Capítulo 15: Chapter 15

In front of us is a large doorway made of stone, moss clinging to the top of the archway hanging down into the walkway. Beyond it was a set of stairs lit by torches. Above the stairs way there was a metal plaque above the doorway carved in a weird language was some type of text.

I look around the room and seeing a mace in the grip of the skeleton, the mace has visible rust as parts are eaten away. As I move towards it, the grip of the skeleton tightens over the mace as it shambles into a standing position. Jaws clacking, it slowly starts to limp along at us.

Joffrey goes white in the face and almost falls over when he sees the skeleton, nearly dropping to his knees. Talk is cheap I guess.

I walk over to the skeleton as it slams the mace down with an overhead swing. I dodge to the side and grab the wrist that has the mace and with my other hand I hit the back of his elbow with my palm, snapping the joint inward and breaking the elbow having the proximal side of the arm fall to the ground, making the mace fall to the ground as well.

I grab the bone where the bicep would be and pull it down where I send knees into its skull. Cracking can be heard after the third knee slams into the skull and with the fourth the skull caves in and it falls to the ground.

[Lvl 1 Skeleton defeated +15exp +10 coins]

Ooh new shinies.

Seeing that Joffrey is still in a fear induced trance I go over to him and shake his shoulders saying "Joffrey, wake up! This is not a dream, this is real life. Get a hold of yourself man."

"Wha-a alright, what I saw was an actual moving skeleton, and I'm not going mad? You can see it too?", says Joffrey fear evident in his voice.

"Yes Joffrey I can see everything you can see, now you need to be strong in the mind if you are going to follow me in this journey. You will see things that don't make sense and creatures you have only ever seen in your dreams. I guarantee you will be overcome by fear if you cannot adapt to the circumstances, but if you adapt only strength and riches will await you. Get a hold of yourself, brother.", I say with a cold determination.

He looks me dead in the eyes and says," I will be alright, I just need a moment to gather me thoughts", he says with a puzzled look.

After a short break he is alright, giving me a look of crazed determination, he says," I'll try to be better in my next battle, I just want this fear to stop and that happens with exposure."

Moving on, I grab the mace and say," Hey, I would grab that knife off your leg, it might come in handy", I say gesturing to the Bowie style knife on his calf.

Taking my advice he pulls it out of the sheath before clenching it in his hand, reverse grip.

"Joffrey, let me ask you question, how many ways do you have to attack with that knife you're holding?", I ask.

"A good amount? Why?", says Joffrey, demonstrating by slashing and stabbing in the reverse style grip .

"You have a limited amount of movement compared to the front facing grip. Additionally, the blade is facing towards you when you hold it, meaning that one wrong move can result in you getting stabbed by your own knife. With that style of grip you have an incredibly diminished range of movement. Along with having better movement as well as safety, you have to be faster than your opponent to effectively use it and believe me there are things much faster than you or me. As well as-", I say.

"Christ, you can ramble, I get it I'll change my grip", says Joffrey with a chuckle.

[Christian, I'm saying this because this is important. Joffrey was built off of a human, meaning he has the limits of humanity. You have near limitless growth because of your system, but he has a cap on his stats. No matter how much he works his stats can't go above 20. There is a way to get around this though, the system has a feature called the companion system. You can formally accept him as your companion and he will get a system similar to yours. That also means that he will also go through a transformation as you did. I recommend not to do it here as his mental state isn't the best and that has a heavy impact on the success of a transformation.]

'Alright' I think, putting that away for another day.

Moving through the hanging moss above the doorway, we go into a larger room about 40×20ft longer than it is wide .To the right there is a yurt with a sign attached to the entrance titled in large letters 'Market'.

To the left there is another yurt titled above the door 'Apothecary'.

"What do you think we should do next?", asks Joffrey.

"Well seeing as you lack any proper weaponry, let's try the market", I say and with a nod from Joffrey, I'm pulling back the fabric door of the 'Market'.

Beyond the door is space much larger than the outside suggests, this place reminds me of a Walmart, but with swords and shiz. I can barely see the back wall it goes back so far.

There are two groups of doors in front of me, one labeled weapons and the other labeled armor. The group of doors labeled weapons has further signs on the particular doors labeled: 'Slashing weapons', 'Blunt weapons', 'Ranged weapons', and 'Piercing weapons'

While the armor section has signs for heavy, medium, and light armors, along with another door for shields.

"Well the question is what do we need, I don't have much money on me and I've already got a mace. What weapon would you like?", I ask.

"Well I'm most familiar with swords, but if I have to I can handle myself with a blunt weapon.", says Joffrey.

