Waking up sometime later, Frank did some exercises and sat on his stone bed (it's covered by a shrew's fur by the way) to begin his petrification training.
He had decided to train petrifying his heart and blood vessels first, because he wanted to be able to use his Fear aura in battle without his own heart stopping.
After five days of this training, Frank became hungry, but he was satisfied because he could petrify all of his blood vessels easily now. Petrifying his heart will need some more training thought.
Standing up, Frank went into grub room, and then through the left door. What met him after going through the darkness was a stuffiest room yet. There were two skorats, two shrews and two big spiders. There were three doors in this room, the one he came from, the one leading to the blue boulder room (to the left) and the one that was different. It had bluish-coppery color and had a ‹shop› sign at its top.
Beside each door were two boulders, to the left and to the right, there were boulders at the doorless side as well, mirroring the ones which were near Frank. In the middle of the room was a blue campfire, the two big spiders were standing to its left and right.
One of the scorats was to the right of Frank, standing in the corner, with boulder blocking Frank's vision of it, the other scorat was standing in the opposite corner. The first shrew was standing to the left of Frank, like a scorat, and a second one was in the opposite corner.
Frank was holding a gray gem in his left hand, thanking everything in the world for this, because using the gem he just manipulated the boulders in the room to crush the monsters standing nearest to them.
«Fuuu...»
'That was dangerous, if I didn't have a gray gem, I would be dead meat after entering this room, for sure' thought Frank, while killing two monsters still alive - the spiders. He killed one with a quick throw of The Seeker and another one by just crushing its head with his petrified hand.
'What a feast will I have!' thought Frank, while controlling the boulders away from the crushed bodies of monsters.
After cooking all of the monsters in the room in the blue fire and eating them, Frank turned to look around the room, thinking about something. Following this, he stood up and went in the doorless wall's direction, inspecting it carefully.
'This room's strange, its too difficult with no rewards aside from the shop, which shouldn't be as precious as the artifact room, judging by its door's color' thought Frank while scrutinizing the wall closely.
After thinking for a bit, Frank had made a little hole in the wall, enough to fit a tennis ball. While making a hole in the wall with his powers might sound easy, it wasn't. He tried doing this before, only leaving small scratches, but consuming nearly an hour he could make a little hole still. Also, this wall was slightly easier to damage than the other one, which only confirmed his doubts.
Placing a bomb in the socket and pressing the button, Frank ran to the other side of the room to not get hurt. After a loud boom, a small hole was left in the wall, enough to fit Frank, if he is crawling.
After crawling through the door, Frank saw a very small room, only two square meters in space, with a ceiling being still three meters hight. On the wall opposite Frank, one meter above the ground, was a shelf with a book and a coin sack lyng on it. There were 4 silver, 5 iron and 13 copper coins lying in the coin. The silver ones had number 10 scribbled on them, the iron ones had number 5 and the copper ones had number 1, which should have depicted their value.
The book looked very old, with dust covering it fully. After clearing the dust on the cover, Frank read the name of the book, which was [Runology for dummies]. Smirking at the name, Frank put the book and the coin sack into his cocoon bag, not forgetting to put his own coins into the sack. He now had a grand total of 7s, 5i and 13c coins.
Crawling back into the room, Frank went into the shop. Going in, Frank was that shop was very different from ordinary rooms. It still had the same size, but everything else was different.
First of all, it was made out of wooden planks and was very clean, like there was someone who was doing a cleaning there every day.
Secondly, there was something like a lightbulb floating in the center of the ceiling, making this room the brightest yet.
Thirdly, the left and right walls were full of shelves filled with some strange cubes, that were of different materials like copper, iron, silver and gold.
Lastly, there was a strange machine in the wall opposite Frank, with a word ‹exchange› written at its top, it was used for coin exchange, for example if you want to exchange for one silver coin, you need to drop 10c or 2i coins into the hole and press the button under the silver coin picture. The number of coins that you have dropped into the machine were counted on the mechanical display, and if you, for example, dropped too much coins into the machine, you could press the button under it, and it will return your coins to you.
Looking around, Frank decided to pick one cube to look what it was for. Inspecting every side of the cube, Frank thought 'It should be where I spend my coins, one side of the cube has an image of the merchandise, another one has a small description, third one has a number, which should be the price, and the last one has a hole to drop coins into. Two lateral sides have nothing on them.'
