"Wait! I can explain." 6 yelled, hoping to calm the angry Karkum before he lost his dinner privileges for the night.
Karkum remained in place, not speaking as if he were waiting to hear 6's explanation.
"Okay so, hear me out. I was given something, right? But the person who gave it to me didn't tell me where it is." 6 explained. "So I had to find it. See, it's this thing right here."
6 held out the the ring once more, showing Karkum what he was referring to.
"So someone gave you a ring." Karkum paused, continuing to speak once he saw 6's quick nod. "And you didn't know where this ring, which you were just given, was?"
6 nodded once again.
"So to find the ring that was in your pocket, the one you were just given, you tore the entire room apart?" Karkum asked.
The nodding of his head was quickly becoming the most frequent thing 6 did here in Folrost.
"Honestly, the foolish things you come up with are enough to drive a man mad. So be it, make up your tall tales, I care not what you do in the room so long as you pay for everything you break." Karkum said as he turned on his heels and began walking away from 6.
"Its not a tall tale! I was really given this ring!" 6 called out as Karkum left.
"That is far from the part which I don't believe." Karkum said bluntly. "Just clean up the damned room, else you'll see none of my food for as long as you're here."
Left alone with his prize in front of the destroyed room, 6 turned back into his room to inspect it in private. He sat down on his mattress, which was fully pulled off of the flipped bed frame and was lying on the ground, and pulled the ring up to his eyes.
The ring in his hands was basic to the extreme, a plain silver band ring, with no other identifying characteristics and nothing special about it whatsoever.
There was no inscription hidden on the inside, no designs, nothing to differentiate it from any other plain ring.
If it were to be lost, 6 would have a hard time convincing anyone that the ring was actually his should someone else claim it.
In games, however, rings and other types of jewelry were usually considered rare items, or at the very least special, and could be considered the best type of item to receive, especially early on. Even if a ring was on the weaker end, it was still better than having no accessory at all.
But all of that didn't actually matter to 6. There was one thing, and one thing only, that he cared about.
The effects. The looks and what happens in games had no actual weight here.
[Collecting Ring]
[Type: Jewelry]
[Quality: To Be Determined]
[Special Effects: Collects a special type of energy every time the wearer kills a being. Once fully filled, the ring transforms into an item containing 1 or more effects related to the beings killed to charge it. The item created from the ring cannot exceed the strength of the creature the ring was received from.]
[Description: A really good item...if it wasn't from one of the weakest forms of creatures that could drop it.]
As 6 read the description, his happy and excited expression, and with it, the ecstasy he felt toward receiving his loot, drained away from his face.
He tossed the ring away from him, burying his face into his mattress as he let out a quiet scream of frustrations.
"My first loot! My first item, the prized piece of the museum built in my name, the start of my over-powered future!" 6 said. "It's a fucking ring that is literally just another loot box! How am I gonna display this in a museum! It directly says it from something weak as fuck!"
6 sprung up from the bed, pacing around the scattered items covering the floor as if they weren't there, his feet dodging and weaving around and over the drawers, sheets, and blankets naturally as if he did this everyday.
"Okay, okay, this isn't all bad. It could still be in a museum." 6 said, comforting his aching heart. "It just had to have a whole '6-The journey from weak to strong' exhibit, and this can be the very start of the weak part, that would work perfectly."
He continued muttering about how the ring would still work in a museum before smacking himself, coming to a sudden realization.
"No, no, dammit, I still need an item I can actually use for something. This damned ring disappears when I fill it, so I can't both have it in the museum and actually use it." 6 said, scrapping his current museum plan. "Okay, okay, how can I salvage it though?"
6 placed his hands on the side of his heads as he sat back down on the mattress, pondering a solution that would achieve the best of both worlds.
The description of the item left no room for him to have any chance of receiving both the ring, even if it had no effect to it once it was used, and the item it would turn into.
'Wait...transform into...not gives! The ring will become the item it gives me, not just give it to me and disappear! That means that whatever item it gives me is still the first item I've gotten, and I can still put it in a museum without having to lie about what my first item it!' 6 thought.
Relief washed over him as he came to the conclusion that he wouldn't have to to lie, and mroe importantly, risk being caught in the lie, about his first item.
"Alright, alright. Now I just have to make sure that this thing turns into something amazing, awesome, and some other word that starts with an A." 6 said to himself as he stood up from his mattress, entirely ignoring the mess he promised he would clean up.
Walking toward the door, 6 began planning his next moves, planning out what actions he could take to ensure the ring turned into something satisfactory.
The description itself didn't share much about how it decided what it became, or even if it would exactly become something related to what he killed to begin with.
To be exact, it said it would turn into an item with at least one effect related to what it became.
Even if 6 killed some weird living spear creatures to fill the ring, it didn't mean the ring would turn into a spear, it meant that whatever item it turned into would have an effect related to them.
Killing spear creatures could end up giving him something like a bow, but the effect of the item could be something like "More powerful against opponents wielding spear-like weapons" or "Ammo fired from with weapon have stronger piercing power".
That meant one important thing for 6. It couldn't be guaranteed to turn into something spider related like he wanted. If he killed spiders to fill it up, it might just turn into a random item with a poison damage or poison resistance effect, which would be terrible compared to getting a web related item.
If he wanted poison, he could just directly use it, and he can raise his own poison tolerance like he had in the past.
Strictly speaking, of all the very few supernatural things he had found so far, the only ones that had a high chance of giving him something he wanted were, rather morbidly, Cypius, Karkum, and most likely Plono.
The frost abilities displayed by Cypius and Karkum would be an amazing effect on an item, and he was willing to wager that Plono had similar abilities.
Some of the other kids in the village would likely have that ability as well, if both Cypius and Karkum had it, but there was no way to tell for certain.
It could even be a common ability shared by everyone in this world, a racial trait of their species, but again, without knowing in advance it would just be a waste of time, not to mention risky, to try to find other villages to become a serial killer at.
Outside the inn, 6 continued walking, directly aiming to leave Folrost once again with no hesitation.
Although the spiders wouldn't give him the best reward, it was the only real option he had. Killing livestock or random animals in the forest would be pretty useless compared to the spiders.
They were too weak and would take too long to fill the ring, and the effect they gave the item would probably be entirely useless to 6.
6 walked directly past the blacksmith, ignoring it entirely. He never actually had any intention to help them, he just needed an excuse to try to get Karkum to leave him alone.
It wasn't that he couldn't help them, he had been telling the truth about blacksmithing as a hobby back in the day, but that he simply couldn't be bothered with something he had already gotten bored of.
Rather than waste his time in town, it was more interesting to leave Folrost, kill some shit, and get his actual first loot, instead of the crappy ring he was now wearing on his finger.
No one interrupted him on his way out, though he wouldn't have been surprised to find Plono or Cypius waiting for him to stop him from leaving.
He didn't have the same expectations from Karkum, as the man would probably die before admitting he didn't want 6 to die, especially after seeing what 6 did to his room.
Instead, he walked calmly out of town, completely unbothered by anyone.
Had Cypius been here, he may have stopped and given his reasons for leaving and fighting the spiders as he was going to, out of respect for the man, but also for respect for his strength.
Had Plono been here to stop him, he may have been tempted to test how much killing her would influence the item he received from the ring.