Fight. Level. Survive.

Chapter 63 - Overpowered

“I’m telling you, It’s not a Unicorn dick!” Mason argued. At this point he was pretty convinced that it was indeed a Unicorn dick but there was no way he was going to admit that to Mayry.

“And I’m telling you it is!” Once she had gotten over the initial shock of waking up, coming out of the Trunk and seeing her boyfriend wielding a Unicorn’s penis as a weapon, she had been unable to stop laughing at him.

Mason felt like such an idiot, he was blushing deeply and incredibly embarressed. The system had even named it a Clop Wand! Mason had been around the internet he knew what the word ‘Clop’ meant. He should have known the instant he had seen the name. He froze and facepalmed, he had even shouted ‘clop clop mother fucker’ thinking it sounded cool. Thank god Mayry hadn’t heard that bit! If he ever went back to earth he vowed to leave that part out of his autobiography.

“How did you even know it came from a Unicorn!” Mason asked genuinly interested, it wasn’t as if she could have seen it in a book. The nature of Unicorn magic made anyone looking at something to do with their true nature gloss over the details and only remember them as all rainbows and lollipops.

“I um… May have been a little bit obsessed with them when I was little.” She saw the surprised look on Mason’s face and got defensive. “I was a little girl! And I still thought they were wonderful peaceful creatures!”

Mason didn’t know where this was going but he quickly checked his notifications just to confirm Aiden was actually dead and wasn’t going to attack them mid story. He saw the kill notification but willed it away to read later.

“I used to draw pictures of them on paper I would steal from my fathers office, he always dissaproved and I never knew why until I got older.”

“What happened?”

“I heard some hunters talking about a sighting of a unicorn. They said they were going to kill it, I later remembered hearing them talk about the carnage and destruction it had caused. I went looking for it and found one. It was the day my Family Magic and Chaos ability first manifested. The moment I saw the unicorn I could see what it really was. It attacked me and a second later it was on fire.”

Mason, was horrified by the story but was still a bit confused. He interrupted without thinking, “and you remembered what its dick looked like?”

She shot him a glare and he looked away suitably chastised, she continued. “The hunters I had heard talking found me a little while later, the Unicorn had died but the fire hadn’t really damaged to body much. I remember what its penis looks like because I remember seeing them cut it off so they could sell it. It is apparently an incredibly rare alchemy ingredient. They took me home and even gave me a cut of the bounty. I was so upset to find out what Unicorns really were that i didn't realise that they only gave me a few Iron when the bounty was probably far more.”

Mason listened intently to the story and when she was finished he didn’t have much to say so he just gave her a hug, the memories of the experience had upset her enough that he said, “Fine, It is a Unicorn dick.”

She perked up immediately, her demeanour reverting back to how it was before she started telling the story, “Hah I knew it! You were so funny waving it around at Aiden and then you were all like, Clop Clop Mother fucker.” She restarted her bouts of laughter unable to stop for a good few minutes.

“You little shit! Was any of that story even true, or were you just trying to get me to admit that it was a dick?!”

The question made her laugh even harder, in between laughs she managed to say, “Viv showed me one once in her shop, and then showed me some sketched of real unicorns. I couldn’t see them at first but after a while the illusion faded.” The laughter died down and she added, “Man, you are gullible.”

He growled at her and threw the Clop Wand at her, she shrieked and tried to dodge it but it smacked her lightly in the face with a plop. She threw it back, missed by a mile and started vigorously rubbing her face.

“I may be gullible but at least I don’t fall asleep right before a huge fight !” Mason accused.

She looked guilty as she said, “I’m really sorry about that, I really don’t know how that happened. I was waiting for you to tell me to come out and next thing I know I was waking up. ”

Mason shrugged as he went to retrieve the wand, waving it the air he said. “Ah don’t worry, me and cloppy handled things, if it makes you feel better I quite like the new look!”

Mayry’s looked thoughtful for a moment, as if trying to understand the joke, until she shook her head, and said

“New look? I don’t understand?”

Oh damn, Mason knew he had fucked up, he had assumed she had noticed the changes she had gone through, but apparently not.

Not really, knowing what to say, he pulled a full sized mirror out of his inventory and gesture for her to take a look.

With a frown she did she looked into the mirror, and for a few minutes didn't say anything. Mason was about to say something when Mayry finally broke the silence, “What the fuck!?!” She touched her face as if she could feel the difference in colour with her fingers. “why am I red?”

Mason tried to calm her down, “you're not… that red.” A death glare made him shut up. She stared at herself in horror and started to visibly panic, “How am I supposed to go anywhere looking like this? I'm going to kill my dad how did he not warn me?!

Feeling out of his depths, he closed one eye and started going through his notifications,

Notification 1/4

You have slain - Level 31 - Chaos System User Aiden

You have received 620 XP

Chaos system detected, additional XP received

You have received a total 2100 XP

Inwardly Mason scoffed at the lack of a level up.

Notification 2/4

You have absorbed the ability. ‘Nausea’

Nausea (Advanced) - looking at you makes them sick.

Active effect: With a gaze, you can Inflict a feeling of nausea onto an enemy, making them feel sick. At higher levels, enemies will be unable to stop themselves from spontaneously throwing up. Scales with Vitality.

