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The Gamer Chapter 1613 – Raid and Adventures 9 – Looting and Going Further
🕑 Added 2024-02-01 11:53:48 +0000 UTC
“Four levels after a day’s worth of attempts, pretty solid,” John hummed to himself. The Skinwalkers had given him another level on the way to the boss. Another one had come from Experience of Love. In other words, he was already six levels up from where he had started. “Really solid.”
He quickly distributed the Stats, then opened his Class Menu. Salamander would take a minute to get back and it was bad manners to open the loot when there was someone from the killing team missing. On final bosses, they often delayed until the entire harem was present.
John should have been used to the capstone Perks of his Classes being ridiculous. He really, really should have been used to that by now. They came at the end of considerable investment, both in time and resources, so them being powerful should have been impressive.
But Interdimensional Tradedeals was among the most absurd things he had ever seen anyway.
All three of these were ridiculous in their own way. A +25 on an Relationship Score system that went from -200 to +200 was valuable in a way that couldn’t be put into numbers. It was the difference between everyone he met being neutral towards him and everyone intrinsically liking him – and most people already did because he had that high of a Charisma. Stacking that on top would make it genuinely difficult for people he did not actively wrong to dislike him.
Which he hated as a concept, like he loathed all of these flat RP increases. It was out, no matter how strong it was.
Sharing Secrets was a cure to his paranoia that he wanted and that he would have taken under other circumstances. The activation condition was stringent, but in the one or two cases where it would come in handy, it would come in REALLY handy.
The problem was that Interdimensional Tradedeals was just too interesting. Sure, free travel was barred, but combining this with his ability to, every few months, get to visit a Kingdom with a theme of his choosing meant that he could engage in trade to get just about any resource he wanted – ever. There were limitations, of course, because he actually needed to convince the people of those Kingdoms to trade with him and he couldn’t force them to after he left because the Outpost would not let him re-enter that world proper.
Yet it was just so powerful. It was yet another way to increase the outflow of valued goods from his Guild Hall, assuring even more economic power would stem from that place in perpetuity. Fusion’s economy would never know a true crash for as long as the Guild Hall existed, just because there was so much raw material going around, allowing people to cheaply start their own projects.
It was too good not to take.
Selection made, the other windows of a maxed Class rolled in.
Seducer was both overkill and unwanted by its formulation, putting the choice between Convincer and Leader.
Convincer was immediately attractive. John was way past the point where he believed he did not know better than at least 20% of people – likely a lot more. Between his own Wisdom and Stirwin’s cautioning influence, not to mention the counsel from all of his women, he did have the moral and intuitive ground to potentially arm himself with more tools to strongarm the opposition.
However, he was given the choice here between strongarming and actually leading. Leader also sounded like it was more broadly applicable than Convincer, granting him a few international benefits. It struck him as the natural choice, therefore.
‘Now what is that new Guild Mechanic about?’ he thought, once he had pressed the button.
Good, but not great. The limitations on it were stringent. It was nice that he could always have dirt on his top officials, although he was less concerned with the elected politicians than he was with the various public servants.
In most cases, removing someone elected is actually pretty easy. Just delay them until the next election, then stack the deck against them. There was no need to even print false ballots to do so. Either the local area was about equally divided anyway, in which case monetary, public, or indirect support for the opposition would swing the few votes required to oust the unwanted representatives or the area was actually held quite firmly by one party, in which case an ambitious contender could surely be found. In the latter case, this then either led to the vote splitting, allowing another party to swoop in, or the newly chosen representative to replace the old.
So far the theory of governing from the top down in a republic with local votes, anyhow. Obviously these things didn’t always work and sometimes the devil one knew was better than the devil one did not. So far, John hadn’t tested these theories anyway. He had no need nor desire to undermine the system he had designed himself.
Regardless, there were ways to remove a bothersome elected official. Removing someone from the House of Exceptionals was even easier in most cases. A large number of them were in their position only by John’s appointment and all but a select few of the rest were there by selection of the state guilds. All of those could simply be removed from their seat by pressing the correct buttons and signing the correct documents, even if the seats were without term duration.
