There was so much that I wanted to know about monsters, but my questions would unfortunately be left unanswered for now. If I could, I wished to meet a monster that was not hostile towards humans and could communicate with me. Erith almost fit the bill, but I knew she thought of me as nothing more than a termite. She had a minimal amount of interest in me but did not value my life. Questioning her was just not possible.
I made it my new personal quest to find a friendly monster that could speak. Considering how hard it was to find a friendly human that didn’t hate monsters, it would be tough completing that mission.
Whelp, there was no use fussing over it. If it happened, it happened. If not, I had plenty of other things to occupy myself with. Like spending my LP.
I conjured my slot machine. It was interesting how comfortable I had become with such a strange phenomenon. I was creating a machine out of thin air with the power of my mind. Several days ago, I would not have been able to fathom such a feat.
Looking through my status page, I saw that I had 4 LP and 4 slot tokens. Normally that would be 8 tries of the machine, but I wanted to use the multiplier again. I turned the multiplier dial to two and began my first spin.
The sound of the lever crank and the rolling reels drew Mimic over. It watched alongside me as the reels spun fast. The first reel slowed down and landed on Stats. The text was outlined with gold. I pumped my fist into the air. “Yes!” I had gotten lucky. I only needed the other reels to stop on Stats too. Then I would benefit from increased rewards.
Not only did the reels do that, but all of them were golden Stat reels as well. My heart skipped a beat.
[Three Golden Reel Jackpot]
“Yes!” I screamed. Both my fists shot upwards and I giddily shook my legs. Mimic was also excited by my excitement. It started rolling around with its tongue out. This was the first time I had gotten a jackpot. My luck was finally starting to turn around.
[Choose your Stats.]
[Quadruple your Body] [Double your Mind] [Triple your Soul]
I groaned hard enough to exhale all the air in my lungs. “This has to be the unluckiest jackpot of all time!” I slammed the cold sone floor with my fist causing Mimic to jump.
The multiplicative effects were all on the wrong stats. Quadrupling my Body would be amazing if I was Penrin! I pulled out my chalkboard. She had a Body level of 22, so that quadrupled would be 88. Using Blyth’s formula, she’d have 39,260 HP. I wouldn’t be surprised if she could survive a nuke with all that health. Unfortunately, I was not Penrin. If I chose the first option, my Body would only increase by 3 points.
Why couldn’t my Mind have been quadrupled? Since my Mind was currently at 9, I would have gained 27 extra stat points. Sadly, it was only doubled, so I could only earn a maximum of 9 extra points. That was nothing to sneeze at, but I could have gained so much more.
On top of that, if I had gained this jackpot a few levels down the line, my stats would have been higher and thus I would have benefited even more.
Oh well, I thought. I could always just roll another jackpot in the future.
I considered tripling my Soul. That would net me 8 stat points. It could kickstart a transition into using magic. Mind was considered a useless stat, after all.
My better judgement decided to stick with doubling my Mind. Most of the other Earthlings were investing heavily into Soul, so I would be following the pack, if I picked that. I’d get nowhere following the road most travelled.
I went in for another spin, and I received a whole heaping pile of nothing. I lost 2 LP on a dud. If I considered the fact that I had just spend 4 LP and gained 9 stat points, it didn’t seem that bad. From what I had heard at the soiree, it seemed that typically 1 LP translated to around 1 stat point. So technically I was batting above average there.
The multiplier knob reverted back to one as I had run out of LP. I pulled out my slot coins and got started on my next four spins.
The first coin spin was another miss, however this one spooked me. The slot tokens created reels with more types of text. On this miss, I saw the reels showing something peculiar, the word ‘Curse’.
“Holy guacamole.” I was glad I didn’t get cursed. My body trembled slightly. What would have happened if all three reels landed on Curse? I imagined the System would not let me off easy. It would probably do something like give me constipation on all the days that ended in ‘Y’.
The terror of a curse made me reluctant to spin again, but I did so anyway. The machine spun and rattled before stopping on ‘Skill’.
[Choose your Skill.]
[Eavesdrop: Listen in on any conversation whose participants you have vision of. Requires 10 MP per second activated. (Body)]
[Repair: Mend broken objects. Variable XP drain, dependent on object value. (Mind)]
[Ice Enchantment: Imbue an object with cold magic. Costs 50 MP. (Soul)]
Tears ran down my cheeks. “Finally…” I had received a choice of skills that all looked useful. I was beside myself with joy, thinking of all the possibilities.
