Chương 31

Wade stared at the dead lootbox. No feet were twitching at least. And no sign of any loot anywhere inside the mashed up flesh and bleeding stabwounds. Lot of loose teeth too.

"Can I even loot anything off of this?" He brought out the phone and waited for the god to give him at least some guidance. No idea, there aren't any mimics in Azdrial. This was a pure system creation, it's really taking some liberties now o(≧▽≦)o"The system cre-" He stopped, looking back at the dead chest. The System had spawned the lootbox chest, there wasn't any dust or signs of age when he'd walked into that house. So the System was clearly capable of generating things wholesale. Why not monsters?

"Fine, but again - how do I loot the thing?" Maybe cut into it? idk, cut its tail off first for extra loot Wade sighed, there wasn't a tail on the fucking mimic.

"Monster hunter joke?" You know it baby~ He really did need to do everything himself.

"Identify." He said, starting the process. Level 19 Mimic - 0% All right, not that then. Maybe if he opened up the jaw again and looked deeper inside, he might find something more specific for identify? He got closer, taking care not to cut himself with the teeth again. There was a wet slimy smell, but oddly enough no bad breath given the thing was ninety percent mouth. Well, if it had been wholesale generated into this world, with the express goal to fuck him over…

Maybe it had never eaten a meal yet, so no reason it'd get bad breath? Also there was a sort of crackling noise, like fire on wood. He couldn't tell where it was coming from, but the closer to the dead body he got, the louder it was. A few seconds later it went from something he thought he'd hallucinated to something he could actually locate. Wade's eyes narrowed at the legs of the dead mimic. Tiny motes of red light flickered at the edges of the limbs, like embers rising from a campfire.

The dissolution started at the creature's feet, ash drifting upward and floated into an unseen wind of some kind, just vanishing once they got high enough.

"What the-" He stepped back, watching the process accelerate. The creature's flesh blackened and crumbled, breaking apart into red embers that scattered into nothing. The transformation raced up the mimic's body, consuming meat and bone alike. The blood pools of black ichor were less dramatic, simply turning to ash and floating off, while the actual body had far more embers.

"Play, are you seeing this?" Niiiicee, Mobs despawn exactly like in a video game. Fascinating The process reached the main body, the tooth-filled maw dissolving into sparks. He heard a crack, and realized that was the lid of the chest hitting the ground, now that the tendons and muscles no longer held the entire thing at all. In seconds, the grotesque creature vanished completely, leaving behind only the pristine silver chest it had been mimicking. Not a drop of blood or gore anywhere.

Wade circled the chest cautiously.

"So that's what happens when system-generated monsters die? They just... poof?" All the other things he'd killed or seen killed in this world had left a body exactly as they should. Makes sense to me, ashes to ashes, dust to dust and all that ┐(￣ヮ￣)┌ The chest sat innocently on the floor, lid opened. Still, with the monster gone, maybe there actually was something inside the chest? He slowly moved over until he could see inside. It was a hole in reality. Something that bent light around it.

He could see his reflection upside down looking back at him, the edges of his face twisting away into the singularity point. A sphere of some kind, playing with light itself. The portal hovered right in the center of the box, large but flattened to the bottom part. He couldn't tell if it was a three dimensional object, or a flat plane. Or perhaps something with higher dimensions.

"Identify." Silver-Ranked Player Selection Reward"The fuck does that mean?" You should touch it. (✧∀✧)"You have no fucking idea do you?" Commme onnn, what's the worst that could happen? Besides, y'know, ANOTHER mimic... (¬‿¬) Wait, that would be hilarious actually"…. you know what, no taking chances." Wade took a step back, and sat down, waiting for his health to return to 100% before he did anything.

