Sponsored Apocalypse Ch. 22

If there are any egregious editing issues with this chapter, please let me know.  RL stuff has been slowing me down a lot and it's been difficult to get in the right mental state for editing.


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I found myself back in the stone room. The Faceted creature was basically unreadable unless it was “speaking” because it had no expression.  Still, I could almost sense irritation from it.  This would make sense if it actually had been hoping I died.

The Faceted didn’t speak immediately.  I had to wait for a few seconds first.  It said, “What you have done is not against the rules, but is… frowned upon. The Assessment Room is a sacred place for warriors to challenge themselves and learn about their own limits.  What you did was a perversion of the system to reap personal gain outside of the goal of your challenge.”

I was unmoved by the creature’s displeasure. “Okay, noted.  But I’m alive and I survived, so I get rewards, right?”

“One reward.  You did not make an S rating.  In fact, you only achieved an F rank, the lowest.”

“But I still get a prize, right?”  As the Faceted was speaking, I checked my stat page and couldn’t help but grin.  I was currently level 19.  This Assessment Room, whatever it was, had given me an incredible chance to power level.  Part of me felt a little regret that I hadn’t kept going, but I squashed it.  Even with the handful of points I had right now, if I’d invested them, continuing would have been incredibly dangerous.  The worst part about it was that once I’d started a new hallway, I would have been locked out of ending the challenge until the hallway was complete.

I’d been scammed enough in my life to recognize how the Assessment Room tried to encourage me to gamble with my life.

The Faceted answered, “Yes, you may choose one reward. Your reward will be limited to the F tier, and no higher.  Please provide me with three keywords of the types of rewards you would like, and then the Assessment Room will display some appropriate options for you.”

I said, “Can you tell me more about the keywords?”

All I got in return at first was a mental grunt.  The Faceted was not even pretending to be nice at this point, it said, “No.”

Lovely, I thought.  So I gave it some thought.  I considered a number of keywords I could use, like “Earth,”  “human,” “magic”… Actually, “Earth” would probably be terrible.  I didn’t know if maybe in another earth there might be dinosaur people or something.

As I brainstormed, I thought about how there wasn’t any guarantee that all the people getting prizes from an Assessment Room were always even human.  If I didn't specify that I wanted prizes for humans, was it possible that I could get options for gear that wouldn't even fit my body?

I decided that was a reasonable concern to have so I wanted to work in a related keyword somehow.  The more I thought about how my keyword choices could go wrong, the more careful I wanted to be.  At least I wasn't being rushed.  I had plenty of time to think about this.

Some other keywords I came up with were:

Antiques

Monster protection

Food generation

Protection

Fighting
Combat
Survival

Weapons

Mobility

Armor

I had a few keywords that contained more than one word.  That might be a risk, though.  The Faceted wasn’t telling me anything and I had a feeling it’d be more than happy to receive a keyword that wouldn’t be of any actual help to me.  If I tried to use a phrase or a sentence, I was afraid the Faceted wouldn’t say anything and my input just wouldn’t work.  Not knowing what was going on was frustrating.

At least I had a few other things I could intuit.  The lack of time limit to make a decision was something I was unironically grateful for.

The “Weapons” keyword made me think more about what I actually needed, which was more offensive power.  Between my different skills making me tankier and some of the other abilities I've gotten so far, I felt like I was already doing pretty decently when it came to defense. I still had points from leveling up to spend too, when I had the brain power to spare.  What I’d just done in my…challenge…had been dangerous, but I must have killed thousands of the big scorpions.  That thought made me glance briefly at my character sheet and a grin tugged at my lips.  Level 25.

However, I was painfully aware that my offense was lacking other than my [Angry Arrows] ability used on my hammer.  Most people didn’t carry around grenades, at least not yet, but my offensive power wasn’t currently tons better than a modern soldier who did.  Sure, I could repeatedly throw explosives more often, but that was still not gonna cut it long term, at least not based on what Aldina had said we would be facing in the future.

So far, I'd been very lucky and I was willing to admit that.  It just wasn’t immediately obvious to me how to fix it.  This reward, even though it was low tier, might still help me.  At least I could narrow down one thing–I definitely wanted gear, not a new skill. I felt like I already had a decent number of skills and if I got too many too fast, I would probably forget what I even had.  There were still abilities I’d gained that I hadn’t tested much yet.

