Chapter 17-

I was looking down at Q and wondering what she means by 'assisting me'?

"What kind of assistance are you talking about?"

"Oh nothing much. Just that I could upgrade your equipment, so you could stand a chance against those beasts. But those upgrades would cost you quite a bit of gold? Sounds like a good deal, right?"

Not going to lie, it really sounded like a great deal. But part of me was thinking that it's also suspicious.

"Any catch? There won't be a penalty for upgrading my equipment, right?"

Q then wagged her finger again.

"Nope, none at all! I just want to see what you'd do next. So do you accept this offer? It's not like I offer this to everyone. Though, you are the only person to make it this far?"

She then raised a sleeve up for a handshake.

"So we have a deal?"

I thought about it for awhile, but I guess an offer like this wouldn't happen twice?

"Alright, I accept your offer."

I then crouched down and shook her paw.

"Perfect! Now what item would you like for me to improve? I could only improve one item for fifty gold."

I then looked at the gold that I had. I had seventy one gold in my bag, so I could only afford one upgrade.

I looked through the weapons that I had and thought about which one that I needed to improve.

'I could only improve one of these, so I need to choose wisely?'

I then looked at one of the spears that was made from the rib of the giant snake.

'A weapon that could pierce the hide of those strong monsters would be useful?'

I then handed the spear and fifty gold to Q.

"I'll go for this."

"Alright then."

Q grabs the gold and stores it into her cloak, then grabs the spear and inspects it.

"You made this with one of Marv's ribs? It'll be tricky, but I could manage this. It'll be ready when you wake up."

Q then leaped into the trees and vanished.

****

The next "morning", I was roasting some of the meat that I got. I was doing this, since I had gone through my rations.

This was due to my strength stat.

Just like real life, if you build muscle and grow, you'll need more nutrition to support the body.

But in this world, raising one's strength has a stronger effect.

Alice had explained it to me during my time training with Sona.

****

It was about a year ago. Toshio had just finished another ten hour long training session and is currently eating at the local tavern.

Since Sona had some business to deal with, it was just Toshio and Alice.

After finishing his plate, Toshio still felt hungry for some weird reason.

"Huh?"

Alice looked up from the sweetcorn that she was munching on.

"What is it?"

"I ate enough for two full grown men, but I'm still hungry for some weird reason?"

"That's because you're raising your strength stat."

"What does that mean? Doesn't it only increase your physical strength?"

"Not quite. True, it does improve your physical strength, but it does more than that."

"What else does it do?"

"There's a difference in the humans in this world and the ones that come from yours. The humans in this world are just ordinary people, so they have to train and study in order to use special skills or items. But the humans that come from your world come into this one with special abilities or items, naturally. But Travelers have another difference than the humans in this world. Their stats affect the Traveler themselves."

Alice then explained the different effects of stats on the Traveler's body.

[Agility: This would improve the body's reaction speed, movement speed, flexibility, balance, and heightens their senses.]

[Intelligence: This would improve the amount of mana(MP) and ki(KP) that you have, improves the effect of spells, increases how much your brain could store knowledge, improves memory, and improves quick thinking for strategies.]

[Wisdom: This improves your mental resistance, mana and ki recovery speed, understanding of how certain things work, compatibility to use magical items, levels of spells that you could use, and improves the effects of ki and cultivation abilities.]

[Vitality: This improves the amount of lifeforce(HP) that you have, stamina, resistance to poison, and gives you a slight resistance to curses.]

[Dexterity: This improves your physical endurance, strengthens your bones, toughens up the skin, helps channel ki, keeps your body from getting crushed by heavy weight, and toughens up your internal organs.]

[Luck: How the world favors you.]

[Strength: This improves your physical strength, slightly increases your height, increases body mass, slightly decreases agility, increases the amount of nutrition that your body needs, and willpower.]

“Travelers that pick the Godly Strength gift give them five thousand strength.”

My jaw almost dropped to the floor.

“Five thousand?! That’s way more than I could get through training!”

“Excuse me.”

I looked up and saw a waitress looking down at me.

“Would you be so kind and not raise your voice here?”

I felt embarrassed.

“Sorry, I was… speaking to someone with a messaging spell.”

The waitress then sighed.

“Well could you keep it down? Other people are trying to eat too.”

“Right, sorry for the disturbance. I’d also like two more servings.”

