“I’ll sign,” Kira said immediately after Almond finished speaking. “I have nothing to lose and everything to gain by staying in this party.”
“Me too!” Kayla said with a determined expression.
“Give me one, brother. We going to rise high,” Amir grinned.
“I will sign,” Noah solemnly nodded.
“Bring it on,” Xavier clenched his fist. “This path is the best one for my future.”
One by one, everyone else said that their resolve was firm, and they had no other intention to jeopardize their relationship for a better future.
Except for one.
Brynjal sighed and said, “I would’ve definitely signed this if not for the party I already have and my guild. I cannot hide the information I gain, so I will be breaking the contract even if I sign right now.”
Almond nodded, his smile calm, “Understandable. Your taunting puppets will be missed, but nothing can be done about it.”
“I feel a slight regret to be missing out on this,” Brynjal wryly smiled. “Hopefully, we can also try to trigger the Heroic Challenge soon enough. The other guilds and families will be trying to do it already, given that some of them already know now, and this information will spread.”
“Indeed,” Almond chuckled with a faint smile, “And I wish good luck to them.”
He then waved his hands as he kept some items on the table while putting away a gold coin pouch containing 1 billion gold coins, gear sets, uni-skill upgrade cards, and insight stones.
“Now then, let’s resume our party by opening these random boxes. Let’s start with the SSS-rank Mystery box.”
“Dice!” Natalia shouted with a big grin.
“Dice,” Marcus laughed.
“Dice indeed,” Lily nodded with a faint smile.
“Awesome, I can finally take part in this now,” Kira cheekily said with a grin, her eyes on boxes, “I’ll open one of these with my luck, hopefully.”
It was up to luck if they could get a chance to open something, but everyone was eager to do so to a certain extent.
“Alright, let’s start,” Almond conjured a rather big dice, this time with 50 numbered triangles. “This will automatically stand on a single triangle and show the result on the topmost triangle across it.”
He was already utilizing and getting familiar with the way to affect mana and give it magical properties with rules set by his control.
Everyone rolled dice one by one as they got away from the table and stood in a circle with boxes in the middle.
The one to win this round was unexpectedly Jian Ranford.
“Damn, didn’t take this kid to be the lucky one,” Natalia immediately snorted.
“Humph, I am lucky,” Jian said, but everyone could see he was happy to win.
“Alright, open it,” Almond lightly twirled his finger as the Mystery Box flew towards him.
Pressing the button, the mystery box burst with colorful sparks before revealing a miniature model of a beautiful yet cool and aesthetic crystal-metallic ship mix of wooden design akin to a pirate ship, but with large wings attached horizontally at the sides instead of sails like in normal ships.
“Fuck, don’t tell me it’s a f-” Finn bit his tongue.
“A fucking flying ship!” Ron finished his sentence.
“Holy crap, it looks awesome!”
“How big is it?”
“This is crazy…”
Almond waved his hand as he took the ship model from the ground and threw it high in the air before activating it by infusing Mana.
It enlarged in the sky, becoming over a hundred meters long with roughly fifty meters of beautiful magic blue wingspan with silver crystal and wooden structure bordered around it.
“Holy shit…”
“And it’s an SSS-rank frigging ship.”
“Yeah, I wonder what kind of awesome features it has…”
Everyone was dumbfounded and also thrilled because they would get to ride on this shit. It looked crazy luxurious and, frankly, the best-looking flying ship out there.
The other guilds and families had their own flying ships, and some had even gotten as rewards from Labyrinth or Dungeons, but there wasn’t an SSS-rank flying ship so far!
This flying ship was bound to make waves once it made its public appearance!
‘I guess we got our permanent ride for the 10th floor and above as they are very vast. The battlefield might be big as well, so this will be useful there,’ Almond thought, and he was more excited about what else this ship could offer.
“Alright, we’ll explore this ship and its features later,” Almond smiled as he shrank the ship and put it inside his storage ring. “Let’s continue with the random box opening for now.”
But just as he rolled his dice and got 17 numbers, he got Admiral Rudra’s message in private chat.
He passed on the dice to Lily and opened the chat.
[Rudra: Before riding around that airship, come to the GAA headquarters with it. Our research team will completely scan and print its external and internal structural details for research purposes to find new magitech from it.]
[Almond: You already found out about it? I guess you have eyes active around here.]
[Rudra: Duh, of course. I told you I’d increased security, and the appearance of that big ship immediately alarmed it, so I got notified by the Astra AI. Anyway, since we are chatting, here’s another piece of news: I’ve already talked with others about S-rank dungeons. Two more spawned today, and one is in our territory while the other one is in Proximax Guild’s territory, so I’ll contact them soon as well.]
[Almond: Awesome! Also, I hope to get the schedule of when they are going to enter so that I can be prepared.]
[Rudra: Alright. I’ll make sure the schedule is spread enough so that you can go into all five of them one by one.]
[Almond: Wonderful. Thanks a lot. As for the flying ship. You can send someone here to take it. I don’t want to bother coming there since I’ll be busy powering up with the resources I’ve got.]
[Rudra: Alright, someone will be there in two hours.]
Admiral Rudra went offline.
‘Fast as always,’ Almond wryly smiled.
“Let’s fucking go, I won!” Anya said with a grin.
“Oof, I was short of just one point,” Natalia clicked her tongue.
“Q-Q, my turn when?” Kira.
“We have many things to open, so chill.”
“So what am I opening?” Anya said as she looked at Almond.
“Random Artifact Box of Tier-3,” Almond said as he sent the box to her, his eyes filled with anticipation. “Let’s see what we get from this.”
The last thing they got from an artifact box was an extremely valuable one-time-use Artifact that could revive someone.
Anya opened it, and a futuristic-looking orb with blue and dark violet patterns popped out of the box.
Everyone quickly inspected it, but before they could see its information, Almond snatched the artifact and stored it in his storage ring.
“Nuh-uh,” Almond shook his head with a playful smile, “No one is seeing its effect. I’ll decide when to share it and when to use it.”
“Fair enough,” Marcus nodded with a grin as he understood.
“Yep,” Lily also nodded. Enjoy new stories from empire
“So the two big boxes are opened already. We are left with small fry boxes now,” Natalia clicked her tongue.
“Well, the five legendary consumable item boxes are quite valuable. They are legendary, after all,” Xavier said.
“True,” Adrian nodded with a grin. “I used two consumable-type items, so I know. The power is awesome enough to let you beat Heroic Boss’ attacks and smack him down.”
“Yeah, yeah, stop braggings. It was thanks to the items only,” Amir rolled his eyes.
“I smell something burning,” Adrian snickered in response.
“Alright, alright, time to open the Legendary consumable.”
The party was already fun, with all the random boxes opening by rolling the big dice.
In the end, they rolled dice for each legendary consumable item box opening separately to decide five winners, opening them one by one as they got the following legendary consumable items with fairly powerful temporary effects:
1—Astral Beast Ancestral Surge Vial: Increases the user’s all physical attributes by 300% and the user’s physical size according to the overall physical stats for 1 minute. Physical attacks gain powerful knock-back potency. After the effect wears off, the user is physically exhausted to the limit.
2—Soulflame Blazing Talisman: Slapping this talisman on a weapon will give the Soulflame Burn effect to all attacks released through the weapon for 1 minute. Soulflame Burn: Burns the target’s vitality by 1% per second while nullifying recovery for 5 seconds. Can stack up to five times on a target.
3—In the next chapter.