If I understood the first one correctly, I could listen in on anyone I could see. So, if I had a telescope, I could listen in on faraway conversations. What worried me though, was how useful it would be for me in particular. Another person could use it to uncover secret plots, or to find out what others were saying behind their back. However, I couldn’t imagine what I would need it for.
It wasn’t as if I needed to eavesdrop on anyone. Even if I did, what information could I get that couldn’t be acquired by just asking questions?
The second option really drew my fancy. Being able to fix any object would be so convenient. I would never have to worry about things breaking again. Plus, I could start a business where I fixed people’s cherished items.
What I saw getting in my way was the MP cost. It didn’t specify anything, and I had a sneaking suspicion that the mana cost would be high. A skill like this couldn’t be cheap in terms of MP, though Cleanse was relatively cheap so maybe I was wrong to think so.
Last was the Ice Enchantment. It was by far the least beneficial for me. My first thought was using it to create refrigerators, but then I realised it was definitely for battle. Perhaps the user of this skill would coat their weapons in ice for extra damage. Or they could coat their armour in it to keep their bodies cool on sunny days.
I went ahead and picked the Repair skill.
To test it out, I wanted to fix the dungeon’s interior. This was my property now, so I couldn’t have it looking so shabby. My first fix would be the central rug in the room I stood in. Then I would fix nearby furniture.
I put my palms on the torn rug and activated the Repair skill. Magically the rug started to transform. The tears and holes mended themselves slowly. Halfway through the rug’s transition to complete repair, my MP ran out. “I don’t even have enough MP to fix a rug?” I didn’t expect the skill to be this mana intensive.
Mimic was satisfied with the rug’s partial repair and decided to roll over it a few times.
“I’m glad someone’s having fun.”
I went in for another spin. It was another hit but regrettably, it landed on ‘Cosmetic’. I did not need fashion accessories.
[Choose your Cosmetic.]
[Silhouette: When toggled, conceal your appearance by shrouding your body in a shadowy black coating. Lose 1 HP per second while toggled.]
[Red Eye Glow: When activated, others will see a red glow over your eyes, and you will also see nothing but red.]
[Wings: When falling for longer than three seconds, sprout angelic wings. Note that the wings are purely cosmetic and do not slow your fall.]
The dumb stuff this System offered gave me headaches at times. How were any of these useful? What made things worse was that if I showed any of these to my fellow Earthlings, they would love it. I could imagine everyone at the nightly meetings drooling over these options.
If they were delighted by a mere tuft of hair previously, this would blow all of their minds.
I picked the first option. It seemed the least offensive, and perhaps it would make for a good disguise.
I placed my last slot token inside the machine and cranked the lever. By the grace of heaven, I won again. I was on a roll. Maybe all the bad luck I had at the lottery converted to good luck in the slot machine. Who could say that the gambler’s fallacy also existed in this world?
[Choose your Stats.]
[+1 Body] [+3 Mind] [+2 Soul]
I didn’t even need to think about this one. I was too deep into Mind to pull out now. When I picked the second option, a new popup appeared.
[Map menu unlocked due to meeting the minimum requirement of 20 Mind. (Hero/Villain Exclusive)]
Was I a genius or what? I always knew that I’d receive some awesome benefit for investing so highly into Mind. It was only a matter of time. All my efforts paid off. I navigated to the sidebar and opened the Map menu.
I saw a blank screen.
In my eagerness, I must have pressed the button too hard. I clicked off the menu and then back on it. That was strange, it was still blank. I was sure the System wouldn’t be so spiteful as to give me another worthless boon.
I clicked on the blank screen.
[To unlock this area, reach the viewpoint located at the top of the School Belltower within the King’s city.]
I cupped my face and pulled my eyebags downwards. “Ugh, nothing ever comes easy, does it?” I wanted to reserve my judgement of this Map menu until after I unlocked it, though I couldn’t help but be disappointed.
I quickly glanced over the stat gains I made from levelling.
[Body: 1] [Mind: 21] [Soul: 4]
They were very lopsided. I let out a yawn and stretched my arms. I was becoming sleepy. It was about time for me to start heading back home. I didn’t want to be stuck out here once the darkness of night came.
Mimic stayed on the half-ruined rug while I bade him farewell and left the dungeon. On my walk out, I realised something dreadful. I didn’t know which way led back to the city. My Map menu was useless. My wall compass was useless. And my sense of direction was… not bad but not good enough.
Upon exiting the dungeon, I saw a carving in the ground. There was an arrow pointing in a certain direction and below it was writing that read, ‘To the idiot that didn’t bring a proper compass or map. Follow this to get back to the city.’
Next to the text was a smiley face.
I knew immediately that Penrin wrote the sentence and Newmill drew the smiley face.
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