Optimizing Your Isekai - Progression Fantasy w/ Slice-of-Life and Biz Building Elements

Chapter 56 Part 1 - Optimizing Your Isekai


Excerpt from The Profound and Pretty Princess' Ultimate Guide to Cultivation, Captivation, Cuteness, and Carving Your Way to the Top, English Edition (the worst-selling guide in the history of Putijama)

On Bloodline-Granting Treasures

While there are any number of interesting treasures that you can get in a rift, bloodline-granting treasures are among the most unique, rare, and interesting.

It's hard to know for sure but estimates say 99.9% of beings with a bloodline were born with it, whether sentient beast, rift bond, or the extremely rare person born with a bloodline. But those 0.1% were granted a bloodline through a rift-dropped treasure.

When someone absorbs a bloodline-granting treasure, they are granted a bloodline. Sounds simple. And it is! But also it isn't!

The only way to obtain a bloodline-granting treasure is to be in the rift when it is dropped as a rift reward. Within a second of trying to carry the treasure out of a rift, it will disintegrate.

There was even one group that simply rushed the boss and managed to kill it within the half bell rift instance timer, hitting the reward distortion and finding one of the rare blood-red gems. One of the team members exited and brought another person into the same instance to absorb it; the treasure disintegrated microseconds after they entered.

At least publicly, there are no known ways to stabilize a bloodline-granting treasure and even one person who had an Innate Capability for stabilizing them failed to do so as the treasure itself was brought out of the rift. If she had been in the delve that received it though, who knows!

If someone knows what they are doing, they can assess the general function of a skill shard through a spiritual scan. Not so for bloodline-granting treasures. There is essentially no way to know which bloodline you'll get before you absorb the gem. There are some people who claim to have guessed right but no AAI-backed recordings have ever been submitted to prove the fact.

Current Beings With a Bloodline

As you might guess, a being with a bloodline cannot add another bloodline through the bloodline-granting treasure. There are reports and conjectures that say if someone with a bloodline absorbs one of the treasures, it will strengthen their bloodline or allocate some free essence to their bloodline core but, given how rare the treasures are, nothing conclusive has ever been proven.

Types of Bloodlines Granted Through Treasures

When someone adds a bloodline, there is typically a combination of essence type and animal aspect. That could be something amazing like the lightning rhino, granting both speed and incredible durability.

Or it could be a delving career-ender, like either of the two different sloth bloodlines acquired in back-to-back years over a century ago. While the two young women, fourth cousins that came from opposite ends of the Kingdom, only needed to consume about 20% of the normal number of calories on a daily basis, their delving careers ended due to the significantly delayed reaction speeds. They were both quoted as saying, rather slowly, 'Not worth it.'

As of now, 53 different known varieties of bloodlines have come from bloodline-granting treasures. And while it is essentially random which one drops, there is a slightly higher chance of a bloodline related to the main enemy type and essence type in the rift.

Estimates are that about 60% of bloodlines granted through treasures are considered helpful or additive, 20% are neutral to no benefit – e.g. the water hound bloodline makes it easier to detect nearby water, which is rarely useful – and 20% are mostly detrimental.

Though it's always in the eye of the beholder. Some people may find the earth bovine bloodline, whose main power seems to be producing exceptionally good fertilizer, a great boon instead of a smelly problem.

And again, when a rift drops a bloodline-granting treasure, it is essentially impossible to know what you'll get. That said, most groups that have one of the rare treasures drop and have the necessary tools will try to absorb it.

Using a Bloodline-Granting Treasure

Absorbing a bloodline-granting treasure, at least doing so 'the right way', is an act of temporary self-mutilation in the hope of increasing long-term power. The most effective way to ensure you get the most from the treasure, rather than only receiving a fraction of its power, is both dangerous and ghastly.

Once the gem comes into contact with a person's blood, it will disappear in the next five seconds or so. This has been a problem with a bloody hand catching the treasure as it falls from the rift reward distortion.

Eating a bloodline-granting treasure is sometimes mildly effective, granting about 5-10% of the typical bloodline strength of someone doing it 'the right way'. It is also far less dangerous but supposedly almost as disgusting. People who did so reported the taste of the gem was like 'blood drizzled like a sauce on top of every bad liquid you can think of'. The sewage-y taste can last for days to weeks. The gem is also incredibly sharp so it cuts up the throat before settling into the stomach and the wounds take weeks to heal.

The 'correct', or at least most effective, way to absorb a bloodline-granting treasure is directly into your bloodstream. Since the gem is of a decent size – about as big as an average fingernail – doing that can be quite dangerous. The most effective way is to cut into your carotid artery, slam the gem into the cut, wait for it to absorb over the next few seconds, and then chug a healing potion.

