The reward page in front of him was a large, empty screen, with just a single line of text on it.
It was like it was mocking him for only having one worthy kill.
6 placed filling his reward page from top to bottom on his list of things to do before he died again as he clicked on his loot from the big spider he killed.
[Claim the Large Spider Loot?]
[Yes] [No]
With trepidation, 6 slowly moved his finger towards yes.
He had no clue what exactly would happen when he clicked it, if the loot would appear right in front of him, if he would gain some sort of inventory his loot would be stored in, if it would fill the entire room with super bright light that he would have to explain to others so that they wouldn't be suspicious of him.
It was a total mystery for him, which made it all the more exciting.
This was also his very first time receiving loot, whatever it may be, which meant that even if the loot sucked, it would have sentimental importance.
One day, when he was powerful and famous and there were schools named after him and museums built to honor the things he had done, whatever came out of this loot box would be the prized possession of whatever museum got ahold of it.
This would be part of his legacy. Part of his beginning, his origin story.
His finger creeped closer to the yes, the moment of truth dawning as 6 nathed in the moment of the loot that would mark his beginning.
With a light tap, the line of text on his loot page disappeared, fading instantly as if it never existed to begin with.
After that...nothing.
No bright lights, no item in front of him, no notification that he had a new page or inventory to withdraw his new loot from.
He froze, stunned entirely by the absolute lack of anything happening or any loot appearing to him when he accepted. With no other option, he turned to the only person who might have answers for him.
"Uhm, Trivrium, do you know what the absolute fuck just...didn't happen?" 6 said aloud.
[The effects of receiving any reward granted to you are entirely random. Not even Trivrium can claim to know what to expect when claiming your loot. The only guarantee is that you will have assuredly received something. It is not possible to receive absolutely nothing. Given that it was called loot and you gained it from killing something, it should be something physical.]
"And what does that mean?" 6 asked.
[It should have appeared near you, most likely somewhere you can't miss, as long as you're looking for it.]
6 began scanning his room, looking for anything at all that wasn't there shortly before, anything tht might be out of place.
He got off the bed, stripped the sheets away and threw the blanket aside to see if it appeared anywhere on the bed.
Aside from his knife, which his ended up flinging across the room when he was shaking the blanket, the bed was entirely devoid of anything that could be his loot.
Flipping the mattress up entirely, he began examining under, hoping he'd find some tiny object that would have amazing abilities beneath it.
There was nothing there either.
With one hand, 6 gripped the bottom of the bed itself, lifting it up onto its side.
Underneath the bed was more dust bunnies than he was comfortable with, considering an inn should be taking care of its rooms to the utmost extent, but nothing that could be his loot.
Unless his loot was one of the many dust bunnies, which would certainly not be good enough to show off in his museum without being ashamed.
His greedy eyes turned to the other furniture in the room, determined to do anything he had to do to find his loot.
The entire room was torn apart in his frenzied search for his loot.
The drawers to the dresser in the room were fully out, flipped upside down and shaken to completely empty the non-existent contents of the drawers.
Even the empty trunk at the foot of his bed had been flipped upside in the search.
[If the reward is not physical, information about it can be found in the Log.]
"Now you tell me! Now, after I finished tearing apart the entire room? That couldn't have been where we started?" 6 said while opening his logs, shaking his head.
Trivrium completely ignored his accusatory words, as he expected her to.
[Opened the Large Spider Loot]
That was the latest entry in his log. It didn't say anything else, no word about what he received from it or where it was.
"Well, Trivrium, am I the first person to receive absolutely nothing?" 6 asked.
[No.]
"It sure seems like it. Did I receive oxygen? A fresh breath of air?" 6 asked. "Doesn't feel like it, otherwise it wouldn't still be so stuffy in my room."
[It is up to you to find what you were given.]
'Fat load of good that does me. Saying it appears nearby doesn't even narrow anything down, nearby could be all of Folrost. Do I have to search the entire village any time I get any loot?' 6 thought as he continued looking around the room.
By now he had already double checked everything, fully confident that there was absolutely no way he could've missed it.
With no other options left, he had to conclude that his loot wasn't in his room.
Now he understood even more why he was warned about accepting his loot when he wasn't somewhere safe. It seemed that if you unlucky, you might lose your loot entirely if you weren't careful.
Or maybe 6 was just cursed.
He doubted regular people had to deal with this when they received loot for the first time.