He unlocked the doorway out, made sure the path outside was clear of everything, and came back with one of Illy's daggers in his left hand, and the biggest rock he could find, leaving it right in quick pickup range. Planning set, he knelt down and reached his empty hand into the wormhole looking thing. Everything turned grey. His hand froze in the air. He could still move, but more abstractly, like a camera would. The rest of the world was frozen in place. Hidden Lootbox Challenge Complete!

Hidden System notification unhidden. Unhidden? There was a notification that was hidden?! When he paid attention, he saw his systems screen scroll upwards by itself, all the way up. Messages after message he'd read, debuffs, buffs, level ups…. and then the lootbox spawn message itself. There was something more there. Something that hadn't been there before.

"You piece of shit." Wade hissed. THE GAME recognizes your accomplishment. You are the first player to defeat fifteen enemies in the same battle. Silver Lootbox spawned nearby. Luck triggered! Hidden Lootbox Challenge added to spawned Lootbox.

"HOW IS THAT LUCKY?!" Wade wanted to attack something, anyone. Almost as if in answer to his question, the notifications scrollbar went right back to present. Two new messages were there. Loot upgraded to Silver-Ranked Player Selection. Select category of reward. Wade had no idea what that meant.

"Uh, what?" Lootbox rewards are randomized. Defeating the lootbox challenge has allowed you to narrow down the category of reward. Select category of reward. Wade realized that was the first time the system itself had answered him something. Then he realized another thing: He was speaking to it. Directly to the System. Wade immediately knew what he should ask: "I want to speak to the manager." Invalid selection. Select category of reward.

"Balls." But he didn't stop trying of course.

"System, open the admin console." Invalid selection. Select category of reward. Every possible combination he could think of to open up dev tools, consoles, even cheat codes. Nothing he asked got through.

"What makes you tick…" He hissed, pondering. The System took that as a request. Knowledge category selected. Is this your final desire? Oh that was different. Good thing it gave him a yes no prompt first. Wouldn't be the worst reward though. Knowing what the System was exactly could help. Maybe. But he wanted to learn more things first.

"No, that's not my final desire. What are the win conditions for all participants in THE GAME?" Invalid selection. Select category of reward.

"Ah, ha! If there was an answer to that one, then you'd have offered it as part of the knowledge category. So there isn't a win condition to THE GAME?" Invalid selection. Select category of reward. It also wasn't baited in giving him a different answer when asked the inverse of that same question. Fine. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

"Who created you?" Invalid selection. Select category of reward.

"What categories of rewards are available to me?" Examples include: Weapons, Armor, Skills, Consumables, Knowledge, Titles, Currency, and Companions. Select category of reward. Hah! Something different.

"What's the highest quality item I can receive from this lootbox?" Silver quality lootbox rewards.

"Woooow, really?" Well that explained nothing.

"What would I get if I selected the weapons category?" A random silver ranked reward that is intended to be used as a weapon. Getting more out of it now.

"What if I asked for an axe category?" Invalid selection. Judged too specific. Select category of reward. That was a new part to the rejection message. Judged.

"Is this 'judgement' happening right this moment when I ask, or already written into rules somewhere?" There was a thought experiment he'd read once, about what really defined a chair. Turns out, with enough logical posturing and semantic tomfuckery, anything could be decided a chair. The only real way for a dungeon master to define a chair in a way the players wouldn't mess it all up… ended up being at the dungeon master's own leisure. All that fled his mind when the System showed him its answer.

Judgement happens at my leisure. Wade stared at the message. For a few reasons. One he'd been ruminating about the question itself and had vividly thought about the word leisure. The System hadn't simply answered his question, it had shown him it was reading his mind. And it'd shown him whatever it was - it had a mind of its own. Possibly far more impartial than any mortal or god, but still someone.

Which meant he had to shift his thinking from wiggling around irontight rules, to wiggling around something more like a border patrol officer. Show me a preview of what's in each category. Invalid selection. Select category of reward. Well that confirmed the mind reading.

"Are there any hidden categories not listed?" Disallowed categories are judged as they appear. I'll know it when I see it. Was what the System basically told him. Wade tried another angle.

