If all the other rooms were weirdly empty, this one was the opposite. It was a crude facsimile of a convention. The room was covered in abandoned tables. A vending machine sat behind each booth where the vendor would be seated. The tables were decorated haphazardly. One was covered in structurally impossible stuffed animals, while another had a collection of painted squares hung on the wall behind it.
“Anything on the tables is worthless.” I said, “Either it’ll break if you try to move it, or it won’t move at all.”
Mimic pointed to a stack of manga. The cover of the one on top looked like a romance between an orb in a veil and a cube in a miniskirt. At least, that was my best guess, mostly from the fact that the cube seemed to be blushing, and the heart-patterned background.
“It’s all a single object.” She said, “Like a sculpture.”
“They’re for decoration, or maybe to hint at secret areas.” I said.
“What about the vending machines?” K asked.
“Those are real.” I said, “But they won’t take cash. They’ll either take quanta, or some special dungeon-specific currency. Most of the stuff in them will be overpriced junk, but they’re worth checking. There’s probably some good stuff here.”
“What would be the priority?” Mimic asked.
“Any equipment that’s marked as S or Star rank is worthwhile. I mean, it might not be of any use for you, but it would be useful for someone.” I said, “That said, a warning - non-unique modifiers don’t stack, and either way, gear stacks additively. Um, there might be a relic, but those are much more subjective.”
“How?” K asked.
“Relics include, but aren’t limited to, the kind of things Divinities absorb and call Gifts.” I said, “Your ‘Reflector of Flaws’ could turn out to be a Relic, and that wouldn’t do anyone any good.”
“That fucking thing?” K cursed, “They’d try to sell it to you?”
“I mean, if you contained it properly, it could be used to make something worthwhile.” I said, “It’s got power in the materials. But yeah, Relics are subjective.”
“You mean some are worse than useless.” K said.
“They aren’t ever useless.” I said, “But they’re often only worth anything to the right kind of person.”
K and Mimic wandered off to check the vending machines. Before I followed, I took a moment to check my notifications.
[You have established a bond with Mimic Uvev! New Skill Acquired!
[Skin of the Changeling]: For a period of time determined by Dream Manipulation, you will be granted a form approximately equivalent to an Amorphous Fae. This skill will only activate when otherwise-lethal harm would be taken. This form is virtually immune to all forms of physical trauma, but highly vulnerable to both energy and elemental damage. A lockout will be applied to activation of all skills when this ability is activated, until thirty seconds from when it is deactivated. The properties of this form will scale with all your Dream stats. This ability has a one-month cooldown.]
[You have established a bond with K Mandatory! New Skill Acquired!
[Mirrored Night]: Within a dream, summons a divine knife. Using this tool will be instinctive. The knife can be transformed to increase effectiveness into one of two forms: a shield of light centered around the hilt of the knife, or a blade of light extending from the tip of the knife. Maximum size of the form is affected by Dream Manipulation, and Effectiveness of the tool is affected by Dream Potency and excess Dream Manipulation.]
The new abilities were neat. [Skin of the Changeling] was a bit of a disappointment. It might save my life, but it wasn’t very powerful, and it would lock me out from using other abilities. There was a good chance that in any situation where I needed to use it, I would still die, just a minute or so later. Honestly I’d be much more thrilled to have it if I already had useful baseline skills.
I mean, I wasn’t exactly going to file a complaint, but that was due to lack of ability rather than lack of desire. Later on, I would probably find this skill very useful and powerful, but right now it was a letdown. (1)
[Mirrored Night] was much better than I expected. It offered both an offensive option and a defensive option. Frankly, the sword would probably be more useful than the shield, but both were significantly better than a tangible sword. That said, I wouldn’t be able to make my blades nearly as long as K could, and they wouldn’t be nearly as dangerous. There was a gap between us in both stats and raw power, and the ability didn’t cover that. Plus, like most Dreamer abilities, it was a clumsy facsimile of its originator’s abilities. It would still be nice to be able to stab anything that got close.