I almost laughed when I realized that with my power set, even a new piece of gear would result in more skills if I got lucky.  Mentally juggling a ton of skills, like it or not, would probably be the key to my survival.

In fact, if I got a skill through a piece of gear here I could effectively kill two birds with one stone–two rewards for the “price” of one.  With that in mind, I started focusing on key words like: Antique

Old

Tsukumogami

I wasn't sure if I could directly choose a piece of gear with a spirit that could bond with me.  Using, “Tsukumogami,” might be risky.

After giving it some deep thought, what I ultimately what I came up with was:

Antique

Enchanted

Weapon

I knew that this was probably not the most optimal set of keywords but I just didn't have enough to work with.  Even the order I said them in might make a difference.  The sheer number of unknowns were maddening.  But this was the best I could do when I was flying blind. Maybe in the future I would learn better keywords to use in an Assessment Room like this.  Then again, I might never find one again.  That might be for the best.

At this point I knew next to nothing about Assessment Rooms other than what I'd heard from the Faceted. Finding one like this might be an extremely rare occurrence.

Since my mind was made up, I told the Faceted my three keywords.  “Alright, my three keywords are antique, weapon, and enchanted.”

I couldn't imagine that I would get too many options for weapons that humans couldn’t use.  Hopefully, these keywords would also prevent getting too many options for alien gear that wouldn't be applicable for my body style.  There could always be things I’d overlooked, but I was going to take my chances.

“So be it,” said the Faceted.

The next thing I knew there was a menu hanging in mid air in front of me.  This looked much different than my system-based menus, and this one had  reward options listed.  If I focused on any of them I could see exactly what they were called with a brief description of what they did.

A lot of them looked really interesting to me.

Kinetic Dagger of Pestilence.  Dagger inflicts a powerful, fast-acting viral infection on target after even the smallest scratch

Automatic Crossbow and quiver of the Loach.  This crossbow will automatically load a bolt from the quiver after being cocked. At higher proficiencies, the crossbow can be cocked and readied much faster.

There was also GenSith of Ruin, which was a melee weapon that increased magical abilities.  A glittering rapier caught my eye, but would be useless for it.  It increased mana regeneration.

it was what I stumbled upon White's Unshakable Harpoon, an enchanted thrown weapon, that

I discovered something truly exciting.

I’d discovered that I could actually look at the actual item and even zoom in.  When I’d done so on this one, I’d gotten that strange feeling that let me know I could bond with it.

With this new knowledge, I went back to all the other  prizes that I've looked at already, checking their compatibility.  Most of them could bond with me!

But then my excitement faded because even though all the gear I was looking at had abilities that I could use with my skill, I couldn't know what this skill itself actually was before choosing and bonding with it.  I had to buy it first.

Crap.  I had no choice but to just choose something.

The smartest play at this point was to get a piece of gear that I wanted for its own merits after I’d verified that I could bond with it.  After a few passes of all my options, the piece of gear that I finally settled on was:

Iron Bracelet of the Weeping Island.  Upon being worn, grants an ability to slightly enhance any held weapon’s cutting or piercing power.  The effect is stronger for weapons held by the limb this bracelet adorns.  

I told the Faceted which prize I wanted, and the creature said, “So be it.”

The moment the prize was in my hand, just a plain metal band, I slapped it onto my wrist and saw the expected prompt.

[You have been recognized by the spirit of this bracelet]

[Would you like to establish a contract with the spirit of this bracelet?]

I chose, “Yes.”  Then I saw a slightly different name for the hammer than the one I’d seen before buying it.

[Weeping Island’s Resolve]

This bracelet can be used to enhance the effect of any other magic, skill, or effect that the caster controls with a limited duration.  Two activations per day, but the Weeping Island will accept life energy in return for additional activations.

Well, that’s different, I thought. It was exciting but kind of ominous.  As I stared at my new bracelet, something began to happen to the room–it spun.  I glanced up fast enough to see the mysterious Faceted one last time before the world spun to a single dark point that receded int the distance.