They probably had it placed into their hands by a cute fairy with sparkly wings that left glitter behind as he flew off into the sky, continuing onward in his quest to deliver loot.
But 6? He couldn't even be born on a world that had all this cool stuff. He got taxes and jobs, governments and politicians.
If someone told him that wasn't a curse, 6 would laugh in their face, because clearly they hadn't been paid by one corrupt politician to kill another corrupt politician, while the first corrupt politician thinks that the other corrupt politician is the corrupt one.
And then when the second corrupt politician is killed, the first corrupt politician has a bounty put on his head that you couldn't resist claiming, so you kill him too, and then you find out the first corrupt politician was a significantly less corrupt politician than the third who paid you to off him, and that the second politician actually was terrible and the first politician was doing the world a favor by taking him out.
But at this point you've entirely lost track of which corrupt politician is which, so you just decide that all politicians are terrible and you just accept any bounty that involves killing one because they are literally never not corrupt.
Maybe losing his loot was the karma for killing too many politicians.
Just as he opened the door to his room, he spotted Karkum just across the hall.
He glanced toward 6 once he opened the door, a natural response to hearing a sudden noise one wasn't expecting.
6 smiled at first, then though of the destroyed room behind him and quickly closed the door most of the way, blocking the rest of the doorway with his body.
"Haha, hey Karkum, what brings you here?" 6 asked, aiming to distract Karkum from what he may have seen in the room behind him while the door was still open.
"I live here." Karkum said with squinted eyes.
"Right, right, you do live here, don't you...that's pretty cool for you...preeetty cool..." 6 trailed off. "Well, anyway, I gotta get going!" 6 said, squeezing through the nearly fully closed door, trying his best not to let Karkum look inside.
He lightly closed the door behind him, patting the hand as he did so, only to turn around and find Karkum standing much closer to the door, and himself, than he previously was.
"What are you doing?" Karkum asked, eyeing 6's strange behavior.
6 straight up his back, blocking the door behind him from Karkum.
"Ah, ah, I was just going to see if the blacksmith needed any help. You see, I actually had a hobby of blacksmithing when I was younger. I thought maybe I could help you guys out, and maybe make some money while doing it, y'know. Gotta pay for a place to sleep and all." 6 said, speaking faster than normal.
"Really now? How kind. I suppose you wouldn't mind if I clean up the room while you're doing so?"
"You can't! Actually, I was cleaning it up myself, because I wanted to apologize more for getting the spider goo on your door last night, but I didn't finish so you can't go in yet."
"That's okay, I don't believe I have as much trust in your ability to clean as I do your ability to make a mess. I believe I'll do it myself."
"Are you still upset about the door? I fixed that, didn't I!"
"Mm, you did, yes. But, as it seems you didn't realize, you also didn't tell me it was, as you so aptly put it, 'spider goo' on my door." Karkum said as he crossed his arms and began tapping one of his fingers.
6 cringed internally as he realized he accidentally spilled the beans on exactly what caused the mess on Karkum's door.
"That's a good point, that is a very good point." 6 said. "But actually you're gonna get a kick out of this."
6 began feeling his clothing, looking for something in his pockets to weave a story around to distract Karkum.
"Its really good, just give me one second." 6 said as he searched.
As he searched, it suddenly hit him that he changed his clothes last night, meaning the his pockets which were normally full of random stuff he decided to keep for no reason were going to be entirely empty, devoid of anything to bullshit about.
"Wait, hang on a minute, I forgot I changed my clothes. It's in my other pockets, just lemme go grab it." 6 said, as one of his hands stopped searching as he began opening the door to his room.
Just as the door cracked open, his other hand felt something in the back pocket of his pants.
Confusion framed itself on his face for a slight moment, before a sudden realization struck him.
His hand abandoned the door, more focused on his new discovery, as he pulled the item out of his pocket to look at what it was.
In his hand was a ring, which he was grasping with both hands in absolute ecstasy, excited about finding his lost loot.
Forgetting about his desire to keep his item secret in his happiness, he lifted his ring up to Karkum, showing him what he was holding.
"Look!!! I got this!" 6 said, now using the ring to bullshit Karkum and distract him.
Suddenly, the hairs on the back of 6's neck raised as he jerked his head around inch by inch, like a wooden puppet, to look at the door he had accidentally thrown open, revealing the trashed room hidden behind it.
"6...what the hell...happened to my furniture." Karkum said, enunciating each word as he spoke.