Random Portals

After the trio finished talking, Steven looked over the stats of the amulet and ring by placing them into his inventory.

Neck- Amulet of the Armored Spider

Rarity- Shard forged

~ Effect]- Enhanced Carapace instantly forms over wearer’s body. (Note: Instantly activates if wearer takes 10% or more damage.)

~Cost}- Regeneration +3 per second.

~ Efect 2}- +50 Resistance.

~Cost}- None. (Passive ability)

~ Efect 3}- +35 Poise

~Cost}- None. (Passive ability)

Steven’s eyes bulged as he saw the plus fifty resistance. That was insane on any stat. It was essentially fifty levels. His mind raced at the thought of a plus fifty to strength or health or any stat, really. Fifty free levels in resistance was still great, not to mention the boost to poise. If it only gave plus ten, it would be insanely good, hell five would be good at his level, but a single ring giving him eighty-five attribute points was insane.

“Hey guys… So, uhh plus fifty?” Steven asked, still in bewilderment.

“Guys? Are you referring to us?” Silvia asked, in confusion.

“Yea… This Amulet,” Steven said, holding out the Amulet for emphasis, “this gives plus fifty! That is inane! Is th…”

“Hey!” Silvia butted in, “I can see how you could mistake me as a guy, but Nevateb is clearly female. I mean, just look at her.”

“Wait! What?” Steven asked with a dumbfounded look on his face. “Any way, about this amulet, it gives an instant plus fifty to resistance and…”

“Master, I have to agree with Miss Silviaburlaxatrix. I am certainly a female! And I am more than happy to show Master this in any manner he would like.”

Steven was taken completely off guard. He opened his mouth to respond but couldn’t find the words.

“Absolutely not! I will not stand for my bounded human to be matting with a monster!” Silvia said.

Nevateb gasped. “And what’s wrong with monsters?”

“I didn’t say there was anythi…”

“Nev! Silvia!” Steven Shouted. “What are you two even talking about? I obviously know she is female. Wait! You know what? I don’t care.” Steven held up the amulet.

“But Mas…”

“Nev! Shush! I’m asking the questions here,” Steven pointed at Silvia, “Nope! I saw your colors shifting.”

“My colors?”

“Shush!” Steven glared at the Wisp before turning back to the Queen. “Both of you be quiet.” Taking a deep breath, Steven held out the amulet for the third time. “This amulet.”

Most of Steven’s enthusiasm was gone by this point. Especially when he realized he had an audience via the drones. They mostly stayed hidden and out of sight, but if you looked, you could always find at least one lurking nearby.

He still managed to learn about the amulet. It turned out that fifty was an incredible amount indeed. It was apparently considered quite good as a shard forged item. Not great, but still good. Steven learned there was a shard forged amulet for each attribute, and each of them gave a fifty point boost to the attribute they represented. They also each had some sort of ability. Steven wished he had the one that gave plus fifty strength, dex, or maybe spirit. Actually, all of them were good. He could see how resistance could be considered the weakest, but it still had plus thirty-five poise to make up for it. Either way, plus fifty, resistance was still like getting fifty free levels. And he should never get sick again! Or did it not work that way?

What Steven was really curious about was the carapace armor, which was what the Amulet was named after.

Putting the Amulet on, he tried it out.

The carapace armor wasn’t phantom armor like he had first thought, but this odd hard leathery stuff, even Nevateb was surprised by this.

Silvia was also at a loss for words. The leathery material still resembled carapace but was made of a leathery material.

To Steven’s amazement, the carapace was extremely thin, barely affecting his movement. It made him think of leather armor. As for how tough it was, Steven wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t even scratch the leathery carapace with his daggers and both the Wisp and the Queen said the carapace was strong.

Steven played around in the armor for a good bit before he realized the Amulet’s downside. He had stabbed his dagger nearly through his forearm when the leathery armor vanished. At the same time he fell to the ground gripping his head from running his mana empty.