The cube that Frank have picked up was a copper one. It had a key inscribed on it, the description was [Tier 0 - copper key, used to open copper chests and some doors] and the price was [15].
'If every copper chest contains 3s coins, then this is a very alluring offer. But that's not counting the cost of the bomb and the fact that I've found only one chest so far' thought Frank, while dropping 10c and 1i coin into the cube. The cube have disintegrated, like a chest leaving only a copper key behind.
Frank decided to buy one, because you never know if you will find a copper chest in the next room, so it's better to have one key always with himself. He now had 7s, 4i and 3c coins in his coin sack.
He picked several copper cubes to see if the key is the only thing that you can buy from it. And it seems like the key isn't the only [Tier 0] merchandise, there were lots of different things selling in the copper cubes, like a [Tier 0 - Health Potion] or [Tier 0 - Energy Potion], which costed [15] as well. After reading the [Energy Potion]'s description, Frank finally comprehended that he didn't need to eat and only needed energy, which he could gather from surroundings or recieve from this potion, but the potion's and surrounding's energy didn't raise his maximum energy levels, like eating did, that's why he became stronger.
The [Healing Potion] was useless for him, because it did what his [Reconstruction] ability did, but consumed much more soul energy than it, it was [Tier 0] after all, and [Reconstruction] was an ability from [Tier 2] artifact.
Other things were all [Tier 0]. There were some clothes, a bed, different weapons and another interesting thing. That interesting thing was a compass, but not a normal one, it was an artifact of [Tier 0], and it was the only thing that cost [30] and not [15]. Its desctiption was [Tier 0 - The Compass, residing in the brain, grants a better geographical memory to the user].
'It can be very useful, its already difficult to remember everything on the fist floor, it can become even harder on the later floors' thought Frank, while inserting 1s and 4i coins into the hole, gaining the artifact. He had 6s and 3c coins now.
The compass materialised in his hand. Making a small cut on his forearm, he dropped a droplet of blood on the compass, while petrifying his cut, forcing it to heal rapidly. The compass exploded into worm-looking white runes, which flew into his brain through his forehead. A new wave of information appeared in his brain, not causing as much pain as before, because Frank was slowly adapting to it.
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[The Compass]
[Tier 0]
[Geographical Memory - the user can easily remember every place he have been to, making a map in his head]
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Receiving this information, Frank smirked, knowing that this new ability will make his life much, much easier later.
Frank started picking the iron cubes next, looking what's in them.
He saw [Tier 0] and [Tier 1] items in there, the basic cost of them was [30]. Most of them had [Tier 1] things, such as potions, clothes, weapons, iron keys and the bombs were also sold there. The only [Tier 0] item he found was a paper piece, two of them actually, their description was [Tier 0 - a piece of a Tier 1 artifact {Treasure Map}, collect 3 of them and another suplementary material to complete it]. The map piece costed [30] as the other items in the iron cubes.
He found another interesting thing amongst iron cubes. It was The Flying Knife, that he was given at the starting room, it had a [Tier 1] as the other items in the iron cubes and costed [30].
Moving to the silver cubes, Frank began checking them. The things in them ranged from [Tier 0] to [Tier 2], most things were of [Tier 2] and costed [60] (potions, clothes, weapons, silver keys, strong bombs). The [Tier 1] were either the pieces of [Tier 2] artifacts, [Tier 1] suplementary materials, or full [Tier 1] artifacts.
Frank wasn't interested in artifact pieces, because he didn't have enough money to complete an artifact. But there was one thing that caught Frank's interest, very much so.
[Tier 0 (evolvable) - The Magical Eyes, residing in the eyes, helps the user to see the things that others can't. Can evolve continuously, obtaining new abilities even at the same tier].
This artifact was like a gun pointed at your head, you can't say no to it. Spending all of his silver coins and being left with measly three copper coins, Frank bought [The Magical Eyes] artifact. A pair of white eyes, with black void-like irises appeared in his hand. Doing the same with them, as he did with [The Compass], they exploded into the deep blue worm-like runes, flowing into Frank's eyes, making his irises void-like.