As I thought about that, I wandered the vending machines. For the most part, nothing there looked amazing. Most of the gear they had was C or B rank, and out of six machines I only saw one piece of A-rank gear. It was too expensive for me to buy, at 7,500 Quanta, so I was going to have to make do with lower rank gear instead. Fortunately, the B-rank gear only cost 1000 Quanta, and the C-rank gear only cost 100, so I probably could afford to fill all three remaining slots.
Rather than the broader stat-boosts that most dungeon drops provided, the higher rank stuff here was almost all boosting a specific stat. That was better, but only if you could find stuff that boosted stats your class actually had. K wouldn’t benefit from gear that would boost “Dream Manipulation”, and I wouldn’t benefit from gear that enhanced “Narrative Reinforcement”.
K stormed over, glaring slightly. “Come here. I want an explanation.”
I did. She dragged me to a vending machine that was filled with S-rank gear, Relics, and a single piece of star rank gear.
[Star of the Youngest Dream (Star, lv. 1) - 30,000 Quanta]
[
* 1% Legend Proliferation (Star)
]
“Nice.” I said, “I didn’t think there’d be any.”
“Why is this good?” K demanded, “I’ve seen much better stuff.”
“Star gear can be infinitely, and losslessly, fused. The buffs stack additively.” I answered, “In the short run, S-rank is better, but in the long run, either you’ll be able to get enough Star gear to craft a piece of supergear, or you can sell it to someone who’s trying to do that for a fortune. By the end of the first month, I’d be lucky to get a class-relevant Star gear for a million Quanta. It might not actually be worth getting now, but at some point, if you have time, it would be worth coming back for it.”
“Your contract?” K asked.
“I can’t share details, but yes.” I said.
K punched in a code. A disc dropped down, and she held it out to me.
“Stay alive.” K said, and tossed it to me.
Stolen story; please report.
[Internal Apocalypse (S, lv. 1)]
[
* 100% Dream Potency
]
She grinned, “You’re more useful alive. Especially if I’m right about this.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Half of it’s secret, and I’m pretty sure you know the other half.” K said, “Think of it as an investment. I’m sure Eris taught you a little about that.”
I laughed awkwardly. (2)
“When you next see her, remind her I’m not an idiot.” K snarled, “I know what I’m doing, and I won’t be put further into her debt.”
“Tell her yourself.” I said, “Thanks for the gift, but I’m not getting between the two of you.”
“You already have.” K laughed bitterly.
“K, stop it.” Mimic said, “Whatever your issues with Eris are, Ashlyn’s on our side.”
“I can’t complain.” I said, “Well, I could, but I’d gladly take an angry lecture for a nice piece of gear.”
Mimic sighed, “Don’t let her off the hook so easily, Ashlyn. Anyways, catch.”
She tossed me two more discs, and I caught them on reflex.
[Usurpation By Fire (B, lv. 1)]
{
* 37.5% Dream Borders
* 37.5% Dream Durability
}
[Melody’s Reprise (B, lv. 1]
{
* 50% Dream Manipulation
}
She grinned, “I want you at your best for the boss fight. That should be all your gear slots filled, right?”
I nodded.
“Good. They’re yours.” Mimic said, “Anyways, K, I think I’ve got what I need. Is there anything else you need, or should we start shopping for the plan now?”
“I’ve got almost everything I want.” K said, then punched a sequence into the machine, grabbing the Star Ranked gear, “Ashlyn, if you wanted to empower the most people, what would you grab?”
