Meanwhile for the three still in game, they waited until Eke had logged out before gathering at the location of the object that had rolled out of the box. Despite the chaos caused by the grabbing for the box, all three had noticed the item falling out and more importantly, they had noticed that Eke had not noticed.

“So hyung, what should we do with it?”

“Power-san, I think we will need Money-san’s skills to identify what the item is nyaa.”

“Girls-ssi, I think it’s kind of obvious what it is… It’s a dagger…A really old one and glowing too…”

“Ah Pow, Ah Girls is right, I’ll identify the item to see if it’s what we think it is.”

As Jinyang hefted the item in his hand, he began muttering the commands for the identification skill. Surprisingly it did not take long before he stopped, presumably having succeeded.

“So hyung, what is it?”

“Ah Pow, it’s what we thought it was. But it’s not just a dagger, it’s the ‘Blade of Light’”

“What does the description say about its abilities, Money-san? Does it bestow powers to the holder nyaa?”

“Yes Ah Girls, with this dagger, you gain the power to bring light to darkness.”

“Hyung! How?!? Is there a command word?”

“No Ah Pow, just a gesture is needed. I’ll show you.”

Jingyang held up the dagger in an imitation of the statue of liberty.

“Bwahahaha, see it’s the ‘Blade of Light’ with the power to bring light to darkness. You know? Light to darkness because it’s like a torch? Hahaha…”

Jinyang’s laughter trailed off as he could see the sour faces of both GimmePower and GimmeGirls.

“Not funny Money-san nyaa…”

“Yeah hyung, that joke was really terrible. What does it really do?”

“Okay okay, I thought it was a good joke. It doesn’t do anything. Someone just put some sort of permanent light effect on the dagger, that’s it. The description just reads as ‘ancient sacrificial dagger’. I can’t even identify what spell was used to make the light.”

None of the three could have known that the light was caused by a data entry mistake on the dagger blade (made by one Eduardo), which was why the effect was considered “natural” rather than magical. This was also the reason the identify skill could not name the spell or effect used.

“You’re not holding back on telling us everything nyaa, right Money san?”

“What? No, of course not…”

Seeing the suspicious glances given by GimmeGirls while GimmePower was focused on staring at the floor, Jinyang sighed loudly.

“Okay, okay, I’ll open the team communication window so all of you can see what I see.”

Ancient Sacrificial DaggerOnce wielded by the priests of Kisin, this dagger was a instrument of death and destruction.

Durability: 70/70

Damage: 5-20

Restriction:

Agility 10+

“Hyung, I never disbelieved you.”

“Money-san, I was just concerned you might have made a mistake…”

Of course, now that they could see the item was rather worthless, both GimmePower and GimmeGirls were scrambling for excuses. A thought occurred to GimmePower.

“Hmmm, hyung it may be usable though.”

“What? You’re trading your spear in for the dagger?”

“No, I meant selling the dagger as the ‘Blade of Light’. Hyung, think of the opportunities…”

“Ah I see where Power-san is going. If we can trick someone into thinking that the dagger is very powerful and magical, we could get something for it nyaa…”

“Ah that’s a good idea Ah Pow, it would have to be a player though so they would have to think hard at getting the murderer’s mark if they try to kill us when they find out it’s not what they think. And no newbies, that would be unfair.”

“Money-san, I would expect that newbies would not be able to pay much for a legendary artefact like the ‘Blade of Light’ in any case nyaa.”

“Hyung, how about Eke-ssi? He’s loaded.”

“Ah Pow, we shouldn’t try and do such a thing to a team mate. More to the point, do you want to see a tiger and an elephant charging at you?”

“Ahh… That’s true hyung. It would not be good if Eke-ssi took it the wrong way…”

“But how would we prevent the buyer from using the identify skill nyaa?”

“Girls-ssi, you must have read the identify skill description too. You have to handle the item to identify it…”

“Ah, so Power-san, we just make up a reason not to let them touch it nyaa?”

“Ah, I see where you are going with this, Ah Pow. We make it look like we are reluctant to hand it over, then they will identify it and fail to identify the source of the glow.”

“Hyung, we are really on the same wavelength.”

“Ohohoho, I get it now nyaa! They will think it’s something very special or unique…”

“Ah Pow, remind me never to buy anything you’re selling.”

