Second World

”Well, just leave the leveling for later. Itʼs not like Iʼm in a hurry to level up this skill. I also donʼt have either Divine Gem or Magic Crystal yet, so there is no point to accumulate exp for it now.”

”You donʼt get it, do you?” Peniel said with a snort. ”This skill came from divine treasure. It takes priority. Whatever exp points you get now will get absorbed by it. You have no control over this.”

”That…” Jackʼs eyes turned wide. ”Are you saying I will not be able to level up until I fill up the exp needed for this blasted blessing?”

Peniel nodded.

”This is not a blessing, this is a curse!” Jack yelled.

”Thatʼs why I am angry with you soul-linking the sphere without knowing the consequence!” Peniel yelled back.

”Alright, letʼs take a moment to calm ourselves down. All these yellings are not good for us,” Jack said as he turned around, took a deep breath, then cursed out loudly, ”f*ck! F*ck!”

His dual-class had already requiring lots of exp compared to normal players, now he got a bottomless pit to feed the exp points some more. He could imagine the huge gap where everyone left him behind in terms of level.

”You can still consider yourself lucky, you know,” Peniel said.

”Yeah, I am very lucky,” Jack said sarcastically.

”Remember when I said a Divine Treasure was normally guarded by a level 70 Eternal creature. Meaning such a creature could only be defeated by lots of level 70 Elite class adventurers, or several level 70 with special classes.”

”Special classes?”

”Donʼt get side-tracked. Anyway, this divine treasure is meant for those level 70 adventurers. Under normal circumstances, the experience required to upgrade its level is around ten times a level 70 adventurer needed to level up. Thatʼs why Iʼm so surprised that it only needs a paltry three million exp here.”

”Oh…” Jack understood what she was saying.

”Thatʼs why I was panicking when you soul-linked with it. Imagine if you are required to collect the amount of exp needed by a level 70. Not to mention a level 70 can fight a level 70 monster which gives tons of experience. If you try to collect the same amount of exp by fighting only the low-level monsters afforded by your current level. You can forget about leveling up for the next one hundred years.”

Jack cringed when he heard her words. If that really happened, he should either retire to being an auxiliary job worker like Ellie or find a way to remove this Lightning God Blessing. He truly, as Peniel had said, had dodged the bullet.

”Perhaps the experience required is adjusted to my level, thatʼs why it was this amount. Similar to the boss just now who matched my level,” Jack offered his deduction.

”It shouldnʼt have done that in my knowledge, but the fact is in front of me, and I canʼt deny that divine treasure just now was genuine.” After a pause, Peniel added, ”Three million is a lot, but it is still doable. You just have to accept the fact that you will fall behind the others. Once we are done with this expedition, I will show you a place where you can gather exp points quickly.”

”There is such a place?” Jackʼs hope was reignited. ”Oh, fair fairy, you are truly my savior!”

”Save your bootlicking, go see what that treasure chest hold,” Peniel said.

”Oh, yes, the treasure chest,” he had completely forgotten about the gold chest. He turned to look at the treasure chest, but as he did, he saw something behind the chest, on an altar. It was a simple bottle, but it was marked by his God-eye monocle, meaning the bottle had some kind of a function. He went to the bottle first instead of the treasure chest, and use Inspect on it.

All-curse Expulsion Potion (Quest item)

Remove any curse

Seeing this potion reminded him again of his SSS quest. If he got this potion, wonʼt that quest be as good as complete? Could it really have been this easy? Well, it was not that easy actually coming til here, but he would have expected more from a quest that was graded the highest in difficulty. Probably what Peniel said was true, there was something wrong with this quest. Could those players, Gridhacker and the others, have something to do with this?

No point in dwelling on it. He reached for the potion, but hesitated for a moment. Will there be a trap? But his God-eye monocle should have sent him a warning if there was one, right? Not to mention his Investigative talent also had a probability to notify him if anything was out of the ordinary.

He walked around the altar, scrutinizing every detail. Trying to see if anything was out of place. He couldnʼt find any, so he just resolved himself to take the bottle. He closed one of his eyes and cringed as he lifted the bottle, expecting something to happen. But fortunately, nothing did.

”You are weird,” Peniel commented after seeing his act.

”Hey, you never know what will happen with this tomb raiding type of game. Traps were always abounding,” Jack tried to defend himself.

After storing the quest potion, now he could finally deal with the chest. He admired its shiny surface, he could see his reflection through that golden shine. Even from look alone, the Gold treasure chest outclassed the Bronze one by a mile.

He took out his Enduring Lockpick. He was sure that this chest would require a ton of attempts, luckily he had stocked up on lots of lockpicks before the expedition. He also summoned his Runestone of Luck, but then realized something and asked Peniel, ”do I have to have this runestone in effect while I lockpick? Though I can multi-task, I still prefer to concentrate while doing the lockpicking.”

”You can summon your runestone of luck once you heard that your lockpick is successful. No need to have it on effect all the time while doing the lockpicking,” Peniel explained.

Jack nodded. The success rate of lockpicking this Gold Treasure Chest at his current Intermediate Apprentice grade would be abysmally low. He would need to score a perfect execution on every attempt to compensate for it. Otherwise, even with his deep stock of lockpicks, he might still not manage to open the chest. If he ran out of lockpicks and this treasure chest was still locked, then he might truly cry. He did not think the dungeon would still let him get to this treasure chest if he re-entered.

As he was about to store back the runestone of luck, he stopped. He looked at the runestone in bewilderment.

Runestone of Luck (rare runestone)

Increase luck by approx. 5 points for 10 seconds.

Elemental energy required for upgrade: 850/1000

The last time he checked, the elemental energy was only 50 points. Now it suddenly shot up to 850? He didnʼt remember feeding it any gemstone. Peniel also gave her attention when she saw Jack looking at the runestone.

”You mentioned that this Runestone of Luckʼs element is lightning, right?” She asked.

”It is,” Jack answered.

Peniel pondered a bit before saying, ”probably there is some excess lightning elemental energy after you merged with the Lightning God Sphere. This excess elemental energy got absorbed by this runestone.”

”There can be such a case?” Jack asked. He then remembered something and summoned another runestone, the Runestone of Probability. He used Inspect on it. as expected, the elemental energy inside this one was 910, way more than it should be. Both the lightning element runestones were now close to upgrading to Super Rare grade.

Just to make sure, he summoned his other non-lightning runestones. They were still at a pitiful amount of energy.

”Too bad not all of them are lightning-element runestones,” Jack commented. ”Otherwise they would all have received a free bonus.”

”You wish!” Peniel said. ”I bet the excess energy was divided between the two. If you have four lightning runestones. Then the excess energy would have been divided by four. The total amount of excess energy will remain the same. In other words, if only your Runestone of Luck is lightning, it would have been upgraded to Super Rare Grade by now.”

”I see. But this is still a great free boon. Do you know of any way I can get a similar boon again?”

Peniel didnʼt even feel like deeming that with an answer. Did he think a Divine Treasure was something that he could find at the side of a street?

Seeing his fairy friend was ignoring him, Jack didnʼt bother her anymore. He sat down beside the Gold Treasure Chest and started to work on the lockpicking process. Despite his perfect execution, the twelve counts inside his Enduring Lockpick were soon exhausted with failures.

He didnʼt think too much of it. Expecting to open this treasure chest with only twelve tries was like asking for a miracle. He took out his standard lockpicks and got back to work.

😉