Chapter 8: Tulip

Phew...

Are you interested in what the great Me was doing? Oh, it's simple, I was rubbing my belly.

We had a wonderful dinner. My regret is that I complained about fried food in the past. There isn't much of it here as oil is considered a luxury in this world. That's why there was so much fried food at that feast. Surprisingly, my mood was just wonderful and magnificent. It seemed like I could fly into the azure sky from happiness. Because of that, I decided not to hold back and indulged almost entirely in meat, only slightly supplementing with salad. Well, why not? Sometimes you can allow yourself some weaknesses. I don't have a precise understanding of how things are here. But for a healthy person from where I was lucky enough to come, it's necessary to consume a lot of protein to be completely healthy and strong, especially after such a heavy workout. But I don't have precise information on how things are here.

All fatigue has already vanished.

In the group, there were cheerful and joking conversational battles. Mostly it was banal bragging and silly jokes with a small number of arguments, more in the category of "I'm this, I'm that," and so on. But one incident occupied my thoughts.

You remember that moment. The moment of my shameful breakdown and unexpected attack. When my roof slightly leaked, and I fell into a strange suicidal hysteria?

In general, you understood. It was about my skills, there were some problems with them, and to be more specific... Distorted mind Lv. 3 there was something wrong with it, it first sharply fell to Level 1, after which he steadily rose to Level 4... During the time he rose, I even had a passive skill Mental Pollution for a very short time. I couldn't see what it was because it disappeared instantly. I don't even want to mention that my alignment jumped more than twice up. It seems that because of it, I went mad. Now it's me again, my usual Chaotic-Evil. But that damn useless skill is back at a stable Level 3. I would really like it to stay at Level 1 or, if possible, disappear altogether. I didn't pay too much attention to it. But you can't imagine how overwhelmingly strong and uncontrollable I felt when it dropped to Level 1 and when my alignment jumped into the positive spectrum, removing all restrictions. As if a mountain that I didn't notice before was lifted off my shoulders, but it didn't last long... I hope it won't happen anymore... I don't want to go crazy again... If possible, I need to somehow secretly find out if it's possible to get rid of skills and how to do it? A useless skill that brings only harm and extremely questionable benefits is simply not needed for me.

Ahem, so where did I leave off? The mood was simply magnificent. I completely agree with you that this is completely abnormal. A sharp, almost instantaneous, jump from a suicidal state to incredibly happy and joyful.

But, unfortunately or fortunately, I am not a psychologist. In my life, I almost never managed to work anywhere. Well, sometimes I danced a little for women, if you know what I mean. But to be more successful in this business, I needed a couple of dozen more centimeters in height... Mostly, everything I did in life was just using women to provide for me.

Why work and ruin your precious, priceless health and youth when a trusting lady, even though she may be ten or more years older than you, is willing to pay for everything and literally "carry you on her hands". Hehe, many naive girls and women liked this type of "a young boy". It was so amusing...

Although, I remember one episode... When a woman loved role-playing games... I won't go into details, I'll just say that after that, the sight of a diaper, pacifier, and the word "mommy" makes me shiver a little... Just a little...

Ahem, sorry, got a little distracted from the topic. Do you know what's really terrible and not so bright in this world? Although, if you look at it from another angle...

It's almost impossible to find something alcoholic and smokable. Seriously, there are huge difficulties here, especially with alcohol, so that people can get drunk successfully and the effect doesn't wear off almost immediately. The problem is that this is an RPG world, you need to have several skills related to brewing and fermentation that are in the Poison Master class... As I found out, there's a little problem, it's a certain skill of a poisoner... When you make alcohol and make a mistake several times, you can get this skill which enhances the potency of your poison... Do you understand?

That's why people here mainly drink juices. Alcohol consumption is extremely rare in wealthy circles, and it's not very accepted here, the word alcoholic simply doesn't exist...

Sigh... And about the weed "that you can smoke", they haven't heard of it here either. A terrible world of almost complete sobriety... Well, at least I have a strong love for milk, so I'm not too disappointed! The bonus is that when I arrived in this world of wonders, I didn't even want to put a cigarette in my mouth, so everything's fine!

We were heading towards our, as Fura put it, "resting place". Satisfied, mostly happy and not even remembering that there used to be Seventh Hero here...

