CH.242 Giving my Gift
CH.242 Giving my Gift
The day of the birthday party is here. Well, it’s not my birthday, but still.
The first thing I did in the morning was confirming my gift. Of course most of it was ready to go, but I did check out the sword I made. Okay, my monsters and Laura made it. I didn’t do anything. I’m just here to steal the credit from them.
The sword was complete and analyzed, so I could take a look at its stats.
Vampiric Steel Bastard Sword |
Element Blade |
Thrusting - Damage done by thrusting attacks ignores 25% of the target's defenses. |
Slashing - Damage done by slashing attacks ignores 40% of the target's defenses |
Blood Repair |
Vampire Weapon |
Durability 3500/3500 |
Description: A sword with a blade made from Vampiric Steel. It has a guard and pommel made from bronze and a grip made of everwood. The sword drinks blood and can use it to repair itself. The sword favors those that also drink blood and will show its true power when wielded by a blood drinker. The sword is capable of taking in the mana of any attribute and it will engulf itself in the element. It has been enchanted to increase its piercing and slashing capabilities. |
I think that is good. Interestingly, there is no stat buff coming with the weapon. Armor has +defense to it, but neither this sword, my sword, or something like Ria’s gauntlets have any sort of +strength. They just have things like piercing and slashing to improve your penetration, or something like deep impact. Ria’s gauntlets have that. It isn’t quite the same, as it instead increases the power of all of her punches by 25%. But still, not directly increasing your strength.
The element blade is interesting though. I didn’t expect that part. Maybe some of my Element monsters did that. But anyway, apparently the sword can take in the mana of any element, and engulf itself in said element. No, mana is attribute, element is the stuff the mana turns into. Well, anyway. Both Dark Flare Knight and Flame Swordsman showed it to me with a factory copy of the sword.
When wielded by Dark Flare Knight, the sword took on a dark aura, and with Flame Swordsman, the sword was engulfed in flames. Interesting to say the least. I tried it myself, but as my mana has no attribute, the sword just glowed a soft white light. I guess you might think it is light elemental, but it really wasn’t. Though interestingly, the mana that came from the sword wasn’t the white and black that my mana usually looked like when I wrote my name with one of those magic pens that took into consideration your attribute. It was more like white and black, with some hints of a violet color added in. It looked quite nice. Maybe I should have my monsters add that Element Blade to my sword. … actually they probably can’t as my sword already has a light elemental enchantment, which makes it more powerful against dark attributed monsters.
Anyway. The sword is ready to go, and I think it is alright. My mithril sword has a bit higher thrusting percentage at 33%, but it has a lower slashing percentage at 35%. I guess a bastard sword, or a ‘hand-and-a-half’ sword, is better for slashing than my arming sword.
Well, my gift is ready to go. My suit is ready and clean, thank you Tahlia. And my partner is ready and her dress is ready. So I’m ready. System, you’d better acknowledge my gift and give me some new sets.
For breakfast, we once again joined the Watchman family. I still feel a bit bad about invading their family time, but I also know them quite well, so I can somewhat relax with them.
After that, I had a quick visit to the kitchen of the manor. Ria guided me there, and I met up with Paulina as well as the head chef there. What was I doing? Well, I did promise them a dragon, didn’t I?
For the dragon, I went with the Harpie's Pet Baby Dragon from the Lord of the Storm Structure Deck. Yeah, we are eating a baby dragon today. But it is a good size. I can’t just cook up a massive dragon and expect all of it to be eaten. And someone will have to carry it from the kitchen to the party hall. Sure I could do it with my storage, but how do you expect others to carry a whole roasted dragon?
For my part, all I had to do was drop a Mystik Wok, just give it a slight surface roast with the spell and leave the rest to the kitchen staff. I hope they can get it all cooked up in time, but they didn’t ask for it yesterday, so if they can’t, that is on them.
When I got back to our room, I spent some time just sitting with Lua. Well, that was the plan, but because it was us, our time just sitting around quickly turned into magic practice. I was still just casting Space Wall over and over again, trying to make something that can actually stop something more than a light touch. Well, it could now stop a punch from a child, or a goblin, but it isn’t at a level where it can be used in a real fight. I could use Level Up! to gain a higher skill level and that should help, but that will have to wait a day or two more.
Of course I also made sure to teach Lua the ‘remote magic loop’ so she could practice it with me in the future. It did seem effective for learning telekinesis, and Lua having LV.10 Mana Control and Mia cheats, she picked it up on the spot. If she practices it, she will likely learn telekinesis in a week or two.
