Darryl looked at the bits of dust left between his fingers after the ring fell apart and got carried away by a non-existent breeze. He blinked once, twice and looked at his teammates to be met with similar expressions.

“Wait w-”

“What the fucking hell!?” Ben interrupted him, jumping out of his chair to tower over the tiny Kua-Tin. “Why did that just happen? Did Darryl do something wrong? Did you forget to explain us something about our precious loot!?”

“No, I’ve never actually seen something like this happen before.” Volos stammered. “That said, you should ask Darryl. I can tell he got a notification about what just happened.”

Darryl ignored the exchange and the questioning gaze Ben threw him as he listened to the new achievement.

New achievement! Failure to comply!

We don’t often give rewards for things you’ve yet to do, and the requirements for clearing it are usually incredibly simple. You still managed to fail following these simple instructions, and then had the gall to claim the box regardless.

You had one job, idiot. Next time a god-like AI asks you to tell them what happened up there you damn well sate their curiosity. Don’t bother trying that now, I already lost interest.

Reward: We’re rescinding the gains of your Gold Adventuring Box!

“Well, that’s a shame. That Golden Adventurer Box was the best box you had, and a Ring of Shielding is actually a really good item for almost any build. Nice stacking too, considering you guys have ten fingers.” Volos said, wistfully looking at his fins. “That Breastplate will be a greater loss, though, as that one would be a really good item for the class you’re gunning for.”

Darryl took out one of the fifty torches he got from the box, which briefly showed a ‘Light? Y/N’ before disintegrating.

“Ah, damn it!” Ben said, followed by a string of curses. “This is such bullshit!”

“Could you not do that inside?” Volos asked as Darryl took out another torch to see it turn to dust.

“Oh, sorry.” Darryl said, sheepishly trying to collect the dust with his bare hands and only pushing most of it further down the cracks and crevasses of the floorboards by doing so.

Volos sighed. “Never mind that, just forget about it for now. Keep your breastplate inside your inventory for the time being, we’ll look at the rest first.”

Darryl nodded and took out the rest of his stuff. Adding his regular gains to the party pile, they now had a total of nine healing potions, two mana potions, seven scrolls of healing, two antidotes, twenty torches (not counting the 48 that would disintegrate upon summoning them), and two scrolls of heal critter plus twenty pet biscuits that Volos told them would be useless for now.

The lesser weapons were mostly ignored, as they seemed about as useful as picking up a random rock. Which wasn’t that easy, now that Darryl thought of it. Despite the mine-tunnel appearance of the dungeon, there hadn’t been a single loose pebble to pick up.

Volos agreed to their conclusion, saying that any item that didn’t grant a stat increase or some magical effect was pretty much worthless. None of the weapons gave anything but some useless joke description to Darryl, and even Thomas saw nothing more than that.

“Darryl, would you mind if I take this item right now?” Thomas asked, picking up the librarian glasses. “It would benefit us as we look at the rest, though it’s fine if you want to keep them to improve your AI visualisation.”

Darryl looked at the Corpora Librarian glasses in Thomas’s hand, and opened their description.

Angry Corpora Librarian’s Glasses

Though these sharp glasses are a frightening constant of every literate race’s most intimidating beta-galls, the Corpora version is slightly distinct by being specifically designed for all intimidation and no utility. It’s not like those geckos can possibly see through them when their eyes are sticking out of their heads like antennea! Instead the glasses are made extra-sharp around the ends and with no embellishments.

+1 Intelligence, gain three skills.

“Well, sure. Like I said before, I don’t mind getting a bit less information. You’re the one getting the most info as is, so wouldn’t it be better if you got more rather than me using up items to catch up?” Darryl said.

“Thanks! Glad you think so too!” Thomas said, putting on the glasses. “Alright, I’ll show you the description before and after equipping the glasses!

Two messages popped up in the chat, which seemed to be copy-pasted descriptions from the AI without the enthusiastic voice reading the words.

Angry Corpora Librarian’s Glasses

Uncommon, Corpora type gear.

Though these sharp glasses are a frightening constant of every literate race’s most intimidating beta-galls, the Corpora version is slightly distinct by being specifically designed for all intimidation and no utility. It’s not like those geckos can possibly see through them when their eyes are sticking out of their heads like antennea! Instead the glasses are made extra-sharp and with no embellishments.

You gain +1 intelligence, +2 levels in the Intimidation skill, +5 levels in the Omni-literate skill and +3 in the Insightful Crawler skill.

Angry Corpora Librarian’s Glasses

Uncommon-B, Corpora gear. Part of the Corpora Librarian/Accountant set.