“Hmm.” I muttered, “Don’t grab anything additive, those can be good for novices but they tend to be outclassed by percentage boosts even in early-game. If you don’t know who you’re grabbing for, the category modifiers are probably the best things to get. Every class has Offensive and Defensive stats, so you know anyone can use them. However, those are also the most common modifiers for drops, too, so it might be better to grab more specific categoric multipliers and trade on the marketplace for the ones you’ll actually need. If you can get it, B-rank gear is about three times as good as C-rank gear for actually strengthening people, but it’s costing ten times as much here. I don’t think you can budget for A-ranks at that price. Using S-ranks on yourselves might actually do more good to your net effectiveness than lower-tier gear on other people in the long run, but it wouldn’t help today.”
“K, how many people do you think we can actually recruit for this?” Mimic asked.
“Less than a hundred, at least to start.” K answered, without bringing me into the plan. (3)
“Then let’s grab a mix of both.” Mimic said, and they split up.
I frowned, and focused on improving my stats as I waited. With my new gear, that wasn’t just directly boosting my stats anymore. The effect of gear increased linearly with level. The piece of S-rank gear K had given me would provide a 200% boost when I ranked it up to lv. 2, and then a 300% at level 3. On the other hand, the costs doubled with each level. Each rank of gear also had a more expensive starting upgrade price than the last. I couldn’t even afford to rank up the S-rank gear, which started at ten-thousand potential and only got worse from there. (4)
[You have 6,428 Potential]
[You have spent 6000 Potential to raise all B-Ranked Equipment from Level 1 to Level 5! You have 428 Potential Remaining!]
That was the most I could do in terms of gear, so I tossed another two points into Dream Durability.
[You have spent 324 Potential to raise Dream Durability from 40 to 42! You have 104 Potential remaining.]
It wasn’t terribly likely to be the difference between life and death, but it wasn’t nothing, either. I took a moment to check my summarized statsheet:
Ashlyn's Stats Base Value Final Value Physique 40 92 Dream Potency 100 454 Dream Manipulation 100 606 Dream Borders 66 276 Dream Durability 42 177
“We’re ready.” Mimic said, “Are you?”
“Yes.” I said.
“Anything we should know before we go in?” Mimic asked.
“The boss will be tangentially related to the dungeon.” I said, “So it’ll almost certainly have something to do with glass. It’ll also be a lot more dangerous than the other monsters. It won’t go down in a single blow, and it won’t be as easy to kill as the others were.”
Mimic nodded, “Got it. Stay alive, okay?”
With that, we walked through the doors.
---
(1) I didn’t think I’d get Mimic’s absurd strength. I was certain that came on the other side of her powers.
(2) So she absolutely had figured out about my bargain already. Apparently, I was no good at keeping secrets at all.
(3) It wasn’t like I couldn’t guess, though. Mimic would be planning evacuation, and K would be planning to defend the safe zone. Which plan it wound up being was still unclear, but I could trust them to think about saving people in ways I wouldn’t. When it was a game, I didn’t care about survivors outside of mechanical advantages - now that it was reality, I did.
(4) In the long run, S rank gear was the best, if you didn’t count Star rank. It took a while, but before long, diminishing returns meant that it provided the best stats of the options.
---
Ashlyn's Full Current Statsheet
Ashlyn's Gear Physique Dream Potency Dream Manipulation Dream Borders Dream Durability Fae Glass Dancer (B, Lv. 5) 1.25 1.25 1.25 0 0 Usurpation By Fire (B, Lv. 5) 0 0 0 1.875 1.875 Melody's Reprise (B, Lv. 5) 0 0 2.5 0 0 Lake of the Sacrificed (B, Lv. 5) 0 1.25 1.25 1.25 1.25 Internal Apocalypse (S, Lv. 1) 0 1 0 0 0 Total Gear Multiplier (1 + sum of not-conflicting modifiers) 2.25 4.5 6 4.125 4.125
Ashlyn's Stats True Base Value + Achievements Total Base Value Gear Multiplier Final Value (Always rounds down) Physique 40 1 41 2.25 92 Dream Potency 100 1 101 4.5 454 Dream Manipulation 100 1 101 6 606 Dream Borders 66 1 67 4.125 276 Dream Durability 42 1 43 4.125 177