“Brian, it is time to head to the party hall.” Ria came to remind us.
“Yes. We are ready.” I said, as I got up from the couch.
Both Lua and I were dressed up and ready to go. I was in the same clothing as yesterday. The white silk shirt, a dark brown tailcoat and light brown pants, lacking the left forearm sleeve, yada yada.
Lua on the other hand was not wearing what she had on yesterday. She was in the purple and white dress we ‘stole’ from The Agent of Judgment - Saturn. With her hair in a reverse braid of some kind, courtesy of her skill, and she had a red stone necklace around her neck. All in all, she is absolutely gorgeous.
In terms of arrival at the party venue, Lua and I were some of the first guests to arrive. For parties with nobles, it was somewhat important to arrive in the order of one's rank. And as an honorary baron, I was not quite the lowest, but basically yes. Below me would only be honorary knights. A single generation title like mine, given to those that show some exceptional skills or something like that. But no honorary knights were invited, so I was the first noble in the room. Other than me, a few high ranking merchants had already arrived and a lot of them turned to look at the two of us as we walked in. I didn’t know most of them, but I did recognize one older man. Mister Bakula, the owner of the Bakula trading & transport company. I didn’t know he was invited, but it appears that he was. I didn’t know if his company was large enough to get an invite, but apparently he did. I just hope he didn’t bring anything from my dungeon as a gift, as that would ruin mine. A bit, at least. But I’m sure he has something else. His reputation would also take a hit if he tried to show the same stuff as the new dungeon founder.
A few of the merchants made contact with me and introduced themselves to me. They didn’t go as far as asking for dungeon items or anything, but they did make it clear that they were looking forward to seeing what kinds of new items my dungeon can make.
Soon after us, other nobles began entering the room. At first, it was other honorary barons, followed by actual barons, then viscounts and then Earl Marsh. By the way, the unmarried children of Thomas came in when honorary barons were coming in, in case you were wondering. They aren’t technically nobles, but they are important guests.
The last people to arrive were obviously Thomas, his wife and the second Prince. They all arrived at the same time, probably out of respect for the Prince. Normally, Thomas would have been the last to arrive, but royalty is different. It would be disrespectful for the Prince to not arrive last, but it would also be disrespectful if Thomas wasn’t last, so this was the solution to that problem.
Thomas soon took his seat and the party began.
First thing was a song. A local happy birthday song, which spoke about living to be over 100 years old. It was chorded by a simple piano melody, played by one of the manor maids.
After the song, it was time for the gift giving. For that, the order we would present our gifts was basically the reverse of our arrival order. The highest ranking person is first, and then others follow.
So as you might have guessed, the Prince was first.
His gift was.
“His Majesty gave me the permission to return this to your family. I believe you know what it is.” The Prince said, as his aide pulled a large mithril battle-axe from a magic bag. It was detailed and beautifully engraved, looking more like a showpiece than something someone would actually use in battle.
“Th- this is … the founder’s axe.” Thomas muttered as he received the axe. “I … I thought it had been lost for ages.”
“No. Not quite.” The Prince said. “It was presented to the Royal family some 600 years ago and we have been taking care of it ever since. But I believe the time has come to return it home.”
“Yo-Your Highness. Thank you.” Thomas said as he got up from his seat and prostrated himself in front of the Prince. “I’ll … I’ll do anything for you for this.”
“Well now. I’ve already gotten what I wished for. You should get back up. The others still have gifts for you.” The Prince said, as he walked off. Wonder what he meant by that got what he wished for comment through?
Next was of course Earl Marsh and his wife. Their gift was three magic books, aka. grimoires, from their own collection. It honestly seemed like a great gift, it was just somewhat overshadowed by the one the Prince just gave.
Then it was the Viscounts. Garner, Yuva and Kramer.
Garner, also known as Angelina’s husband and Angelina herself, gifted Thomas with a wyvern mantle. The wyvern leather coming from a wyvern hunted by the adventuring party Diamond Sword just a few days before Alewatch was the target of a wyvern attack.
Viscount Yuva, ruling a town with an ore mine and all, gifted a steel shield, which had a thin coating of mithril on it. It was very good looking, but at the same time fell into the ‘use item’ category for me, instead of the ‘decoration item’ where the battle-axe had been.