Civil servants were a whole different beast. They moved throughout the power structure as they advanced, made connections, put away files, made genuine mistakes, squirrelled away some, admitted to others, drafted, redrafted, acted on behalf of their elected bosses, and pushed against them. Civil servants were entirely necessary for the functioning of a proper state, forming the sinews and cartilage between the bones and organs of the body of politics.
Problem was that they were numerous and often overseen only by each other. It was difficult to keep civil servants truly accountable. Politicians often were incentivized against it. The annoying fact of life was that the average politicians had to interact with the electorate every four years and the civil servants every day in-between. Who would risk upsetting their entire support staff?
‘The kind of people that play Draven,’ John considered.
That was simultaneously quite powerful and pretty useless. 50% was an enormously steep cost and the upside wasn’t good enough for that. Since he could only switch Modifications once per day, putting this in for an important negotiation meant he would not be prepared if that negotiation turned violent.
There was a conceivable reality, when he reached max level and he could roll over 99,99% of potential ambushes with his pinky alone, that he put this on just to be generally regarded as being even more charismatic. That was, however, unlikely and had its own drawbacks.
So, this was one of those Modifications that were powerful on paper, but useless in reality.
John waited around for a moment, but found that no final window ever opened. ‘No Overclock for this one, eh?’ he thought, a bit confused. Either Gaia had no idea for this one or he just did not understand which Classes did and did not get an Overclock attached to them.
“Loot!” Salamander shouted, stomping across the scorched battlefield. “Show me the fucking goods!”
John smirked, she had returned just in time.
The entire party crowded around the boss chest. A crude thing of angular shapes made from scorched iron. The grip atop the lid was the only part that looked like it could be handled without cutting one’s palm. “Undine, if you would do the honours,” the Gamer instructed.
“Me?” the healer asked.
“You delivered the final blow, it’s only right.”
A smile spread on the goth slime’s lips. A broad, honest one, reflective of all the insecurities that lingered under that calm surface. They were appeased by what he had just said. They would never go away, not fully anyway, but it was what she had wanted to hear – and it was true to boot. Undine making the snap decision to push for damage rather than eek out a little more healing had almost certainly won them the fight there.
It was far from the first time she had done that and it would be far from the last. Undine knew what her role was and when to go beyond it.
The antlered water spirit stepped forwards. A quick tug and the sealed lid of the chest opened with the satisfying hiss of a broken vacuum. The inside was as pitch black as ever, light just fading away into inexplicable nothingness. Undine sank her hand into the darkness.
“One of these days a chest like this will be a mimic,” Aclysia suggested.
John shot her an unappreciative glance and she smiled back. Then he smiled. It had been a while since she had said something that poked at his weaknesses. Another step in finding a balance between the obsession that had claimed her and the calm-headed inquisitiveness of her early days. He loved seeing every part of her renewed self-actualization as a person.
Unperturbed, Undine pulled out the first item. Others swiftly followed, coming out in order of rarity.
In Common, they had the entire Dark set. Dark Helmet, Dark Chestplate, Dark Gauntlets and Dark Boots, everything someone needed to dress up like one of the soldiers they had killed. John put it aside to send it to any one of his high-ranked military officers worthy of an accolade.
The Desolation Blade and Axe they were given in Uncommon went on that same pile. Couldn’t separate such things.
In Rare, they had two Charred Litanies. They were thin books with half-burned covers. The pages were yellow from age and proximity to heat, but the script on them was still clear. Anyone who read them out loud could conjure a fireball. That was fairly useful in certain situations, but not really that great for John, who had Salamander to do the same thing without condition or associated costs. This item would go to Nightfall. It might be useful as specialized mission equipment.
Last, in the Epic category, they had the Mark of the Purger. It was a trinket shaped like a star, four smaller points sitting between four large ones. At the back was a cruelly shaped meat hook, pointy at the tip to be driven into flesh and barbed to be gruesome to pull back out. The description stated that anyone this was driven into would be affected by the same torch spell that had been the main difficulty of this fight.
