The retrieval group had gotten caught up in a scuffle with the priests before getting away from the main security room. Apparently the priests were skilled magic users. It's just they were incredibly cowardly.
Jaycee bet that if they had just confronted the intruders at once with all the mercenaries they would have a 50/50 chance of winning. Thankfully the dungeon divers got to the room mostly unharmed. They began to integrate with each other and as the trust with Farrah's faction grew Percy became the more de facto leader.
As Jaycee meditated, Lady tapped on Jaycees shoulder, abruptly pulling him out of the peace he found. He shook his head a little before turning to the small Asian woman. She had matured a lot in terms of skill and drive through the time she had been away from Jaycee. But he was always going to be the man who had carried her throughout the early parts of the tutorial where she was disoriented.
She looked at him expectantly while pointing to the door of the room. "What?" Jaycee asked. He was never good with understanding nonverbal cues. She motioned for him to follow her and pointed to the door again. "You want me to follow?" He asked.
She nodded and started for the door. "Oh shi." He stood abruptly and spoke to Percy. "Lady wants to go outside and she's asking me to come with her." He said while jogging after the surprisingly fast woman.
Percy tilted his head confused and made a move to stop him but stopped. "What, why aren't you stopping them?!" Farrah asked as the two opened the door and left the secure room.
"What Jaycee and Lady do is not my business. I believe in them. They've never officially integrated with my group. Ultimately they listen to me because of their respect for me." Percy explained. She looked at him surprised and grit her teeth in frustration.
Unlike the rest of them, they had seen nothing of what Jaycee was capable of and treated him more like Percys foot soldier. As Jaycee caught up with Lady he asked. "What's the plan?" Lady pointed her finger which had a pulsating golden light.
Jaycee noticed that as they ran through the halls, the light began to pulse faster. He watched their surroundings carefully as he wasn't sure if the two of them could beat an intruder. Not to mention two.
In only a few minutes of jogging Lady led him to a door. she pushed it open to some sort of fireplace room that was richly decorated. She went straight to a corner of the room as if she was looking through the walls. She began touching the stone bricks in the wall where she found one that slid back beneath her palm.
Jaycee looked around and focused on making sure they were safe. A door in the wall opened, revealing a small square room with treasure boxes in the corner. Lady walked into the room and crouched down picking up one of the two treasure boxes.
She gestured to Jaycee and the other box. He picked up the small chest and inspected it.
'Treasure box G: rarity red, Open now? Y/N'
He chose to open it and a new screen appeared.
'Choose: +12 FP/ Skills/ Random Item'
Jaycee thought about his options and scratched his head. To him these were all good options, but for different reasons. Obviously getting 12 free points to his stats would be great. That's almost as much as a whole level up. As for skills, he wasn't sure what it meant by just skills. It could be just an offering of a skill but that felt a little much.
It was more likely upgrading skills or helping the completion of developing skills. Right now he wasn't developing anything and while an upgrade would be great, it wasn't outweighing any other option. And finally the random item. The only thing he didn't know was the average quality of an item from a treasure chest.
If these treasure chests were different enough from the boxes people found in the forest, the item could be incredibly valuable. So he embraced the gambler side he suppressed for so long.
He chose random item and saw a ring float out of the white expanse of the chest. It floated into his hand where he identified it.
Ring of Fris: Wearing gives the ability to sense treasures. +3 Int +2 Wis +2 Will. Required level 10
Jaycee slipped the ring onto his left middle finger and inspected it. It fit perfectly on his finger and he could barely feel it. Suddenly a very weak sense that there were valuable things in the temple came to him. He bet that if he wanted to, he could search the whole temple for anything valuable.
There were probably a few other things they could find in the temple but Jaycee decided it wasn't worth it. Encountering one of the intruders one on one seemed like death so he waited for Lady to get her treasure.
The white light in her treasure box disappeared as a golden light momentarily ran up her body. It looked like it empowered her and she opened her eyes breathing heavily. She placed the treasure chest on the ground and turned to Jaycee.
He didn't know if these chests had different choices each time so he couldn't be sure what Lady had chosen. Although the golden energy could be stats or skills. "Ready to go?" Jaycee asked, holding his thumb up.
Lady held a thumb up. Jaycee nodded before peaking outside the hidden room into the fireplace area. His eyes darted toward the door. Jaycee and Lady rushed out of the room to the hall.
They both turned as they felt a menacing presence down the hall. A large knight stood with a large sword in one hand and a leash in the other. On the leash was a large and ravenous bald dog. The beast was level 27 as well as the knight. Jaycee felt his innards turn to mush as the staffed woman walked out from behind the knight.
She looked at Jaycee angrily and pointed her staff at him. Lady and Jaycee began sprinting down halls as the staffed woman shot forward. The knight opened his heavily armored hand and allowed the leash to be pulled out of it by the thrashing dog. As it lost its restraints, it shot forward and chased after the duo.