Disclaimer I do not own anything except the idea of my story and the oc. Everything else belongs to the owners
Logan POV
Jeez man, I really do have the worst kind of luck. Right after Demeter and her family left, I started down the hill, and wouldn't you know it? The ground shook, and I fell into a hole that had opened up in the ground. Definitely didn't scream as I fell down the hole; I was too busy trying not to soil my pants. So anyway, as I fell down the hole like a boss, I landed on something that was hard as shit.
As I shook the cobwebs loose, I looked around but all I saw was blackness. I checked my inventory bag and found no torch. Damn, I guess I'll use geneticist and upgrade my eyes to super vision. Fuck!!! That hurt! It felt like my eyeballs had exploded inside my head. Slowly, the pain subsided and I was able to scan my surroundings. This almost felt like a classic pitfall trap, but if it were, there should have been something sharp and deadly to greet me.
After looking around, the wide open space looks and feels like I fell in a tunnel. The question is what kind of tunnel? Was it a bad guys tunnel? A secret hideaway? A forgotten supply cache? I don't know but I'm gonna definitely look around. The walls give off an Ancient Egyptian feel with all the writing and hieroglyphs . Which looked soo cool cause I never got to travel in my previous life. It's a shame I don't have something to take pictures... duh I'm such a dumbass sometimes.
Let's 'get creative' and create an all language skill to read, write and understand any language(1000LP)let's have a creative recall skill, which allows me to draw anything I can recall from memory(500LP). Finally since I'm in a dark place with only eyesight I create detect enemies(1500LP). That should be enough for now. As I look at the hieroglyphs, I can now see that it tells the story of the Three Beasts of Legend. This is... it can't be?!? The writing goes into detail on some of the weaknesses of the Beasts that have been observed since the Beasts have walked the earth.
When watching the anime, it always bugged me why the Zeus and Hera familias never tried to destroy the OEBD's wings. I mean you take away a dragons flight, it makes it a little easier to maneuver and attack it. I'm just assuming that there is more that happened that wasn't said, but in the end these weaknesses will help to avoid the dark period.
As I read further I found the answer I was looking for. Apparently to defeat the dragon, you need blessed metal. Blessed metal as described is the strongest metal in the known world. It possess the Divinity of gods and it needs the power of the oldest god, the strongest god, and the three blessed maidens. The combined divinity of these 5 gods, mithril, durandel, the magic stone of a level 7 boss and various rare ingredients could create the metal. It also states that the more divinity added during the forging process, the stronger and powerful the metal become. However it took a blacksmith on the level of Hephaestus or Gonibu to make.
………WTF!!!! There actually was a way to defeat the OEBD and no one found it? As I sit in the darkness in complete shock, this new knowledge bounces around in my head explains quite a few things. For instance, why Zeus and Hera familias with two lvl 9's could not even scratch the dragon. Just based off that an adventurer would have to be lvl 10 or higher, and that's just to not die right away.I understood that it was for plot but if they were able to defeat the leviathan and the behemoth, they should of of been able to defeat the dragon.
There are too many unknowns in this equation, I have some time to work this out. I just hope I'm able to save the Zeus and Hera familias. As I'm thinking these depressing thought I'm still investigating this tunnel. The architecture is amazing, it's still in almost pristine condition after what looks like a very long time. Suddenly I feel a nudge in my mind, like something is drawing my attention to the wall in front of me. I use discerning eye on the wall and it turns out to be a ancient doorway. As I inspect it, the door started to glow brightly. I had to advert my eyes it was so bright. Now blinking the spots out of my vision, I hear a loud grinding noise.
The door slide along the ancient track into the wall, releasing dust and air centuries old all around me. This forcing my eyes shut again, goddamn it man why the eyes? Waving my hand in front of my face I slowly open my eyes to stare at a deteriorating room. The walls looked smashed, the ceiling looked ready to collapse. Oh and let's not forget the piles and piles of bones. Human, from the looks of it. As I move into the room to inspect it, my ' I'm about to die, MOVE!!' instincts are going nuts so I took to the right. I barely clear the space when something heavy hits the ground right where I was standing.
