Chapter 98
Chapter 98
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 98
Chapter Title: Self-Portrait (3)
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A massive portrait. The figure painted inside was a familiar face to Regen.
“This is Flexis? The wizard who made your cloak and pendant?”
“Yes.”
“Why would a figure like that suddenly appear here...? No.”
Greg gripped his axe tightly and hurriedly stepped in front of Regen.
“...We have to fight a wizard like that? This is a headache.”
His voice trembled, but his eyes were resolute, unlike before.
If a fight was necessary, his gaze conveyed the will to somehow protect the group from the front.
“Fortunately, Flexis isn’t the enemy.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. This is a portrait containing rewards.”
A massive portrait. To Regen, these were paintings he knew all too well.
‘This is actually why I started studying this room in the first place.’
A massive portrait event that followed after meeting the escape conditions.
This was a reward selection time of sorts.
“You can see massive portraits on the side as well, right?”
When Greg looked to the side, paintings that hadn’t been visible before now hung there.
There were four massive portraits in total.
“These contain the rewards?”
Only then did the sharpness in Greg’s eyes soften a bit.
His gaze shifted from one that saw ghosts to one that beheld a sack of gold.
“Ahem. You could’ve told me sooner. I was tense for nothing.”
“...Haha. I was still figuring it out myself.”
“Do you know what the rewards are? It would’ve been nice if the book mentioned that too.”
“...”
“You can’t take them all, I assume.”
NPCs who had rolled through life here were certainly better than most users in some ways.
He had immediately grasped the core of the reward selection.
‘You can take one per person.’
Exactly one portrait could be chosen per person.
It meant they couldn’t take all four rewards.
“We can probably each take one. Plenty of explorers who’ve made it this far have experienced it.”
“...Hm.”
“But it doesn’t apply if the group size exceeds the number of portraits.”
“Excess members get nothing?”
“Yes. Exactly one reward comes out of each visible frame.”
“It’s nice they give something, but they don’t give generously. Good thing there’s three of us—if there were five or six, it would’ve been disappointing!”
In truth, it was disappointing even now.
If they had come with numbers matching exactly, they could have claimed rewards from every portrait.
“Do we have to guess what the rewards are?”
Seria, who had been listening quietly, spoke up bluntly.
Besides Flexis’s portrait, the others hanging around featured extraordinary figures.
Their professions and traits were visibly all different.
“I believe they come out randomly. Explorers have reported getting different things.”
“...Hm. Still, better to pick one that seems related to me.”
“Exactly.”
“Regen, are you going for the wizard?”
Two portraits hung on the left wall, and two on the right.
On the left was a general holding a sword and a jeweler carrying gems.
On the right were the wizard Regen was looking at and a figure holding flowers.
“Greg, you’d be better off with the sword or the gems. Seria and I should go for the wizard or the flower guy.”
“I think so too.”
As Seria surmised, the portraits offered subtle hints.
Items related to the paintings emerged randomly.
‘Honestly, I can’t remember all these rewards myself.’
Over thirty items per painting poured out randomly.
And what Regen had identified might not even be all of them.
They were all usable items, so he had meant to memorize them, but some were outright junk, so he gave up.
“Here, take this for now.”
Regen pulled an item from his pouch. It was a rabbit’s foot he had farmed with Greg in the rabbit warren earlier.
“A rabbit’s foot. It boosts luck, right?”
“It’s not much, but better than nothing. Maybe it’ll help get something better.”
He plucked two strands of fur from the rabbit’s foot, one for each of them.
Greg and Seria each took a strand of fur from the rabbit’s foot and moved forward.
“Do we just stand here and look? Like summoning a ghost?”
“That’s what I heard.”
After some deliberation, Greg stood before the knight.
“I don’t know what the flower means, but this one intrigues me most.”
Seria approached the portrait of the man holding the flower.
After standing there for about ten seconds, the portrait began to ripple.
Pop—!
This time, instead of a ghost, items burst out from within.
They floated into the air before falling to the ground.
“...Ha.”
Greg, who checked his first, let out a hollow laugh.
“Plate boots.”
Boots meant to be worn as part of a plate armor set.
Greg picked them up and examined them with curious eyes.
As a blacksmith, he was always curious about how weapons or armor were made when he saw them.
He could even see who made them and with what intent.
As he stared for a long while, Greg’s mouth slowly began to gape open.
“...Insane.”
“What is it?”
“Regen, do you know a knight named Alfredo?”
“Of course. Like Flexis, he was one of the famous knights from the past.”
There was a saying: if modern times had Chimihir the swordsman, the past had Alfredo.
Their styles differed, but the point was they were icons of their eras’ greatest swordsmen.
“These are his boots.”
“...!”
Regen’s eyes widened in tandem.
‘This came out in one try...?’
Whatever came out would be fine, but he had in mind three particularly useful ones.
‘Hoping for something helpful to Greg.’
Alfredo’s boots were one of them.
“He was the Knight of the Wind, and these boots imbued with his will greatly increase the wearer’s movement speed.”
Greg had to fight in heavy armor, which inevitably hampered his mobility.
These boots filled that exact gap.
“But the material is mithril, not orihalcon, so it seems like a replica. A bit disappointing—it’s a fake.”
Seria tilted her head.
“Not the actual boots Alfredo wore?”
“No. The real ones are probably in the kingdom’s treasury. They wouldn’t have handled such finely made boots carelessly.”
