Ch 195 – Karma Shop
Fidgeting with his third Token Fragment, rolling it between the fingers of his left hand, Deacon sat beside Bonehead in the seats of a massive football stadium that the Grandmasters of the Knight Orders had temporarily repurposed as a staging area for cadets preparing to advance to Floor Eleven.
All around them were other members of their Generation who had successfully collected all three Token Fragments and were now waiting for their names to be called to the podium.
To prevent needless chaos from hundreds of eager climbers all trying to advance at once, which would have almost certainly devolved into a full-blown free-for-all to reach the Waystone, a ticket system had been implemented.
Registered Parties or individual cadets were called up in numerical order to merge their Tokens and place them on the podium before being granted permission to approach the Waystone and advance to the next Floor.
Unfortunately for Deacon and Bonehead, they were not among the first Parties or individuals to show up at the stadium after collecting their final fragments, having been assigned number fifty-six when they arrived, and the current number being called up by the administrator standing beside the podium was number forty-three, which was even more annoying because it turned out to be a Party consisting of thirty-seven cadets who were all taking their sweet time making their way down from the stands.
"Did you check out the Karma Shop yet?" Bonehead whispered to Deacon, the sudden question snapping him out of the thoughts he'd been lost in while absentmindedly staring forward at nothing in particular.
"Hm?" Deacon replied, turning his head slightly toward his friend.
"The Karma Shop," Bonehead repeated in the same whisper, leaning in a bit closer. "Have you looked at it yet?"
Although the seats immediately around them were completely empty, everyone nearby having recognized who they were and deliberately choosing not to sit anywhere near them because of the rumors that had been lighting up their Generation’s social feeds for the past two months, Bonehead still kept his voice low, just in case any of the people pretending not to be interested were listening closely enough to overhear their conversation.
The rumors ranged wildly in plausibility — from accusations that Deacon and Bonehead had sacrificed their friends in some dark ritual to steal their levels and strengthen themselves, to claims that they had murdered their Party members who were either nobles or descendants of them to curry favor with Guilds aligned against the noble faction in the growing political war.
And then there was the particularly inventive tale that some act of debauchery within their Party had led Deacon and Sam to fight each other to the death over love, with Esmerelda and Jass killed in the crossfire before Sam ultimately fell by Deacon’s hand, aided by Bonehead.
Nevertheless, with all those rumors circulating across the Generation’s social networks and Sam’s sizeable fanbase flooding both Deacon’s and Bonehead’s DMs with death threats, while others sent them rage-bait memes specifically designed to provoke them, nobody wanted to be anywhere near them.
People avoided them both to prevent being associated with them and to distance themselves from the superstitious “bad energy” that supposedly surrounded the only two survivors of what should have been, relatively speaking, a peaceful Floor.
What absolutely did not help Deacon and Bonehead at all in that particular department was the fact that their Racial Levels were both sitting at twenty-five, which was a full four levels above what everyone else in their Generation should have been able to achieve while still on Floor Ten, and that discrepancy only added fuel to the fire of speculation about how exactly they'd managed to gain those extra levels.
Putting his third Token Fragment back into his Spatial Sling Bag, Deacon reached in and pulled out one of the many Silencing Talismans he had purchased. He peeled off the backing and stuck it onto the back of the chair directly in front of them, immediately creating an invisible three meter by three meter cube around their seats.
While the two of them remained within the cube, they would be able to speak freely at a normal volume without needing to whisper without worry of being overheard, along with the added benefit of obscuring the shapes of their lips from anyone trying to read them from outside the barrier as part of the premium Deacon paid for.
"No, I haven't," Deacon said, shaking his head now that he could speak at a normal volume. "What about it?"
"Dude," Bonehead began, no longer bothering to whisper as he shook his head in what looked like genuine disbelief at Deacon's lack of knowledge. "It's crazy. Good crazy," he emphasized, the excitement in his tone bringing a curious look onto Deacon's face that prompted Bonehead to continue. "Just say: Open Karma Shop."
A bit perturbed by the level of excitement Bonehead was displaying over what sounded like some kind of store interface, Deacon shrugged off his hesitation and spoke the words clearly. "Open Karma Shop."
