Quill slowly woke up in a daze as everything that had happened before he went to sleep came creeping back into his thoughts and he let out a groan as he sat up. He had to assume the points in the body stat were why he hadn’t woken up feeling all sore despite sleeping on the cold hard ground.
He stretched his body, feeling a couple of joints pop as he looked over at the trap door. The throne was still sitting on top of it which was good so he doubted anybody had gotten into the grand station. Especially since traveling through the metro tunnels themselves was such a dangerous route.
He brought up his class upgrade screen that told him he needed to kill a freaking cursed sin in order to level up. He probably would have outright ignored that and adapted to living his life as a level 24 forever but he needed to kill all these stupid cursed sins in order to actually survive once the tutorial was done. Which was just… Ugh.
“Hey Quill, you can get super depressed and despair about it later. I want you to check something for me?”
“Good morning to you too.” He managed to get out as he yawned “What do you want me to check?”
“Good morning darling~” She said in a super chipper tone before switching back to her normal voice “I need you to check the overly ornate chair for me. Properly examine it first before casting identify. I want to confirm a nagging suspicion of mine.”
Simple enough. He hopped over the broken window he had to make in order to rest in the kiosk and headed over to the golden throne. He didn’t really know what he should be looking for but he examined the whole thing anyway. Outside of some small red and purple gems that encrusted the base of the whole throne with some large blue and green gems embedded at the top. There were several markings of some dialect that he didn’t understand over the headband and around the arm rests. Otherwise it seemed pretty straight forward. It just came across as your typical throne you might see in a high fantasy setting. Not thinking he could glean anything else from the chair he decided to cast identify.
Throne of the soul king- F grade- Upgradable
(Rare)
Made by a man who sought to get into his lord's good graces by giving him the power to command those he deemed lesser.
Whomever owns this item will find their soul attacks greatly strengthened when they are within a 20 meter radius of the throne.
“Huh. So I take it the rat king was primarily a soul attacker or something then. Is that why when he was barking commands I felt some kind of impulse to obey him?”
“Sorta, he was using some kind of skill which was a soul based attack that would have forced you to obey him. But it was clear his stats and probably his class were geared heavily towards the soul stat since his body was fairly weak. If it wasn’t for me protecting you from the attack you would have likely been his drooling minion. But regardless, the strength of the attack was stronger than I wasn’t expecting so I figured he had some kind of amplifier helping him out, hence why I wanted you to check on the throne. Also since I was protecting you I think I’ll just say your welcome. Feel free to praise me now~”
“Yeah yeah, thank you” He responded as he looked over the throne impressed.
“Uh... No. Properly praise and thank me. I am not accepting some half assed thanks. Come on, I know you can do better than that~”
Quill inadvertently swallowed a little and spoke again. “Really, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I would absolutely be dead if you hadn’t intervened and without your help. I would be lost and most likely dead.”
“That’s a good boy. Anyways, we should probably take this chair with us. Even if you don’t have a use for it, you will probably be able to sell it for some decent money.”
“Yeah, I was thinking something similar. If nothing else, I have plenty of room in my storage ring.” He quickly stored the throne inside and realized he didn’t really know what to do now.
He felt logically he should go and kill the roaches now cause only an insane person would try and tackle that rank up quest.
“Good thing you are ins-”
“Don’t say it.” He quickly cut her off.
“What??? I wouldn’t keep saying it if you didn’t keep denying it. Practically becoming my catch phrase at this point.”
“No it isn’t. Either way. Logic would dictate I should try to fight the roaches. They would be the easier faction to deal with all things considered. Probably easier to deal with than just the single cursed sin.”
“But???”
He let out a sigh. “But I’d like to check out the rest of this station first. See what I can glean and if there is anything here that might help me with dealing or killing a cursed sin.”
He decided by first checking the platforms that were in the grand station. He wanted to know what other colors he was dealing with aside from the white, green and red.”
“What colors would you like to see??”
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“I’d LIKE to see nothing. But if you are asking me what my favorite color is? Then it’s probably grey” He stopped and frowned at that. His favorite color wasn’t… He quickly shook his head as he pinched his leg “Anyways. We need to scout things out. So let's get going.”
He trotted up the stairs before pivoting right back around and trotted back down, placing the golden throne back on the trap door before going back to the stairs. The last thing he wanted was to suddenly get a surprise attacked by something while examining the cursed sin.
He began to check out the platforms, each one was a copy paste of the others that were in this station but they were still fancier than the platforms in the regular stations, with golden architecture holding the thing up with various murals depicting all sorts of things.
Some had dragons burning cities, others showed angels descending from the sky and killing grotesque looking monsters, many showed various humanoid races doing all sorts of things. From fighting, to building, to going on adventures. It was actually quite beautiful and he enjoyed the stories they seemed to tell.