As I stare at the creature, my discerning eyes tell me it's a Tomb Spider. The info from it don't revel much other than it's a ambush hunter and are long lived. So these bones must be other adventurers that got unlucky. My base instinct is telling me to run, but in my mind I know this room is important so I have to beat this spider. If any video game or real life logic holds true here, fire will severely damage it. So as I cautiously guard against the spider, I glance around the room to find anything that might help. There!! Discerning eyes see in one of the corners, it's a small oil jar and striking flints and of course it's across the room. Now to get there across the room, distract the spider long enough to coat it or the war hammer and fuck it up.
Well the worst thing is that I'd die and go back to Evie. Not too bad of a choice, but I have plans. I still have to become a god of blacksmithing, make legendary equipment and score with all the hot waifu's. So not today you ugly ass arachnid. The goal is the oil, so in true tank fashion, I charge the spider while screaming " I'm gonna fuck your shit up motherfucker."
The spider wasn't gonna let its prey go without a fight. It shot web at me, which I slid under. Using my war hammer as a vaulting pole, it caught a hole in the ground launching me over it. 'I can't believe that worked' I said as I'm flying over the spider. The dagger that I still had was grabbed from my belt and in quick motion was thrown at the spiders eyes. Yes!!!! it was a direct hit in the center of the spider's eyes. As I land , the screech from the spider is deafening. Ignoring the sound, I skid to the oils and start checking the jar. The jar is halfway full so I grab the flints and spark the oil causing it to ignite. The room is awash in the glow from the fire, the spider by now has found me again and is trying to kill me. I pour the flaming oil on my war hammer and say to the spider " Come get some motherfucker."
I guess getting stabbed in the eyes pisses people and monsters off, go figure. The spider started playing for real, it used to room to full advantage. Funny enough the spider acted like Spider-Man from the games. It used webbing to fly across the space to me. As I swing the hammer, it dodges the blow by skittering to the side. It lunges at me and it's close enough that I can't use the hammer. I have no choice but punch the spider to avoid getting bit. I sure as fuck wasn't getting poisoned, fuck that shit.
I straight cold cocked the spider and all you hear is a crunch. The spider goes flying and slams into the wall. Not giving the beast a chance to breathe, I attack it with a swing of my hammer, the flames dancing in the air as the hammer closes in. The spider manages to dodge, my hammer slams the wall behind it. The debris and dust clouding the room. As if sensing a possible opening, the spider attacked with its powerful jaws. It managed to catch my left arm in its pincers and was chomping hard. As I grunt in pain, I use the opportunity to crush some of its legs with the hammer. Unfortunately it yanked in its pain and it shredded my arm.
I scream out, the pain almost cause me to drop my hammer. Fuck this shit, it's time to kill this fucker. I start swinging the hammer one handed and managed to catch it in the thorax, igniting the body. The screech the spider let out could chill a person to the soul. The harsh sound bouncing off the walls and smashing my hearing to pieces. I quickly move in to kill it. Raising the hammer above my head I swing down and squished its head, blood and brain matter explode all over in a mist. That shot stinks and now I'm covered in it. Thankfully before I do something stupid like make more bloody gore, the body explodes into dust leaving a mid size stone.
With my good hand, I pick up the stone and put it in the storage bag. The flames on my hammer were put out by the blood of the spider, thankfully allowing me to keep the hammer instead of leaving it. However I look at my damaged arm and try moving it. I can close my fingers but lifting anything is out of the question. So I work to stop the bleeding until my HP regen kicks in... wait.. "Status" my stats pop up in my vision and thankfully I'm not poisoned. That's a huge relief, so I take the canteen from my bag and take a swig of water. Ok as I sit on the floor and start looking around the room with discerning eyes, I notice that the room I'm in has not been explored in a long time. Dust and cobwebs cover a lot of space here.
