It was definitely going to take some getting used to but, well, I could certainly get used to this. Arrayed before me, like the most expensive banquet any world had ever seen, was treasure. I happily slinked up to the latest new item, a helmet of a strange metal. It was winged, though the design wasn’t like any wings I had ever seen. The feathers looked like leaves, creating branch-like pinions. My hand touched it, and the System did the rest.
Item
Helm of the Arboraven
Effect: Grants the wearer the respect of all plant and avian life. The wearer has the vision of an Arboraven.
The knowledge of the item’s properties was known to me, but the actual qualities of the effects weren’t. I had no clue what an arboraven was, so what it’s vision might be was a mystery. Still, it seemed to have a grand effect, the helmet must be worth heaps of gold.
My mother tossed it aside. She fussed over me as I told her what the helmet was and did. We had been doing this for a few hours now.
“Oh my sweet darling! So clever and powerful. My strong little dragon.”
Byzametiya, pronounced biz ah meh’tee yah, was apparently my progenitor. At the sight of me, she had bounced around the room, sending jewels flying and shaking the ground. Quickly regaining her composure and, seeming sheepish, - a strange look on a dragon - introduced herself.
“Oh prophesied child,” she started, “I have been waiting for you to stir for many years. I,” she paused for dramatic effect, tilting her face and looking off into an imagined distance, “am Byzametiya, the last of the gem dragons. A title which no longer holds true.”
Saying that aloud, in a language I understood without knowing before, she excited herself again. She shivered, her scales throwing purple lights across the cavern, turning the space into a wonderland of shimmering colours.
“Hello,” I said, feeling small and foolish, “it’s… lovely to… finally meet you, mother. I am Izaark.” My voice was a small, coughing rasp. The words coming from my mouth were understood, but the new dialect felt strange on my tongue.
“So you can talk!” My new language, easily thought of as draconic, was a raspy and guttural language. Yet from Byzametiya’s toothy maw, it somehow sounded like a lullaby. “You’re so intelligent! You even have a name already! I saw my majestic little hunter fell that prey masterfully. Well done, Izaark.”
I felt a swell inside me at her words, a feeling I was not expecting. There was a nurturing tone in every syllable, met with a yearning happiness inside. Again, my adult, human mind was met with my infant kobold brain. I wanted her affection as I had my actual birth mother. Imprinting, like a duckling maybe?
Whatever the case, I fluttered at her words. I felt my tail wag, and ignored the pang of ridiculousness I felt. The pride of a dragon was hardly something to shy away from. It was time to start really impressing her. A chance to start playing the role was also a welcome opportunity, I would keep my reincarnation to myself.
“Oh magnificent mother, great Byzametiya, the most…” I struggled for another effusive word. “Luxurious…” I fought back a wince, but the gigantic dragon batted her eyes. “The most luxurious of the gem dragons. I am blessed to be your child, and hope that I can live up to your illustrious name.” The ground shook with her stamps as she snorted and squealed in delight.
“Well said! Well said indeed, little one. Already, a service is done, and a mother made proud, by your words.” There was that inner glee again. “Come to me, that I might share some time with you. I have so long awaited your arrival, and find myself overcome and improper.” She stretched her left foreleg out, creating a path to her shoulder, gesturing.
Happy to oblige, I clambered over the first thing in my path to her lowered hand. Paw? I think hand works best, though it hardly mattered due to what happened next. As my hand touched the piece of scattered trove to climb it, the jingle of bells played, alongside a page telling me what the item was.
Item
Wand of Chaos
Effect: Upon use (100MP), cast a random spell.
I gasped aloud, and Byzametiya asked what was wrong. When I explained what had caused my alarm, she grew incredibly serious. Where before her excitement was accompanied with joy, this time it was filtered through greed.
Which led to now. A few hours passed since then and a dwindling pile of magical items to identify was my prize. I had learned a vast amount about the world I now inhabited, and the types of magic in it. It seemed that there really wouldn’t be anything that could be considered impossible from now on. As I worked, Byzametiya told me the story of the race I had been born into. She was no joke. A grand skirmish had been fought, with gods on both side of the battle. Ages had past since then, but the war wounds still remain. Greatest of which was the slaughter of the other gem dragons. Some trick pulled on them by a god, but mother said no more, containing a rage that started to boil.
I returned to focusing on the work, then.
There were rings of immense power, gifting neverending breath, flight, strength or larger mana pools. A gauntlet that would improve the results of smithing when used. Boots that double the wearer’s speed, sandals that stick you to walls. Staves of magic, wands a-plenty, amulets and necklaces and earrings, all with wondrous properties.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
I was happy to share this with my mother, who had been amazed at the clarity of my ability. Her greatest happiness was, as I finished, the small pile of items that even to my untrained nose, stank of corruption. Each item had a new descriptor, cursed, and had a detrimental effect associated with it.
Cursed Item
Symbiote Shield
Effect: A living creature, this shield bonds to anyone who uses it to protect themselves. It will slowly sap the user's mana, growing stronger as a result.
I could see the downside there, but the upsides were less understood. How the shield would work, what it meant that it would grow stronger, that would only be understood with use. Even then, as it was thrown onto that same mound of “junk”, it didn’t seem unusable.