"System, what percentage chance do I have of getting something useful from each category?" 100%"So whatever I get is always going to be useful to me in some way?" Yes.

"Can I roll again if I don't like what I get?" No.

"If I select a category, will I get to choose the specific reward within that category?" Lootbox rewards are randomized. To its credit, it had said this right out the gate.

"Will my luck stat influence what I receive?" Yes. Oh hoooo, now here was some useful info. It implied some items were more useful than others. Who decided what was more useful?

"If my luck triggers on the lootbox pull, will it tell me on the systems notification?" It was part of the system after all, and everytime luck had triggered, it'd told him. Yes.

"What's the percentage chance I'll get lucky?" 12%"Stats." He called out, then went right down to the one that mattered. Luck: 12 (2+10) Wade started laughing. All his stupid probing questions had finally given him something that could be useful - how the luck stat actually worked. 12 points into luck, and a 12 percent chance of having it trigger for his lootbox. That didn't seem like a coincidence. Was it really that one-to-one? Then again, luck wasn't always a good thing.

Case in point, the lootbox challenge nearly killed him, and that had triggered from his luck.

"Can I ask for a category that would buff my stats?" Not available for silver ranked lootboxes. What if he could go further meta?

"How about a category that the system thinks I should be asking for?" System-Guided Category selected. Is this your final desire? Ohhhh. But this could backfire. It'd be like a top level player picking out the game's strongest item, possibly something that required deep knowledge of the meta and how to break it in order to use, then giving it to a fresh player without any of that knowledge. Risky.

He could get something random, like a fork that if used in some strange location, time and movement would cause some kind of game breaking bug that would make him a god. Technically the best item he could get. Not the best he could actually use.

"Can I get a category that's specifically the best possible category Michael Valentine Wade could make use of right this moment?" System-Guided Category selected. Is this your final desire?

"Naw. Just testing your bounds." Same answer as before, so there wasn't a difference. At least the thing was patient. Anyone else would have started throttling him.

"Is there a 'wild card' or 'random' category that might give me something outside the normal parameters?" Maybe he could get past what the system would normally allow him, if- No. Okay, well fuck that idea then. Ten minutes of incessant or highly specific questions later, he continued down the list of everything clever he could ask, but largely what he'd learned now was the best he'd gotten. Which meant the best use of category would come down to what Wade valued more.

His own choice, flawed as it could potentially be, or trusting some higher power to make a better choice for him. He wanted to pick the guided category. But the moment he put his mind to it, he just felt awful. Morally repugnant. Selfish. Why? Why was he feeling this way? It was almost obvious the moment he spent more than a second to think about it. The feeling was so visceral, it cut through his logical haze and hyper-fixations on power: Because Leon had walked out there and put down his own life to save Wade's.

And he'd done it before knowing his soul would survive. He'd done it thinking he was going to die for good. So that he could save someone else. Someone else who would later scurry away like a rat and choose personal power over everyone else on the very first chance he got. You want tae know who someone is? Watch 'em make a hard decision. Wade felt sick to his stomach that he'd even thought of any other choice. So have all the quirks and oddities you like, deep down inside, we already seen who ye are.

"I want to bring someone back from the dead." Necromancy Category selected. Is this your final desire?

"Yes." It wasn't guaranteed he'd get the item he wanted. All he knew was that he'd get something necromancy related. Could be summon skeletons for all he knew. Or he could quite literally pull a necromancer into this world gacha style. Didn't matter, all Wade knew was that he felt like a weight was off his shoulders. This might not be the best thing, but it was the right thing. And all items were useful anyhow, the System had vouched for that. He'd make it work.

Copium it might be, but he'd made do with worse cards before. Time resumed. The vortex before him vanished. And what his hands held was something different. It was a scroll. A single scroll. He held his breath.

"Identify." Scroll of Raise Dead (System Quality)