As my vision passes over a table against the wall, a notice pops up saying "Vault Room Key". Oh that's nice as I keep moving my vision until the light bulb goes off. I turn back to the table to make sure I seen right and sure enough, there is a key. I scramble up to grab it obviously, the key is a little rusty from age but it's still in good shape. Pocketing the key I keep looking around when I notice on the status page, there is a notification saying I leveled up some skills such as one handed weapon, hammer wielding , heavy weapons specialist and discerning eyes. Hammer wielding, HWS and one handed weapon went up about 10 lvls and discerning eyes went up 8 lvls. Right now these are great boosts until I get the falna. Then everything will more than likely transfer to excelia from then on. So with everything I've done up til now I should be close to if not a lvl2 by the time I get to Orario.
Continuing to look around the room, in the back towards the wall furthest away from me I see the vault door description pop up. Whelp time to collect my reward. I start walking towards the wall when the sudden thought of the bones on the floor around me. " Where is all the equipment and weapons from these bodies?" This has me immediately on guard, the weapons and armor should be around the bodies unless something moved it. I whisper "detect" and the weirdest sensation of my head swimming as I was able to see sonar imaging 500ft away. There! In the vault room, the pinging detected an enemy. The enemy turns out to be a kobold. However, the description says that due to experimentation, it developed intelligence and a fondness for shiny objects.
Weirdly, the name for the kobold has an asterisk next to it. The only reason I could think it would be there is that it's an enhanced specimen. Shit that means I would have to plan this out, I'm not ready for enhanced species yet. I think the best bet will be an assassin creed's special. Sneak up behind it and kill it. That way it does critical damage and I get bonus LP. Ok time to plan, I look up above the door and there are rafters above the door. To get up there I'm gonna have to take off my armor, so I take off my chest piece and my gauntlets so I can grip the rafters. Next i put my war hammer into storage as well and bring out the trusty dagger.
Realistically I'm only gonna get one shot at this. So I pray that I'm gonna get it right. I climb up the wall thanks to the statue by the door. Then I shimmy into place above the door, I lock my legs around the rafter and I hang upside down. As I stare at the door I have the dagger in my right, and a large rock in my left. I throw the rock at the door then swing myself up to the rafters.
Did the kobold hear the noise? Will it fall for such an obvious ploy. I sue hope so or I'll feel like a complete idiot. As it turns out, I only had to wait a few seconds which felt like eternity before the door opened.
Out stepped the biggest and ugliest kobold I've seen so far. It was missing half of its left ear, and had a hideous scar on its face. I would guess and say a burn. As I quickly inspect it I notice it's wearing armor likely from the adventurers it's killed. Shiny chainmail armor which still looks new. It has what looks like onyx greaves and gauntlets, and at this point I'm glad I decided to ambush it. Finally the damn kobold has a hammer, that with discerning eyes, that is durandal with a explosion enchantment on it.
I'm extremely glad I decided ambush at this time. Thankfully the neck is exposed enough to stab its throat. I ready myself to drop on it... just a bit more... little more... perfect, I drop down and wrap the kobold up. It yelped and tried to throw me off of it. I wasn't having it and started stabbing its throat over and over. The blood spurts all over me and the floor. The kobold struggles but it's weakening fast. Eventually it falls to the floor bringing me with it,and explodes into dust covering me in that as well.
As I lay there I thought ima need a nice long soak after this. I start catching my breath while my regen abilities go to work. Lets see my LP gain while I wait. 'Status' shows that for the Tomb Spider, I got 2500LP,". Sweet, that will be a nice help. Now the kobold showed that I got 2000LP for killing it plus 3000LP for an assassination kill. That brings me to 8815LP, that is a nice increase of 7500LP for killing 2 monsters.
Maybe I should rest for a bit in the vault room to recover my stamina? Yeah I feel a little drained from the monsters and it will give my arm enough time to recover for the journey ahead. I'll explore the room first then rest.
