The Gift of Loot Chapter 24: Chapter 24: Cheese The Hell Out of the Dungeon

Read chapter 24 of The Gift of Loot by Jack_Golightly on NovelPedia.

Thomas went back to the boss goo and found a nice grade B healing crystal and three more adaptation crystals. Judging by the amount of glitter and the pace at which they shifted from white to fleshy rose gold, he guessed these were B grade as well. Then he helped Zach comb through the rest of the room, looking for anything else that had dropped. Unfortunately, Zach's fire had been ferocious enough to burn away everything except the Adaptation crystals. They only found one among the numerous scorch marks and small piles of ash. He did manage to net several air crystals in the fake Thomas-mimic goo and a single brown earth crystal. Gathering it all together, they took a seat on the edge of the stage. Thomas grimaced. "I thought there would be more." "Dude, what are you talking about? This is a great haul." Zach paused, then looked at him. "Or maybe it's not a good haul for you?" There was definitely a question in there, though he wasn't pressing. Thomas knew he could ignore it or wave it away as a joke. But... well, Zach had told him the details of his Gift. "My Gift is loot," he said with a shrug. "Rare drop rate goes from half a percent to five percent, and monsters are five times more likely to drop items." "What the hell, that is awesome!" Zach enthused, but then he paused, grimaced, turned unusually serious. "You understand that if people find out your Gift, it'll be all bad news for you. Someone who wants what you can do will not stop." "My Gift is that special?" Thomas asked. Zach started to nod, then shrugged and scratched the back of his head. "I... think so? Old Families have had access to dungeons for ages, but the strength of unlocking Gifts for the first time was supposed to increase after the System Announcement. That's why I waited until Announcement Day to dive. Yours, though? Man, I've never heard anything like it." Well, that was most of his fears come true. "When I came out of my first dungeon, I told the National Guard that it was a sensory gift: My perception increases for every dungeon monster I kill, then resets after I leave the dungeon." "Hey, that's a good cover story for this dungeon," Zach said, brightening. "We can tell them about the darkness and everything. It will explain why they lost so many people. I think that box thing was probably a trap. The mimic dungeon was supposed to be challenging, but not this challenging." He paused. "Or maybe they set it up to try to train their younger generation, and it got out of control. The Brighten family knew they were screwed, so they left." "Do you know these people personally or something?" "No. Just by reputation. People thought they were all witches or some shit." He gestured to the sword that lay between them, having taken it off since it was long enough to be awkward to walk with, much less sit down. "And they loved these old-style Japanese swords. They weren't Japanese, either." His face blanked, and he must have been replaying part of their conversation because he said, "Hey, so wait! If you killed more in the Chipmunk dungeon, could we have gotten more red crystals?" Then he paused. "Actually, maybe that wouldn't have been a good thing. But your Gift means you don't have a party either? All those crystals you sold me came from you? Just you?" "Yeah." Thomas smiled, a little proud of himself. "That all came from my first dungeon." He whistled. "Okay. You've got to figure out how to offload these without attention. Maybe travel to Sacto or the Bay Area and sell some in different places so they don't ping the wrong people." That was a daunting thought. "These Old Families," Thomas said carefully, watching Zach out of the corner of his eye because he could tell it was a sore subject, but he had to know, "Do they have a way to read people's Gifts?" "No one can read Gifts." He shook his head emphatically. "But they have access to databases, just like every other rich asshole who can buy their way in. Or they just own the databases. So you've got