-Use Plunder?

The screen pinged Seth yet again to respond to the prompt while he stood dumbfounded over the corpse. I can Plunder people’s caches? Wait, if it’s possible to take people’s cache items, why didn’t that lady in the cloak take it instead?

Alarm rang throughout Seth’s head before he quickly summoned Anar and jumped several feet away from the body. His eyes darted back and forth while he sporadically moved his limbs, waiting for the arrow of death that was surely about to end his life. After several moments of his life flashing before his eyes, Seth’s frenzy was only met with cold silence. No death arrow. No cloaked woman.

Honestly, he was kind of disappointed.

After doing an extra check around the perimeter just in case, he ended up back next to the corpse with a frown. “Kind of a rookie move, huh?” He gave a look back down at the skinny corpse, as if trying to get it to understand his confusion.

“No traps, no ambush, and the real loot was left behind. Either she is extremely bad at her job as a bandit, or she isn’t a bandit.”

He thought about it for only a second longer before pulling back up the screen to Plunder the unmoving body. He activated his ability and watched as his cache filled up with a slew of miscellaneous items. Unfortunately, it seemed Seth’s cache was no match for all the new items, as a small pile of stuff spawned directly in front of his feet. Between the mound of random monster pieces, stuff he bought in Ethin, and some of his important items like Fool’s Errand, Seth’s cache had already been half full. Now, it was completely full and overflowing, as shown by the items on the ground. It seemed it was about time to finally go through his things and ditch some of the junk.

Damn, I really wish I would’ve sold some of this crap while I was in Ethin.

He sifted through the pile before luckily finding a medium, blue bejeweled knapsack among the items. He threw all the stuff from the ground into the bag before taking off toward his original destination. The next challenge was near the towering mountains that bordered the swamp. He had found a rather large crack that contained a familiar silver metallic wall. Fifteen minutes passed without another person crashing into Seth. He safely arrived at the crack a couple minutes later and found that it still hadn’t been completed.

Although he wasn’t sure what the challenge would consist of, he was confident that whatever the case, he could handle it. Plus, entering a challenge meant that no one should be able to get in through the entrance, so he can safely look through his new loot. The only hitch would be if this challenge was like Rulik’s lair, where the exit was always available.

Regardless of the risks, Seth walked up to the wall. The metal of the wall slowly peeled back at the spot in front of him, causing a sizable rectangular hole to open for him. No light shined through the hole, just leaving a sheet of hazy darkness as the only identifier that he could enter. He strolled into the hole without hesitation. Upon entering, the darkness licked at his skin and a sense of familiar weightlessness took over his being.

Just as he realized that the feeling was teleportation, colors exploded back into his vision and he found himself standing in a cube-like room. He curiously scratched his chin while he analyzed the room. It looked to be seven by seven feet, and consisted of a series of random puzzle pieces that protruded from the walls, ceiling, and floor. Honestly, it reminded him of a toddler’s jigsaw puzzle.

Instead of diving into the challenge that was clearly going to take up the majority of his next couple days, Seth emptied out all of the contents of the blue knapsack, as well as the items in his cache excluding the Xtrey Cloak, his recovery crystals, and Fool's Errand. It was time for his favorite part of this new life: checking out some new loot. With a greedy smile on his face, Seth sorted the forty or so items into groups. Soon enough, the miscellaneous items were laid into four groups: Potions, monster pieces, plants, and unknown trinkets.

First, he started looking at the monster pieces, as they seemed the least interesting and it was the largest pile. After a little while, he had used Identify to decide which monster parts were the most valuable. It seemed that most of the good items that were in that pile were just the ones he had acquired beforehand from his Plunder ability. It seemed that his ability was way better at harvesting monsters than he had previously thought.

Any pieces that were from the skinny guy’s cache were pretty sloppy, so even though some were of a higher tier, they were still not worth keeping. After setting aside the monster pieces he was thinking about keeping, he swiftly moved on to a more interesting group.

Scooting over to the pile of plants, Seth started to identify them as well. It turned out that the plant group could also be separated into multiple groups of its own. There was two multihued fruits that apparently helped raise attributes, six bushels of herbs that stemmed bleeding, a small mountain of edible berries and stalks, and a large amount of something called Shoogin leaves whose description labeled them as a potent hallucinogenic drug.

Looks like homeboy was a bit of a hippie.

He shrugged with disinterest before deciding to take all of the plants with him, even the Shoogin leaves. Who knew, maybe he could find a use for them in the future, even if it's just to trade with another hippie. He smiled at the thought while he turned to the pile of assorted bottles.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“What do we got here?”

First, he picked up a star shaped bottle with a vicious purple liquid inside. He shook it around a bit and watched as a small storm of purple glitter begin to swirl inside. True Sight showed the potion to be of a significantly higher value than the rest of his stack. A few showed small amounts of energy as well, but this one definitely took the cake. He hesitantly set the potion aside for anticipation’s sake. Seth had always liked to leave the best part of a dessert for last so its taste would linger the longest. With one last glance to the star potion, he moved on to the rest of the pile.