I get up and stretch, hearing my bones and joints give their sign of appreciation with all the popping they did. After I shake it off, I pick up the durandel hammer and armor, and I put it into my inventory box to look at when I get in the vault room .I then pick up the monster stone and place it in the stone box. After I select the key from inventory and walk towards the door, I insert the key and turn the lock, I give a grunt to push the door open. It was surprisingly heavy. But it moved fine in the end.
Once inside I couldn't believe what the room contained. I stared in disbelief at the piles of weapons and armor, which according to my discerning eye, were all top tier equipment. Scattered around the room were piles of gold and ingots of different materials stacked in neat piles. That kobold really took hoarding to a new level. The problem is I may have to upgrade the bags to the next tier.
After looking at the upgrades for the bags, it only made sense to change them to XL bags. Each one could hold up to a thousand items or five thousand stones. However each upgrade is 3500LP each, so for now I just upgrade the inventory bag. I'll get the stone bag later. After 10 mins of gathering, everything is packed in the bag. Now it's meditation time to focus, so I get into the classic pose and start focusing. So much so that I fall asleep.
Dream Verse
I come to with a start, wondering why I'm not in the vault room. Instead I'm drifting around a sea of white clouds. I'm pretty sure I'm in my mind space right now. "What an astute observation. I must say your doing well." The feminine voice said from everywhere but nowhere. That voice is very familiar though, I thought as I heard the the voice again, saying "Turn around handsome."
Sure enough, as I turn around it's none other than Evie. Damn she is still fine as all hell. She was still wearing the steampunk googles but she dressed more casually than before. I must say that tight jeans and tank top works almost too well. Not gonna deny I was staring for a good minute before I realized she was talking to me. "Sorry sexy eyes, I was lost in thought for a minute, what did you say?" She totally looked like she believed me until she said "Yeah sure but just so you know, my eyes are on my head not my chest."
'Ouch, critical damage' as theatrically play it up. "My fair lady, you wound me. My eyes cannot help but to be attracted to beauty. I am but just a man, take pity on me." I say as I slump to the ground. Meanwhile, Evie is trying her hardest to to resemble a tomato as she fights not to laugh. Eventually she loses that fight and starts a belly shaking laugh that has me joining her. Eventually we calm down and as we face each other, I take her hand and bestow courtesy upon her hand. Her face takes on a red tint as I say "It's lovely to see you again, but why are you bestowing the honor to me again my sexy lady?"
Evie starts to swoon but stops almost immediately. She clears her throat and tells me "Besides the fact I didn't explain that basics to you in the beginning, you figured it out on your own. The higher authorities of the multiverse decided that time manipulation and geneticist are too overpowered and will be limited so as to not overpower yourself." I'm actually kinda mad at this point, but before I could say so, Evie explains "Time manipulation would defeat the purpose of trying to get stronger. You could pause time forever and easily eliminate the OEBD, the higher ups want to be entertained. So time manipulation will be limited to training and sexual purposes." Evie concluded with a apologetic look.
Understandably I'm upset, this was a main part of my dungeon diving strategy. The new limitations do not work for me at all. What if I...? "Hey Evie, how about it becomes one of my skills when I get a falna? The max limit is 10 mins and it just makes me move so fast it seems like time stops? Also I have to level it up the hard way? That way I still keep time for my dungeon crawling and the other things you mention. But could training and sex not be time limit? Please?" I beg of her, I would hate to be a disappointment to my lovers. She appeared pensive, I assumed this was one of those god like being things and she was communicating with the higher beings.
She suddenly spoke to me "That's right Logan, I was talking with them and they agreed to it. They also said that since they're taking a perk and downgrading it, you can replace it with another." Me being the budding haggler, and figuring no time like the present, ask Evie " I still get the downgraded time skill? Also what are the limitations on the new perk?"
