A snap of Cosmo’s fingers had us leaning against the polished steel railing of the superyacht as the small waves broke lazily against its pristine white hull. The coastline of Maui where we’d just been stretched off into the horizon, backed by lush and beautiful mountains that disappeared into the beautiful reds and yellows of sunset.
Its enormous sails flapped in the breeze, and the catamaran bobbed in the unique way only twin-hulled boats did.
“Damn,” I said. “This is nice. Can you bring me here every time?”
“Whatever you like, Greg, but I wouldn’t recommend it, personally,” Cosmo said, straightening from the railing and walking inside, Piña Colada in hand.
“Why?” I asked, following after him. “Cost you extra Essence, or something? What’s a few trillion for an all-powerful god?”
“Saw that, did you?” Cosmo said, chuckling with amusement. “Well, now you can appreciate just how much trouble old Cosmo here goes through to summon you Champions. It’s a rough life, being a god, you know?”
That statement could either have been entirely true, complete bullshit, or anywhere in between. Without knowing Cosmo’s Essence Pool—if he even had such a thing—it was impossible to say, and I somehow doubted the god would share.
Inside, I found the equivalent of a living room, furnished with an enormous L shape couch, with massive panoramic windows on both sides. Further ahead was, of course, a bar, manned by a Cosmo bartender wearing a tux.
That I barely paid his double any attention spoke volumes as to how warped my understanding of reality had gotten. Cosmo could show up as a squid at this point, and I’d probably carry on the conversation just fine.
I sunk into the supple leather of the couch and kicked my leg up on the mahogany coffee table that undoubtedly cost more than I’d make at my old job in a lifetime, and brought up a pending notification as I waited for Cosmo to show me the options.
Congratulations! Your Rank-Up has upgraded your [Spatial Inventory].
Ability [Aim] has evolved into [Launch].
Living weapons may now be stored inside the Spatial Inventory. NOTE: Significant trauma may occur if organisms are stored for extended periods of time.
[Launch]: Aim and fire objects from your Spatial Inventory. Speed is inversely proportional to mass. Launched objects cannot be intercepted or stopped until they have fully exited the Spatial Inventory.
Please choose upgrade path:
Current size: 4 ft x 2 ft x 2 ft. Weight Capacity: 20 lbs.
* 4 ft x 4 ft x 4 ft. Weight Capacity: 80 lbs.
* 16 ft x 2 ft x 2 ft. Weight Capacity: 80 lbs.
Now that was interesting. When I first got [Aim], I’d hoped my inventory would gain something like this. Aim was useful, sure, but this? This was a weapon. I couldn’t wait to test it.
Sadly, it would have to wait. Cosmo pressed a button on his remote and a gigantic 80’’ TV swiveled down from the ceiling. No primitive scrolls from behind the bar this time.
On it was a fancy blue screen, not unlike my own System Messages. It showed three options, which, for some inexplicable reason, were all rainbow colored.
Consumable Initialization
Consumables such as tinctures, potions, and food may now be Initialized for temporary effects. Strength, duration, and effect varies depending on grade and nature of the item consumed.
Essence cost reclaimed upon consumption. Note that not all effects may be beneficial. Consume at your own risk.
Armor Sets
Combine five unique armor pieces into a Set. Sets consume as much Essence as the item with the highest Essence cost.
Choose any one ability of any piece in the set. This ability retains its current level, and will now apply to the entire set. All other abilities will be lost. Stats of the constituent pieces may be retained as-is, or freely redistributed for a [30]% stat penalty.
Accelerated Reclaim
Equipment may now be reclaimed once per day, in addition to level ups.
Reclaim window increased to one hour.
I whistled. “Not fucking around with these perks, are you?”
“Greg, I fuck around with no one. Least of all you. So, what are you feelin’?”
I glanced at my god, who’d copied me and put his legs up on the priceless coffee table.
Shaking my head, I returned to the options. “To be honest, they’re all pretty strong. Initializing consumables reminds me of Tool Initialization I passed up in my previous rank up selection, actually.”
Cosmo nodded knowingly. “Believe me, Greg, cooking these choices up ain’t easy! Then I had this brilliant idea! I said to myself, Cosmo, just copy the old ones and make them slightly better! And just like that, badda bing badda boom! Problem solved.”
He closed his eyes and slurped bubbles from his empty Piña Colada, oblivious to me staring daggers at him.
Seriously? Was that really how he came up with these?
“Funny, Cosmo. Because I distinctly recall you saying you didn’t fuck around. Like, ten seconds ago.”
“Did I say that?” he said, looking genuinely shocked. “Well, okay. Maybe I fuck around a little.”
I ignored my patron deity. Whatever he said, these were good choices.
“Initializing consumables is definitely interesting. I actually tried that, once, but it didn’t work.”