The common people were never informed that one of the Heroes had passed away. It could have caused a general panic and concern, but there was another side to the coin, no one was informed that I had arrived. As a result, it seemed that 7 heroes had arrived, but in fact, ordinary people thought that 6 had arrived... and no one had died. Only the aristocrats and the "Highest" estate knew the true state of affairs.

My curiosity got the best of me, and I learned more about Equipment Ranks and penalties. Even if you wore [A]-rank weapons, they gave roughly the same amount of damage as weapons available at your level? Surprisingly, there were many nuances to this. The weapons did give less damage, but there were some key points where the weapon's features were preserved, albeit reduced. It was possible to obtain weapons that were one rank higher, but only someone who was one rank lower could wear them, all because of special modifiers. Such weapons could not be created, they were "dropped" from monsters in dungeons or towers. The concept itself, that instead of skin and insides, monsters gave experience and drops, was very mind-boggling.

This is what happens with all monsters up to Rank [D] (40-60), which live in "dungeons".

Are you interested? Well, there were not only weapons with modifiers — with a penalty reduction for 1 Rank. But it was also possible to upgrade armor and weapons and jewelry.

This may seem incredibly amusing. But it was possible to upgrade a regular [F] Rank sword to be not just an [E] Rank sword, but even a [D] Rank, but there was a small... problem. To upgrade any weapon, armor or jewelry, special upgrade stones were needed, each for its own Rank.

Moreover, different modification stones were needed for (weapons) and (armor, jewelry), which may seem incredibly difficult to understand, but it wasn't. It was more or less intuitively understandable.

[F]-rank weapons are divided into three sub-ranks: Initial, Middle, and Upper class. For [F]-rank weapons of the initial rank to correspond to initial [E]-rank weapons, they needed to be upgraded 8 times. For [F]-rank weapons of the middle rank, 6 upgrades were needed, for the upper rank, 4 upgrades. And that's how it turns out. And this is only for lower rank weapons [E]. Does it seem clear?

The chance of upgrading any weapon, armor or jewelry with a regular upgrade stone was 50%, each time you improve, +1 is added to the upgrade, and in case of a failed upgrade, the weapon simply instantly broke into hundreds of pieces, in other words, turned into metal sand. But there were also blessed upgrade stones. They were incredibly rare and cost entire fortunes. When upgraded with such a blessed stone, the weapon did not break, but all upgrades were reset in case of failure.

So it turns out that a lot depends on upgrades here too. There is another amusing effect: a weapon upgraded from 4 to 6 shines slightly blue, a weapon from 7 to 10 — blue, and further — purple. As we were told, the record, like, was on a [F] Rank sword with 12 upgrades. All this was told to us by Fura when we saw him. He added that we would be given upgraded weapons and equipment along with jewelry when we will go to the dungeon tomorrow morning.

Not bad, right? Everything is already prepared for us.

For those who are less understanding:

Weapon [F]>1>2>3

1. Lower rank =>+8 = +0 Initial rank weapon [E].

2. Middle rank =>+6 = +0 Initial rank weapon [E].

3. Upper rank =>+4 = +0 Initial rank weapon [E].

And if you take higher ones, then the upper rank Weapon [F] +10 = equal in strength to the initial rank weapon [D].

Phew, I'm even a little tired from all this explanation. In general, we are now going to our bedrooms.

Before going to bed, I wanted to visit Maria. Why? She invited me to talk about "my emotional problems". Opening up your soul to a person brings you closer, and I wanted to be as close to her as possible.

But there's one little thing I don't like... Jacob, my real male friend, decided he could talk with my target. I didn't like that. This animal decided that he was not only allowed to watch, but also to talk with my victim! With my passion! With my woman!

But it's okay...

My charm is hard to surpass by anyone! I'm the top handsome guy here! I'm the main character here!

Ahem, sorry, I just don't really like rivalry. So, I'll have to visit Maria. Luckily, all the heroes' rooms are located close to each other.

Each Hero was escorted separately by women and men, ordinary servants. But there was something strange about them. Something unnatural. Something that is hard to catch the eye, but the mind clearly screams about it...

Upon closer inspection, I realized that I wouldn't mind getting close with one of them, or with several at once, ahem. Quiet, I need to keep myself under control. But what set them apart from regular people? Hm, what if...

Hidden analysis activated.

Tulip.???[E]

Level ?