NOVEL NEXT Chapter 64: Rewards Centre
The rewards centre was too small for them all to fit in at one time. In fact, it only just managed to house the two large shapes of Dominic and Nyx, along with his two favourite lionesses. Dominic had to keep his wings pressed tightly against his back and duck his head to get in the door itself, though fortunately the ceiling was tall enough that he could raise his head again afterwards. It was even more of a tight squeeze for Nyx, but she managed by crouching and creeping forwards.
Inside, there were eight pillars that rose to about waist-height on an elf and had a gleaming, faceted crystal at the top of each of them. Otherwise, the room was blank – no decorations, no windows, just wooden walls.
'You must touch one of the crystals,' Berion instructed them from outside – he hadn't tried to squeeze into the cramped confines. Sekhmet and Jenkins sinuously made their way through the room to one of the pillars each; with the small space, Nyx and Dominic could easily reach multiple pillars without even trying.
'Shall we touch the stones as the two-legged male says?' asked Sekhmet, eyeing the light-blue shapes with suspicion.
'He has no reason to trick us,' Dominic reminded her. 'They want our help in the future.' Sure, there was always the chance that this was an elaborate plot to bind their wills just as the dungeon had tried all that time ago, but Dominic doubted it. Unless the earring he'd had added to store his armour had held some sort of binding enchantment. But if they'd been capable of that, why try to convince Dominic to help out of his own will? And nothing he'd seen from the elves so far indicated that they were likely to do something like that.
Reaching out, Dominic touched one of the glimmering crystals, demonstrating his trust with his actions. Under his paw, the faint glow within the heart of the orb grew stronger until it was more like a light-bulb than a jewel.
Before Dominic's eyes appeared a large box that blocked all but his peripheral vision. Instinctively, Dominic took his paw off the crystal to swipe at it. However, the moment he lost contact with the crystal, the box disappeared by itself.
Heartened by the realisation that truly nothing would happen unless he was in contact with the light-blue orb, and that he could pull his paw away at any point, Dominic touched it again.
Once more, the large blue screen took over his vision. Something else appeared in the centre of it too – something that brought back very familiar memories from before the System arrived.
[Loading rewards….]
He waited, more than a little impatient for the handful of seconds it took for that message to disappear. It was first replaced by his current total of Challenge credits.
[Challenge Credits available: 2913]
After that, the total moved to take up space in the top right hand corner of the screen. The rest of the screen then populated with the various rewards that were available.
The expected health potions were there, accompanied by stamina and mana potions. But Dominic focussed on the health potions to begin with.
[Minor Health Potion (T1) (+immediate boost, -ongoing regeneration) - 10 CC
Minor Health Potion (T1) (-immediate boost, +ongoing regeneration) - 10 CC
Moderate Health Potion (T1) (+immediate boost, -ongoing regeneration) - 50 CC
Moderate Health Potion (T1) (-immediate boost, +ongoing regeneration) - 50 CC
Major Health Potion (T1) (+immediate boost, -ongoing regeneration) - 250 CC
Major Health Potion (T1) (-immediate boost, +ongoing regeneration) - 250 CC
Minor Health Potion (T2) (+immediate boost, -ongoing regeneration) - 1250 CC
Minor Health Potion (T2) (-immediate boost, +ongoing regeneration) - 1250 CC]
Dominic immediately noticed that there were two of each level of health potion and realised that they leant either towards a better immediate boost or a better regeneration over time. Having taken two different healing potions before, he got the idea. For him, with his high regeneration rate, getting the one with an increased regeneration rate might be the best option since the effects seemed to be multiplicative, getting him out of trouble quickly. At the same time, having a massive chunk of health to begin with was something that would help him if his own regeneration was simply not enough to keep his fat out of the fire. And it was the sort of thing that could save him from the after-effects of Second Wind if he got himself into that situation again.
The second thing he noticed was about how he now knew what the next rank of potions was – major. Perhaps there was something above that, but if so, it wasn't featured here. Instead, there were Tier 2 minor health potions. If the increase in cost was anything to go by, even the minor potion of a higher tier was significantly better than a major potion of the tier below.
That said, the costs involved were steep. Though the minor Tier 1 health potions were cheap at 10 CC each, the moderates were five times the cost. That pattern continued with each level up of potion costing five times the previous, meaning that the minor Tier 2 potions were a whopping 1250CC. Even with as many Challenge Credits as he'd accumulated, Dominic would only be able to afford two of them, which was insane.