Evie smiles and states that "Thank you for asking about the limitations, in reality the higher authorities would like you to pick a skill for development. They feel that you should have a medium gain for excelia to help level up fast enough." I look at Evie and ask "What would you have me do Evie? I don't really want to have a skill like that. Do I say no to the higher authorities? I don't want to be like Bell and have and OP leveling system." I start pacing as I speak, getting all of the feelings out there to be seen. "I already feel like I'm super OP and I don't wanna alienate people once in Orario." I have a sudden epiphany. Why didn't I think of this already?
I stop pacing suddenly and turn to Evie. She looks taken aback with how fast I turned to her. I say "How about a development skill that benefits me and my lovers?" Evie looks thoughtful and places a hand on her chin. "What do you mean Logan? Explain your reasoning for this?" I start pacing again as I lay the idea out there. "This isn't a idea I've come up with. Reading fanfics helped me realize that this skill shouldn't benefit me alone. My plan is to live my life how I want it. By being a blacksmith, surrounding myself with great friends and lovers, and most importantly try to save this world from destruction."
I face Evie again and say "I want to make this skill sorta like 'Liaris Freese' but not overpowering. More like medium gain and it increase with each lover I take. In addition, my lovers receive some small to mid gain. It's only fair right?" I said with an emotional feeling that makes the mood build up. Evie stares at me with an happy look in her eyes. Eyes which look like she's about to cry.
I can't have that as I walk up to her, her cheeks turning red. My hands reach for the corner of her eyes and I dry them. "The angel in front of me shouldn't shed tears for me. As of right now, I'm not deserving of this angels tears. Maybe in the future, when I prove to this angel I'm worthy of them, she can shed these tears. Maybe this angel could also find it in her heart to stand with me, by my side, as a friend, a companion, maybe even a lover? The choice is up to this beautiful angel in front of me." Damn I laid that on kinda thick.
Evie's face was atomic red and she took a momentary leave of her senses and passed out. I caught her before she falls again. I shake my head and wonder if this is a good sign that she likes me. Suddenly a voice speaks out. "You don't have to worry about that young Logan. She has started to fall for you ever since you said she had the prettiest eyes ever." I look around but cannot find anyone. "You will not see me because I choose not to be seen. My name is Order. I'm one of the higher authorities that Evie spoke of. Like she said, me and the others are sorry to restrict the one perk you chose. We feel like we need to make it up to you."
This is trippy, I have a higher being apologizing to me. Its honestly scaring me a bit so I scratched my head and say "It's not a problem, honestly, the fact that your giving me a new perk choice is more than enough. Speaking of which, is it acceptable?"
Order folded its hands and said"Yes it is, the perk will be called The Love of the Blacksmith. The information will be 'So long as the will remains burning, TLotB will give the holder medium excelia gain for every enemy defeated. Also for every perfect equipment crafted, gains small to medium gain. In addition, every lover the holder has, gains excelia the more they love the holder. I think this will more than make up for the perk."
Damned if Order wasn't right. This would be a big help for the events to come. I get lost in thought think of how this can be utilized. It isn't until Order clears its throat, that I stop dreaming. "Also I approve of you and Evie. The poor girl has worked herself ragged for so long. Treat her right." I respond "Without a doubt."
Order floats over to me and picks up Evie. "Eventually she will join you, once her affairs and obligations are settled. Also when you go back to your body, take advantage of the forge next room over and make or fix your items. It helps if you have a crafted weapon to present Hephaestus when trying to join her familia." I give a nod of respect to Order. I feel the mind scape collapsing so I know it's time to go back.
Evie wakes up and looks at me, still atomic red. She manages to say before I leave "Yes Logan, I will be one of your lovers. Just wait for me?" She asks the last part all shy like. So I blow her a kiss and say just as I wake up "Always."
Chapter is finished. Next chapter will have Logan making a new weapon or upgrade his armor, then hopefully we arrive at Orario. So long as no more hijinks ensue.