However, considering the much larger collection of non-cursed, fantastical items, mother was hardly hurting for usable trinkets. It had been an inability to identify the effects and drawbacks of the cursed items that had stopped her from using the purer magical items. It simply wasn’t worth the risk that any would do some real harm, and I had to admit it seemed possible.
Cursed Item
Earring Of The Unrisen Phoenix
Effect: This earring will age the wearer, proportional to their race’s lifespan. Within seven days, the wearer will expire and a phoenix will be born from their ashes.
That one, for example, would probably kill even a dragon like Byzametiya. Wise, not to haphazardly use items. My ability to see these effects would be massively useful in the future. I begrudgingly said thanks to Dion in my head, and for a moment, I felt dizzy. As though I was tipsy. It passed quickly enough that only paranoia, not certainty, set in.
As we neared the end of her collection, my stomach protested loud enough for her to hear it. She started, eyes widening, before apologising with all the force of a true draconic mother.
“Oh, my strong, powerful, talented appraiser is hungry! I’m sorry, my darling, I’m still very new to motherhood.” She paused, pondering and looking around the room. The chaos, which her trove had been thrown into by her own excitement, was becoming more uniform. Satisfied for now, she seemed to make a decision. “I am not a bird or cow. You and I, we are dragons. Dragons do not offer aid, nor do they expect it. Go, hunt. Bring me even more pride, little one. I will reward you for your work when you return.”
“Th-thank you mother!” I could only imagine what boon a dragon, especially one as ancient and powerful as she, could bestow. I excitedly trotted over the tunnel entrance, looking back once to a nodding, purple head gesturing me onwards. It was a little silly, but a large part of me was scared to leave her side. I chalked that up to understanding there wasn’t much better protection than an ancient dragon.
Still, within Izaark the kobold, Isaac the human remained. While there was a definite hunger in my stomach, the primary reason for leaving wasn’t that. My head was spinning with new information, and the absurdity of meeting a dragon hadn’t helped. Getting some space, wandering the caves for a while on my own, might help me clear my head, get back some of the normal Isaac.
And Isaac the human knew he needed to start levelling up, too. I looked at my status page, no changes there. My mana was full, and I had felt it happen over a fairly short time in the cave. Testing would need to be done, as I couldn’t find any actual numbers for it, but it felt about 0.5 mana points per second of regeneration. I hadn’t lost any health yet, but I hoped that the conversion there might be the same. I assumed the System would prompt me if I levelled up, but seeing no change there was still a bit of a shame.
Actually, other than the prompts, the System had been very quiet since meeting my mother. With a start, I realised that there was a pulsing icon in my vision. It looked like an envelope, and it had the number “4” hovering on it. I must have been so distracted with the magical items, and the shiny coins, that I hadn’t noticed and somehow kept the prompts minimized.
Excited, I rubbed my clawed hands together and focused on them. The chime of bells sounded, and achievements were unlocked.
Achievement Unlocked - Yeah, I’ve definitely seen one of these before.
Appraisal is a fine skill, wanted by many. You have appraised an item of -Uncommon- quality.
Effect: Increased information can be revealed, at the cost of mana. Mana cost is based on the quality of the item.
Achievement Unlocked - You’ve come to the right place, my friend.
Appraisal is a fine skill, wanted by many. You have appraised an item of -Rare- quality.
Effect: Items can be appraised from a distance.
Achievement Unlocked - What can I say? I’m a collector of fine things.
Appraisal is a fine skill, wanted by many. You have appraised an item of -Epic- quality.
Effect: You now instantly know the value of an item, relative to the most common currency of the land.
Achievement Unlocked - I’m not sure what it is, but it’s dangerous.
Appraisal is a fine skill, wanted by many. You have appraised an item of -Cursed- quality.
Effect: For a cost (200MP), you can attempt to remove a curse from an item. If the item’s nature is intrinsic to the curse, there will be no effect.
Wow. That was a crazy experience, the world seemed to pulse as my vision shifted. It almost looked as though a lens had fallen over my eyes, and it took a few blinks to get used to it. I looked back again, having not yet fully left the cavern, to see plumes of smoke from an already snoring nose. The ground around her was scattered with small dots. Most were green, some were blue and a few were purple. The pile of cursed items were awash with red dots.
Green for uncommon items, blue for rare, purple for epic? That tracked, though I found myself wondering which came first, the System or the video games. Well, that would just be another thing to excite Byzametiya when I returned. Ideally, I would be laden with new abilities and skills, so appraisal will become less interesting. Remembering the instant shift in mood, I doubted that.
With my new sense of the value of things, I was actually surprised that this horde, while staggering in wealth, was not the be all and end all. There were many things I knew of, part of an esoteric understanding inside me, that would outshine this whole cavern -mother included- in value.
Maybe I’ll get a small inheritance when I come of age, I thought happily to myself, trying to whistle as I walked down the tunnel. My lips were at the end of a snout, covering sharp fangs and a forked tongue. Whistling was going to take some working out. I did enjoy rapping my tongue across my teeth, a xylophone’s worth of noise being produced.
“Enough messing around.” I proclaimed, out loud. I felt like speaking my actions into existence. “Watch out, Gaia. I’m about to start grinding experience.”