From Viscount Kramer, Thomas got two war horses. They are a subset of the regular horses that people use to pull carriages and other stuff, specifically bred to be used as mounts for knights. And yes, they are actually monsters with a monster core. D-rank monsters, in case you were wondering. But having lived their entire lives with humans, and monster tamers, they were not at all aggressive. And as D-rank monsters, they were reasonably powerful, so they could run for a long time with no rest, take multiple strikes without going down and so forth. Well, of course their durability would depend on who was the one attacking them.
Then came the barons. But none of their gifts were that impressive, so I won’t go over them.
Well, I guess I’ll mention two. First, the one given by the Watchman family, even though I feel like it is mostly from Christina. A magic tool which used earth magic stones to improve the soil quality, as well as a decent amount of small magic stones to power it. The magic stones weren’t fuel by the way, more like batteries. After being used, they’d have to be recharged with mana. This could either be done by just leaving them out in the air where they will slowly refill themselves, or by having a mage with the same attribute as the stone filling it with theirs.
The second worth, or in this case not worth, mentioning was the gift from Baron Bloggs. He gave Thomas a bangle made of gold, set with a few small gemstones. Giving something like that to a young lady should be fine, but giving it to a 60 year old male, not so much.
For the rest of his children, Mariina gave her father a golem carriage she herself had apparently made. It didn’t come just from her, but the Sage’s Tower as an organization, as they had paid for the materials. It didn’t fit into the room, so I didn’t see it, but that was quite the gift.
Cressida brought her father a rare book from the capital. She had hand copied the book, as the original copy was forbidden from being printed. It could only be copied by hand.
Violet, who had arrived yesterday from another town where she had been doing something, gave her father a magic lantern which used a light magic stone as the light source.
And Paulina gave her father a magic device to help plants grow. It used both water and earth magic stones for that. Too bad it was somewhat overshadowed by Christina’s gift, as they were both very similar.
Then finally, it was my turn. I did feel just a bit nervous as I approached Thomas, but his gentle smile did calm me down.
“My Lord.” I began. “I’d like to give you some of the treasures coming from my dungeon.” As I said that, I got the magic fanny pack loaded with fabrics out of my storage. Again, storage can store ‘magic holding items’ even if they have stuff inside of them. “This is a magic bag from my dungeon. While it can only store a small amount, it is small from the outside as well, and can be clipped around your waist, making theft highly unlikely.” As I explained that, I heard some awes from the merchants who had been invited. A bag like this would be more useful for them than most nobles, after all. Merchants are the ones who have to look out for pickpockets and stuff. “Inside of it, you will find six bolt rolls of fabric. One of denim fabric, two of cotton fabric and three of tricot fabric. Now I understand at least some of them might sound new, so I’ve prepared some clothes made from them.” As I said that, I got out the ‘three-piece suit’ I’d made. Yeah, it wasn’t a suit at all, but I did somewhat style the jacket after one.
It consisted of a relatively normal looking pair of black jeans, a long-sleeved crew-neck white shirt and a black double-breasted cotton suit jacket. The jacket might honestly be more of a blazer than an actual suit jacket, but who really cares?
As I went on a quick explanation on the fabrics, and what I believe they are good for, the butler took the ‘suit’ and placed it next to all the other gifts. He had also pulled the fabric rolls out of the magic fanny pack.
“Then last, I’d like to present you with this sword.” I said, as I got the vampiric steel bastard sword out of my storage, and handed it to Thomas. “It is a bastard sword made of vampiric steel, with a guard and pommel made of bronze, and a grip of everwood. The scabbard is everwood and sword-horn bull hide.” I explained, as Thomas pulled the sword out of the scabbard.
As he was holding it, I heard some murmurs from the audience, like “It cannot be vampiric steel.” and “It has to just be blood iron, right?”
Nope. Vampiric steel all the way. Because why not? It isn’t that much more expensive than blood iron.
“It is quite a beautiful blade.” Thomas said, as he looked at it. “While it might be somewhat plain in design, that allows for the special metal to shone with elegance. Thank you.” He thanked me for the gift as he slid the sword back into its scabbard.
After that, I bowed slightly before walking back to where the other party goers were. As I returned to Lua’s side, my quest notification popped up.
Mission: Gift of Value |
Mission Complete |
Sets , and unlocked. |
Reprint set unlocked. |
You overdid it. |
What do you mean I ‘overdid it’? My gift is perfectly reasonable. Others just give bad gifts. Well, other than the Prince. His gift must have still been better than mine, right?
And honestly, I don’t really care. I got three new sets, and one reprint. That is just fine. E-Heroes and Cyber Dragons. The world better be ready for the chaos I’m about to unleash.
… no, I actually won’t unleash anything. But still, I like that I now have access to those cards.