Chapter 275: Antiques of the Mauryan Empire (3)

“Woow…!”

Said Ian who climbed his way to the third floor of the antique store along with Reno Barns.

The reaction from Ian was definitely because of the objects that were on display on the third floor.

And then, a new system message emerged in front of Ian.

Tring-

[You have entered the antique store of the Kapila castle.]

[You have succeeded in entering the hidden area.]

[Your fame has increased by 3500.]

It was a hidden area, but it wasn’t so hard to enter it and there was no need for fame to be given for such a thing.

‘What, that is as less as a teardrop.’

Ian grumbled to himself, he didn’t care much about the fame points.

The items that were in front of his eyes seemed much more important than the system messages.

Gulp-

But the messages that followed made Ian a bit stiff.

[You cannot purchase more than three items at a single time in the Artifact store.]

[Once you have purchased the items, until a certain period you will not be able to enter the Artifact store.]

Ian held the back of his neck and asked Reno Barns.

“Mr. Reno Barns, how many things can I buy at once?”

Reno Barns nodded his head and answered.

“It doesn’t matter till the 2nd floor. But on the top floor, you cant buy more than three items at a time.”

“Even if I have the money to buy?”

“Even then. That is the rule that has been going since the beginning.”

“Damn…”

Ian swallowed his dry saliva and began to look at things very intently one after the other.

He became more cautious and calculated after he found out that he could only buy three items at a time.

‘The weapons look awesome… one more than the other. As if that wasn’t enough, the equipments here are all ranked as unique or legendary.’

Kailan, unlike any other game, always gave a higher graded or high-end equipment.

However, one couldn’t be sure is the equipment would be good by only looking at the appearance of the item.

If the equipment rose above the legendary grade, there wouldn’t be much difference in the abilities.

Moreover, a weapon couldn’t be considered good just by basing the grade of the equipment.

No matter how good a legendary equipment it is, if the unique ability of that weapon was not suitable for the user, it couldn’t be considered as a good equipment.

‘I haven’t seen anything bad on a legendary equipment yet.’

Among the unique abilities that can be used by the weapons, the categorized options that are most likely to be chosen are; the additional attacks over the regular attacks.

If we go into a little more details, the options or categories that one user would choose are solely based on the occupation that they select.

For example, in the case of a warlock or a mage that wholly deals with magic damage, the additional attacks that would probably be equipped are physical attacks.

On the other hand, in the case of other classes that deals with physical attacks, their preferred additional attack would be a magical attack.

This option was created as a complimentary for the skill that a class lacked.

To give another simple example,

For all the warrior classes where their skill attacks usually cause a lot of physical damage, it often becomes difficult for them to deal with the monsters who have a high physical defense or a weak magic defense.

However, if there was an option to inflict magic damage with the weapon having a probability of n%, then it would be an effective solution to deal with the above-mentioned enemies.

This is the case of Ian’s weapon Judgement of the Spirit King which has the unique ability, ‘Lightning of Judgement.’

The Lightning of Judgement is an additional attack ability that inflicts damage proportional to the spirit power, which can be also classified as magical damage.

From Ian’s standpoint, the unique ability attack of the Judgement of Spirit King is mainly focused on physical attack.

Surely, the wide-area attack of Karceus’s Breath was a magic attack, but it had a major drawback that its cooldown time was very long.

And Ian was looking very carefully at the equipments, hoping that something would fit his requirements.

Kaka, who was on the shoulder of Ian, nagged at him each time he had picked up an item.

“Master, this isn’t so great.”

“Why?”

“The design is similar to the one used by the ancient cavalrymen in a 1000-year-old war. It has good durability and defense, but it will be very heavy. So, not a good option.”

“Then, how about this?”

“Umm… I feel like I’ve seen this somewhere… this looks like the one that the High Elves like, the St. Rania longbow. This is the best thing that I’ve seen so far in here.”

“Is it a ‘keep’, for now?”

“But master, this isn’t something that you need so desperately.”

“That is right…”

“Let’s quickly look at the other things.”

“Okie!”

From one side, Reno Barns was intently watching the interesting conversation between the two strangers and was trying to figure out who was the master and who was the slave.

Reno Barns spoke to Ian.

“I’ll be heading downstairs. You’ll have to pick something in an hour.”

Ian didn’t even bother to look at Reno Barns, he just replied with a strong voice.

“I get it, Mr. Reno Barns!”

As soon as Reno Barns went down, Ian and Kaka began to look for the equipment more aggressively.

The third floor of the antique store was named as ‘The Artifact Store’, and the size of this floor was a little different when compared to the other two floors.

It was a definite thing that all the items in the display had some kind of a story attached to them.

Ian thought that this was like the same situation as when he had found Kaka in the slave market.

‘If I would’ve just picked some random thing there, I wouldn’t have received a huge jackpot like Kaka.’

From Ian’s point of view, Kaka was a huge jackpot.

Although the combat abilities were almost zero, Kaka’s knowledge has always been helpful to avoid unprecedented shortcomings several times.

The information about the content of the game played a very crucial role.

Especially, since there were more users like Ian in the top class.

And it was always natural for Ian to research about the content most of the time.

“This is a keep. Let’s move to the next one…”

Kaka had around 70% of the information about the items that were on the display in the artifact section.