That’s when he learned what the cost of the Amulet meant. The plus three meant it took all the mana he regenerated, and three more per second. Apparently, all Shard forged abilities drained a resource, although most drained endurance, which one typically had less of. But you got the powerful effect of the shard forged treasure, so it’s worth it. This was just another thing that drained his mana. What he wouldn’t do to get his hands on the amulet that boosted spirit! He ended up having to use one of his precious few health potions on his forearm. Steven watched in amazement as his wound healed up, not even leaving a scar. He couldn’t help but imagine what health potions could do on earth. Probably nothing aside from making the rich people richer now that he thought about it. The big corporations would somehow get their hands on it and charge a ridiculous price. Shaking his head to clear it, he pulled up the ring’s description.

Ring 1- Ring of webs

Rarity- Rare

~Effect]- Conjure up to 1000 feet of spider webbing per day, or 250 feet of enhanced webbing per day.

(Note: The webbing you use first each day is the only webbing that can be used for that day.)

It was pathetic compared to the amulet, but that was to be expected. Shard forged equipment couldn’t be compared to normally enchanted items.

When Steven asked the wisp, what a day was exactly? He got a ridiculously long answer. When she finally finished explaining it to him, he thought he understood it, just not in great detail. From what he could understand, all items and abilities with a cool down reset at three thirty-three am. Although in this world people didn’t run around with little computers in their pockets telling them the exact time. So most just understood it as when you go to bed and woke up your cool downs reset.

Steven equipped his new ring and amulet. He could only hope he made the right choice by switching out amulets. He understood the one he had on now was so much more powerful it wasn’t even worth a second thought to most people. But Steven was worried about heights. Silvia explained his Shard ability should actually protect him. Although if he was falling onto spikes, then he would appear ten feet above the spike and fall back on to them. The wisp said his angelic death shard was extremely useful, and one of the most powerful unevolved shard abilities she had ever seen.

The next thing was to absorb the shard. This was something he was looking forward to and dreading at the same time. He couldn’t wait to see what sort of shard ability he would get. He hoped it would be an offensive ability.

“God, I hope I get a good offensive shard ability.” Steven mumbled.

But first he wanted to test out the ring. Just a bit, he imagined himself swinging around like spider man, but he wasn’t sure how it worked. He asked Nevateb if he would have to shoot webs from his butt. The response he got from the spider Queen was one he would never forget. Even the Wisp burst out into laughter as her pink light fluttered with specs of green.

As for the Queen, she fell to the dungeon floor with laughter followed by her uncontrollably transforming back into her spider form due to sheer laughter. This went on longer than Steven thought was necessary. After she finally gathered herself and turned back to human form, she then apologized by kneeling down in front of him and asking for forgiveness. The drones also knelt after seeing their mother bow down. It’s not like Steven had a choice. He had to forgive her. He needed her help, after all, and they were stuck together. Once things calmed back down, Nevateb tried to show Steven that the web did not come from her actual butt, but a hole below it. Though Steven wasn’t having any of that, her spider form terrified him. He didn’t think he would ever get used to the massive black arachnid body. To get out of having to deal with the very adamant Spider Queen, he just pulled out the Shard.

Absorb shard of Arachnid Royalty Yes/No?

Selecting yes, Steven watched as the shard broke down into thousands of little black moats of light that shot towards his chest. Suddenly they froze as if time its self stopped, looking around in confusion he realized that Silvia and Nev were also frozen in time. Steven moved his hand experimentally, but found he could move just fine. Suddenly, a portal opened. It was similar to the one that opened up in his basement, but this one was silver and speckled with red. Steven felt a strong urge to go into the portal and had unknowingly stepped towards it before he realized what he was doing. He didn’t get anymore time to think on this as an actual Angel with wings, halo and all stepped out of the portal. The Angel glanced at the frozen wisp and then at the massive spider Queen who was frozen in an extremely odd position. The Angel’s eyes lingered on Nevateb for so long that Steven was starting to think the Angel was also frozen. But soon as he went to speak up, the Angel turned to him. “Chaos has heard your prayer.” The Angel suddenly held his hand out and some of the black moats of light started to take on a slivery red color. “Uh, hey.” Steven said. Unsure what to say. “What is…” Steven started.

