Chapter 30: 29. Visiting the Wastelands

This room was wider than the previous ones, and I could see many items glittering. Some of them looked as if they were made of gold, and others were decorated with gems.

I entered the room, and Petra followed behind me. Another system screen appeared in front of us, explaining the details of this room.

[Living beings detected!]

[Welcome to the Treasury, Hosts]

[You’ve proven yourselves as worthy hosts. This room contains the remaining treasures of a certain tribe that followed the feathered serpent. This is the last level of Quetzalcoatl’s Temple. The divine serpent gave his people many treasures, and taught them how to make them too! Most of these items are of the (Common) grade, but some of them are even better. You have ten minutes to take your treasures before you’re sent out of the temple. Countdown: 00:10:00 Good luck!]

 

Petra was awed by the treasures around her, and she didn’t hesitate to take a look at them.

“I consider myself to be a fair person,” I told her, “You could take some items since you were useful in the second room, but don’t go overboard.”

She nodded at me and went back to staring at the shiny items.

There were piles of items laying around me, but most of them weren’t up to standard. My bag of holding was relatively small, and it was half-filled already. Pocket space was precious and I didn’t intend to waste it on lackluster stuff.

These items have bad value for their size, and I’ll get more loot later anyway.

In the center of them, a certain object floated inside a sphere of pure mana. I went ahead and took it, as it was the item that I’d been looking for.

Despite the way it was presented, it didn’t look special at all. The chain had a copperish color, and a simple pendant was attached to it. The latter had the drawing of an eye with a vertical pupil on each side.

[Eye of truth]	(Uncommon)
This is an ancient necklace that was passed through the generations of High Priests. Many people revered it as the treasure of the tribe, but nothing about it stood out. Most of the information on this item has been lost through the ages. […]

 

According to people in my past life, this necklace allowed the user to speak with the deity and ask him a question. The feathered serpent could answer all questions as if it was omniscient. Some people wasted their chances to gain useful knowledge by asking stupid questions.

There was a funny story that circulated among people in my past life. A lucky bastard asked Quetzalcoatl whether his crush liked him, only for the deity to say that she didn’t.

This item’s value was unparalleled, but it needed the blood of someone whose ancestors followed the feathered serpent. It would allow me to learn more about the system admin, and those weird people that I met when I evolved my class.

I decided to check the other items that were on the ground, in case something useful was hidden.

I told Petra to use [Identify] on the items that were laying on the ground and to send me the details. Most of them were common items that gave low stat buffs, with some uncommon ones occasionally. These items would be magnificent to people with regular classes, but they wouldn’t suit me.

After some minutes of looking around, I found some items that I liked.

[Mending Wand of Fragos]	(Uncommon)
Fragos worked as a repairman for the clan, just like his ancestors. He had great fame among people until someone stole his wand. Apparently, Fragos wasn’t special at all and the wand did all the heavy lifting. -Repairs items of similar or lesser grade. (Condition: Infuse Mana for the effect to take place.)
Warning: The mana needed depends on the state of the item and its rarity.
Warning: This item can be used to repair higher grade items if the host overloads it with mana, but that would damage the wand.

 

[Blazing Saber sword]

(Uncommon)

Swords were popular weapons among the people, and they made many different variants. This item is made from a Tungsten Alloy and strengthened with many runes to assure great compatibility with flames. The host can control the flames easily using this sword, and it can be used both for short and long-range combats. -Channels flames to increase their efficiency in battle. (Condition: Consistent source of the fire.)

 

[Combatant Shirt]	(Uncommon)
Mandatory shirt for frontline fighters in the Glorious Serpent army. This might seem like a plain black shirt, but it is the best variant that could be made by the crafters of the clan. It is reserved for special fighters. -Increase STR and AGI (+7 each).

 

[Combatant Shorts]	(Uncommon)
Mandatory shirt for frontline fighters in the Glorious Serpent army. This might seem like plain black shorts, but it is the best variant that could be made by the crafters of the clan. It is reserved for special fighters. -Increase DEX and AGI (+7 each).

 

These items are very good; too bad the other things are much worse.

The wand was small-sized, and it seemed like a regular tree branch. The sword’s hilt was silver, without any patterns, and its blade was white with many weird letters written on it.

The shorts and the shirt were plain looking, and the only special thing about them was their fiber; as it was suitable for stretching and had great ventilation.

Petra asked for my permission to take some items, and I allowed her to.

I put my items inside my bag of holding and waiting for Petra to take some items.

She took a pair of daggers, one of them was white and the other was black and some runes were applied to the blades. She also took a pair of bracers and a set of leather body armor.

After she was done, I started converting everything else into shop points. I could’ve taken some items to sell them later, but it wasn’t worth it. I hoped to find another bag of holding here, but there weren’t any.