There are other places on the body people use as well but the effectiveness is known to be far lower in general. The more blood that comes into contact with the gem in the first few seconds that stays in the body, the more power is imparted to the person absorbing it.

Of course, there are multiple stories of people not having strong enough healing potions and the person absorbing the treasure died. But, as with any path to power, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Still, if it were me, I'd just let that little red gem turn to dust. Not worth the risks!

We waited with bated breath for Ratmir to say more about if his bomb, or as he called it, his 'essence excitement exploder', worked.

"Well?" I asked after a few minutes of the researcher measuring and saying 'hmm' or 'oho'.

Romie took a more direct approach, pulling out their own equipment to start measuring the rift. They shook their head sadly. "No change."

"Shit," Inara said, kicking a rock that sailed off into a tree's canopy, scaring away a bird.

I nodded at the sentiment but it was what we all expected. There were many theories about how rifts worked but the most commonly accepted idea was that upon entering a rift instance, everything was set. No matter what anyone in the rift did, that didn't change anything about the number of enemies or any materials in the rift instance.

You could destroy everything in the rift and monsters or puzzles reacted to your actions but the rift itself was essentially immutable.

The theory was also the same for dungeons but we'd seen Gabby change her configuration around during a delve so I knew it wasn't perfect.

Then again, hopefully rifts and other dungeons aren't conscious.

"Yeah, that sucks we had to go through that for nothing. Any idea what these are?" I asked, handing the feathers to Tiesa.

She laughed. "I think these are perfect for enchanted quills. Really useful for some enchantment work, especially anything that's temporary." Then she dashed my hopes. "They're not worth much but I'd say keep them. I bet Roksana would want them." She handed them over to Inara who held all of our loot in general.

After an appraisal, I'd figure out if I wanted to use my right to buy any of the loot myself.

We had inquired about the odd oil we'd gotten as a rift reward in the first delve of the trip a few times but no one had fully identified it yet. It had some kind of anti-magic related effect but it didn't cancel enchantments like the rift boss did.

The feathers were the fourth magical object we'd gotten out of eleven team delves, which was somewhat below average for how full the rifts were. However, overall the trip was still proving to be immensely profitable, especially for me.

Because of the life debt payments from Vesna, which I still had yet to stop, I was making 30 gold a day at the least, often over 50. The per-delve fee was adding up quickly and I was surprised Inga hadn't tried to cut the fee when we added six more planned delves a day with Steve being carried on his own.

We moved forward with the day, again our team the only one willing to test the impacts of the devices. While I didn't love it, if Ratmir's bombs were able to increase the null essence concentration for a rift instance, having two cultivators who could absorb the essence was far better than one, especially since Steve and I both had objects to push essence to in a pinch.

Inara also turned out to be a bit of a pyromaniac, loving to watch the resultant fireball from the explosions. Pavel threw more than a few dirty looks at Ratmir, clearly blaming the man for awakening something in his fiancée that he didn't like. He smartly remained silent about it.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Over that day and the next morning, we tried all three of his devices but nothing worked to increase the null essence concentration in any one rift instance. It was annoying but Ratmir strangely seemed more excited by the failure than if they'd succeeded. Without saying goodbye, he ran off back to Velez to continue with additional experiments.

At seeing his back, I felt a sense of relief that none of his devices worked, which gave me an odd pit in my stomach.

Do I not want to lose what I have even if it will help people? Something to analyze later.

***

On the final day of delving for our Pitola trip, I got my own shield back.

Emil, the odd enchanter in Pitola, had asked for an extension to his examinations and said he'd upgrade an enchantment on one of our team's objects for each day he was late. At day nine, it was four or five days late, depending on how much of a stickler I was on the original 'four day' deal.

While I was sad to lose the Tier 2 shield Emil loaned me, I was ecstatic at the upgrades he'd done on my own. Roksana was by my side, nearly drooling at the thought of examining the shield after I took it from the courier.

"Fine, yes, you can look. But be careful with it," I said, handing it over to her.

"What kind of woman do you think I am?" At my exasperated look, she laughed. "Fair. I see why Ileana likes you. Don't go breaking her heart, okay?"

At my wince, she did the same. It was supposed to be a lighthearted comment but Ileana and I had been spending more and more time together. We still kept things from going much further physically but I wasn't looking forward to when we'd be parting in the near future.

It wasn't love but there was something deeper there that I'd rarely felt.

Shaking my head, I looked back to my shield. "It feels different from before. For one, the self-repair enchantment seems… maybe not stronger but more efficient?"

Roksana, gladly jumping on the chance to change the subject, started excitedly pushing a small amount of mana through her tools, making the runes themselves light up. "Yeah, Emil is actually pretty famous. I tried to get an apprenticeship under him but he didn't even respond to my application, the jerk. But now, I've got a friend that's going to give me a warm introduction," she said, turning an evil grin my way. I leaned away from her arm that she tried to fling around my shoulder.

