“Shut up,” I muttered through a sore throat, irritated by the moans and groans of some obnoxious individual who wouldn’t let me sleep. They sounded like they were dying. I fought through the piercing headache to open my eyes to find out who was being so dramatic. That was when I discovered that I was alone in my room and that I was the one making the sounds.
“Well, that’s fine. After what I went through, I can make whatever sounds I want.” As it was, I was trying to focus my mind enough to read the new pop-up notifications. It took me a few minutes, but the headache finally started to fade away. Despite this, my body ached quite a lot.
Finally, I recovered enough to glance at my information screen. I was pleased to see that my magic points had increased to fifty-five points. However, that wasn’t what brought me the most joy. I now had something called a “Twilight Dimension.” While I did want to groan at the system’s choice of a name, I had to admit it was an amazing ability.
While I was overjoyed with the large increase in my magic point pool, what excited me the most was what happened with the Bag of Holding. Looking back at the notifications, I realized that the Bag of Holding had transformed into a connection to the Astral Plane, giving me a small pocket dimension called the Twilight Zone. “Wait. What? You must be kidding me? Now I’m certain that either the System or the creator of the System has a weird sense of humor. Still, I have to admit. It is a nice power.”
In addition, I had actually gained an additional attunement slot available due to the Ring of Attunement. I was very pleased, and this only increased the more I read. My magic points had obviously gone up, and surprising, so had my mental energy. Heightened Senses, Blindsight, and Lucky were kind of obvious. However, I definitely needed more information about Body of Twilight. Because of this, I clicked on it to see what else I could learn about it.
BODY OF TWILIGHT: Shadows embrace your body, turning it partially incorporeal. Physical attacks have a 50% chance of passing through your body on a successful attack. In addition, your proficiency in Stealth is doubled when not in direct sunlight.
“Nice. I don’t see anything about a time limit, but I’m sure there is one. Otherwise, it would be too overpowered. I’m probably limited in the number of times I can use it each day or limited by how long I can maintain the Body of Twilight. Either way, I’m quite satisfied.”
Thinking about the new additions to my information screen, I realized that more than half of the magic items I had used to evolve my draconic bloodline didn’t seem to have any effect at all. I wondered if they combined to create particular effects. For example, the Belt of Darkness, the Bracers of Shadows, and the Cloak of Protection might have combined to create the Body of Twilight. That actually made sense since I chose those items that I thought would be the most likely to resonate with my Twilight Bloodline.
Smiling, I laid back and enjoyed feeling like an overpowered protagonist. Whoever had given him the system was an avatar of awesomeness, a brilliant being, a cosmic caregiver, a divine deity, an exemplar of excellence, a fantastic father or marvelous mother, a god of generosity, a herald of happiness, an incarnation of incredibleness, a just….ah judge?
“Bah, I probably need to start working on organizing my thoughts. I need to plan out what I want to do next.” Thinking about the future, I stood up and picked up the last remaining magic items that I hadn’t chosen to extract magic from or use for evolving my draconic bloodline. The first one I picked up was the Aegis Libram which I quickly put within my pocket dimension. The remaining magic item was the Boots of the Firelands I was currently wearing.
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Deciding I should attune the boots while I had the opportunity, I sat down and started concentrating. Fire resistance was too important to neglect. In fact, I felt a little stupid for not having already attuned the boots. That should have been one of the first things I did after getting them.
By the time I was done attuning the boots, my stomach was growling again. “Oh my, how does the tribe feed so many hungry newborn kobolds?” Getting up, I looked around to see I had forgotten about any leftover food. Unfortunately, I found nothing. Realizing my stomach was getting louder with its demands, I decided to go get some food. It wasn’t as if there was anything left for me to do in my room. I had already taken care of all the magic items.
Fortunately, just as I was about to open the door and head outside, someone knocked on the door. “Come in,” I said, wondering who was visiting me. Of course, the number of possible choices could be counted on the fingers of one of my hands.
For some reason, I was relieved that it wasn't Dróttinn or Geyma. Instead, it was someone new, an older female kobold with scales that had long since lost their luster. However, the bling she was wearing more than made up for the lackluster appearance of her scales.
“Dang,” I thought. “She was wearing more jewelry than any of the other kobolds I had seen.”
“Greetings Gothi Nóttormr, I am Forsjá. We have brought food for you,” she said. She then took a step back and made a beckoning motion. She did pause a moment and sniff, wrinkling her nose as if trying to figure out something. However, other than sharing a look with the other female kobolds who entered immediately after she did, she said nothing.
These three female kobolds also wrinkled their noses and looked at me. I was about to ask why they were making faces when I smelled the food from the food that they were carrying into the room. These trays were placed on the large table. Of course, the table was too high so they had to lift the food plates above their heads to slide them onto the table. My mouth started drooling as soon as they walked in. I could barely take my eyes off the food. However, with a monumental effort, I tore my gaze away and smiled at the kobold females.
“Thank you very much. I was just about to leave to get some food. I appreciate your thoughtfulness,” I said, nodding to each of them in turn. “If possible, could you bring a lot of nonperishable food so that if I get hungry, I can snack?”
“It would be our pleasure,” Forsjá said, smiling back at me. She gave me a brief bow and motioned for everyone to leave.
As soon as the door closed, I pounced on the food like a gnome would pounce on a copper coin. Standing in the chair so that I could reach the food, I didn’t even care that some of the food was trying to slowly crawl off the plate. That just meant that they were the first ones to meet my stomach. I silently chomped down on the food until it disappeared. The voracious title certainly fit me I had to admit.
Giving a little burp after I was done, I sat back and instinctively tried to unbuckle my belt before I realized I wasn’t wearing one. In fact, the only thing I was wearing was a pair of boots. The scaled boots were black and actually almost matched my own scales.
While I was thinking about what to do next, the young females returned with more food. They placed several bags on the bed and started picking up the emptied plates. They also brought several pouches of water. At least, that is what I assumed was in the pouches. This was a pleasant surprise. I had expected them to bring another jug of water. Because of this, I could just carry the food and drink with me.
In fact, I even had a belt I could use to carry them. The tag said it was a Weight Watching Belt. Apparently, you could tell if you were gaining weight or losing weight by observing how much of the belt was left after looping it through the ring. Needless to say, it wasn’t actually magical.
I really needed to find out who was curating the magic items and teach him the Detect Magic ritual. How in the world could someone who can’t even cast a first level spell be in charge of magic items? Were magic users that rare? It actually raised some grave concerns for me.