As the three of them looked at each other, they broke out laughing, their villainous sounding laughs echoed through the room.

The addition of the curse box and the pact they had agreed on for ‘team treasures’ had mollified any residual irritation from GimmeGirls’ attempt at circumventing their stat race treaty and the three settled down to identify their magical treasure, get cursed repeatedly and fail to pick the lock on the smaller box respectively. Fortunately, it took only another three game hours before GimmeGirls finally announced that he had picked the lock.

“Ah Girls, you’ve finally gained the Lockpick skill?”

“Eh yes Money-san, I’ve finally gotten it.”

Which was a lie by omission, namely he was omitting when he had gotten the Lockpick skill. In actuality, GimmeGirls had already succeeded in getting the skill when he had first tricked the rest into letting him try lockpicking on the box for an hour.

Lockpicking was a skill that improved slightly even if you failed although the skill improvement rate was only around a quarter of a successful attempt. However once you had a lock open (or locked if it started off as unlocked), repeatedly locking and unlocking it improved the skill only marginally as there was no real challenge to the lock anymore.

The difficulty of the box’s locks was actually very useful to GimmeGirls as the constant failures racked up into slow but steady skill increases. By the time he had gotten the box open, GimmeGirls had reached Beginner 5 in lockpicking, which was a rate that would have made any newbie thief in the game jealous.

Of course none of this mattered to GimmeGirls directly, he was after all only in it for the stat gains. The real benefit, in his mind, was the 5 point increase in Agility that he had received for spamming the skill and failing.

On hearing the box was open, GimmePower stopped his self cursing and joined the other two as he was curious about what the box held. Plus he had to see the stuff in the box itself, in case some treasure went ‘unnoticed’ just like what had happened with Eke and the ‘Blade of Light’. However the curses that had been placed on him had reduced his strength stat to 1, making him so weak he was forced to crawl over.

Both Jinyang and GimmeGirls sat unmoving, impatiently waiting for GimmePower to reach them. Of course it would have been easier and quicker to simply bring the box over to him instead but Jinyang was too lazy to actually get up, plus it would have required him to carry the box over that three or four metre distance. GimmeGirls, as was normal for his personality, was definitely not moving if no one else was. After a long minute, GimmePower had covered a good one meter distance.

“Hurry up Ah Pow!”

“I’m trying hyung…”

"Power-san, we would help but that would only inspire dependency and slow down development of your potential..."

"Yes Ah Pow, its tough love and hard for us as well..."

In a flash of inspiration, GimmeGirls dropped flat on the floor and rolled, covering the short distance in less than half a minute. Getting into a sitting posture from his prone position would have taken another minute if the other two had not grabbed his arms and hauled him upright. Clustered around the box, as they opened it, they found only a bag of teeth, a bone dagger and a stone figurine of a bear in it.

“Ehhhh, hyung, I’m sad. I thought it would be like those old movies where you had gold light coming out of the box when you opened it and all of us go ‘wow’”

“Cheer up Power-san, you never know, these may be very powerful items nyaa.”

“It is what it is, Ah Pow, though a golden light would have been nice…”

It took half an hour of skill spamming before Jinyang finished his identification. Once done, all three gathered together once more.

“Alright, I’m opening the team communication window so all of you can see exactly what the item is so there will be ahh... no mistakes.”

Given that none of the two had shown any trust in him in telling the whole truth about an item, this was the method acceptable to all three.

“Identify!”

Robe of Exalted DeathWorn only the highest ranked priest of Kisin, the robe is a symbol of the office and authority of the high priest.

Durability: 90/90

Defence: 50

Restriction:

Must have received the murderer’s mark at least once.

Effects:

+50% to the duration of any Necromancy based spells.

+20% to the damage of any critical hit.

+20% to the speed of mana regeneration.

-10% from any damage caused by undead including spells and ranged attacks.

Immune to the special soul draining attacks used by some undead.

“Strong defence and good magic effects with easy restrictions, nyaa. Money-san, this almost makes me want to be a murderer nyaa.”

“Well Ah Girls, your axe mastery certainly fits the part… Ok and here’s the next one, identify!”

