The third delve was extremely tightly run, alleviating some of my worries.
The rift was filled with plants that released a spore-based intoxicant into the air, making people relaxed and happy. Meanwhile, the monsters sent out writhing, spiked tendrils through the long grass to grab and then slowly crush delvers as they bled to death from spikes impaling them.
The clear and protection teams were both extremely professional, sharing videos of their strategies and how they'd each tackled the rift before. With the full facemask they provided, covering my eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, the plants couldn't get a single spore through as the clear team systematically eradicated every plant.
I was also worried about Steve's backpack cage and if it was air-tight. I hadn't thought to require that when I commissioned it – though was told it should keep out water – and grew concerned when he fell asleep.
It turned out he was just bored as I refused to take him out between fights when they didn't have a mask that fit him. That meant more of the essence flowing to him went towards his core instead of his intelligence-enhancing circlet and he was getting mighty close to Tier 1.2.
I'd love to see him get through Tier 1 as fast as possible. But if he wants to compete in the tournament, I have to slow his growth down. Otherwise, he'll be at the bottom of Tier 1.3. I don't want to put a little rascal with no real fighting experience in the 1.3-1.5 bracket…
When I'd put forth the idea of the tournament as best I could, Steve was elated, demanding his stick to wave around menacingly, smashing it into my shins and random furniture. It had already cost a few silver in damage to the various inn rooms we stayed in.
Annoyed but relieved that the bathysphere seemed like it was airtight – or at least nearly so, as I planned further testing – we finished with the rift, me trying to keep him engaged enough to stay awake.
The reward was a potion reagent useful in making Tier 1 concoctions. It helped with the process of removing some toxicity – usually only able to make a potion move about half a step from the middle of mid-tier to the bottom of high-tier quality at best.
Valued at all of eight gold, which meant I made two gold, sixty silver for the delve, I was getting more annoyed.
Not terrible but still, pretty disappointing. Are my expectations way out of whack? I should ask someone, but who?
I spoke with my team and they said they'd put out feelers to people they knew but, thus far, the rewards did feel rather lackluster.
***
I dodged right, moving my shield into the way as they swung at my head.
SCRAPE
The awful sound of nails on a chalkboard – or nails down a shield – reverberated throughout the rift. It was the fifth time one of the tigers the size – and somewhat the shape – of a moose had broken through our attempted containment.
But it was also the last.
Romie used my joke of the lion getting a thorn in its paw to good use, shooting a second arrow to strike one of the rift boss' pads, making it move just slightly more awkwardly.
We had taken down one of the lieutenants that started the fight but Inara and Pavel were still wearing down the second.
Despite the creature's size, it was rather wiry, its legs almost looking like a camel's with angry cats' paws and claws, so it relied more on speed than power and weight.
It brought its snarling maw down at my head so I ducked underneath, scoring a rather nasty crunching hit to its genderless undercarriage. It let out a piteous moan but managed to rear back on its hind legs all the same, going for another swipe.
Romie's arrow hit it in the guts, right where I had just smashed it, letting loose a cord of entrails. The strike that crashed down on my shield was more like that of a sleepy kitten than a terrifying beast.
I shoved it away with my shield, stepping in to smash down on its head with a victorious snarl.
Feeling the essence rush, I dashed over to the only remaining monster, landing a surprise, enchantment-enhanced strike against a hind leg, hearing a slight crack but not fully breaking the leg. Despite their weird composition, the creatures' legs were more solid than steel.
Still, the distraction and resulting swipe at my head, which was easy to dodge, left its throat open for Inara to sink in both daggers in the shape of an X. She dashed backwards to get out of the way of the resulting deluge of blood.
Which washed over a nonplussed Pavel.
During our delve, we leveraged Inara's [Restricting Vines] spell to incapacitate two of the rift monsters to test how far away I could be from a kill before the allocation bracelets were ineffective for the purposes of filtering out null essence.
Theoretically, all allocation bracelets had a range of well over 100 feet (30m) but we found that the null essence attraction capabilities Ratmir designed only had an effective range of about 50 ft (15m).
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It was good to know for the future and was something we could trade to Ratmir for other useful information. He was nothing if not ruthless in his pursuit of knowledge.
When Inara won our rock, paper, scissors game, this time not done over AAI so we let her cheat to her heart's desire, the young woman skipped over to the rift reward distortion with glee. She swiped her hand through the air and deftly caught the falling object, turning gracefully to show us.
A ball?
It looked like a perfectly ordinary ball, though exceptionally well crafted and balanced, a bit bigger than a golf ball. Beyond that, nothing seemed interesting or special about it. She handed it to each of us and Steve seemed to really take a shine to it so we let him hold onto it until we could get it evaluated.
Natalia seemed entranced with the ball too as we jogged to the last rift of the day. Pal was just as sour-faced as ever, barely keeping up with the two of us.
I told the rest of the team to take off early and they went to try to do a few things in town, including visiting a weapons-maker that specialized in spears for Pavel.