Not being able to contain his patience, Seth flew through the pile of uninteresting potions before arriving at the small tray of bottles that showed signs of energy. The majority of them were lower classed recovery potions as well as quite a few bottles of things called Liquid Ambrosia. According to the description, they were lower classed bottles of sustenance that were pretty much rich people field rations.

He gave one a taste and was delighted to find that they were absolutely delicious, like a gourmet milkshake. He quickly stashed them into his cache before looking back over at the recovery potions he left. Seth wasn’t entirely sure how they differed from his recovery crystals, but he didn’t think it mattered that much. The more, the merrier. He tossed the rest of them into his cache and moved to the bottles with traces of energy. He was super excited to Identify them as well because the bottles themselves were encircled with gold swirls and looked pretty important. His smile slowly faded as he read the description of the bottles.

Fun Yum Happy Time (Class B):

-Once ingested, the user will experience a rush of dopamine followed by an inexplainable feeling of jubilation and delight, as well as a large increase in libido.

“Are you fucking serious?”

Seth stared in absolute disdain at the gilded tray of potions.

This guy really brought Viagra here? Who the hell was he planning on using this on? I know you’re a seventeen-year-old, but dude, come on! Not the time!

He begrudgingly placed the tray inside his cache, because even though he wasn’t going to use it, they were still Class B items. They should fetch a pretty penny if he held onto them for long enough. Finally, it was time for Seth to move on to the potion that he had been waiting for. He snatched the star potion before giving it a dangerous look.

I swear to christ if this is more drugs, I will go back and kill him again. With a spark of mild anxiety, he activated Identify.

Elixir of the Fatigued Hero (Class S):

-Once ingested, the user’s constitution will adopt a special property based on the elixir consumed. (Alert: The constitution attribute will not be affected by adopted property.) (Warning! To adopt a constitution property from an elixir, user must be at least tier five for assured survival.) (Warning! User’s survival chance cannot be calculated because of conflicting title: Little David.)

Seth’s eyes widened with surprise and excitement.

A Class S potion! It took me hundreds of kills just to get Inmate’s Resilience and that’s only Class A! Where the hell did he even find this?!

Drool began to pool inside his mouth at the thought of drinking it.

“Based on the description, this isn’t supposed to be for people in the Configuring stage… But it also didn’t say I would definitely die from using it.” Seth mused over the idea.

Gaining a power boost that is usually enjoyed only by tier fives and higher seemed like it would be almost cheating at his level. Although, there was another interesting piece of information that he was able to derive from the elixir’s description. His only title, Little David, applied to more than just fighting monsters. He shrugged at the new information.

Just another plus of having a title, I guess. It’s pretty cool that it applies to more than just monsters though.

He thought about it for another moment before setting the bottle aside for the second time. If he was going to die from using the elixir, he might as well check out the rest of his spoils beforehand. He finally moved on to the last group of random trinkets. The first he picked up was a copper cylinder about the size of his forearm.

Camp in a Can (Class D):

-Upon activation, creates a small camp consisting of an individual sized tent, a fire pit, and a set of stakes for perimeter patrol. (Reusable)

“Sweet,” he claimed with gratitude.

Although not really necessary, it was a welcome item to have. Plus, the perimeter stakes could definitely be useful just on their lonesome. Next, he moved on to a small green disk that had some square shaped facets carved into the material.

Camouflage Array (Woods) (Class C):

-Upon activation, creates a seven meter wide circle of varying camouflage to hide the user’s location. (Reusable)

Slightly less excited, Seth also put the disk into his cache along with the Camp in a Can. It seems like the trinkets might be less interesting than he had originally thought. The trend continued as he went through the last three items. One was a portable water purifier, another was an attachment for a weapon that he had no use for, and the last was a broken pair of something that had a similar use as binoculars.

Well that was underwhelming. You really brought high classed drugs but nothing else that was worth a shit.

Seth thought back to the cloaked woman. She had spent a good few minutes looting the body as well, to the point where the guy really on had the clothes on his back left over. Maybe he had a bag of better stuff that was on his person.

That would make sense as to why he had another empty bag inside his cache.

Despite the possible loss of high-quality loot, he was still satisfied with the stuff he had gotten from not even fighting.

Finalizing his choices, Seth left most of the monster parts on the ground while he put the rest of the items into his cache. He even put the blue bag away as well, because he didn’t think toting around the bag was worth it just to have some extra junk. Grabbing the last item from the ground, he held up the swirling star potion in front of his face.

“No better time than the present I guess,” he muttered.

Unstopping the bottle, he thought about all of the things that could go wrong from drinking the concoction in his hands. There was no guarantee he could safely ingest the contents.

Unfortunately for fate, Seth simply did not care.

Tipping over the bottle, he silently downed the entirety of the liquid.