Ring of the Black DemiseA creation by a dark sorcerer allied with the death priests, it was rumoured that Kisin himself had blessed its creation.

Durability: 120/120

Restriction:

Must have killed 10 players while wearing the ring.

Effects:

+5% to any damage caused including spells and ranged attacks.

Any killing blow landed heals the wearer (up to his or her normal maximum) an amount equal to the damage caused by the killing blow.

Stops any normal health regeneration of a struck target.

“Hyung, this looks like stuff for PKers…”

PKs were players who focused on killing other players, giving them their self explanatory name of Player Killers. Newbies especially hated PKers in games where there were no safe zones and they could be killed repeatedly by PKers camping a respawn site.

Though Royalroad did have a form of safe zone in use, where NPC town guards would attack murderers, the guards were far from invincible and could be killed. The game mainly worked on another method by harnessing the greed of people. PKers would receive a murderer’s mark and anyone could then kill and loot them repeatedly if their respawn sites could be identified. Plus the players could gain a lot of fame from killing high level PKers and sometimes a PKer infuriated other players enough that a player or guild sponsored bounty was placed.

This had led to the creation of bounty hunter guilds based purely on hunting PKers. That in turn drove the killers into the much less travelled wilderness and esoteric respawn locations, indirectly protecting newbies who normally congregated in well travelled dungeons or hunting grounds. Some even turned to bounty hunting after losing their murderer’s mark as bounty hunters where simply PKers who exclusively hunted and killed other PKers.

“Ah Pow, we are players too…”

“…And we can die a lot! … But hyung, we’ll still get the murderer’s mark…”

“Power-san, not if I attack you first…”

“Ahhh, Girls-ssi, you mean you will strike first then get killed… Good idea, that way we can use these things and still not get a murderer’s mark.”

With the main stumbling block bypassed, GimmePower was quite pleased with the two items shown. He was especially interested in the ring as his normal damage was the highest among the three, though with the robe and a critical hit, GimmeGirls might give him a run for his money and Eke’s damage outpaced his but Eke did have a massive advantage in levels and class abilities.

“Ok let’s look at the rest, identify! Identify!”

The Hunting BearCreated by priests of Yum Kaax, the god of the wilderness, the statue was stolen when the temple was razed during a period of religious strife known as the Godswar. Few but the bear itself knows where it has been through the ages since.

Durability: 50/50

Effects:

Transforms into a full sized Andean bear and back into a statue on command.

The bear can be commanded to attack a single creature.

If it dies in bear form, it reverts back to statue form and cannot be summoned for a week

The bear can be commanded to guard and it will stationary, roaring when it detects intruders.

Dead TeethMade from the teeth of farmers tortured to death, this horrid device was said to have been created by a priest of death, whose parents were accused of causing droughts and other disasters and lynched by farmers.

Durability: 1/1

Effects:

When thrown on fertile soil, a skeletal golem rises from the ground.

The area in a 1 kilometre radius where the tooth was thrown, becomes barren for 3 years.

The item is destroyed after usage.

Sounds of “ehhhh”, “mmm” and other bored noises emanated from GimmePower and GimmeGirls after viewing the two items. Though they had no idea what level an Andean bear was, most common bears were around level 60 to 90. A skeletal golem ranged in levels from 80 to 100. Eke alone could probably demolish 30 or so skeletal golems before requiring some sort of healing.

Amulet of Death’s ProtectionSaid to be found in the remains of a high priest that had been cremated, the amulet has been passed down as part of the ceremonial gear of the high priest of Kisin.

Durability: -/-

Restriction:

Must have been killed by another player while wearing the amulet. The amulet effects do not activate for this death and normal death effects apply.

Effects:

Item cannot be damaged

Never drops on death unless permanent death

If the wearer is killed, a party member within 20 meters dies and the wearer is resurrected and healed.

If no such scapegoat exists, the wearer loses 10 levels instead.

If the wearer has less than 10 levels when the previous happens, the wearer dies permanently (and the character is wiped from the server) .

This was the item that Jinyang was most interested in, which was why he had placed it near the end but not as the last item. He had arranged it in a manner so as to first allow attention to be drawn by the more obviously powerful items before boredom settled in after viewing the mediocre items in the middle.

