Before I started choosing my rewards I first had to list out my priorities and problems. Thankfully the amount of time I could spend in the reward room depended on the level of rewards I got, and since I had gotten up to a level 30 reward, I could spend up to 30 hours in this room. Of course I had already spent many of those hours sleeping already, but I still had plenty of time, so I didn’t need to rush anything.

First things first. What are my biggest problems I need to fix, and what do I need to keep in mind while choosing my rewards?

It was too big of a list, so I decided to go over it one more time.

1. First I get to keep all of the things I collected in the dungeon. So some of the things I’m worried about have already been taken care of, which is great. Especially the Archetype Skill Orb, with that I won’t have to worry about having enough mana for my plans.

2. I need to take special care when choosing my special reward, since it’s a trait, characteristic, Power, or something on a similar level. There are pros and cons to any choice I decide to make.

A Power can grow without limits, is multifaceted, and runs on its own energy system. However, Powers have to be slowly learned through trial and error, grow slowly unless used very often, and can have unknown side effects. A power can come to define a person, just like the one I have. But that's just the thing, I already have one, and focusing on more than one could slow down my growth.

Skills use already available resources like mana, physical stamina or mental energy, are less flexible at first but can be customized with extended use and time, and have their own growth limitations and benefits. Skills are great, but are somewhat vanilla compared to other options.

A metaphysical organ uses MP (Meta-Physical Energy), can synergize with other metaphysical organs, can be detected by others but is hard to specifically identify, can be grown without necessarily being used but is limited by one’s own growth limit. I’m not a huge fan of metaphysical organs because of how rigid most of them are in their application. They can be a great addition to make up for weak points in a build, but they aren’t really my thing.

A Trait doesn’t grow (in general and unless specified) but has max and strong capabilities from the start to make up for it, is permanently active/available, doesn’t require any energy input to function(unless specified), and cannot be detected from direct observation(only from observing the effects it has on other things). Traits can influence almost everything a person has or does, which is great, but the fact that they don’t really grow is kind of a put off for me.

A Characteristic can be tremendously powerful, but it also has unforeseen negative and positive interactions/conflicts/synergies with other Characteristics that could completely ruin someone’s future or elevate them to new heights. It’s a dangerous gamble that could have enormous payoffs… that I wouldn’t want to take.

There’s a lot to think about when it comes to the special reward, and I think I’ll save it for last for that reason. Moving on to other things to consider.

3. I could trade in higher Rank rewards for lower Rank rewards, but that’s kind of a waste since I can’t do the opposite, so I need to take care to get the most out of every reward.

4. The 4 normal rewards could be: a random skill orb, a lower tier talent awakening orb, an artifact of a larger scale of effect(something like an array), a more powerful artifact of personal scale, or an even more powerful artifact of singular use. Of course these aren’t all of the options, but it gives me a framework to work off of.

5. Of course I could also use my Status points for some of these kinds of things, but that’s too expensive for the current amount of points I have.

Those are all of the major things to keep in mind, but now I need to think of what I actually want the rewards to be considering my circumstances.

First, I am in desperate need of something that will allow me to get to civilization undetected, because I will easily be found once I leave the Dungeon of Tribulation. In that same vein, I need something to hide my appearance until I can get a new identity.

I need some sort of wildcard/trump card to use in case of emergencies. Because this world has some crazy powerful things in it that I have no chance of going up against normally.

I need something that will help me grow. Something like a more reliable attack method. I felt that I was lacking in this aspect all throughout the Dungeon of Tribulation, and since combat experience is a reliable way to gain experience, I feel that a good attack method is paramount.

I would like a way to start getting confidential information that I can’t get from The Archives. (I’m thinking of maybe a listening device or something that I can plant somewhere important.)

Other than that, what I really need is an artifact that will work well with my Metaphysical Physique [Body of Artifacts]. Having a large cost or downside will drastically increase how powerful the artifact will be, allowing me to get more out of my reward. I could get an artifact that will tell me if I'm being tracked or something similar.