And it was all thanks to its ability that Ian was able to find two items that he was willing to purchase in an hour.

“Is this a fix?”

Kaka nodded at the question from Ian.

“Let’s go for it, Master.”

The two walked downstairs after successfully picking out the items that they were willing to buy.

And since there was no limit on the purchase in the 1st and 2nd floor, they picked out all the items that they felt needed.

Kaka looked at Ian with a silly expression and asked.

“Master, are we buying these all?”

Ian nodded his head.

“Hmm, I’m buying them all.”

“Aren’t you buying way too much?”

“We’ll take out one or two.”

“…”

And Ian went to the downstairs to find Reno Barns and calculate the total of all the items that he had brought.

[You have bought ‘Unknown Ancient Iron Sword’.]

[Cost: 1756800 gold.]

[You have purchased ‘Mysterious Shooter’s Longbow’.]

[Cost: 2217000 gold.]

He had purchased all of the items, and all the gold he had was gone!

He sure did keep a lot of his gold in separate places like the guild locker, but he still did spend tens of millions of gold in a flash.

But Ian wasn’t feeling bad about spending it.

Rather, he had a smile on his face.

‘It will be advantageous to possess a legendary class equipment that doesn’t have the options account attribution attached to it.’

At the current situation, a legendary item with above-average abilities would be worthy of more than sixty to seventy million gold.

And if just one of such classified item could be bought, Ian believed that he could easily get back the money that he had spent, and these were just based on his instincts.

“Kaka.”

“Yes, Master”

“Shall we try this once?”

“Sounds nice.”

After completing the calculations, the two sat at the corner of the antique store and lined up all the items that they had just purchased.

And now began Ian’s gamble.

* * *

Tring-

[Feeling the antiques completed.]

[You have succeeded in evaluating the legendary items!]

Ian’s hand which held an item started to shine with a golden light.

[You have been successful in identifying the excellent items.]

[Your ‘discerning’ ability has increased by 5 points.]

[‘Luck’ has also increased by 1 point.]

Feeling the antiques, there was no need for any skill to feel the antiques.

Anyone who had an emotional balance/order could immediately feel the antiques that were meant for them.

So even if you succeed in finding a legendary item, it does not guarantee that the emotional bondage with the item would rise, or the efficiency of the exploration would increase.

But, if the antique items or high-ranked items are selected based on the ‘feeling’ then the stats like ‘discerning’ and ‘luck’ were bound to rise.

The higher the ‘discerning’ stats were, the more ability one possesses to see the information about the monsters or to check the information about the items.

And ‘luck’ was a stat which’s ability wasn’t precisely known, but there had been numerous speculations that it could influence the factors related to luck, such as an item drop rate or the probability of successful gambling.

These both could be considered as secondary skills that could help a user when playing the game.

Ian realizing this—kept on feeling the antiques.

‘Keuk, is this a fluke? There is no way I get to be this lucky?’

To be honest, Ian is lucky, this was a fact that everyone knew except for Ian.

Ian was already successful in acquiring two of the legendary equipment.

On top that, there were more than ten of the heroic grade equipment that he had purchased.

The breakpoint for buying was already over.

“Kaka, I feel like I have ignored gambling till now.”

“What is that supposed mean, master?”

“It means that I’m going to actively favor gambling in the future.”

“Master. Today it was just because of luck. On top of that, we got these at a discount of 30%, we wouldn’t have been able to buy these all if we had to purchase them at their original cost.”

“Is that… is that so?”

Ian had felt all the other items, and there were two more heroic grade equipments, but there weren’t anymore legendary equipments.

Ian’s expression turned a little blue.

“Ahh… I thought that I could get another one settled…”

Kaka who saw the sorry figure of Ian, mumbled in a low voice.

“There is no other option but to steal it…”

Ian glared at Kaka.

“Yah! This fella! If I’m doing well, then you’ll do well too. I’m sorry that I can’t give it to you…”

“Please explain to me what is good for me, master…”

Ian was flustered with the question that came back.

“Uhm… that is…”

Kaka bent his head and opened his mouth.

“That’s enough; let’s look at the items from the top floor.”

Ian just nodded his head.

“Yes, I put a lot of money on them; they need to be a huge hit.”

Ian just put the items that he felt into the inventory and placed two items that he bought from the top floor very carefully on the table.

Because these were the items that he had purchased from the hidden floor ‘The Artifact Shop’, the level of expectations that he had on these were way different from the previous ones.

Ian looked over at Kaka who still sitting on his shoulder and asked,

“We have bought the right things, right?”

Kaka answered with a confident look,

“Master, don’t you trust me?”

“That’s not it, I trust you.”

“Then why are you so nervous?”

“Not nervous, I’m not nervous…”

Rather than calling it nervous or anxiousness, this was a feeling of unsettlement because all the spectacular items were located on the top floor.

And once again, Ian picked up the item to feel the emotion from it.

It was an old ‘wooden box’ that was the size of Ian’s palm.

Ian completely detested it, but Kaka kept on nagging him till the last minute to buy it.

‘I’m gonna have to feel this thing first.’

The box had a bit of luxurious feel, and it had carved details and colorful patterns on the surface of it, but it still was an old box that looked rather plain to any eye.

Ian just moved his hands along the item without much expectations.

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