It seemingly worked as the bored noises continued. It was not surprising given that they were already resurrecting on death. The only effective difference that the item granted, was resurrecting with full heath rather than 1 health. That was useful but not as attention grabbing as the robe and ring.

Skull DaggerRumoured to have been created from the souls of five death priests who had angered the high priest with their lack of respect, the dagger has been used to remind new priests to be humble or die.

Durability: 300/300

Damage: 33-40

Restriction:

Agility 30+

Level 30+

Effects:

The user may summon up to five flaming skulls to aid him or her.

Any particular skull destroyed cannot be summoned again until a month has passed.

5% chance to inflict the poisoned (10 health per second) condition on any target struck

The final item brought forth more bored noises and this time Jinyang joined in, as the item’s use was rather straight forward and the level requirement killed any possible chance of them using it. A normal player would have found the item to be a great treasure as it had good durability, strong minimum damage, useful abilities and extremely low restrictions. In comparison, the iron sword that was awarded for completion of basic training only had a damage of 10 to 14. It was good enough to inspire arguments among members of a normal adventuring group but unfortunately, the party who had actually gotten the treasure viewed it as trash as any level restriction of more than level 1 was considered too high level for the three.

“So hyung, how do we split the treasure?”

“Shouldn’t we wait for Eke-san nyaa?”

“Ah Girls is right but it would be a waste of time to have to show Eke everything again and we told him that we would be here for 24 real world hours…”

“Yah, Eke-ssi would agree with hyung’s decision, whatever it was.”

GimmePower’s words were heaping sole responsibility (and blame of course) of the decision onto Jinyang. Though he noticed that, Jinyang said nothing in response to it as he already had a plan to get the amulet.

“Well Ah Girls, I’m sure Ah Eke would agree if the majority agrees. I was thinking that from the item descriptions, Ah Pow should get the ring and you should get the robe. I would get the amulet and Eke would get the bear or dagger.”

Basically he was playing on their desire for certain items. By letting them get what they wanted, Jinyang would also get what he wanted. It was a win-win situation all around, well, unless your name was Eke.

“Ehhh, that sounds very logical nyaa…”

“Yah hyung, the choices you made are all great! Eke-ssi would also get a choice on what item he wants.”

It was a resounding success as the two had climbed onboard without much reservation and most importantly, neither had insisted on sticking to their original agreement of letting the items be evaluated by NPC merchants. Jinyang suspected that the amulet would have been priced much higher than the robe and ring, making a buy-back of the amulet a costly affair. Still, surprisingly, Jinyang felt a little guilty about short changing Eke.

“Since we are agreeing in his absence and Ah Eke is the only one who can use the dagger anyway, let’s give Ah Eke both the bear and dagger. Agreed?”

Mutters of agreement followed as neither of the two were particularly interested in the two items though GimmeGirls did make a half hearted objection. Of greater import for GimmeGirls was the fate of the final item.

“What about the teeth, Money-san nyaa?”

“How many are there anyway, Ah Girls?”

“I counted. There are a hundred teeth nyaa. That would be twenty five teeth each.”

“Okay, so we’ll split the teeth and if anyone wants to keep or sell their portion, it’s their decision. Agreed?”

GimmePower, who was only partly paying attention to the discussion on the magical teeth, murmured his agreement. He was much more involved in stroking and mumbling to his newly won ring. Surprisingly, GimmeGirls was much more active in his agreement.

“Ah Pow, you’re not going all ‘my precious’ on us, are you?”

Despite its age, the old Lord of the Rings novels had made a comeback in a popular VR game two years back and the ‘Gollum’ character’s tag line had become popular (again).

“No, no hyung, it’s just that this is the first big treasure I’ve gotten since playing.”

“Well Ah Pow, come to think of it, you might want to practise on doing that ‘my precious’ thing. It might come in useful in scaring people.”

“My preciousssss…”

“Whaa? Hyung, I didn’t say that!”

“It is mine, mine! My preciousssss…”

“Ah Girls, you can stop that now…”

Giving the look of a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar, GimmeGirls stuck his tongue out. After being used for jokes when he accidentally gained the Ventriloquism skill, GimmeGirls had been on the lookout for opportunities for revenge and what better revenge would there be than to use the Ventriloquism skill itself in retribution.