The mana and stamina potions were almost identical to the health potions – the only difference was in the name. In Dominic's case, the mana potions might come in useful but primarily those with an immediate boost since his ongoing regeneration was still so pitiful. He probably shouldn't waste Credits on anything above the most basic levels anyway since his pool was small and he was pretty sure any extra mana would just be wasted.
Still, before he made some decisions on what to buy, he decided to first have a look at the other resources offered.
Scrolling through the options was easy – all he needed to do was concentrate on seeing the next possible reward and the list obligingly moved up to reveal a new reward at the bottom.
By the time he got to the end, Dominic was overall a little disappointed. It was very clear that the rewards on offer were chosen according to the elves' needs. Dominic had been expecting that, but he'd still hoped that it might be different. However, among all the offerings – the crafting resources, weapons clearly for humanoids, stat potions which had made Dominic drool until he realised that he had none of the stats they were talking about, and odd foodstuffs that he guessed were from the elves' cuisine – there was little that he was immediately interested in.
He did play with the idea of buying some of the resources or stat potions in hopes that he might be able to use them later, or if not, trade them for something that he could use, but he dismissed the idea after a few moments. He didn't know enough about what the future held to be able to make such plans. Not when there were at least some items in the shop which could be immediately useful, and not only the potions.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Dominic looked thoughtfully at the small selection of interesting non-potions that he'd managed to find. It had turned out that there was a way of 'marking' things for later – not buying them, but putting them aside to look at afterwards. He found it amusing that even the System had a shopping cart option. He gazed at that smaller screen now.
[Scroll of Healing (requires mana, recommended Int 15+) - 750 CC
Scroll of Fireball (requires mana, recommended Int 13+) - 650 CC
Scroll of Water Breathing (requires mana, recommended Int 12+) - 500 CC
Scroll of Telepathy (requires mana, recommended Int 15+) - 750 CC
Scroll of the Tidal Mage (requires mana, recommended Int 25+) - 1850 CC
Artifact of Zola (effects: stores mana to create a barrier which can be set to allow up to three people access. Maximum size of barrier: 60 m3. Shape of barrier: hemisphere or cube) - 1100 CC
Misha's baton (effects: can be used to strike opponents with lightning bolts. Can be used by someone without mana, but it then requires frequent charging) - 1400 CC
Poor storage ring (4 slots, maximum stack: 15) - 190 CC
Poor storage earring (4m3, single space) - 200 CC
Poor storage bag (8m3 space, single space) - 240 CC
Common storage bracelet (8 slots, maximum stack: 20) - 480 CC
Common storage ring (15m3 space, single space) - 480 CC
Uncommon storage bracelet (28m3 space, single space, stasis) - 960 CC]
These prizes were definitely among the more pricy of the offerings, though some of the weapons and armour Dominic had seen were up there too, especially those which seemed to have some sort of magical effect to them. The highest price he'd seen was for a breastplate which had the ability twice per day to absorb the energy of the blows it was hit by within a short period of time and then send it outwards in a wave of force. That was available for a cool 5000 CC, way outside even Dominic's budget, assuming that he was interested which he wasn't. Though only because at the moment he didn't have an appropriately shaped breast to put it on.
His selected items, as far as he could tell, were not limited to humanoids in any way. At least, they didn't say it, and most of the other weapons and armour on offer had mentioned somewhere that it was for 'humanoids'. And Dominic had already absorbed one magic scroll before. Yes, he'd had issues with it, but he was pretty sure that was just because he hadn't met the requirements.
Each of these scrolls made it clear that to use it, someone needed to both have mana and a minimum Int level – Dominic assumed that this meant 'Intelligence', quantified according to the System. The minimum level required was 12 – by the Water-Breathing scroll. The scroll of the Tidal Mage, however, required a whopping 25 Int.
He couldn't remember everything from when he'd absorbed Lightning Discharge – too many things had happened since then for him to have a precise memory of that moment. But he did remember that his Intelligence had been judged as barely adequate despite the scroll not saying anything at the time about an Intelligence requirement. Maybe, even if it hadn't said that it did, it had had an Intelligence requirement which he had only just met. Or maybe, when these scrolls were talking about minimum Intelligence, it was for the spell to work as intended. If Lightning Discharge had had a minimum Intelligence which he hadn't quite met, the consequences he'd suffered after going ahead and absorbing it anyway would make sense. He'd certainly not had the mana requirement back then and developing the capacity to use mana had caused even more damage which he was still trying to deal with.