He did note that the artist clearly favored the angels as it showed many of the other humanoid races seemingly bowing and venerating them. It would have come off as a heavily religious scene; however his enhanced eyesight did pick out details on some of the faces of the worshipping humanoid races that held poorly contained rage towards the angels they were bowing too.
His attention went back to the platforms, he could admire the beauty of the artwork later. For now he needed to focus on the main threat.
Each platform was completely separate from the others so he would hope that should he fight one, the others wouldn’t try to interfere. They could elongate their arms and the last thing he needed was to deal with a mass hoard of scary hands trying to nab him while he was fighting for his life against one of the worms.
Once he scouted out everything it was now time to figure out what colors he was dealing with. He had 6 stations in total and he already knew 3 of the colored sins. So now it was just finding out the last 3.
“Not to be a debbie downer but some of those colors might not be in this station. I mean, it’s not like we actually know how many colors there are or even if they’re multiples of the same color.”
“Please let me hold onto the little hope I still have.”
“Alright alright. Go do your little scouting. But don’t go having another mental breakdown if there are even more cursed sins then you expected/hoped.”
“I make no promises.” He responded as he staked out the first station that had its arrival time the soonest and waited. Sure enough, when the electrical sign said “arriving” The cursed sin appeared and Quill held his breath as he bit down on the familiar fear that seemed to stretch through him as the cursed sin appeared in the familiar color of sickly green.
This was actually a really good thing he tried to tell himself from his hiding area on top of the stairs of the platform as he risked peeking out more. He needed to know if this monster was missing a hand. If he was then there was an even stronger chance that he was only dealing with one of each color. Obviously not guaranteed but it would help reassure him.
As the cursed sin started to pad the platform he examined its body and sure enough. One of its many arms had a stump on it. He could practically leap in joy if he wasn’t so freaking scared of the damn thing!
Eventually the cursed sin decided there was nothing on the platform worth eating and began to crawl away allowing Quill to let out a breath of relief. He didn’t know why the creature was so scary to be around but hopefully it would eventually die down.
Once that was done he checked the other five platforms as well and soon knew what he was dealing with. He still had a white and a red cursed sin which was a good sign. The other three cursed sins colors were purple, blue and yellow. All looked exactly the same outside of the colors so he almost wondered if they were the same type. What was it Ssevinac said? They were cursed sins of Gluttony?
“They are also pacified. So I would assume they don’t actually eat things on the platform if they are alive based on what we know. Though I am not sure if you would count if the cursed sin found you.”
“This almost feels like a poorly thought out gimmick in a video game.” He complained “One that you aren’t actually supposed to fight or deal with in a dungeon as asking the player to do something like that would be incredibly unfair. Nudge nudge. Hint Hint!” He glowered up at the sky hoping the system got his message. But of course there was no reaction.
He huffed in annoyance and began to make his way towards the kiosk now that he had gotten all the information he wanted from the cursed sins. He wanted to see what was behind the closed locked door.
As he hopped over the broken window and walked over to the door, he contemplated how he was going to open it when her voice chimed in. “Well you could go the boring way which is to see if any of the rat corpses held the keys, the savage way such as your class and try to break the door down through brute strength or the easy and fun way!”
When she didn’t elaborate, Quill felt himself sigh and asked the obvious question. “And what, pray tell, is the fun way?”
“Well it’s a basic lock without any magical stuff keeping it closed. Why not just use your energy manifestation as a mist, let it fill the keyhole properly and then let it manifest into something solid allowing you to create your own key.”
Huh.. Yeah, That would make things a lot easier. He summoned up the mist and had it go inside the keyhole as she said and soon enough he got a click and turned the knob opening it.
“Well that was incredibly easy.” he murmured before opening up the door and stepping inside.
Inside was another break room with a practical treasure trove of… Stuff. He didn’t know what most of it was as it was all in chests or crates but it was clear that the rat king had been using the break room as a storage space.
He began to open crates, chests and examine everything that was just lying around or leaning on the nearby walls, making sure to cast identify on everything as he did so.
Identify has leveled up to lvl 3
Most of the stuff that was within the crates were various coins, jewels or weapons and armor. Most being somewhat useless to him, especially since half the armor seemed to be fitted more for rat kins than humans. He could have used some new armor.
He opened one crate that was filled with various black balls and casted identify on it.
Rat bomb- low quality- G ranked (Common)
An incendiary explosive made by rat kin that goes boom. Not sure what else you were expecting. Keep away from fire, children and crazy people.
Creates a small explosion when lit or in contact of Fire
Quill stared at the explosive devices for a long moment as a grin slowly etched across his face.
“Uh-oh~. I know that look. Whatchya plannin on doin?”
“I think I plan on getting that level up quest out of the way and kill my first cursed sin.”
The Insanity ailment has been buffed from weak to mild.
“If I wanted your opinion I would fucking ask!!”
“You tell em honey!”