"Alright", I say. Heading towards the sword door, I open it and this room is swords on racks as farther than I can see. Oh yeah, this place makes no damn sense.

As I look around the swords closer to the front are of shabby quality, with chips and some warping on most of the blades, but this is worth it due to the astronomically low price compared to most.

I look to a shabby sword, it has chips on the blade, warps down the length and a crack near the tip of the blade. The price makes sense though as it is only 10 coins, just what I can afford. The reason I say this is reasonably priced is because, when I look a rack over where the blades lack any outside imperfection, their price goes up to several hundred coins.

I use the skill inspect on the sword.

[Shabby Iron Sword]

Quality: Shoddy

Durability: Weak

Sharpness: Dull

Integrity:[ upgrade skill ]

Description: A sword that barely functions. Is made by some amateur blacksmith. It lives up to it's abysmal price.

Selling Price: Three Coins

"It's better than nothing and all that I can afford, I would be incredibly careful with that weapon. It could break at any moment. Just be safe with it", I say.

"I understand, thank you", says Joffrey.

We go towards the entrance and go up to a desk that seems very reminiscent of a cashier's counter.

"The way paying for things usually works is that we go to a desk and pay for it, I don't see anyone-", I say

"Well, hello there dear travelers! I am Gringrox, your friendly universe cashier. At your service!", says a gravely and high-pitched voice.

I look at the counter and I see a finely dressed goblin, about four feet tall, wearing a purple suit with a matching top hat. He wears a golden pocket watch and a similar monicle. From the constant meaty tapping against the tile floors I would also bargain that he's wearing no shoes.

"Ahh- so do we pay here?", I say with apprehension.

"Of course, sir. Just 10 coins please.", he says as a sharp toothed smile stretches across his face.

"Ummm, yeah sure", I say as I place the sword on the table.

'Adel! How do I access coins?'

[Just open your inventory they'll be there in their own slot designed for money of any form.]

'Inventory'

There are the familiar twenty slots for items, but a new part is some text labeled 'Coins'. Alright this better work out how it usually does.

As I think of the coins, ten quarter sized coins clink down into my outstretched hand.

I hand over the coins and he says,"Thank you for your patronage, sir. Also for your convenience, with larger amounts of coins all you have to do is think about paying me while shaking my hand and the coins will be subtracted from your inventory."

He pulls a sheath out from under the counter and slides the sword into it, and then handing it to Joffrey with a kind smile. Well as kind of a smile a goblin can give.

Moving out of the tent, I see Joffrey holding the knife in his right hand and the Shoddy sword in his left. He fastens the sword sheath on his right side and the fastens the knife sheath on his left so he can draw them effectively.

"Just curious, do you have experience with fighting with two weapons?", I ask.

"Oh yeah, I fought this way for a few months but thought better of it when I almost lost me arm, that was when I changed to the sword and shield combination", he says with a smirk ," What, do you think it's a bad idea?"

"No of course not, just making sure you don't get yourself killed", I say.

Curious about his stats I use 'inspect' on Joffrey.

Name: Joffrey

Age: 17

Height: 5'5

Race: System Construct (Human)

Level: 1

Strength: 15

Agility: 17

Reflexes: 15

Will: 18

Intelligence: 13

Vitality: 15

Skills: One Handed Proficiency Lvl 6, Dual Weapon Proficiency Lvl 4

Good to know, jeez he's got a higher agility that me. And damn he's only a year older than me.

[Chris, just so you know you can see his stats because he's already a part of the system, it is still important to level up your inspect skill.]

Noted. I move past the yurt titled 'Apothecary' and move on toward the end of the room.

On the way there, several wooden signs are stabbed into the stone ground, all saying 'Under Construction'.

At the door way there isn't a staircase as I had thought. There's just a rope going down into darkness. Above the doorway there is sign titled 'Dungeon Entrance'.

"Are you ready, Joffrey?", I ask with a steely gaze.

"Yes, I'm ready, for sure this time", Joffrey says, unrelenting tenacity evident on his face.

Grabbing onto the rope, we slide down for quite a while, even having to stop myself so I can put the long sleeves of my shirt onto my hands to stop the pain of rope burn.

After a while of going down in complete darkness my feet touch the floor. A faint orange light is visible around a corner. When Joffrey gets down the rope after me, I drew my mace from one of my belt loops and Joffrey unsheathes both of his weapons.

I move toward the light, shoes moving deftly along the stone.

I peek around a corner as I see the light is coming from some torches on the walls of a hallway with a door at the end of it.

I've played enough DND to know where this is going. I take an incredibly soft step forward as my foot slowly starts to sink into the floor, stopping half way into it, I take a few steps back.

Traps