Mr 30mph and I had been in a heated argument for several minutes. “I just don’t understand,” I said. “Why would you give up additional points to your stats and instead choose a useless trail of afterimages that you can’t even use?”
“I already told you, it’s called looksmaxxing,” said Mr 30mph.
“And I already told you, I don’t know what that is.” I was astonished that it was so important for Mr 30mph to look cool. His System allowed him to spend LP in a virtual store, and of all things he chose a cosmetic. As far as we all knew, cosmetics were useless for anything other than vanity.
“I’m surprised to see you caring so much about this,” said Loftus. “When you came to this world, you didn’t care about levelling at all.”
I drilled my fist into my forehead. I was getting far too invested in Mr 30mph. I supposed that since I was getting unlucky with the System, I was annoyed that someone would willingly forgo spending their points wisely. “Hmph. Whatever, I guess you’re right. He can do whatever he wants. It’s ultimately his choice and none of my business.”
“Oh, you misunderstand,” said Loftus, wagging his finger. “I wholeheartedly agree with you. I think he’s building unoptimally too. I would never do something as stupid as giving up LP for cosmetics. You’d have to be a complete dumbass to waste a finite resource like that.”
Mr 30mph didn’t seem to be fazed by the shower of insults Loftus had given him. “Say what you want for now. You’ll all be eating your words once I hit a top speed of 30mph.”
That wasn’t the point. Even if he were to activate the trail, it would still be useless. I didn’t have the energy to argue with him anymore. “How are you planning to get that fast, by the way?”
He shrugged. “Hard work and determination.”
“In other words, you have no plan.” One couldn’t just train themselves to the speed of a world-class athlete, especially when in the body of a child. Genetics played a huge role in running. “Why don’t you try levelling your Body instead? Or maybe you could buy items to become faster,” I suggested.
“Items?” Mr 30mph was intrigued by that idea. “What kind of items could make me faster?”
“Erm, magical ones, I think. For example, I have some boots that increase my movement speed by 3%.”
“You do? Are they for sale? I’ll buy them from you.”
I wasn’t expecting someone to be interested in buying my footwear, but I wasn’t opposed to the idea. The movement increase didn’t seem to have much of a noticeable impact on my speed, so for the right price I’d easily part with them. “How much are you offering?”
Mr 30mph pulled out his pockets. He had no money inside. “I’m flat broke because I spent all my money on fashion accessories.”
“I’m not giving them away for free.”
He groaned. “But I thought you were a pushover that helped people for no good reason?”
I had no idea where he had gotten that characterisation of me from. Perhaps that was how other Earthlings viewed me for wanting to help those suffering.
“What about a trade?” he asked.
“It depends on what you want to trade.”
Mr 30mph opened his System and brought forth his level-up game, which was actually a virtual store. “Every time I spend a point, this shop gives me completely different options. Right now, I don’t really want anything it’s offering me, but I have to spend a point to reroll the store. You can spend one of my points on whatever you want to have.”
This seemed far too auspicious a trade. When something was too good to be true, it probably wasn’t. “Can I see what sort of stuff is in the shop first?” I asked.
“Sure!” Mr 30mph swapped seats with Loftus and showed me a blue screen full of stuff to buy. It had stat increases, pets, boosts, and of course cosmetics. “You can’t choose the stat increases since they would automatically go to me. Same for the pets, boosts, cosmetics, mounts, skills, lootboxes, and titles. You can pretty much only choose an item. I’ll purchase it and trade it with you for the boots.” He filtered the store by items and showed me the list.
There were pictures of weapons, clothing, accessories and more. I wasn’t too keen on most of the merchandise the shop had. One picture was of a fairly long and thick, black sword.
[Sword of Lightning: When held in the air, increases chance for lightning to strike user.]
That was somehow one of the more useful ones. Mr 30mph wasn’t kidding when he said the shop wasn’t offering anything good. I settled on the least useless item.
[Wall Compass: Points to the nearest wall.]
“I’ll have this one, please,” I said.
“Why that one?” Loftus asked. He was also scanning the items as I perused through the shop.
“If I get lost in the woods, I can use it to help me find civilisation again. Since it points to the nearest wall, it would take me to a building made by humans, right?” I reasoned.
“Or it would take you to some ruins, plenty of those around. Then you’d be even more lost. It seems far worse than just using a normal compass and a map. You could also use your System to give you the locations of your party members. There are so many ways to find your bearings. What kind of airhead would get lost in a world like this?”
It hurt most when someone unknowingly insulted you. I couldn’t let anyone know how I had gotten lost earlier. The shame would’ve ended me.
Mr 30mph bought the item and it appeared in front of him. We swapped our items. He hastily put the boots on and began running around the room. “Woooh! One step closer to the afterimages,” he said.
Blyth got up and went into analysis mode. “I wonder if the effect still works if you put on only one of the boots. And are multiple movement speed bonuses from items additive or multiplicative?” She instructed Mr 30mph to run with one normal shoe and one magical shoe. With a few tests, she determined that no effect would occur with a single shoe. Both had to be worn for the speed bonus to activate.
“Blyth’s a natural born scientist,” I said.
The others at the table agreed.
“So, Yarm,” Loftus started, “after leaving the main party, have you found any other party members to team up with?”
“Yeah.” I immediately regretted admitting that. I didn’t want anyone here to know that I was friends with a monster.
“Who? And what are they like?”
“Well, the first person I added to my party has a beautiful smile and a big tongue.”
“Big tongue? Ah, I see, you naughty boy,” said Loftus. “The two of you must get up to a lot of fun together. I bet she’s your favourite, huh?”
She? Mimics probably didn’t have genders. I felt like if I corrected him, he would ask more questions that I did not want to answer. “Yeah, I guess.”
Someone else joined in on our conversation. “You know, I also left the main party and made my own team. I’ve got a high-level necromancer in my party so that whenever we defeat a strong monster, we can bring their corpse back to life as our ally.”
Another person said, “That’s nothing. I have a shaman that can heal-tank like crazy. He frontlines for like five of us.”
“I can’t believe you’re glazing a tank. That role takes no skill. I have a bard that stacks like 20 different buffs on me. I feel like an immortal with them supporting me.”
Loftus, who was still part of the main party, could not brag about having special party members. Thus, he started bragging about mine. “Yarm probably has some insanely strong party members too.” He nudged me. “Tell them about who you have on your team.”
Why did he do that? What the heck was I supposed to say? “Erm, I guess I have some cool people on my team too.”
“Like who?”
“A member of the royal family for one.” That would surprise them. I bet that no one else had literal royalty in their parties. I neglected to mention that he was the weakest heir to the throne.
“That’s it?”
That wasn’t enough to impress them?
Loftus explained, “One of Blyth’s friends is in a party with the crown prince. Can’t get much higher than that. Also, royalty and nobility isn’t all that impressive when you realise a lot of them want to team up with us heroes to increase their social status. Don’t get scammed by crooks, Yarm.”
That was hilarious coming from the biggest crook I knew.
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