However, that was then, and the situation was different now. He had mana for one thing. And he had survived absorbing a magic scroll despite the lack of Intelligence listed in his status. Surely Lightning Discharge was no more basic than something like Fireball? And perhaps his enhancements to his Brain would count towards Intelligence? Frankly, Dominic was rather pulled towards the idea of getting more magic now that he finally had a way to fix his mana issues.
'We've barely even learned to use Lightning Discharge, though,' Leo pointed out. ' Why use Challenge Credits to add another weapon when we have not even mastered the ones we have available to us? Especially when we are not certain that it will work for us at all.'
'Because it would help to cover an area that we're weak in – ranged,' Dominic told him, focussing on the scroll which had gained his attention in particular.
Ultimately, the healing scroll wasn't interesting to him – he already had a healing Ability which he was able to share with his Pride members. That was more useful than an expensive scroll even if the scroll might offer a different type of healing. Though that in itself was a potential problem – Healing Cloud hadn't worked on elves; what if the healing given by the scroll wouldn't work on beasts? The same was true with the scroll of telepathy. He had it, Sekhmet had it, and if he wanted others to develop it, they could use Group Enhancement to share it around – which they probably should do since it would make things easier with the elves or indeed any other non-beast.
Water-breathing was vaguely interesting in that he hadn't managed to get enough Cores from the crocodiles which held Extended Breath to gain that Ability, but he wasn't inclined to use that many Challenge Credits for it. All he needed to do if he wanted that Ability or one similar was to find a river with plenty of crocodiles or water-breathing beasts and battle enough of them to earn it. Plus, it wasn't the same thing anyway.
The scroll of the Tidal Mage was tempting just because it sounded powerful and the massive cost in Credits indicated that it had to be. However, that wasn't really a candidate either. First of all, it was far less likely that Dominic met the 25+ Int requirement in comparison to the 15+, 13+, or just 12+ requirements of the other scrolls. Secondly, and probably most importantly, they were in the middle of a savannah, not near the sea. A 'tidal' mage surely required a large body of water to really make their abilities strong.
So overall, out of the scrolls, Fireball was definitely the most attractive. It was a risk, but then technically any of these choices were, scrolls or not – there weren't enough details about any of them to know all the strengths, weaknesses, and risks. The Artifact of Zola might be able to block off the obsidian stone which was the source of the Place of Power to prevent others from accessing it, but then again, it might not – he didn't know how much the fact that the stone was at the bottom of a tall tree would influence it. The barrier was certainly not big enough to cover the whole thing. Perhaps he would have to key in the tree as one of the permitted presences; perhaps it would be ignored completely.
Equally, although Misha's Baton might allow one of his Pride to shoot out lightning bolts, or give inspiration to the elven crafters which would allow them to mimic or duplicate it, it also might not. It might prove to require so much mana that it would only be good for a couple of hits every battle until it was gone, similar to how his Lightning Discharge was right now.
The storage spaces were also a risk as he wasn't sure how they would work – or work on beasts, at least. Even if they did work on beasts, would they be like Sekhmet's storage bracelet in that they were easy to put on? If not, possibly the elven crafters would be able to help them with that. The rings and bag were definitely out – beasts wouldn't be able to wear them. The bracelets and earrings, however….
Dominic suddenly had an idea. Reaching out to Nyx, he asked her if she'd finished. Finding out that she had, he asked whether she'd taken a storage device. If she hadn't, he'd ask Sekhmet or Jenkins next.
'I did,' answered Nyx.
'And were you able to put it on? Did it work?'
'The two-leg needed to tie it around my foreleg, but now it seems to work perfectly well,' Nyx informed him briskly.
'Alright, thanks,' Dominic replied, turning back to his own screen, in a hurry to finish now that he knew at least Nyx had already. It was good to know that the storage devices would work even if they weren't as convenient as the dungeon versions, but the description from the dungeon ones had talked about them being modified for beasts. Maybe auto-sizing was part of that.
After having a quick conversation with Leo just to ensure that they were on the same page, Dominic then made his choices.