Notification 3/4

Status effect: Affliction – ‘Overpowered has been added – all ability’s effectiveness is reduced by 50%

Mason muttered, “What the hell.” There was a limit on how many abilities he could have? “This was bullshit.”

Mayry looked at him expectantly, “What was that?” she asked.

Oh crap, he hadn’t realised he had said that out loud. Thinking quickly, he said, “Errr, oh! I was just saying how it was bullshit that your dad didn’t tell you about this!”

She nodded and went right back to ranting, “Right?! People are going to think I’m a Monster! Maybe I could say it was an ACT…”

Phew, that was a close one. He whispered as quietly as he could, “Help, Affliction, ‘overpowered’.”

Help

The Affliction, ‘Overpowered’ is added when the system user gains more abilities than their current system can sufficiently power. Power is taken from all other abilities in order to power any new abiliites.

Affliction can be removed by replacing or removing existing abilities or by absorbing more pure Chaos Essence to upgrade your system.

The nausea ability didn't seem worth getting rid of any of his other abilities, but it was good to know that there was a hard limit. how could he absorb more pure chaos essence? Another question for The Mayor.

He found it easy enough to get rid of an ability. He just focused on the nausea entry on his character sheet and willed it to be removed.

Are you sure you want to remove Ability, ‘Nausea’? Y/N?

The last notification was the loot he had gotten from killing Aiden. It wasn’t nearly as much as from Gael but there were still a few interesting items.

Notification 4/4

Loot Received:

Map

Ring of suggestion

Various Alchemy ingredients

2 unknown potions

2 Chaos orbs

He wanted to use Identify on the unusual items but thought that he better give Mayry a little nudge otherwise they’d be here for hours.

He gently interjected into what she was saying and explained that Aiden was worried about an elder trying to find him and that they should probably get out of there relatively soon, just in case.

Still a bit annoyed, she reluctantly agreed. they started searching the rest of the rooms; they took everything that wasn’t nailed down and a few things that were. The doors that Mason hadn’t been through turned out to all lead to storage areas. His inventory and Trunk were starting to reach their limit. They had found a room filled with dried meats, preserved fruits, and full meals with preservation runes etched into their containers. Since coming to this world, Mason had mostly eaten at Inns and restaurants, but he definitely wasn’t going to say no to a massive amount of food; considering the sort of situations he found himself in, it would probably get used at some point.

Another room housed an incredibly unorganised library. They took all the books but dumped them into Mason’s trunk without reading any of the titles. He was sure that, eventually, he would get around to sorting through them. Now that he thought about it, the books he had gotten from Gael still needed to be looked at…. Maybe he would try and convince Mayry to do it for him.

The last room was Mason’s favourite. He had walked in first and turned around to block Mayry’s view. He grinned and said, “Do you remember the day we met? When you were telling me about money? You said I should never tell you if I found Gold because you weren't above killing me for it?”

Hesitantly she replied, “Yes… I remember saying that.” she narrowed her eyes at him, and added, “Why?”

“Do… you still stand by that?”

She pushed passed him saying “Mason, with how much you annoy me you're lucky I don't kill you for a cop…per.” She trailed off as she saw the contents of the room. Three see through boxes sat on a table, one contained Iron, one Silver, and the other, by far the smallest, contained several Gold coins.

Her mouth fell open, and she stared at the boxes. “Mason, that is an insane amount of money. Do… do we take it?” She was so mesmerised that she had started stuttering.

Mason laughed, “Of course we do! Finders keepers and all that!”

She stared at him bewildered. "Mason, are you serious? How can are you so calm about this? I don't think you understand just how much this is! Even if we just took the Gold and left the rest! It would be enough to buy a small country, for Chaos’ sake! I'm not even sure we could spend it all in a lifetime. And trust me, if we tried to use it in Sparksford, they wouldn't know what to do with us. Maybe in Trilil or one of the larger cities, but here? It's unheard of. They’d think we robbed the Royal treasury or something!”

Mason held up his hands. “Okay, okay, Breath. This is a good thing. Just think would you rather us have the money or leave it here for one of the ‘Other’s’ to claim? I'll keep it in my inventory and if we ever go to a bigger city, we can try and exchange it there for something smaller. Okay? Otherwise, we’ll just hold onto it.”

Mayry nodded slowly and started to calm down. They walked closer to the table and inspected the three boxes. They seemed to be made of glass but try as he might Mason couldn’t figure out how to open any of them.

After trying for a few minutes, Mason tried using his enhanced strength to just break it open.

A sudden flash of light caused him to blink, when he opened his eyes he was standing at the top of the hole again, empty-handed, with half of his HP gone.

Five minutes later he was back in the room. According to Mayry he had been there one moment and gone the next.

The next hour was spent with Mason and Mayry coming up with different ways to get into the boxes. Mason was always the one to try the methods as he didn’t want to Mayry get hurt.

Finally, they gave up and called it quits, accepting that with the methods they currently had at their disposal, they weren't going to be getting into the boxes. Instead, he picked up the entire table and threw it into his Trunk, hoping that eventually, they would figure it out.