Though these sharp glasses are a frightening constant of every literate race’s most intimidating beta-galls, the Corpora version is slightly distinct by being specifically designed for all intimidation and no utility. It’s not like those geckos can possibly see through them when their eyes are sticking out of their heads like antennea! Instead the glasses are made extra-sharp and with no embellishments.

You gain +1 intelligence. You gain +2 levels in the Intimidation skill towards any literary cultured race, a buff that increases the older, more female and more silently grumpy you are. You gain +5 levels in the Omni-literate skill and +3 in the Insightful Crawler skill.

“It’s an okay item, but quite useful for beginning crawlers.” Volos said. “As you can see, you got some more information that you’d have to figure out yourself otherwise, and you got a lot more than Darryl got.”

“The distinction didn’t actually come from your intelligence boost, which doesn’t really do much per point after the first three or four.” Volos continued. “Rather it came from your Insightful Crawler skill. Where intelligence is a passive buff, Insightful Crawler is specifically for adding more information to your descriptions.”

“Hm. Meanwhile Omni-literate allows me to read any written text as if it is in my native language, assuming it follows certain prerequisites.” Thomas said, reading the invisible text. “I can’t read bad handwriting, or dead languages. By being at the fifth level I get a wider selection of languages and some minor translation tweaks to explain cultural differences.”

“That skill is rather worthless. Almost all written texts in this dungeon will be Syndicate common, which you guys already read and speak as part of the basic survival package. It would only benefit you when trying to communicate with other crawlers, but even then you cannot understand their words or write back in their language.” Volos said. “But it does make for a good example. Remember what I explained to you guys about skills?”

“If you do a thing, you will rapidly get better at it and it will soon make you ridiculously overpowered compared to normal humans.” Ben said.

“Be sure to get a lot of them, and train the ones that best suit you.” Darryl tried.

“They’re boosts to our power unrelated to our stats, and as we can’t invest our stat points until the third floor it’s our main source of damage and survival for the time being.” Thomas said.

“Right, all three of you. I also told you that there are skills you can learn and skills you can only get through items.” Volos said. “Your Insightful Crawler is a learning skill, you got level 0 when you first read any of the dungeon's pop-ups at all and you have been levelling it since. Those glasses boost you to level three immediately, which already puts you above anyone without boosting items of their own for the next two floors. Insightful Crawler is a useful but slowly levelling skill.”

“Meanwhile Omni-literate is a kind of superpower that you cannot level yourself. You can stack the gains of multiple items, but you can’t learn how to do it without items. Similar to how someone cannot just gain the regeneration skill, or keep levelling it by getting hurt. Unless they pick a race like the troll to make regeneration a natural stat for them, their levels are purely from items.”

“Right. Thomas is the party identifier.” Ben said, impatiently bobbing in place. “Weapons! Let’s get to the weapons!”

“Sure, sure.” Thomas said, picking up the edgy black and red dagger. “The vicious dagger of backstabbing grants you a +2 to the Pierce skill, doubles your attack when backstabbing someone and triples damage when used against neutrals and friendlies. The double and triple stack, by the way.”

“Pierce is a pretty basic skill, you’d start training it the moment you’d stab into anything with a piercing motion.” Volos explained. “Avoid slashing with this knife because the damage improvement won’t apply, though you would start training the Slash skill that way. That would be useful against certain enemies and crawlers with piercing resistance. But for now, stabbing motions. Try to use that sneak damage too, there are a few stealth and assassin related skills that can stack with Pierce to make an unnoticed backstab ridiculously effective.”

“It’s a silver box reward, so unfortunately your weapon will probably be subpar to ours.” Thomas said.

“No matter, this is perfect for my build. Right?” Ben said, sheathing and unsheathing the dagger gleefully.

Volos chose to remain silent.

“The Skyfowl Spear of the Heavens seems to be quite good. It’s meant to be used as a javelin, but a shield and spear combo should be effective and easy to learn.” Thomas said, studying the spear. “+3 to Thrust when held, +4 to Living Ballista when thrown and it will split off into multiple spears while airborne. The higher your Living Ballista and related ranged skills are, the more spears. The spear is more effective when thrown from above.”

“That makes sense. The Skyfowl are a bunch of supremacist bastards with wings, so they usually sneer down on people from above.” Volos said. “Seeing their race in a dungeon world is downright cathartic, as most of them get utterly slaughtered in the close quarters of these tight dungeon tunnels.”

Darryl accepted the spear handed to him, stood up and tried out his shield and spear stance. He thrust out the spear a few times, finding it surprisingly light and well-balanced.