“Not a weapon or armor,” Cosmo said.
“Exactly.”
“If I recall, you didn’t choose tool initialization because you thought you could work around the system I oh-so-painstakingly crafted just for you. How’d that go, by the way?”
“Not bad, actually,” I admitted, ignoring his little dig. “Haven’t had the chance to spend very much time on it, but I was able to initialize that waterskin, and later, Rogar’s hammer. I think I made the right choice going with the inventory, back then. Dunno how we’d have survived this Cataclysm Dungeon without it, actually.”
“Kinda crazy, huh?” Cosmo said. “Wrong choice back there, and you could’ve died!”
I narrowed my eyes. “You don’t sound nearly as concerned about that as you ought to, Cosmo.”
“Well, because you didn’t, did you? So why worry?”
Was that supposed to be some reference to fate and personal determination?
A breeze blew through the open sliding doors, and the catamaran’s gentle undulations reminded us we were out on the ocean.
It helped calm me down, allowing me to, once again, ignore the eccentric god’s flawed logic. I considered the second choice. Consumables were interesting, for sure. That bit about it potentially creating negative effects didn’t concern me. I could always analyze it before I drank it. And poisons were always useful.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
“Another improvement on the old option, I see,” I muttered, re-reading the description for Sets. If memory served, the version of this I’d encountered in my previous rank up was far more limited, which is why I never chose it.
“You betcha!” Cosmo said. “Doesn’t make it any less based, does it?”
“Sorry?” I said, whipping my head around. “What did you just say?”
“Based! It’s what the kids in your world say these days.”
Oh god. “Cosmo?”
“Yessir!”
“For the love of all that is holy, never say that again.”
“Oh… Er, okay? Can I ask why?”
“It’s just wrong. Coming from you. Like, Archon-ending-the-world levels of wrong.”
Cosmo’s eyes bulged. “That wrong, huh?”
I nodded.
“Thank you, Greg. I nearly made a terrible mistake! Fret not, my friend. It has been stricken from the record. So… Sets!”
“It’s intriguing,” I said, rereading the description. “A few restrictions with this one, but that ability…”
The power to have any one of my armor’s abilities apply to the whole set. And moreover, it only cost as much Essence as a single piece! Wasn’t this exactly what I’d been hoping for? A chance to finally move away from the all-rounder I was dreading becoming, in favor of a highly optimized set that excelled at one purpose?
“Just wish I knew how similar the items have to be, to be combined,” I said, glancing at Cosmo.
“Agreed,” Cosmo said, nodding seriously. “Let me know if you find out.”
Coaxing information from my god was never going to be that easy, was it? And knowing Cosmo, I wouldn’t be surprised he really didn’t know.
“Okay!” Cosmo said, clapping his hands with as much enthusiasm as a kid on Christmas morning. “What about Accelerated Reclaim? I was pretty happy with that one.”
I briefly glanced at option three, but ruled that one out pretty readily. “Reclaiming once a day isn’t all that useful,” I said, and I could swear I saw the light vanish from Cosmo’s bottomless gray eyes.
“O-oh,” he said, voice cracking like he’d just been disowned. I almost felt bad for him. Almost. Not for the first time, I reflected just how incredible of an actor this guy was.
“It's just a matter of degree,” I said. “On demand reclaiming? Now we’re talking. I could Initialize and uninitialize gear in the middle of a battle, and since things get the same abilities when I re-initialize them, that could actually be useful. Of course, anything I did re-initialize would start back at F-0. That tactic really only makes sense if it retains its original level, though… I suppose even without that, it would let me Initialize stuff like arrows and other throwaway projectiles without worrying about finding them after. Maybe think about that when you cook up my Convergence options, okay?”
“Greg!” Cosmo cried, slapping me on my back so hard I winced. “That is a brilliant idea!”
“Uh, really?” I asked, hardly believing my ears. “So you’re gonna give me that option next time?”
“Absolutely… Not!” Cosmo said, grinning. “But it is a brilliant idea.”
“Cosmo?” I said, in as sweet and innocent a voice as I could muster.
“Hmmm?”
“Screw you.”
----------------------------------------
In the end, it came down to Consumable Initialization and Sets. The choice wasn’t that hard. As with Tool Initialization, I felt like I could work around the System to get it to do most, if not all, of what that ability allowed.
It almost felt like my Blessing held this vast reserve of potential that was just being held hostage by these rules and restrictions. Like the power was there if only I could find it. Like these ‘abilities’ were, at least in part, more akin to guides that spelled out the formula.
I made a mental note to really dive into Initializing more tools and other things. I felt like I’d just scratched the surface with my Blessing’s flexibility. With all the chaos before the Cataclysm Dungeon, there just hadn’t been enough time to explore much. That would change once I got back.
I made my selection. “Sets it is.”
