-comb with a few strands of scraggly pubic-like silvery hair, two brightly shining chain-links of mithril, a incandescent corium wing-shaped lapel-pin of a Fantimal knight-paladin and a wedding band with a tiny -even to Gerald- speck of a diamond embedded in it.

The items were mostly mundane and useless to Gerald, with the lapel-pin being outright dangerous if he was caught with it by any of the minions of the Divines. Especially to the fanatical minions of the church of Fantimal that it belong to. So without further ado Gerald recalled all the items back within his ring.

What really worried him was the card. For it was full-fledged-platinum ranked adventurer’s card from the Union state. One that was plated in platinum and jam-packed with high level magical inscriptions, such as one that track the whereabouts of the card in the event that it were to be lost.

And these cards were well known to also be soul-bond and could only theoretically get lost if the owner were to be trapped in a different realm to the card. But it was more likely that the card were to be without its owner because they were dead.

Gerald knew that all of these items were for Silky’s use. But he’d rather be damned than bring out some, very probably dead, platinum ranker’s calling card and subsequently getting into a unholy heap of shit when the Union came to ruin his ass.

He could only hope that his soul-bound ring of holding’s space magics or whatever machinations it functioned on, were stronger and able to obfuscate the tracking that was placed upon the card. Otherwise Gerald knew he would be royally fucked when a whole slew of high-rankers came for him.

Semi-immortal or not, but at the end of the day he was still just a level hundred and something Bush Hermit and would be nothing but a bug to be repeatedly squashed when the friends of the cardholder came to ask questions.

High-levelled individuals tended to have a vainglorious modus operandi and Gerald even doubted that they would even ask him questions if they were to discover the holder of their very-likely-dead-friend’s identity card.

The questions would probably come in the form of torture if he were to take an educated guess.

Because nobody ever got up to mythical rankings by being handicapping themselves by being morally squeaky-clean and he’d doubt if any powerful living legends would even blink an eye at torturing a naked hobo-fairy like himself.

He Knew for a fact that even the morally good Pheonix Dancer and Isaldra got up to some dirty shit from time to time and they were the actual good guys.

Gerald did his fair share of mischief back in the day and right now he felt like he had been had quite particularly bad by Isaldra.

“Everything ya need ma’ bloody arse,” he grumbled whilst adding a whole slew of insults non-verbally. He was angry, but he wasn't stupid enough to insult a Diamond-ranker in front of her protege.

Who knows if dungeons could get up ta some weird shite, like takling ta each other accross ta' world like the Wakes, he quietly wondered to himself.

He was now left in a really bad mood and not particularly keen to look up anymore items. He knew that there was a lot more left inside his ring for him to inspect, but the thought of a future that involved setting up a dungeon economy and possible torture-death by high rankers diluted the fun out of his mysterious item identification.

Plus Gerald was feeling slightly hungry after all that intrigue he felt from his mystery items he had pulled out from his ring-of-holding-gacha.

He then closed his eyes one more time before delving into the ring’s phantasmal box.

Ya got any food? He questioned.

The ring answered by pulling up nearly half of the floating items within the ring.

Of which turned out to be different types of bundles upon bundles of jerky of various mystery meat, jars of dried fruit, assorted paper wrapped biscuits and various Gerald-handy vials and jars of drinks.

On a particularly large bundle wrapped in golden paper was a bright red message that was scrawled in some shiny magical ink.

LET SILKY ABSORB SOME!

DO NOT EAT ALL OF ANY ITEM.

Well that’s not gonna be too hard wi the grub, but I cannae promis you that with them drinks, he thought as he willed up a random bundle of jerky and a random vail of drink before him.

Before he had opened his eyes and willed the items into his hands, he was already drooling from his beard.