“Don’t go throwing that thing in here. You can go do that outside.” Volos quickly said. “And don’t bother trying to train this way, most skills only level when used in practice.”

“The quarterstaff seems like a very good item. It improves damage and effects of light and radiance spells by 20%, grants me the spells of Torch and Blinding Flash, and it gives me a +3 to Intelligence.”

“Which will be great if you find more light spells, or near worthless if it stays limited to your staff’s innate ones. You won’t be getting that many spells to choose from, not until you reach the higher levels where that 20% becomes negligible compared to a proper crawler’s basic gear. No improvement to your quarterstaff’s more martial applications either.”

“Still, I can see a lot of uses for this. We won’t have to worry about Darryl’s Disintegrating Torches, at least.” Thomas shrugged.

“Yeah, why are you being so down about our awesome loot?” Ben chimed in. “Or is it really that bad compared to the other crawlers?”

“Well, no. I just want to make sure you guys don’t get overconfident and end up dead.” Volos said. “Happens to the best of us if we’re coddled with good stuff and steamroll through the first floor. The first floor is meant to be a breeze for you guys, despite what the death rate suggests. Even the second floor’s difficulty spike can kill you before you know it, and taking it too easy right now will kill you in the long run.”

“Thanks, Volos. For looking out for us.” Darryl said.

Volos chuckled uncomfortably and looked away, which with his 75 degree fish-view meant he turned his back to Darryl.

Ignoring the others, Thomas continued studying the rest of the loot. He threw the cufflinks at Darryl. “Put those on, great item for you. Makes your wrists as hard as buckler shields and extends the hardness to anything that even resembles a shield tied to them, but more importantly it’s a downright +8 to your Shield skill. Hide them around nobles from the Skull empire, apparently.”

“Orcs, the more sophisticated ones amongst many kingdoms.” Volos explained. “You might see the more degenerate kingdoms soon enough, but the Skull empire you don’t have to worry about until the ninth floor. And a +8 to any skill right of the bat is pretty amazing, it will allow you to pull off inhuman feats already.”

“The tiara comes with a similar disadvantage, but towards all orcs. It’s only meant to be worn by a Countess or higher, evoking their wrath if you don't hold that title. Doesn’t seem like a very great item, its only feature is channelling 75% of all damage you take towards allies.”

“That can be pretty good actually.” Volos said. “You can tank damage and channel it evenly across the party to minimise the cooldown restrictions to your healing. And you can channel it to one specific person, so if you guys get a beefy mount or pet then that would be great.”

“Well, I guess Darryl should get that one. He’s the one who’s going to take most of the damage.” Ben said. “Or Thomas, being the frail wizard.”

“I think you should wear it, Ben.” Darryl said. “As the rogue, you’ll be the one most likely separated from the group and surrounded by foes if your stealth fails.”

“What? No. Don’t be ridiculous, I don’t need that tiara. Darryl will draw the attacks, and the smart foes will be gunning for Thomas.” Ben said quickly.

“I agree with Darryl. You do have the lowest Constitution of us, and your Dodging isn’t high yet.” Thomas said.

“Yeah, but I’m going to be stealthy, and having something flashy won’t help there.” Ben tried.

“It’s highly unlikely that you can properly stealth during the first floor anyway, what you’re wearing will barely aid or harm your skills in this.” Volos said. “It’s all about stats and what you do, as long as it doesn’t shed light or has some alarming traits your gear doesn’t matter.”

“But… But…” Ben stammered, trying to come up with more arguments before begrudgingly accepting the girly tiara and putting it in his inventory.

“Don’t worry, you can cover it up and it will still work. Some items don’t, but this one is mental.” Volos assured him.

“And with this cloak, it’s not as if anyone is going to see you anyway.” Thomas said, passing him a cloak that looked like part of a Dracula Halloween costume. “+5 to stealth, +7 when in shadows or darkness. And +2 to Dodge.”

“Yeah buddy, no one is going to make fun of you for doing your part in our survival.” Darryl assured him.

Ben muttered a thanks but kept pouting as he took out the tiara and reluctantly studied it.

“And I won’t even make the joke that your tiara would go well with the pointes, because those don’t match any of us. Assuming they reshape themselves to fit, that is.”

“They don’t.” Volos said.

“Then these are worthless to us, for now.” Thomas said, tossing the ballerina shoes back at Darryl. “And with that, we’ve studied all the loot.”

“Hey Volos? Is there crafting in this dungeon?” Darryl asked, looking at the leftover pile of junk.