“Alright, I’ll be back with them soon.”

Then the waitress left and Alice continued what she was saying.

“Yeah, but remember when I said that every power gets nerfed?”

“What’s the catch? Do they become hulking monstrosities?”

“Sort of. The more you raise the strength stat, the more their height, muscle mass, and appetite increases. But for the Travelers that picked the Godly Strength gift, they end up as huge and tall goliaths.”

“Really? How come I’ve never seen any of those guys?”

“Those people tend to go on dozens of quests just to afford their meals. Due to their strength and size, they need to eat enough to feed about a hundred men.”

“Wow… hate to be the guy that cleans the mountains of dishes afterwards?”

“Surprisingly, they don’t hang around the cities.”

“Really? Why is that?”

“Some of those people tend to waste away if they’re unlucky enough to afford their meals. But the rest are forced to live in the wild, hunting large beasts and monsters for food. Some say that there’s even a community of those people in the mountains on the other side of the country. There’s even rumors of them being forced to live there, not allowed to become adventurers, and prohibited from helping with wars.”

“Huh? So all that strength and they can’t even use it. What’s worst, their appetite forces them to work their butts off just to earn money for food or live out in the wilds.”

Alice then reached over for another salted green bean.

“Sometimes power isn’t the only answer.”

She then takes a healthy bite out of the green bean.

****

“It’s still a scary thought.” I said while removing the meat from the flames.

“What is?”

I turned around and saw Q standing behind me. She was holding onto my improved bone spear.

“Here you go, your new spear. Hope you like it?”

I then grabbed the pear and inspected it.

It looked amazing. The rib that I used for the spearhead looks like it had fused with the wood. The spearhead looked more like a blade and the branch that it was fused to is now longer and looked like a twisted fusion of wood and bone. It really looked more like a propper spear and felt very sturdy.

"Well… how do you like it?"

Q sounded eager for a response.

"It's perfect! I might be able to hunt those large beasts with this?"

"Glad to hear it! Keep hunting and you'll earn more coins for upgrades. Goodbye for now!"

Q then leapt off of the tree and vanished.

"Better do some hunting with my new friend here?" I say while giving the spear a few practice swings.

After breakfast, I made my way to the swamp.

I saw that both the six legged alligator and the horned toad were gone. But I did see that there were a few giant mosquitos flying around.

I started to approach them with my new spear in hand.

One of the giant mosquitos noticed me and flew right at me.

I then swung the spear and brought the blade down onto its head, caving it in.

The mosquito then fell on the ground next to me, twitching and squirming. When the other mosquitos flew at me, I did the same thing to them.

I whacked, stabbed, slashed, and killed every giant mosquito that came for me. Soon I was surrounded by dozens of twitching dead mosquitos.

“This thing really works!” I said while looking at the spear, which is now covered in fresh mosquito blood.

Then like what happens to the beasts on this floor, they all turned into gold coins and items.

What I got from them was two hundred and sixty-five gold coins, a couple of mosquito shells, a bunch of insect meat, and a bow.

The bow was made out of insect limbs and the string was made of some type of rubbery string.

“Sweet! Now I could put those arrows to use.”

I then noticed that the air had a strong bitter taste and the smell was coming from somewhere deep in the swamp.

‘The bitter taste is stronger here too?’

I thought about traveling into the swamp, but I looked at the rest of my gear and the pile of gold on the ground.

“Might need to get better gear first?”

I gathered up all of the gold and items, then made my way back to the base.

Almost like she knew that I wished to see her, Q was sitting near my treebase and roasting a small fish over the flames.

“What are you doing here?”

“You wish to see me for more upgrades?”

“Yeah… how did you know?”

Q shrugged her shoulders.

“Just a feeling that you would.”

I tossed the bag of gold near Q and she searched through it.

“This should be enough for five upgrades? Or if you’d like, I could upgrade one of your items and improve that spear again?”

“I was thinking… Wait, what?! You mean that this could be improved even further?!” I said while looking at the spear.

“I could, but it would cost more.”

“What else could you do to improve my gear?”

I then found out the other upgrades that Q could give and their prices.

Simple Upgrade: 50 Gold(A simple upgrade that improves weapons and armor.)

Advanced Upgrade: 200 Gold(An improved upgrade that makes items three times stronger and lasts longer.)

