After a fight or two, the party had a golden chest appear from the dungeon, it making sense to Jade as it was the first room to include a floating shark. The shark had even dropped a diving helmet accessory, leading Jade one step closer to another combined item, that with the flippers he’d looted from a chest earlier. One of the jellyfish should drop a glowing necklace, allowing him to combine all three into the glowing diving gear, which would allow him to swim and breath underwater easier. It also would make him glow like an angler fish, allowing him to see even very deep underwater. Maybe I should try and get the set for those two as well? Though… how would they use it-
“Hey Jade!” Yondol called over, waving from the exit to the room. “So there’s a primer we need to try and get from the general store when we get back to the surface. It explains everything you need to know about this world and a copy is generally kept around somewhere just in case.” Jade sagged at that, giving Yondol a dejected nod. “In the meantime, what do you want explained first?”
Jade had to think it over as they waited for the team ahead of them to finish, with him deciding to ask about how everyone else’s magic worked. Apparently he’d missed the local churches in every town, each one having a monolith that was used on a person’s eighteenth birthday. Depending on what training they had or what hobbies they’d worked hard on, the person would then get to pick between five to ten different forms of magic they could use. It could be anything from being able to telekinetically knit, to having magic assist them with combat or crafting, like it did with Jade. Over time the body got used to the magic and would offer other options in the future, though Yondol explained that only around fifty percent of the population was offered that chance. Every kind of magic, however, came with a personal storage space, which intuitively used feelings and sensations to help people interact with it, rather than use a visual component.
It all sounded straightforward to Jade, way better than some of the other magic systems he’d heard of. “So that’s why my magic is so weird? Is because it was picked for me and based on another world’s experiences?” Yondol nodded at that, Amy having gotten bored at some point and had started playing with her new starling companion.
“Also it being visual makes it especially weird,” Yondol commented, causing Jade to blush at the deduction. He assumed it was his habit of looking into the middle distance when fiddling with his inventory.
“It’s based on a game I would play back in my old world. You would play using an… item of sorts? It would display things and I could interact with it using my hands.” He tried to explain playing video games to Yondol some more to no avail, there being nothing in that world that had been similar for him to compare it to.
They soon had to stop talking as the next room refreshed itself, getting back into the groove as they cleared out the next few rooms. Jade ended up getting two of the glowing necklaces in one fight, as well as getting two more of the flippers to add to his almost completely full inventory. He even started looting the chests normally, the three finding out that his inventory’s way of stacking similar items worked a lot better than their personal storage.
Even so, they soon ended up with everyone’s inventory being full after a while, finding that they no longer even had to wait for rooms ahead of them to clear. People must head out a lot sooner than us… At least he’d gotten what he came for from the last room, Jade smiling at the third pair of water walking boots. Next is the jungle… he thought to himself, all three putting their hands on the pedestal between rooms and teleporting out of the dungeon.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
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Once the party appeared back at the entrance for the dungeon, they found a group of concerned guild employees all gathered around the dungeon entrance, who immediately all looked at the three with wide eyes. A chorus of “How far did you get down?!” and “You had us all worried!” soon assaulted them, Jade frowning as he placed his hand on the pedestal outside of the dungeon to see which room they had gotten to.
“We were at room-“ Before he could say more, Amy slapped a hand over his mouth and gave him a stressed grin.
“As you can see, we’re fine. Just had a bit of a tough time on one of the rooms and rested up. Let’s get going boys!” She rushed both Yondol and Jade away from the now more annoyed guild crowd, the movement speed buff they all had from each having a pair of swift shoes allowing them to quickly out pace the officials. Soon they were back in the town, Amy rushing both men into an empty side alley and leveled a glare at Jade.
“You never give out secrets like that!” she whisper screeched, getting right up into an embarrassed Jade’s face. “We obviously went down further than a normal party, so we make sure to keep that to ourselves for now. Unless you plan on staying in this town?” Jade shook his head at that, now looking alarmed at her statement. “Guilds can ban members from leaving the town if the need presents, and your magic is too tantalizing of a lure. Until you’ve established yourself in a town and grown your social power, you need to keep it more hidden than that.”
Yondol sighed as his sister’s outburst came to an end, putting a calming hand on her shoulder. “He didn’t think that far ahead, okay Amy? Hell, even I didn’t know how out of the ordinary our fighting had been until the guild members freaked out. We’ll be more careful.”
Amy huffed as she started pacing up and down the alley, Yondol peaking out to make sure they weren’t drawing any attention. “I’ll check the guild information. It had said it was an intermediate dungeon, but I don’t see how our gear made us that much more powerful.”
“I’m not sure either,” Jade interjected, finally having calmed himself down. “From the… game my powers came from, we’re not even wearing top tier gear. Maybe mid range in the first part of the game?” Both of the siblings gave him confused looks at that, Jade giving them a shrug. “It’s all based on a game I played, remember? Unless the power level of this world is lower than I thought it was. That’s the only thing I can think of that would cause this kind of issue.”
“Well anyway, I hope you got everything you needed from this place. Because we are leaving at first light tomorrow,” Amy huffed, walking out of the alley and back towards their lodging. Yondol rushed to catch up with her as Jade walked slightly behind the two. I was planning on getting even more powerful armor… Would that be too much? He sighed as he pondered the question, unsure if he should bring up how he activated the second part of the game to the two. That would… seriously fuck up the world if it works the same way. Maybe only the early game is available in this world…?
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They got back to the inn unmolested, Amy still a bit upset over Jade’s near screwup while Yondol tried to keep everyone calm. They spent the rest of the day chatting with random bar goers in the inn, though Jade mostly stayed off to the side and inspected his inventory with a frown. Now that he thought about it, both the rocket boots and the crafting station needed to combine equipment were both bought from the same NPC, leading him to be slightly confused on how to get both to upgrade his movement options. Messing around with the crafting menu hadn’t helped, leading him to dread what might be the answer. Please let there be no goblins here…
Once the sun set, the three went to bed, Jade having a rough night with everything on his mind.