Buttopia
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Chapter 29: Headaches & Breakfast
🕑 Added 2024-11-29 00:00:03 +0000 UTCI woke up the next day with the headache partially gone. It still wasn’t great, but I was pretty sure I could handle more complex thoughts now. The first of those thoughts that hit me was to check my Inner Vitality and see what was going on. That would have been a great idea last night, but I can’t expect my brain to get into these routines overnight.
My bones were fixed. Somehow despite knowing that was supposed to happen, I was still in a bit of disbelief that it actually had occurred. That meant the rest of my body was going to eventually repair itself. I would be back in my prime, no, likely beyond anything I had ever been in my prime. I could punch snails now. Well, maybe not rock snails. That hadn’t been the best idea. Phantom pains went through my hand at the memory of that bone-shattering mistake.
Strangely enough, Inner Vitality wasn’t showing anything wrong with my head. The pain was there, though, sure it was all in my head, but that was generally where a headache was. With the pain from my broken bones gone, I decided I could weather the drumming that was happening in my brain and get some breakfast.
As luck would have it, I met the brothers at the table. Both of them had minor burns on different parts of their faces, and Cecile was missing half an eye. Just What did they two do when I wasn’t around? Then again, considering what we did together, I’m not actually sure they looked that much worse for wear.
“Hey guys, new monster fight?” I said, sitting down.
“Oh yeah, after the wyrm parts we sold Mel, though, we were able to get a pretty decent regeneration bottle. We should be back to fighting shape in a couple of hours. I mean, Elicec’s face is already mostly solid again and I bet you can’t even tell I was missing an arm a few hours ago. Best of all we only had to drink a shot apiece. We’ve got over half the bottle left!” Cecile seemed enthused over the story despite the wounds, and who could blame him? I’ve seen firsthand how great regeneration actually is.
“Congrats, I’m glad you’re both alive and healing. So, question for you two. Any idea why I’d get a horrible headache that my own Inner Vitality skill can’t detect?” I asked as I tried to find my usual eggs on the menu. It wasn’t there. Instead in its usual spot was a lobster omelet. Did the System have a sense of humor? I ordered it anyway. I was too hungry to complain much, but I really did miss how solid my morning routine had been.
“Could be a mana backlash, sometimes those happen if your core can’t handle the level of power your skills pull through it,” Elicec said. Okay, that made some sense. That last simulation had demanded more out of my core than I could safely channel at once. I was going to have to test that more and see where my limits were. I took a bite out of a newly arrived omelet before following up.
“Any reason I can’t detect those headaches?” I asked, still wondering why my skill had zero recognition of it, not even the nerves firing.
“You probably won’t be able to detect anything mana-based affliction-wise with a low-level skill. That’s my guess, at least,” Elicec answered.
“Okay, much more important question, how do I get through all these caps on my attributes? I know there are generally ways to break through them, and you have to find them, but so far, I’ve got absolutely nothing,” I said. The omelet wasn’t bad. I still preferred my normal breakfast, but this could be something I added on occasionally for more caloric intake.
“Like just your basic attributes? Those are level-gated. That other part you read about is for more special stuff, some of the rarer stats people get. The first goal is level fifty, so you should still have a ways to go. What is your level anyway?” Elicec asked, causing me to choke slightly on my food.
Coughing, I forced out a response. “Uh, I hit level fifty-seven last night alongside the mana backlash.” I had an awkward smile as I said this. Should I tell them about my unique skill? I wasn’t sure it was dangerous, but at this point, I was starting to think it was best to keep most of my strangeness as quiet as I could. Then again, I trusted these two, and they knew everything else about me.
“Damn, Dave, we’re only in our thirties! How did you get there so fast?!” Cecile asked, staring at me with his eyes wide. He had dropped his fork directly into the weird, gooey mass of green he had been eating at my revelation.
I looked around and didn’t see anyone in the room with us before I decided to tell them. “Let’s keep this just between us, and well, Mel, since he already knows. I’ve got a unique skill that Mel considered extremely rare and powerful. It lets me recreate simulations of dungeons and then tweak them with special modifiers to make them more difficult. This increases the experience I gain. So far, the only downside has been that if I push it too far, I get a mana backlash. This headache started last night after I shot up eleven levels in a single run.” As I explained this, Elicec had also started staring at me, his food forgotten.
“That’s amazing! Any chance it works on more than just you?” Cecile asked, grinning from ear to ear.
“I don’t think so, at least not yet. There’s a lot I still need to unlock for it, but right now, I haven’t seen anything that would let me add anyone else. Is the trick to curing a mana backlash headache just food?” I asked as I realized the longer I had been sitting there, the better I felt. I was nearly pain-free in my head again, and that was always a great feeling.
“Yeah, usually food and water helps a lot, some people swear by a good fight being the cure, but I’m not so sure on that one,” Elicec said. I imagined there were a million different hair-of-the-dog-type cures for mana backlashes, similar to how there were hangovers.
“Guess I should have a second breakfast then,” I said as I ordered another omelet before I resumed with another question. “So, got any leads on a new dungeon? I’d like to get as many into my simulation list as I can.”
“Well, there’s the persistent desert, but even with your new level, I don’t think we are ready for that yet. There’s a scouting party coming in later tonight, we can check with Mel tomorrow and see if he’s got anything new or even old. It’s possible he just hasn’t mentioned anything he didn’t think we were ready for,” Elicec answered. I took several more bites of my omelet, each one pushing out some of the little pain that held on in my skull while he was talking.
“What exactly makes a dungeon persistent anyway? Couldn’t we just dig deep enough into it to kill the boss and take or destroy the core?” Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to me before that the word persistent wasn’t just part of the dungeon name. What caused them to stick around so strongly? There had to be people powerful enough to still destroy them, or were they too weak to be considered important enough by those with the power?
“No idea what makes it like that, but I know it means the monsters are a lot harder, and there are usually sub-bosses and sometimes more than one dungeon boss. Mel might know more if you’re really curious,” Elicec answered. I was, I was strongly considering making that my goal before we left this world. I had no idea, of course, if we’d have the time to actually complete or not, but I’ve found goals give you something to work towards and have always helped push me further.
“Sounds good to me. I’m going to head over to talk to him after breakfast anyway. I’m hoping he has some tools. Do you know how much credit we got from the last trades?” I asked. I hadn’t been with them when they sold off the parts of the wyrm we didn’t want. I didn’t plan to spend much, but I had a hunch on some interesting uses for a few tools, preferably starting with a mallet.
“I think your total was sitting at two hundred something, but feel free to take any from either of us if you need some extra. We should probably start a team account anyway. We’re going to need it eventually,” Cecile answered. I assume a team account functioned similarly to a bank account, and yeah that did seem like the best idea. I wasn’t even sure how much I’d ever spend. With the way the simulation bonuses worked, I didn’t really want traditional weapons or clothing, though if my current idea worked, I would want a lot of quality tools.
“Thanks, I shouldn’t need much. I’ll let Mel know about how well my test went, just in case that motivates him into giving up a few more dangerous places; either way, I’m going to head back to my room and play around with my attributes. I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” I said, quickly finishing off my plate. Just how would Mel feel about the System’s new big quest, making me cheat?