"So, the shield… I feel like it might actually be able to Tier up now. Is that… normal? That an enchanter can make that possible?" I asked, curious.

"Nope! At least not that I've heard of, especially through just enchanting. I can't think he'd use some secret technique on you, no offense. Wait, how bad did you say it was damaged?"

"Pretty damn bad. Steve pushed a huge amount of his mana in and the self-repair enchantment barely functioned at all. Maybe he wasn't as bad at using enchantments as I thought. But yeah, it was in a bad way," I said.

"I've heard that you can sometimes change the essence channels in an object if it wasn't perfect but it's a precarious business. The item has to be nearly destroyed but not fully destroyed and that's…"

"Dangerous to an incredibly stupid degree," I finished for her.

We went back to examining the shield. It still had the rather unique enchantment to create gaps in itself to hook on objects, which Roksana found fascinating. She kept activating and deactivating it, simply marveling at the metal seemingly disappearing into nothingness. "This is so cool. I heard this enchantment existed a long time ago but that the technique was essentially lost. Where did you say you got this again?"

"I didn't," I said, smirking at her. "It was a dungeon near here." She looked interested before I dashed her hopes. "But then I destroyed it. And yes, that was fine, it had gained a small degree of intelligence," I said, laughing a bit to myself at how Gabby would react to that statement.

Emil had not just repaired the enchantments but added a new one as well.

There was now a repel enchantment that, while not able to keep a barreling terror turkey from crashing into me, would better deflect blows and especially knock any projectile objects off course.

Its ability to repel spells was hit or miss, and mostly miss, though quite a few of the mages seemed more than willing to cast at me to test, which made me slightly concerned.

Why am I a favorite punching bag?

I was glad to have my own shield back for our final day to test it out, especially since we decided to mix things up so much.

***

I dodged to the left as Romie's arrow streaked past my ear, piercing an eye. The spider – or at least that's what I was calling them given how they moved and looked – let out a hiss and clicked its chelicerae in fury.

It was down two legs but it still had fourteen more to go. How it was able to use so many appendages I had no idea but I didn't have time to wonder as one came crashing down towards me.

My shield at the ready, I was sprayed with an incredibly sweet-smelling ichor, some getting in my mouth.

The foul concoction hit my tongue and it reminded me of a mix of cotton candy, toothpaste, and just a hint of what I guessed motor oil tasted like.

It was better than I could have hoped for, which made it all the more foul.

Keep your damn mouth closed man!

"Ha, got it!" Rahila, Vesna's team mage, yelled after severing the leg with a large spike of ice.

She followed it up with a [Weaken Bite] that made the crazed arachnid's attack against my shield glance off ineffectually. Even its corrosive acid was turned to something as harmless as very thick lemon juice, the disgusting liquid glooping to the ground without marring the shield's surface.

Svetlana, another of Vesna's teammates, activated [Damsel in Distress], causing the spider to spin wildly to locate her. While I wished Inara were with us to take down a few legs, it fell to me instead.

With an overhead smash, I knocked one leg clean off, then moved to the next. My side swing didn't fully sever it but it wouldn't hold much weight, which was part of the plan, so I moved on.

The next leg received a swing from the ground, the uppercut leading into a heavy downswing immediately after.

This time I was able to interpose my shield to prevent the disgusting mouthwash effect.

I struck the fourth leg three times, effectively crippling it but still leaving it barely functional.

Finally, Rahila's self-returning chakram sliced in and cut a small gash on my last target, allowing me to smash completely through yet another limb.

In under three seconds, Svetlana's gambit had paid off perfectly.

The spider turned in fury to attack me with all its might.

As it spun to spit an acid glob at me, the two weakened legs collapsed and it tipped for a second before it could adjust to losing nearly a third of its legs in one area.

With just a hint of underbelly showing, Romie used their [Triple Shot] enchantment on a nastily-barbed arrow to score three large gashes across the soft underside of the beast. As planned, Rahila cast [Curdle Blood] before quickly removing the effect.

I was dubious of the tactic ahead of the delve but making the blood/ichor thicker caused an overcorrection when the effect was removed.

The spider's lifeblood began to fall quickly to the ground from the long wounds and the fight became easier and easier.

Rather than risk getting bit, Svetlana and I continually circled, taking down legs methodically until she used her [Fist Blast] just as I swung, causing the monster to lurch into my weapon, pushing the spiked head deep into its body.

I pulled the disgusting morningstar out of the beast's side, shaking it violently to get as much of the ichor off as possible, and backed away as the massive spider slowly expired.

"When you just let them die, it's not nearly as satisfying," I said as soon as the essence rush hit.

"Good strategy rarely is," Svetlana replied.