The moment the words left his mouth a purple screen materialized in the air directly in front of him, floating at eye level with the title "Karma Shop" displayed prominently at the top in elegant golden script, and directly beneath that was a timer counting down in a bolded golden fancy looking font that currently read: 6 Days, 15 Hours, 06 Minutes, 41 Seconds.
Right below the timer were images of seven different items arranged in a vertical list, each one accompanied by a small text description beside it explaining what the item was and what it did, and at the very bottom of the screen, Deacon could see an icon of a shopping cart with the number zero displayed beside it, indicating his current selections.
The items displayed looked completely random and seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with one another in terms of theme or purpose, creating a bizarre assortment that left Deacon confused about just what type of shop this was.
The first item that caught his attention was something called a Refined Cognition Pill that, according to its description, was intended for someone forty levels above his current level.
Item Name: Refined Cognition Pill
Type: Consumable
Effect: Permanently increases mental attributes: +20 Intelligence, +10 Wisdom, +5 Willpower.
Duration: Permanent
Rarity: Rare
Description: A smooth, deep-indigo pill refined through the distillation of focus elixirs and clarity-inducing herbs. Originally developed by field alchemists to enhance long-term spellcasting efficiency, the pill reinforces the mind at its foundation. Ingestion produces a brief wave of mental pressure and disorientation, followed by a lasting increase in cognitive sharpness, mana control, and mental resilience. No effect if taken more than once.
Requirement: Lv 65+.
Cost: 50.000 Karma
Beneath that was an item that made even less sense in the context of what Deacon would ever need, which was a farmer's straw hat that, when he squinted his eyes slightly at the image, he could make out what looked like a sun with a coy smile embroidered on the top of it.
Item Name: Farmer’s Sunhat
Type: Helmet – Light Armor
Rarity: Uncommon
Effect: Passively encourages pollination in nearby crops and flowering plants while worn.
Description: A wide-brimmed straw hat reinforced with simple stitching and a light inner lining that is commonly used by those bearing Agricultural Classes. When worn, it emits a subtle field that promotes pollen spread and plant fertilization in the surrounding area.
Requirements: Humanoid & Agricultural Profession.
Cost: 500 Karma
Below the hat was an icon depicting what looked like approximately fifty tiny eggs being held together in a small wooden crate.
Item Name: Rotfang Arachnid Egg Cluster
Type: Organic Material – Egg Cluster
Rarity: Uncommon
Description: A tightly bound cluster of pale, translucent spider eggs wrapped in thin webbing. Harvested from the highly venomous Rotfang Arachnid Hive Queen and kept in stasis after her death to preserve both the lives of her rot toxin-bearing children.
Cost: 2.600 Karma
The remaining four items displayed below were similarly random and had no one similar theme, ranging from materials to obscure tools to consumables that Deacon had never even heard of before.
"What the hell?" Deacon muttered as he whipped his head around to look at Bonehead before warily glancing at the people sitting in the sections around them to see if anyone was reacting to the floating purple screen that was supposedly only visible to him.
"Relax," Bonehead hissed as he jabbed his elbow into Deacon's side hard enough to make his point. "You're the only one who can see your Karma Shop."
"How do you know that for sure?" Deacon hissed back.
"One, because I've had mine open this entire time we've been sitting here, and you haven't seen it, and neither has anyone else around us," Bonehead hissed back before waving his hand vaguely to his side and behind him at the other occupants of the stadium. "Look around. No one is even reacting to our Karma Shops being open right now."
True to his word, aside from the occasional whisper passing between groups of cadets in other sections and the furtive glances shot their way by people who thought they were being subtle, nobody was looking at the floating screens supposedly hovering in front of Deacon and Bonehead. Those who did glance in their direction were clearly trying to appear as though they were looking at them as normally as they had before.
Holding back his tongue and forcing himself to calm down, Deacon turned his attention back to the screen while doing his best to ignore the administrator down on the field calling out for number forty-eight to approach the podium. "What the hell is this thing?"
"I think it's some sort of randomized weekly shop system created by the Tower," Bonehead answered before immediately addressing what he knew Deacon was about to ask next with a shrug of his shoulders. "I don't know why or how or what the fuck the purpose of it is. I'm just as lost as you are about the whole thing."
"All I know for certain is that the items displayed are completely random for each person and that each item only has a stock of one, so once you buy something, it's gone from your shop forever," Bonehead explained.