The last thing I need is a bag or something that I can link to my Internal World, for more convenient item storage and retrieval, so I won’t draw attention to my spatial abilities.

It’s a pretty long list for sure. However, once I get down to it, I can use one reward to satisfy multiple requirements. The first thing that comes to mind is getting an artifact that blocks anything outside from looking at what’s stored inside of it. If there are enough downsides or negatives to the artifact, then its concealment capabilities will be tremendously increased and strengthened, and since I can make my body exhibit the artifact’s properties, then It won’t matter how useless the original artifact is. This will definitely be one of my reward choices.

If I have an artifact that can stop me from being tracked, then I guess I don’t need something that will tell me if I’m being tracked. So I guess that is no longer a problem, nice.

If I think about it, that solves most of my problems. I’m mostly worried about being tracked once I leave here and am able to be tracked again, but even if I take care of that problem there’s still the fact that I can’t change my appearance, at least not in a way that isn’t detectable or removable once I get to civilization.

That made me think back to one of my Talent choices. If I think about it, [Anonymous & Access] is looking like a pretty good option right about now. After all, it said that I could buy a body/self or another identity along with everything else that identity could need to be real. If I could just completely change myself into another person, then I wouldn’t have to worry about the government tracking me down at all anymore. However, I have no idea how costly something like that would be, and it’s not like I’ll always need to remain anonymous in the future.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

It sounded like a great idea right now, but a Unique Talent isn’t something I wanted to be only a temporary boon. I would have to think about it some more before I made a decision. If only (Selective Transformation II) was able to make permanent changes to my appearance, then my identity problem would be solved. But as it stood there was no way I would be able to permanently hide my appearance with it. Hah… I’ll come back to this problem later. For now let’s think about something else.

The spatial bag is a simple problem, I can just get a bag that can only be used by me. Although it will have a very small storage space because of this, it won’t matter because I’ll be linking it up to my Internal World.

As for information collecting? Well there’s no way such low level rewards can evade the detection of any decently well equipped organization. So although I would love to get some juicy confidential information, I think that’s a pipe dream at the moment.

As for an attack option, I think I can use one of my rewards to fulfill this condition, and I can probably find something that will grow along with me as well. It’s an easy solution.

That’s 3 of the regular rewards taken care of then: an attack option, a spatial storage bag, and an artifact that stops outside information prying. Now all that’s left is one regular reward and then the big reward.

I tried to think of what I should choose as my 4th and 5th rewards, but it just wasn’t coming to me. So I decided to redeem the rewards I knew I wanted, and hopefully I would be able to think more clearly afterwards.

So I said into the void, “I would like to redeem my rewards please.”

[4 normal rewards and 1 special reward remaining]

[Would you like to choose your rewards from a random assortment, or specify and customize your reward choices?]

In the past I would’ve thought the random assortment was a worthless option, but not anymore. However, I didn't need to use that option currently, so it was an obvious choice for me, “I would like to specify my reward choices.”

After saying that, a new screen opened up. This screen showed something like a text editor mixed with art software and a search engine, and off in one part of the screen there were the numbers 2600, 2700, 2800 and 2900. These numbers were the points I could spend creating my 4 normal rewards.

I was already familiar with the reward creation process, so I took no time at all using the tools to specify my first reward using the 2600 point reward. I wanted a spatial storage bag that I could put an imprint on so its contents could only be accessed by me. The description I put in made an image of a small black coin pouch to appear in the window. It was a simple spatial storage bag that would barely be able to hold double the amount of stuff it looked like it should, but it was enough for my purposes.

Next up was the attack option. I could get an artifact for attacking, but artifacts required energy to function, in my case I would be using artifacts that functioned off of mana. However if I was going to be spending mana I would prefer to be spending it on something that wasn’t static like an artifact. So instead of an artifact, I wanted a Spell.

You would think describing a Spell for a reward would be fairly easy, but it wasn’t. First of all I had to meticulously describe what I wanted from the Spell. Then I had to worry about the allotted points I was working within, 2800, so I had to put in a lot of different restrictions and limits on the Spell before finally arriving at what I wanted. After a lot of finagling, the Spell [Frozen Water Lance] was ready for me to redeem.