“It is done, mortal.” The Angel then stepped back into the portal, but not before taking another long look at the spider Queen.

Steven had the urge to follow in after the Angel but ultimately decided against it. “That was a bit rude, you know,” Steven said, staring at the spot the portal had been. He didn’t get time to think about the strange event that had just happen as time resumed and the now silvery red and black moats of light shot into his chest. Steven instantly fell to one knee, screaming in pain.

The pain was several times worse than he remembered from the first time he absorbed a shard and seemed to last twice as long. When he opened his eyes, Nevateb was by his side, back in human form, looking at him in concern. “Master, are you okay? Ive never seen someone just absorb a shard without a ritual and absorption stone. I thought you were going to test the ring out first.”

Steven didn’t respond and just continued to breathe hard for a couple minutes, sweat pouring from his brow.

“There is a lingering sense of divinity here.” The wisp said in confusion.

Nevateb started looking around in what Steven would consider panic. But she quickly took on her normal demeanor when she realized nothing was around.

“Well, an Angel of Chaos came in through a portal and did something to the shard right before I absorbed it.”

Nevateb’s eyes bulged. “Ch-chaos! How do you know it was that, God?”

“Because that’s the God your master has been blessed by.” Silvia said.

“I see,” Nevateb hesitantly said.

“You didn’t know?” Steven asked, slowly standing up.

“I knew you were blessed by a powerful God, but I didn’t realize it was Chaos.”

“What’s so special about him? If I’m being honest, the Angel was actually a bit of a dick. At least the other Angel wasn’t rude. This one kept staring at Nev, all strange like. Well, now that I think about it, the other Angel stared at me weirdly. But I still liked him better.”

Nevateb started looking around wide eyed. “Staring at me?” Nevateb said.

“Umm, Steven,” Silvia started, “I would be very careful when talking like that about Gods and their Angels.”

“Why?”

“Master. It’s best to not provoke those that had transcended their mortal chains.”

“Never mind all that! Chaos doesn’t seem to care, or you would already be dead.” Silvia said nonchalantly. “Let’s see what sort of shard ability you got!”

Steven was surprised at how excited the Wisp was. He, too, was excited and could barely wait. He had attribute points to spend and new gear to try, most importantly, a new magical power!

He quickly pulled up his shard page.

{Stats} {Equipment} {Shards*} {Inventory}

Shards:

~ 1 of 7

Angelic Death-

Ability effect~ Expands the distance by 10 feet between two distinct targets, while dilating time for both targets at the cost of 100 mana per second. (Note: Ability will trigger automatically when user is about to take a lethal attack. Can be turned off at any time.)

~ 2 of 7

Royalty of the Chaotic Arachnid

Ability effect~ Transform into a true Spider King at the cost of 1,000 mana per minute. All attributes get a 333% increase while in this form. You lose all equipment slots and shard abilities while in this form. (Note: This ability will automatically trigger if health goes below 25%. If hit points would be reduced to 0 or less while in this form, those hit points become 1, all effects are removed and the shard user will revert to original form.)

At first, Steven was confused by the name change. But his confusion quickly turned to anger after he read over the description.

“Master… This is incre..”

“NO! No! No! Why me? This is utter bullshit!“ Steven shouted at the dungeon ceiling, “I wanted a fire ball or lightning bolt! Hell, I would have been fine fire bolt! For fuck’s sake, I didn’t want to be dam spider! What the hell is wrong with you?” Steven was utterly pissed as he shouted at a God he assumed was paying him no mind. After a few minutes of this Steven calmed down a bit.

Silvia floated over. “Hey, I understand being irritated you didn’t get what you wanted. But the Gods can’t actually affect the shard abilities you get.”

Steven glared at the Wisp.

“All they can do is change the shard it’s self. As for the ability you gain, it is formed by your soul.”

