Second World Novel

“She can do that?” Jack asked.

Yvok heard Pandora’s words directly. He was now conversing with her.

After they were done talking, Yvok explained to Jack, “The energy that Luna transferred to Pandora is a lot, she can’t digest all that energy. With Luna’s power orb, she can channel this excess energy to connect with Sol and Fira and for a moment, renders their abilities as if they are adult nightmares. This way, they can bring two satyrs as if these satyrs are their riders and travel to the upworld. This can only be done once though. After that, Luna’s excessive energy within her will be used up.”

“And if the nightmares are safe in the upworld, you can continue fleeing to avoid the demons,” Jack said.

“That will be a tiring ordeal to be done for life, but yes, we can do that,” Yvok said.

“Father, you are a more experienced custodian, you should be the one to go with the little nightmares,” Yrin said.

“No,” Yvok replied. “As I said, the two of you are their main custodians. You two have to stay with the nightmares. I know you are worried about me. You don’t need to. Before becoming custodians, we satyrs are a nomadic race. We have no problem living while continuously wandering.”

“Well, whatever your decision, we need to do it fast,” Jack said. “The demons could come any minute now.”

Yvok nodded. “I will go inform the others. We should be able to leave by today.”

The elder satyr left then. Jack saw him more spirited now that there was a way out for both him and his children, even though Jack thought Yvok was still sad since this meant he couldn’t see his children anymore.

While waiting, Jack checked the loots Hraghshu had dropped. That hell baron was only a special elite, so he didn’t have much hope. Additionally, he didn’t use his runestone of luck. Pandora’s action had been so swift and unexpected that he didn’t know that Hraghshu was going to die.

As expected, there were only three items. A pile of coins, a pile of mana cores, and one small item that his monocle marked as a super rare grade.𝗇𝞸𝗏𝓔𝑙𝔫𝑒xt.𝒸𝗈𝓂

Jack used his Inspect.

*

Level-down pill (super rare consumables)

Reduce one level

*

“Huh? What’s the point of this item?” Jack asked after reading the description. “Who wants to reduce his level?”

“This is a very useful item. This pill only drops in the underworld,” Peniel replied.

“How is this useful?”

“If it only reduces a level, then yes, it is counter-productive. But what if I told you that the increased stats and the skill points you got from the previous level-up remained the same?”

“That means I can get a bonus level-up,” Jack said as he made a realization.

“Bingo,” Peniel remarked. “You need to note also that every class had a limit of level 99. After that, you will not receive another level-up no matter how many exp points you collected. This level-down pill allows you to have extra level-ups more than the standard ninety-eight times.”

“Great!” Jack stored the pill in his inventory. He would give it to Jeanny first for safekeeping and for her to make a copy when she had spare mana cores.

Jack then took out the lockbox he had stolen from Hraghshu’s warehouse.

He asked Peniel, “This is a legendary grade, so the items it drops should be legendary grade as well, right?”

“Not necessarily, but legendary-grade treasure chests and lockboxes do have the highest probability to yield a legendary item. It depends on luck.”

“Hehe, then we both know that getting one is a certainty, don’t we?” Jack grinned.

“You should know that lockboxes only produce one or two items at most. Don’t expect to get a bunch of items like you did when you opened a treasure chest.”

“One legendary item is already better than a bunch of non-legendary items,” Jack commented as he took out his enduring lockpicks.

Peniel wanted to slap him and reminded him that getting a legendary item from this lockbox was not a sure deal, but she didn’t because it would just be like talking to a brick wall.

Jack proceeded to use regular lockpicks after exhausting the usage of his enduring lockpicks. Since it was a legendary grade, his failure rate was also astronomical. Luckily, he had prepared tons of lockpicks. So, he could try lots and lots of times. He also summoned his runestone of probability to enhance his success chance.

He was too focused on doing the lockpicking that he was not aware of the passage of time. It took almost half a day and he nearly used up his stockpile of lockpicks before he heard the successful click. He wasn’t truly worried about running out of lockpicks. He could bring this lockbox away, so he could just buy more lockpicks and continue lockpicking it another time.

Both his lockpicking and runecrafting skills leveled up during the process. His lockpicking was now at advanced expert, while his runecrafting increased to basic master.

Jack didn’t forget to use his runestone of luck when he heard the successful click from the lockbox. The lid opened and released dazzling light similar to the visual effect when one opened a treasure chest.

Once the light dissipated, Jack saw only one item inside the lockbox. Even though there was only one small stone inside, Jack was ecstatic. This was because his monocle marked that item with purple color.

He wondered then if it was possible to get equipment from a lockbox. A lockbox seemed too tiny to hold something as large as a weapon or armor. Peniel later informed him that it was possible. The equipment would simply be thrown out of the lockbox when it was opened. Jack didn’t question the logic in that.

Jack picked up the tiny stone from the lockbox and used his Inspect.

*

Portal-closing Stone (Legendary consumable, main quest)

Close the portal to the underworld.

*

“Main quest…?” Jack turned to Peniel. “What does this mean?”

“I… I don’t know…” Peniel replied.

If this was a regular game, then Jack knew what a main quest was. It was the goal that every player who played the game had to complete to achieve the final victory in the game.

Now that he saw this term, it made him think. Considering this world was based on a game, there should be a main quest, which should have automatically triggered for every player. But after going through a year in this game world, he never encountered what looked like a main quest.

The most epic quest he got was the kingdom chain quest that ended up putting him as a king, but that was not the main quest. A main quest spanned globally and affected the whole game.

‘The underworld,’ he thought. ‘Can the main quest of this game world have something to do with this underworld? Then why doesn’t everyone get a quest that connects to this place?’