It took only a minute for GimmeGirls to split the dozens of teeth and pass each member’s portion to them. Once done, GimmeGirls turned to the other two.

“Power-san, Money-san, I have to go offline for a few hours nyaa.”

“Oh, coincidentally Ah Girls, I have to handle something and will be offline for some time too.”

Jinyang, with his review deadline nearing, had decided to use the time to complete his review. It was not a spur of the moment decision as he had been waiting for a chance to exit the game without giving too much time or opportunity for either of the other two to get a head start on him. With GimmeGirls leaving the game for a few hours, it was the opening Jinyang had been waiting for. At worst, GimmePower would probably try and get as many stat points as he could during the period but it was still better than been overtaken by both. As a bonus, with a strength stat of 1, many of the physical training methods would be out of reach for GimmePower during that time.

Leaving GimmePower to look after the campsite as well as Eke’s share of the loot, both were ignoring the fact that he would be useless as a guard as he could only flop around on the floor weakly. With an exhortation for GimmePower to guard Eke’s loot carefully (and the implication that he would be blamed if it was stolen or lost), both logged out.

As Jinyang removed the VR helmet and exited the capsule room, he was already planning on what to add to his draft of the review. He had already written most of it, including a write up of the Nahual Warrior class and how it could be gotten. This plus the card matching game that could be used to improve Intelligence, would be the main hot spots for his review.

Jinyang had chosen both points mainly because none of it directly concerned him. The class was Eke’s rather than his so if people found out some secrets or weaknesses about the Nahual warrior, he would not be affected. The card matching game had a rather low stat gain limit of 80 which he had already hit. Being a limited way of gaining stats, Jinyang was not too concerned about exposing that secret. He had chosen the card matching game rather than the number guessing game simply the game could be done alone without aid and because luck was a less significant score for most characters. Intelligence on the other hand was greatly valued by spell casters and there were many soloists in the game. As the first review for the game, he needed something strong and hype worthy to catch readers. He had already planned to put the number guessing game into the next review as it was a much weaker method, with its limit of 40 points of luck, than the coin toss guessing game that the group was currently using. He had no intention of putting in the truly valuable information of the training methods they used, such as the tiptoe method or the finger hanging method, nor the important training equipment that they had, including the tied up troll. Those would be secrets held close to the group members' chests.

Of course he was not going to tell anyone about the tunnel to the South American based game region or even the giant rock spider and snake creature they had met in the tunnel. Many clever or experienced players would deduce the general areas they had travelled in, by simply focusing on those areas where such monsters could be encountered. The longer he could prevent others from exploring the South American style region of the game, the longer he had a monopoly on information about it.

With the new items that they had gotten, he was aiming to add in the bear and teeth items into the review as well as doing a monster column write up on Kisin’s death priests based upon the high priest that they had fought plus information on the crimson snakes they had encountered in the pit. As these were all new monsters and items from the South American expansion and the bear’s description did mention something called the Godswar, Jinyang hoped that it could create excitement about the rest of the review.

His true aim was rather simple. He wanted the review to succeed so as to get the higher ups to turn it into a series instead of a one shot. Reviewing anime was nice and simple but the short deadlines were extremely stressful. Many were the times that Jinyang had to watch an entire 24 episode series in 24 hours, leaving little time to sleep, eat or even write the review. Even after the review was written, the long stream of hate mail by fans of certain anime, which he had reviewed as being poor or in need of improvement, did not help improve his job satisfaction as well. In a way it was lucky that the company had never attached his name to any of the reviews as he was still receiving mails addressed to him, through the website's general email address, that cursed him for reviews that he had done years ago. If everything worked out with the game review, he would have a lot more time to write follow up reviews and there was also a bonus of getting cash by selling his character at the end of the review series.

After three hours of pasting in edited screen shots of the items, short clips from his capsule’s internal recording function as well as double checking for spelling errors and grammar, Jinyang sent the final result to his boss. The review would need to be approved before being published on the company’s portal, so he could only see if the review had gotten hot after another three days or so. He had merged the process of writing the review with eating as Jinyang wanted to get back into the game as soon as it was feasible. It was useless waiting around for the result when he could improve his character (and directly its sales price)

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