“What about the ambiguity around what qualifies?” Cosmo asked. “Weren’t you worried about that?”
I shrugged. “At the very least, I’m pretty confident my current Basecrest City Guard armor qualifies. I can experiment from there. Even if it is extremely restrictive, it’s just too powerful to pass up. Even right now, I’ve got [Hidden Dragon] and [Snap]. I could have a set that makes me invisible or one that gives me super speed.”
Both were pretty mediocre on their own, but became insanely powerful when applied to my whole body. Granted, neither were leveled high enough to do much yet—[Hidden Dragon] only made me slightly invisible right now, and [Snap]’s acceleration was moderate at best—but I was sure at least [Snap] would become much more useful. Especially since it was attached to Uncommon gear and could level to Emergence. Moreover, any ability I got from now on had the potential to become something incredible in the future. Elemental resistance, boosted vitality... The ability to fly?
As for the stat reclaiming, that was honestly what made this so valuable.
“It’s exactly what I’ve wanted,” I said. “It’s the reason I picked this Blessing in the first place. To craft tailored equipment optimized for specific tasks. By redistributing stats, I can finally do that.”
“Not worried about that 30% penalty?” Cosmo asked.
“It's still a win, even with that,” I said. “70% of pure, optimized spec is a whole lot better than an extra 30% of a diluted distribution. Besides, I didn't fail to notice how that 30%'s in brackets. I'm betting that penalty decreases as I rank up. Maybe even to nothing.”
The options on the TV disappeared, replaced by fireworks and exploding confetti. The speakers blared to life, playing an obnoxious victory theme. Cosmo’s head popped up on screen. The head flashed a million dollar smile and said, ‘Armor Sets, babyyy’ before flashing a wink.
“You’re crazy, you know that?” I muttered.
“Only in the best possible way, my friend,” Cosmo said, before placing the back of his palm on his forehead. “Alas, I’m afraid our soulful time together draws to an end. I’m afraid that I must let you go, little one,” he said, falling onto my lap.
Or he would have, had I not gotten up already. Instead, he just crumpled onto the couch.
“How mean!” he said, righting himself. “Just as I was pouring my heart and soul out.”
Shaking my head, I walked out onto the railing, feeling the wind in my hair as I admired the Hawaiian coastline for a long moment.
So peaceful. So idyllic. Soon, I’d be back. To a world of dragons and goblins and magic. And violence.
“You know, it’s funny. A year ago, I’d have bitched about how fucked up our world was. Of the violence and the atrocities. Now, I can only see it as a utopia. I never knew violence. Sure, you could find pockets of it, but… nothing like Axius.”
Nothing like a world where people got up each day not knowing if meteors would fall from the sky, obliterating their city. Or if hordes of monsters would slaughter everyone they knew.
A powerboat shot by, blaring music as a half dozen guys knocked back beers, laughing at the wakeboarder behind them who just took a spill.
We’d gone soft, in the modern day. And we didn’t even know it.
“Do you miss it?” Cosmo asked, leaning back against the railing beside me.
“Wouldn’t you?”
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” he said, his voice entirely devoid of the silliness he’d showed just moments earlier. “Thought it’d make you comfortable, giving you a taste of home.”
“You mean showing me the place I can never return to?” I snapped. I immediately regretted it. Why did I say that?
“Sorry. That’s not… It does,” I stammered. “It does. Thanks, Cosmo. I think… I needed this.”
Cosmo nodded slightly. “Happy to hear that, my friend. Maybe next time, we can bring Aerion too. For real, I mean.”
I stared at the deity with a blank expression. “You’re joking, right?”
Nope. Not a joke. Okay…
“I don’t know how to break this to you,” I said, “but if you brought her here, she’d either assault you, or go off on a curse tirade until her voice went hoarse. Believe me, I’d know.”
“Well, give it some thought, will you?” he said, leaning off the yacht’s railing as he stared wistfully off into the horizon. “And Greg? Take care of yourself, yeah?”
“Er, thanks,” I said, reflexively. “You too. Oh, and Cosmo? Thanks. For not changing my species without consulting me.”
The barest hint of sadness flashed across Cosmo's face before he grinned and gave me a two-fingered salute.
That was all I had time to process before the scenery abruptly shifted, melting and morphing before my eyes like putty.
In just a few seconds, I was back. To Axius. Standing outside the ruined rubble of the Cataclysm dungeon, beside Aerion, Richard, and Eskil.
And waiting for us a hundred yards away were three beings that made my knees buckle.
Not gods. But they might as well be to me.
Until now, I’d thought that high level delvers were just that—stronger, more capable.
How wrong I was. For the first time since arriving here, I truly understood what it meant to be a high ranking delver.
No wonder they couldn’t enter low-level dungeons.
They weren’t human. They were something far, far more.