"You already bought something from this?" Deacon asked.
"Yeah," Bonehead confirmed, reaching into his Spatial Satchel to pull out a bronze-colored sextant that had a faint red holographic display projecting from its side. “Cost me 30 Karma.”
Item Name:Bronze Sextant
Type: Tool
Rarity: Uncommon
Effect: A tool used to calculate long-distance traversal.
Description: A polished bronze sextant modified with embedded mana crystals along its frame. When supplied with mana, it projects a translucent holographic coordinate beside its arc, marking the user’s present position and calculating directional distance to an inputted location. Commonly used for long-distance traversal across unfamiliar Floors where traditional landmarks are unreliable.
Requirements: Humanoid.
"It looked cool, and I got curious about what a purchase would look like," Bonehead shrugged, clearly reading the confused expression on Deacon's face. "Anyways, this thing is completely legitimate, and you can actually get real functional items from it. I bought this yesterday when I was searching around online for any traces of people talking about a Karma Shop on the web, and while I was searching, I accidentally mumbled the activation phrase out loud, and the shop just appeared in front of me."
Okay, Deacon thought to himself, looking back at the floating purple screen hovering in front of him before asking his next logical question. "Do we have the same items available for sale in our shops?"
"Is the first item displayed on your screen a multitool that can be used by early Tier 2s?" Bonehead asked.
Deacon shook his head. "Nope, and it's not any of the other seven items I can see either."
"Then I guess the inventory is completely randomized for every person who has access to it," Bonehead shrugged again.
"Okay, so what exactly is this Karma thing that everything in here costs?" Deacon asked, gesturing at the numbers listed beside each item, forgetting that Bonehead could not see the figures he was gesturing to.
"Look at the amount of Karma you currently have displayed on the bottom left corner of the screen, and when you click on it, you should get a pop-up that explains what it is," Bonehead said.
Holding back his annoyance at Bonehead for not giving him a direct answer, Deacon resisted the urge to reach over and strangle his friend. Instead, he glanced down at the bottom left corner of the Karma Shop screen, where he saw that he apparently had 332,491 Karma available to spend.
Confused by how he'd accumulated such a large number without knowing anything about this currency system, Deacon tapped on the number with his finger, and a small informational pop-up immediately appeared over the main screen:
Karma Points, commonly shortened to Karma, is a type of currency within the Tower that can only be used by a select few individuals granted limited access to it by Floor Guardians. Karma is gained and calculated based on every action you accomplish within the Tower, such as clearing Floors, completing Hidden Quests, collecting Achievements, and performing notable feats. As a person who was born within the early years of the Tower's appearance, you gain a passive 1,000 Karma every year you've been alive due to your innate karmic link with the Towers of the System.
DISCLAIMER: Spending Karma Points has no effect whatsoever upon the deduction of your actual karmic ties, bonds, or experiences. It is simply a numeric currency that has been created to denote standardized values to certain items, all of which have been calculated by the System without bias.
So I've collected 20,491 Karma from everything other than just passively existing, Deacon calculated mentally as he dismissed the pop-up, though he found himself unsure of what to actually do with this new knowledge since nothing in the current selection of items really stood out as something he needed or could even use given the level requirements and profession restrictions listed on most of them.
"Ticket number fifty-six, please step up to the podium," the administrator's voice called out across the stadium, the announcement cutting through Deacon's thoughts and causing both him and Bonehead to immediately dismiss the Karma Shop screens floating in front of them.
They stood up from their seats and made their way down from the stands toward the field below, Deacon making absolutely certain to reach back and tear off the Silencing Talisman from the back of the chair where he'd placed it before ripping the used Talisman in half to deactivate it properly and tossing the pieces into a nearby trash bin as they passed.
While walking across the field toward where the administrator was waiting beside the podium, Deacon reached into his Spatial Sling Bag and pulled out his three Token Fragments, pressing them all together in his palm and watching as they merged and fused into a single complete token.
Item Name:Sovereign Blades Full Token
Type: Tool – Quest Token
Rarity: Unique
Description: A complete token formed from three Sovereign Blades Token Fragments. It bears the full insignia of the Sovereign Blades Guild and serves as proof of acknowledgment from the Guildmaster upon completion of Floor Ten, and is required to proceed to Floor Eleven.
Requirement: Deacon Surtr Hayes.