“So you’re saying somewhere deep in my soul I wanted to be a giant fucking spider?”

“I-I’m not sure. Even though this is not what you wanted, it is an incredible ability, and the part about becoming a spider king is interesting. I wasn’t aware that was even possible. I can’t put my light on it, but I felt as though I’ve heard of the Spider king before.”

Steven stopped paying the Wisp any attention as she rambled on about the tremendous boosts to stats. He heard Nevateb say something, but he ignored her too for the moment. He had a stat page to look over.

{Stats*} {Equipment} {Shards} {Inventory}

Level- 18

Available Attribute ~7

Essence- 64

Essence required for next level 3318

HP ~ 143

Stamina ~ 56

Mana ~ 207

Poise ~ 0 +35

Vitality ~ 10

Endurance ~ 7

Strength ~ 7

Dexterity ~ 14

Resistance ~ 10 +50

Spirit ~ 17

Talent-

Basic Stealth - 15% less likely to be noticed while in stealth.

15% noise reduction while in stealth.

20% more damage when attacking in stealth.

Steven’s eyes widened when he saw the boost to his attributes. From what he could tell, he got a three point bump to all his attributes from absorbing the shard. That in its self was good. Taking a few long steading breaths, he sighed. Maybe having the ability to turn him into a giant spider wouldn’t be that bad. It did make him harder to kill, which is what his first shard did as well. It was the only synergy his shards had. He wondered if all his abilities were going to be defensive. Surviving was his top priority, after all. Maybe the Wisp was right, and it was his soul doing what was best for him. After all, he was trapped in a dungeon and only one Domain holder would be left alive. Whatever the case, Steven was still alive, and the boosts to his stats were greatly needed. The next thing to do was spend his attribute points he had been saving. Suddenly, he remembered the pain and resigned himself to only using one point at a time. He then realized he had just received three points to all his stats. No wonder it was so painful! Although if pain meant getting stronger, then it had to be good pain.

Steven spent his points one at a time. Seeing as mana was a huge part of his survivability now especially with his new amulet and shard ability it was clear he needed to spend most of his points in spirit, although he needed eleven strength to use the spear so he placed four of his free points in strength and the remaining three he placed into spirit.

Which brought his total mana pool all the way up to three hundred and twenty-six. Which made him stop everything he was doing and ask Silvia about it. She reminded him that every ten attributes he would get a boost to that stat. She was also positive that spirit was his dominate attribute and he should dump as much as possible there. Steven had already planned to do so but he just told her that was a good idea and he would definitely do so.

Eventually, the trio had a chat about the Angel. Nevateb also began adding in my king when referring to Steven, making it just another oddity he now had to deal with. The more annoying part was she kept asking when he was going to try his spider form. He just told her soon, but he was tired for now.

Once that was done, Steven was able to sleep in an actual bed that the drones got him. Nev tried to sleep in the same bed as him but Silvia was firmly against it and she ended up sleeping on the ground next to the bed in her spider form while the Wisp floated above him to make sure the spider Queen didn’t try to climb in the bed with him. When he woke up, her human half was lying on the end of the bed. Steven just rolled his eyes at her sleeping form. He really didn’t mind if she slept on the bed with him as long as she stayed in human form and didn’t eat him. But he kept his mouth closed as the Wisp was quite adamant about it.

That morning Steven got some much needed practice in with the web of rings. He used the basic webs so he could practice more. It turned out the webs shot from the ring itself. Which made a lot of sense now that he thought about it. The ring was pretty awesome, although he had a hard time practicing because he didn’t have any enemies to use it on. He stuck the web to the celling and tried to swing on it, but it turned out the web was quiet stretchy and was made for trapping enemies, although Nevateb showed him how to use it to catch himself if he was falling. Which was really just a big net. Luckily, it wasn’t all that sticky to him. She also told him that if he used the enhanced webbing, it wouldn’t be so stretchy. But when he asked about it getting tighter like hers, she told him the ring was not that powerful. But maybe his spider King form could learn that ability.