“Hm, so a replica means much lower performance.”
“That’s true for ordinary items. Mimicking this structure is hard enough. Even alloying the ore like this for plate armor isn’t easy.”
“...Is that so?”
“Yeah. This is on par with the real thing. The material is just a tad inferior...!”
Greg’s eyes sparkled.
It had been a while since his field of expertise appeared, and he seemed a bit excited.
“...So that’s how it’s made. Whoever replicated it has impressive craftsmanship. Sharp eyes too. The additions to compensate for material shortages... show real creativity.”
In this world, items with superior performance or craftsmanship existed.
Commonly called masterpieces or artisan-grade.
Users simply dubbed them ‘cheat items.’
‘Those kinds have replicas. Same special effects, but downgraded performance.’
The originals of such cheat items were limited in number.
Some existed only as a single copy.
In a multiplayer game with others, server-exclusive items would be impossible.
But since DAT was a thorough solo play game, it didn’t matter how many there were.
One might think replicas were inferior and worthless.
Yet the higher-tier replicas rivaled the originals.
“This is a top-grade replica. Worth using.”
Just like the one now in Greg’s hands.
Normally, such items required appraisal by a blacksmith outside after acquisition.
But since Greg was the blacksmith, there was no need to go anywhere.
“You’re putting them on right away...?”
“Heh heh. New shoes are meant to be worn right away.”
Greg struggled to remove his old plate boots.
He then hung the black ones on his bag and donned the new pair.
“A perfect fit?”
“Yeah. Seems tailored to my size.”
Regen had wondered. In most games, shoes or armor just equipped regardless.
Here, did they come size-adjusted, or did they need custom fitting?
When he asked specifically, Greg said it varied each time.
“Come to think of it, Regen, you’ve never gotten any weapons or armor yet.”
“Right. Just what I got from the Skeleton Knight.”
Regen patted his bag.
The Skeleton Knight’s items were too conspicuous in his inventory, so he carried them in his bag.
“Those were probably sized to the person who landed the last hit. Since you did, Regen... they matched that build.”
“Ah.”
“Well, it’s all under some magic influence from the tower or monsters.”
Regen nodded.
Users called it the system; people of this world called it the tower’s laws.
It seemed magical, and was worth pondering later.
Whoosh—!
When Greg infused mana into Alfredo’s boots, he felt his body lighten.
In just a few steps, he reached right in front of Regen—astonishing speed.
“...This is almost like a dash skill.”
“Wow, that’s fast. The effect of Alfredo’s boots?”
“Infusing mana gives a temporary speed boost. Cooldown seems long, but I could strike a gap once.”
Greg burst into hearty laughter, clearly satisfied.
To Regen, it looked perfect for Greg.
A wizard like him might dodge one or two skills at best with them.
...But for a one-shot dealer like Greg, a dash skill was cheat-level.
“What did you get, Seria?”
“Hm.”
Seria, who had stood silently, held up her item in bewilderment.
A single flower was clutched in her hand.
“...A flower?”
“Yeah, this single flower came out.”
“Haha! Seria, looks like you got confessed to!”
“...”
“Sorry, Seria. Anyway, do these actually drop?”
Greg quickly apologized, sensing her expression harden.
Unlike his decent boots, she had only gotten a decorative flower.
He thought she might be disappointed.
“At least the scent could help change your mood...”
“Don’t sniff it.”
“...Huh?”
Seria stopped Greg as he leaned in to smell the flower.
“This is Pendalia, a toxic herb.”
“...What?”
“Amazing. I got something perfect for me too. Squeeze the leaves and seeds properly... and you get level-2 paralysis poison.”
Seria examined the flower closely.
No matter how she looked, it was one of the toxic herbs she had noted before.
“It’s rare to obtain, and the harvest yield is low, so demand is limited—I had given up on it... but it drops like this.”
The corner of Seria’s mouth lifted.
“Saves me money.”
Too extravagant to buy with what remained after sending money to her sibling, but now it had dropped right into her lap.
“Damn. Can’t you be happier with good stuff? I thought I said something wrong.”
“I was plenty happy.”
“Anyway, slather it on a dagger and it’ll be threatening. Level-2 paralysis... even I’d be stuck for about ten seconds.”
“By the way, Regen, why haven’t you taken yours...?”
Both had gotten satisfying items. Only Regen remained.
Yet Regen wasn’t standing before a portrait.
“...We both got good ones, but you could still get something great.”
Regen chuckled at Seria’s words.
Their good luck did make him a bit wary.
From experience, low-probability events never chained in this game.
Luck was like that, after all.
‘That’s why I’m uneasy.’
With three people, it wouldn’t be odd for one to get a dud.
“It’s fine. I wasn’t planning to take anything from these portraits anyway.”
Regen’s gaze turned to the end of the room.
Fortunately, there was an option unrelated to their luck.
Even if his turn was doomed to misfortune, it wouldn’t matter.
“The rumor of disappearances in the Portrait Room. If it’s due to something in this room...”
Not the portraits on the left or right walls, but Regen looked toward the room’s end.
Hidden in the shadows was another portrait.
“It’s probably related to that.”
The Portrait Room’s hidden event triggered through that one.
‘Disappear.’
Or obtain the game’s most core item.
Regen walked toward the black portrait.
The one users called the Black Self-Portrait, which had made him rage-quit countless loops.