Gacha Kingdom Building

As the Demon Queen's event approached, we did our best to prepare for it in the few days we had.

One issue we were having was with our weapons.

It's not that they are bad, most of them actually complement us somewhat well.

The only exception would be Ellie's...

For a while now it's been clear that she would like something that suits her more, but she never asked, so I ended up not prioritizing it.

The last time I summoned weapons, the Merchant ended up taking a pretty good bow with him, leaving her in dismay.

After that, I decided I should give her one whenever I got the chance.

Thanks to the skills we collected and all that we were sharing around, we were doing pretty fine on that front, so now was a good time to spend some tickets into weapons...

I went one by one in order to minimize waste, but given that all kinds of different weapons were popping up, it took a while to get a good enough bow to substitute for the one she was currently using.

[Aeresia

The famed bow given by the Angelic High Council to the hero Aeresia during the Bloody Era of Kollonc. This construct will evolve together with its users, and will provide them with benefits to strengthen them.]

It seems like the effects of the bow change according to the archer's powers... for now, Ellie said it's giving her a boost to dexterity, speed, and strength.

When she draws the bow. she also gets a skill called [Angels' Blessing], so I had her do just that and got the skill.

[Angels' Blessing

The angels decided to bestow power onto this one. Increases the odds of fate working in your favor. Increases your strength. Increases your luck. Increases your mana pool.

People with good alignments will be more likely to approach you.

As a passive skill, the effects will be applied all the time, unless the user decides to turn it off.]

After seeing that, I tried the other weapons to see if something else was like this, but it was no luck.

The skill is pretty good, and I surprised Ellie by sharing it back with her again.

I thought the bow might create an infinite cycle by strengthening its level again if she equipped it, but sadly, this didn't work.

Perhaps when the bow itself gets stronger she'll get another level in it, but we'll have to wait and see.

With Ellie's weapon issue resolved, I still had about 10 tickets left, and I ended up using them on the [Potions Banner].

Since whatever came out would be random, in both effects and quality, it's not a very reliable banner.

Still, the results were actually pretty good. Especially the mana regeneration and mana recovery potions that we could use right away today.

With these in hand, today's exploration proceeded at a faster pace than ever.

We gave Claire the mana regeneration potion, and thanks to it, she managed to keep going for quite a while and we found ourselves deep into the sixth floor.

When the effects were gone and her mana was close to running out, she chugged the mana recovery potion and ended up at max mana again.

There were [Lords] and [Kings] in the region we were in, so progressing further would be meaningless and would probably lead us to death, so we decided to make our way back, passing through a settlement first to rest.

There were a few things I wanted to check, especially the price for the items I summoned from the Gacha.

Inside the dungeon, the people of the settlement traded mostly for the loot that you could get on the floors.

I tried going to a few of the people selling goods and traded some of the weapons and potions that didn't seem particularly useful.

These guys offered mana orbs, monster cores, and dungeon crystals.

The latter is a bit useless for us since it's mostly used to enchant weapons by people with Gifts related to that, and the government rarely buys crystals from lower floors nowadays. Even when it does, they buy a bulk on the cheap, so it's not worth it.

Through trading, I managed to basically double the loot we had obtained today, and I didn't even offer too many items, about three weapons and two potions...

Money-wise, it's pretty worth it since I get them for nothing.

It's also probable that I ended up getting less than what they are really worth, but since I was just testing it out, I didn't really mind it.

Licia: "It still doesn't make sense to me why you don't care about the crystals... You know that a decent blacksmith could make great weapons with it right?"

Just like that, she ended up nonchalantly dissing most of Earth's blacksmiths.

Miwen: "Hm... I don't know how it was in your world, but on Earth, if you find a random blacksmith and give him a crystal of the sixth floor to make a weapon, he'll probably make you something only good for the sixth floor..."

Meaning that there's no point for an adventurer to pursue a blacksmith to make a weapon for him using the crystals from the floor he's currently exploring.

The demand comes mostly from people on lower floors who feel like they need a strong weapon to proceed further.

And if you're going out of your way to get one, might as well go for the best.

Weapons made with crystals from lower floors are usually marketed as a way to increase your earnings in a short time.

While it may not be intentional, this ends up creating a trap for new adventurers.