That, too, went to Nightfall. It was a terrible instrument, but one that might have a use somewhere. John would have considered using it against Raid bosses, had he any confidence they could both attach that to one of them and have it last. Most likely, it would break after the first use. ‘Still might try to, better than to have it gather dust in storage,’ he told himself, primarily to overpower his hoarder brain.
“Pretty meh loot all around,” he summarized. “You want to claim any of it?”
Lydia shook her head. “Do you wish to deliver the news of the new absurdity you have added to your arsenal to Scarlett?”
The Gamer smirked. Of course, the queen of mithril had peeked over his shoulder while he selected his next Perk. “You think we are due for another break already?”
Lydia hummed, crossing her ornately armoured arms. It was only the latter half of their second day. Lunch had been had right before this attempt. Going back already was a time waster. Predictably, Lydia came to the same conclusion. “Let us scout out the next area.”
John nodded and so they advanced past the killing zone.
A wooden wall separated them from the area behind. A singular gate flung open when they approached. Fifty soldiers spread across five rows blockaded the entrance. “Come then, curs!” someone shouted.
John raised his hands and everyone stopped. This was either a trap or a scripted event.
It was the latter.
After just three seconds of waiting, several of the members of the soldiers began to tremble. Panicked screams filled the air as the previously orderly line was ripped apart from the inside by emerging sea-spider legs. Arms burst, as white carapaces bulged outwards. Half a dozen empowered Skinwalkers reduced the enemy line to mincemeat.
“THE GENERAL IS DEAD!” gargled one of their numbers. On that signal the entire camp behind the wall broke out into cacophony. Screams of betrayal and vengeance echoed out, the army camp going from a brightly lit place of desolated discipline to a dark abyss of treachery as the campfires were snuffed out one after the other.
It all happened within ten seconds and, once it was done, the six empowered Skinwalkers faced John and his party. They waited right at that invisible line where the boss arena ended and the next area of the Raid began.
“Back to these abominations,” Lydia commented.
“Empowered from the start though and more numerous,” John remarked. “Guess we are leaving the ‘easy’ part of the Raid.” He raised his eyes from the wooden wall. Looming behind it were the three ever unmissable landmarks. The black-red rock, the graveyard of naval vessels, and the decrepit castle standing atop the cliffside. The lay of the land as he had seen it through Ehtra’s eyes earlier in this Raid suggested that they were heading towards an open space right in front of the ornate stone, a space that also bordered where the ships had run aground. “Guess the castle is the last area?” he theorized.
“Repetition: advancing will bring certainty,” Beatrice stated.
“Do you have no… uhm… sense of adventure?” Gnome asked. “Is that the right term?”
“Statement: Raids are crafted layouts with specific purposes in mind, providing mechanical and sometimes mental challenges. Unless Gaia wishes to deliberately challenge us in that way, navigation is not one of the difficulties. Theorizing about the layout does not change that there is a layout we follow. Comparison: it’s like theorizing where a train track leads. The signs tell you, you cannot change the order, and you will follow the rails anyway.”
John grumbled something under his breath. She was right, of course, but it was still dull to just accept it. “Alright then… Everyone healed up? Yes? Good. Aclysia, take point.”
Fighting the clump of Skinwalkers was challenging, but overall not that interesting. They had done it before and so they were equipped for the tools in question. They did almost wipe on that first group, just because there were so many of them, but they pulled through. Cutting and slashing through the additional limbs, hacking, burning and slicing through the carapace, they diminished their number, recovered, then moved further into the now dark and silent camp.
The period of movement was over. Only terrible darkness remained. Blood-soaked sand painted the otherwise grey ground a sad shade of crimson. There were no corpses around. “No games… they’re hiding themselves with illusions,” John muttered and they advanced carefully with recovered numbers.
Careful was not careful enough. They defeated the first group that ambushed them out of the cover of their veils, but not the second. Pincered by frowning skulls and gargling sounds, the party was one by one cut down and sent back to the Intermediary Barrier.
A change of plans was in order.
Comments
naton
Should this be part 8?
Fenbags
Had some.PTSD flashbacks just reading the word 'contender' in this
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