Tiesa had decided that between Svetlana and the warhammer-wielding Anica, the pugilist tank was a better fit for this delve. I was all for mixing up my teams and from the footage Tiesa reviewed, Vesna's team was quite good. We kept Romie on as we needed some ranged support and we didn't want to bring Vesna in too, as that would cut down on our total delves.

The spider was added to the corpse cart as the meat was very popular in Pitola restaurants and we trudged on.

Luckily, because the spiders were so large, the trees were unable to support them so they were stuck to the ground. Romie easily spotted the beasts hiding in burrows and only alerted us when we didn't see the monsters early enough.

Steve was able to sense them spiritually but had increased enough in intelligence to generally get that I didn't want him to let me know when he did so I could train my own senses. I still felt a spike in excitement each time but he was trying, which I appreciated.

My spiritual sense swept out while I tried to also spot the telltale shiny black slits in the fallen leaves, the spiders having lids to camouflage their eyes.

I sensed something but it didn't feel quite right. Like I was being watched but not by an enemy, merely an observer. It was also far up in the canopy where the branches of three trees intersected. When I scoured the area, nothing looked amiss or strange.

After we eliminated a spider that was near, we returned.

Steve could also sense it though he was confused since I hadn't really taught him to be on the lookout spiritually for anything other than enemies.

Has he really been able to find magic anomalies in rifts and I didn't tell him to look for them?

I kicked myself but focused on the here and now.

My question was one of ignorance and curiosity. "Anyone have an idea of what it could be? Is it dangerous?"

Romie fired an arrow about ten feet (3m) to the left of where the magic felt the strongest and it seemed to fold in on itself momentarily, moving very slightly.

Rahila chuckled, keeping her voice from hitting its usual 100 decibels. "Prolly not dangerous then. Natural treasure?" Romie and Svetlana nodded.

Svetlana started listing out natural treasures from a database she had in her AAI and Romie and Rahila gave their input as to if each was possible.

Many of the natural treasures that formed in canopies were exceptionally fragile. If you chopped down the tree they were in and they fell with the tree's descent, the treasure would be destroyed when the tree hit the ground. Some even disintegrated in the fall from the spike in wind.

I spoke up. "I have a theory here. We're not sure which tree it's attached to and it feels like it might move, if that's possible, if we chop one down." It was based on an assumption from when Romie fired the arrow where it seemed to move a foot or so after the arrow passed.

Rahila said, "Well, then what do we do? Chop 'em all down? I can't climb for shit and don't think these two can either." Romie and Svetlana nodded at the statement. Our lack of climbing gear meant even if they could, it would be essentially impossible, the lowest-hanging branches too high to grab.

With a backup axe, I started chopping down three trees whose branches all converged on the spot, using my small amount of knowledge to angle the falls away from the center point. When they were all just about ready to fall, I had Svetlana take one tree, had one for myself, and Romie and Rahila took the third one.

We pushed simultaneously and the branches pulled away from each other at the same time. The noise was tremendous but based on knowledge from many delves, the spiders would stay hidden rather than investigate loud noises unless it was very near them.

I felt the magical anomaly shrink in on itself, starting to vibrate before it fell towards the ground.

Almost reluctantly it seemed, the small treasure floated down, carried this way and that on the breeze. Romie pushed me to the side and I realized why. The deftness required to catch the nearly transparent leaf without destroying it was incredible.

The Lively Ash Leaf, a very rare treasure that granted a significant speed boost only appeared at the perfect center point between three or more trees. It started to disintegrate the second it was disturbed, the fragility ramping with time. The arrow shot earlier had set the clock in motion so even the slightest mistake at this point could ruin the rare natural treasure before we could figure out who should use it.

To not distract Romie, I sent a quick AAI message to Svetlana and Rahila. [I assume it's useful for any of us but won't last the rest of the delve. Who do you think? Romie?]

Svetlana smiled at me but shook her head, sending back [Probably can't afford it. The only one who can is you.]

Rahila saw her message and nodded just as the leaf touched down onto Romie's supple fingers.

I turned to my teammate. "Romie, do you want it? Team fund can pay for it."

They shook their head very slightly before nodding at me to say it was mine. Romie softly said, "Hurry."

Without deliberating, I started to rip my backpack off and Svetlana moved in front of me to prevent even an air ripple from getting near the leaf. A somewhat grumpy Steve emerged and I walked him over, trying to balance haste and caution for the extremely fragile treasure.

When Steve saw it, he chirped happily and reached out, grabbing the leaf. The crunching noise before he shoved his fist towards his face made me wince. It was supposed to be absorbed by placing it gently under the tongue as the power slowly ebbed through your essence channels.

My self-recriminations for allowing the little beast to destroy something so useful were cut off suddenly.

A shockwave resounded along our link, Steve's feeling of odd euphoria flooding me.

Then, I felt the little monster both spiritually and physically burp.

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