Magical Upgrade: 3,000 Gold(Gives the improved item a magical or cursed upgrade.)

"So do you want me to improve the spear or do you want me to just improve your other items?"

I thought about it for awhile, but there was something that I wanted to ask Q.

"Before that, I want to ask you something?"

"As long as it isn't about the test, you could ask me anything."

"What is with the bitter air? Is it because of the plants or is it from the swamp?"

"Can't tell? It's been part of this floor for as long as I was here, but I don't know where it comes from?"

This really confused me.

"How could you not know, you're the guardian of this floor?"

Q then shrugged.

"Sorry, but not even I know where it comes from. But it could have something to do with the plants on this floor?"

"Guessing since it isn't too much of a bother, there's no use looking into it?"

I then hand Q the snake skull, leather armor, the two jawbone clubs, and my dagger.

"Just these for now."

Q then inspected the armor, skull shield, and the clubs.

"More weapons made from the remains of Marv? You didn't waste much from his remains, huh?"

Q then chuckled a little.

"Is that wrong?"

"Nope, not in the slightest. It's that it's almost funny seeing Marv like this." She said while inspecting the skull shield.

"Not so tough now, huh?"

Q then flipped the skull upside down and tossed the other items into it.

"I'll be back in two days."

She then gave a small bow, then started pushing the skull like a wheelbarrow.

"Hope to continue our business together!"

****

While I was waiting for the upgrades, I turned one of the animal hides into a quiver for my arrows and started practicing shooting arrows at trees.

After two days had passed, Q returned with my new gear and I started to travel deeper into the swamp.

The leather armor was improved into some interesting boneplate leather armor and it had a red snakeskin leather jacket to go with it.

It isn't something I'd wear, but Q said that it provides better protection.

"..."

I would've believed her, but there was a sewn picture of a chibi Q winking and holding out a thumbs up.

The only problem that I had with it, was how it was on the back of the jacket and how cute the picture was.

The two jawbone clubs became two bone machetes. My iron dagger was improved into a steel dagger and Marv's skull became an interesting bone tower shield with a serpent design on it.

Due to the weight of the shield, I had to leave it at the base.

So with the new gear and a somewhat decent aim, I felt confident to travel deep into the forest.

At first it wasn't too bad, but soon understood what made the swamp difficult.

I couldn't walk on the muddy water, due to it slowing me down and it being home to dozens of small leeches. So I was forced to travel from tree to tree.

It wasn't easy since I kept getting attacked by the strong monsters and forced to fight them.

Sometimes I win the fight, but most of the time I had to run away to gather coins and food by killing giant mosquitos.

Whenever I managed to take one of the strong monsters down, I came out with some interesting loot.

I only managed to kill two of those six legged alligators and one horned toad.

I killed the alligators by firing arrows into its eyes and into its brain, while I almost got eaten by the horned toad and had to kill it from the inside.

What I got from them was alligator and toad meat, a necklace made of alligator teeth which boosted strength, and a weird toad bracelet that shoots a long tongue out that acts like a grappling hook.

It wasn’t easy using what I named ‘The Toad Hook’. The first time I used it, It sent me crashing into a tree. So I decided to use it to pull the giant mosquitos from the air.

Soon after what felt like days had passed, I started getting the hang of fighting the strong monsters. I also kept searching around for the door to the next floor, but couldn’t see any sign of it.

I was also trying to find the source of the strong bitter taste in the air.

The strange thing was that whenever I returned to the area where the air was strongly bitter from the previous day, it wasn’t there when I returned. It was like whatever’s the source of the bitter air, kept moving around.

So one day I decided to keep searching the swamp until I found the source of the bitter air.

I was in the process of gathering all of the stuff that I was going to bring with me. While I was doing that, Q was arriving with a batch of upgraded items that I requested.

“I’m back!”

She then noticed the large bag that I was packing.

“Are you going for a longer hunt further into the swamp?”

“Pretty much, I’ll be gone for probably a few days? But why do you want to know? Aren’t you the guardian of this floor?”

“Yes, but I don’t possess scrying abilities. I also don’t see the need to keep an eye on everything you do, or the need to follow you?”

“That’s useful… I guess?”

I then gathered the newly upgraded items and tossed the backpack over my shoulder.

“See you in a few days.”

“Happy hunting!” Q said while waving me goodbye.

I then made my way through the jungle and into the swamp.