I didn’t actually redeem any of the rewards yet though, I would redeem all of my rewards at once. So I moved on to the third reward, an artifact that I could use to hide from magical tracking and searching. For this reward I used the 2900 point reward, I needed this artifact to be as powerful as I could get it. Then I moved on to describing and customizing the artifact.

In the end the artifact turned out to look like a tiny metallic safe that would only be able to fit a few coins inside of it. If it were to be looked at on its own, then it was basically useless, but its small size was actually a benefit to me rather than a negative. I would be absorbing the artifact into my [Body of Artifacts], and my [Body of Artifacts] had the equivalent of an artifact stomach that held all of the artifacts that I absorbed. After an artifact was within the artifact stomach then my body could copy and display the same effects as the artifact.

With those 3 rewards finished, I needed to figure out what my final 2 rewards should be.

But making the artifact got me thinking, I don’t have to use every reward to make me specifically stronger, I can improve other things that I use too. The first thing I thought about strengthening was the Restless Ruby Tree so it would be more useful to me, but I didn’t want to rush my last normal reward, so I started to look through my Internal World to see if anything else caught my eye before making a decision.

After a lengthy search, something I had almost forgotten caught my eye. It was a small silver vial with a strange alien script scrawled all over it, and it prevented me from viewing inside of it to see its contents. I got this on the very first floor, but I didn’t know what the writing on the bottle meant so I had put it off for later. But now that I was no longer restricted from entering The Archives, I decided to hop on over and see if I could quickly identify the markings on the vial, maybe it would be worthy of an improvement if I knew what it was.

I easily entered The Archives like normal, and as I made my way into The Archives I threw on a cloak that would hide my appearance, since I was only going to be here for a short while, and I didn’t want to waste any time on social interactions.

After entering I made quick work of translating the markings on the vial. It turned out that it was a very old language that was called Thurinovas. I was somewhat interested to learn more about this language, but for now I just translated what was on the vial. The translation was instantly done after inputting a mental image of the vial into the translating ‘software’ available in The Archives.

The rough translation read as, “Stored within this vial is a being by the name of Shadow Symbiote. This Shadow Symbiote will feed off of the host’s mana in a non-parasitic way, however it requires a form of shadow mana to live, which it acquires by transforming the host’s mana into shadow mana. The harder it is to transform the host’s mana into shadow mana, the less growth potential the Shadow Symbiote will have and the more mana it will need. In exchange, the Shadow Symbiote fuses/attaches/connects to the host, which allows the host to benefit from the Shadow Symbiote’s abilities.”

After I finished reading the translation I couldn’t help but speak out loud in a quiet voice, “Allows the host to benefit from the Shadow Symbiote’s abilities, huh? It doesn’t mention anything about what those abilities are though. But more importantly, why isn’t host capitalized?”

I didn’t get an answer to any of my questions, but in any case I had gotten what I initially came here for, so I left The Archives and came back to the empty room.

I wasn’t sure what to do with the Shadow Symbiote now that I knew it was inside the vial, but I knew I wasn’t too keen on having the thing feeding off of me, even if I would probably be a good match with the Shadow Symbiote due to my pure mana. However the description didn’t mention anything about the Symbiote needing any particular kind of host, the only thing it mentioned was the mana conversion. That makes me wonder, is there something else I could give this Shadow Symbiote to and still benefit from it?

As soon as I thought that, another thing popped into my mind. That’s right! I can give the Symbiote to the Restless Ruby Tree. Although I’ve just barely made a connection with it, I can still share some of my mana with the Restless Ruby Tree, which the Shadow Symbiote will then be able to feed off of. It’s the perfect solution, I won’t have it living on me, but I can still benefit from it.

This was all great, except for the fact that I had gotten nowhere closer to answering what I should do with the last normal reward. I felt like I was close to an answer, like all of the pieces were coming together, but there was just something I seemed to be missing.