Petra was startled to see so many items vanishing instantly, but she didn’t talk at all. The sight must’ve been astonishing because there were hundreds of items.

The quantity might be high, but the quality is lackluster.

After a while, I was finally done. I opened the shop window to see how many shop points I had.

Shop window:	[Current points: 112720 points] You are reading story System Dilemma at novel35.com
-What are you looking to buy? [. . .]

 

The points aren’t that much, but they should suffice in case I needed to buy some stuff.

I checked the countdown, only to find that more than four minutes were left. I wore my new clothes and used the new wand to repair some of my items that got damaged by the flames early on.

It only took fifty mana to repair my crown and cape, yet it needed more than a hundred to fix my staff. The equipment’s appearance improved immensely and they looked as good as new.

I tried to wave my new sword around and infuse it with flames, only to get a system screen threatening me, saying that violence was prohibited inside the treasury.

Meh, I’ll just open my status window to allocate some of my free points.

Host: Jason Stubbs	HP 700/700 (1 HP/480 seconds)
Class: Living Crematorium	Mana 2600/2600 (8.47 mana/1 second)
Level 53: 205415/1379000	Stat Points: 164
STR: 22 (+7)	VIT: 130
DEX: 22 (+7)	AGI: 31 (+14)
MAG: 264 (+30)	END:395 (+10)
Class Skills:	General Skills:
[Flame-n-Go]: Level 18	[Zoom]: Level 2
[It’s fine!]: Level 18	[Shut-Down]: Level 2
[Burn That Invader!]: Level 13	[Light Steps]: Level 16
[Kill Them Before They Spread!]: Level 11	[Shadow Assimilation]: Level 10
[Dismantle]: Level 3
[Plasmic Torch]: Level 7
[Flawed State of Being]: Level 9

 

Now that I had a way to repair my items, I could freely use my staff in combat. My mana regeneration was swift as is, and it got even better when I used the staff.

Most of my stats are good to go, but something is bugging me.

My HP wasn’t bad for my level, but it wasn’t good enough for someone who’s fighting bosses on his own.

I put forty points in VIT which brought my HP to nine hundred and closed the system screen. I would’ve allocated all my stat points into VIT if I could, but I had to save as many stat points as possible. People would be able to obtain special stats outside the tutorial through various means, and there were some interesting options that I wanted.

[Countdown is over!]

 

[The feathered serpent sends his regards to the host, Jason.]

 

As soon as I finished reading the system screen that appeared, I got teleported outside the temple. When I looked around, it was nowhere to be seen.

I asked Petra about the number of system screens that appeared in front of her before we got teleported, and she said that it was only one.

I am not feeling good about this, even Quetzalcoatl knows about me.

I shrugged my shoulders, as thinking about this kind of stuff was futile.

I turned to Petra and told her that she was free to do whatever she wanted. I knew that she had enough tutorial points to teleport back to the safe room, but she was adamant about staying in this area.

Her intention must’ve been to continue hunting for goblins; she still had some hope.

I turned around and started walking in the opposite direction. When I was far enough from her, I used [Zoom] to visit another area.

The disorientation hit me as usual, but I could deal with it nowadays.

When I opened my eyes, I saw purple gases all around me. I couldn’t see that well, and I knew that the gases would be problematic if I didn’t do something about them.

I used [Plasmic Torch] and flew up, as I wanted to have an idea about my current location. No matter how high I went, my vision was still blurry when I tried to look at things that were a little far from me.

I was disheartened and went back to the ground. As soon as I landed, I set my body on fire to keep the toxic gases away from me.

I thought about buying a skill that would improve my scouting capacities, but I decided not to as I had better stuff to buy with my shop points.

I took my equipment from the bag of holding and equipped them all. After walking for a while, I was disappointed with the lack of monsters in this area.

I might’ve been walking in circles for all I knew, I need to find a slime as soon as possible.

According to people in my past life, this area had all kinds of disgusting creatures that looked as if they came out of a horror movie. Slimes were among them, and my goal was to find one of them.

After what seemed like ages, I saw four black dots far from me. As I went closer and examined them, some system screens appeared.

[Tar Sludge] (Uncommon)

Level: 22

 

[Tar Sludge] (Uncommon)

Level: 17

 

[Tar Sludge] (Uncommon)

Level: 20

 

[Tar Sludge] (Uncommon)

Level: 19

 

Each of them was a blob made of a viscous black substance, with a small mana core that floated inside each of them. They were variants of slimes, as they had identical characteristics to the regular ones.

I felt elated to have my crown, as it had a special function. I could control these creatures, as their grade was (Uncommon) and their level was less than half of mine.

These will be my guides for the trip.

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