They often rely on the weapon without keeping in mind how effective their Gift truly is for fighting.

In time, they find themselves on floors they have no right being, and once disarmed, or facing an enemy who has bad compatibility... the result becomes pretty obvious.

This didn't stop some guys from aiming high but if you think about it rationally, it's better to have a weapon that complements you instead of it providing the major part of your power.

Licia: "I guess the difference lies in the frequency of monster attacks... you don't have too many monsters going around in your world, right? So you guys don't feel the need to arm yourselves..."

Miwen: "Pretty much... "

If a weak dungeon rampages, even without a Gift, you can just grab a gun and you'll pretty much be fine, there's no need to go after an enchanted weapon.

In case the dungeon that rampages is one of the more difficult ones... a strong weapon will probably not do you any good, you'll be overwhelmed either way.

In this case, most people would just evacuate if they knew they were too close to a dungeon that was soon to rampage.

Miwen: "When we go to another world through a settlement's gate, it always seems like they're more afraid of what's outside their walls than what comes out of the gate itself..."

Licia: "Monsters in the wild don't have a level cap so they are usually regarded as being more dangerous... At least back in my world, there were plenty of cases where a kingdom fell to monsters, not to mention entire areas lost to them. It's basically a constant war."

Thinking about it this way, Earth is pretty lucky since thanks to the technology and institutions in place, we can keep track of when a dungeon is going to rampage, and we can also coordinate ourselves pretty well to deal with it in the best way possible.

I kept talking with Licia a little bit while we were resting, and the topic changed a bit as we talked about Anna, Bea, and Ellie.

These three were the last to join us, and during our camping night, the topic surfaced about going back to their original worlds.

While none of them expressed the desire to go back, Ellie did say that there was still something she wanted to do.

As for Bea, aside from a few other witches, she didn't have any connection to her world, and as long as she could keep devoting herself to magic, she would be happy wherever she was.

Thinking back on it, she also said that she felt better here since she had access to more research material and was less often disturbed.

As for Anna, she wanted to use her second chance in life to do the things she didn't manage before, and she felt that she stood a better chance with us than with someone else.

Licia had her sister back in her old world, but even though nobody wanted to say it, it was doubtful that her sister would've managed to stay alive due to her condition.

Nobody understood that more than Licia though, and while she never said anything, it's clear that she doesn't care about her world anymore. There's simply nothing left in there for her.

Though I would like to have a word with the man who hurt her.

Still, that night, the only one who seemed indecisive was Claire.

While she has sworn duty to me in this life, she also did the same as the daughter of her house previously, when the option of coming back became available, she ended up torn between them.

She still has her family, and while she'd have suffered a great setback, if she went back now, she might manage to reclaim the life she once had.

It's her decision at the end of the day, but if possible, I'd like her to reach closure.

Miwen: "If she went back to her world I'd like to bring someone from the kingdom to sleep with us... who would you pick?"

Licia: "Eh? I can choose? Then I guess I'd go with Ellie, she's so cute after all."

Miwen: "Great choice, she's squishy and it's great to sleep hugging her body. Not to mention, we would gain some space without Claire's dump truck. Her body's only for me though, so you'd end up losing on that."

Licia: "I wanted to kiss her at least once though... She's so delicate and her lips look so sweet..."

We kept going on about that without noticing the two presences that stood next to us.

It was only when one of them couldn't take it anymore and interjected that we realized our mistake.

Ellie: "H-hm... so... the others said... y-you were taking too long..."

Claire: "No, no. Now I wanna hear more, it's the first time you complain about my behind, so I'm dying to see what you have to say."

Miwen: "Uh... Sorry?"

One was on the verge of tears from sheer embarrassment while the other hid her fury behind an ominous smile even after we met up with the others to go back home.

While it was clear that something had happened, the confused girls who didn't listen to the conversation didn't manage to figure it out. At least I'd like to think so.

For a while, this made Ellie wary of Licia, who tried everything to patch things up with her.

As for me, it took me a while to get to play with everything Claire's body had to offer again.

Aside from these results, today brought us three level-ups, making us reach the cap for this floor at an unprecedented speed. We also made $1947 thanks to trading a few items for monster cores.