The fifth rift was settled in a nice verdant valley of wildflowers, only a small trail to it indicating the way. Natalia said no one ever took anything other than the rewards from the rift so why have a big road going to it?
For this delve, all I had was a clear team as it was a trap rift. One of the members had an Innate Capability that let them spread their defensive power to the rest of the team and they were wearing what looked like three layers of armor on top of each other, puffing their size out quite a bit.
The man seemed to find it very funny. "We love this rift. Don't get to run it often, too expensive. Gets some great rewards. But with Kyra an' me, this thing's a breeze!"
His teammate waved her hand, showing two rechargeable mana stones. At my surprised look, Kyra laughed. "My Cap is about not being fooled and I have the [Trap Finder] skill. So with these babies provided by the city, this is going to be hilarious."
And hilarious it was. Kyra cast her skill once per room and pointed out every trap, not needing to worry about losing her mana.
Apparently, the rift had a tendency that the more traps were triggered or disarmed, the better the reward.
So the team of four set about setting off every trap. It took an hour longer than it should have because they brought some carcasses for the traps they couldn't disable, partly for entertainment purposes. Seeing a pig leg stabbed with six spears simultaneously was really cool. Until it was the seventh time and there was barely any meat left.
Each triggered trap released some essence and every successfully disarmed trap released more.
The final room had a trap almost every step and took thirty minutes on its own to clear.
Kyra swiped her hand through the reward distortion and an ornate box fell into her hands.
"Aw, dammit!" she hollered.
"Why is that bad? I can feel it's magical from here," I said.
"It's a trapped puzzle box. There can be really amazing things that come from it but they are a pain to open and it's only about a 20% chance whatever is in there will be valuable. We just auction these off. They usually go for about 20 gold but still, not great. With how many traps we set off, I was hoping for something better… mama needs a new pair of boots." She showed me how hers were absolutely falling apart, presumably from the fire, acid, and who knew what other stresses they were regularly tested against.
As I headed back to the city, to the new inn that Lurka had arranged for us, I reflected on the day.
Overall, it was pretty disappointing.
Five delves and, barring the ball being worth anything or the puzzle box going for way over expectations, it was far worse than Struva. In total, our rewards were only worth 35 gold. We had a three delve day in Struva that was by far our lowest at 50 gold. And our cut from the rifts with The Order especially was worth almost nothing since we had 50% of a small chunk of gold and a ball.
My personal net gain for the day was looking to be about eleven gold total. Under my previous agreement with The Order, it would have been six gold, thirty silvers, an abysmal amount in my book.
Maybe I really am spoiled…
"So, did it end up being worth anything?" I asked to the woman running by my side.
Natalia went back to the city to ask an official to appraise the ball while we ran the trap rift. Steve had been a little upset at it being taken away but seemed to understand it would be back.
"Nope, they said they'd give you a few silvers, five at most, for it but that's it," she said with a shake of her head, handing it to the rascal riding my shoulder with her smile returning quickly.
"Eh, that's actually not the worst outcome, though maybe it is for my team. Per our contract, I am using my right of first refusal to buy the ball for five silvers," I said with a smile. I let Steve know the ball was his as best I could, to which he rejoiced, throwing said ball into the air.
While we were still running.
We had to circle back to pick it up.
As I caught back up to Natalia, she gave me a downcast look, which was surprising. "The Council said it was a mistake and it's a known reward. It's worth ten gold."
Smelling something fishy, I knew what to do. "Great, we'll take our five gold from it instead then." Steve could feel my smug reaction through our link and rejoiced again, confusing Natalia.
Isekonsultant Tip to Thriving #56: When someone is clearly trying to screw with your money, force them to commit to one decision or another. Don't play their games. Once they are out of options, just move forward with your decision. Negotiating with people trying to change the rules after a contract is signed is not worth the time or effort.
Clearly reading an AAI message, Natalia's smile froze confusedly on her face. "Uh, they said that no, the original appraisal of five silver was correct and they are taking the ball."
"Please forward me the official valuation with documentation and ask the Council's main assistant for confirmation." She did and a few seconds later I had it. After a back-and-forth with Inara, I sent the Council our team's acceptance of the price for the ball and exercised my right of first refusal to purchase it.
The assistant to the Council sent back a confirmation with a tersely worded message asking why I was wasting the Council's time over five silver and that this wasn't how good relations were established.
When she read through all the details of the situation, her reply only read […I see…].
Chuckling to myself at my small victory, I arrived at the new inn, bathed, and quickly grabbed a bit of food before heading to my room. I had a late dinner meeting with a local member of the Council – Sigita Salub – arranged by the Velez Council so a few nibbles were all that was necessary for the moment.
Inara won again at rock, paper, scissors – this time fair-and-square – so she got to babysit Steve during my meeting.
Wearing a rather fetching suit that combined Velez and Earth styles Sofia helped me design, I entered the restaurant. The host took me to a private room where the Councilor in question, an older woman with salt and pepper hair and exceedingly gorgeous purple eyes, sat with a small frown plastered across her face.
The man next to her rose, smiling coldly. "So you're the pig fucker that messed with my rift."
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