Elysium's Multiverse
Chapter 334

Chapter 334

Chapter 334

Retesh stayed behind to watch over Narg and let the girls know where Riven had gone, but he had no intentions of just sitting around doing nothing while waiting. Plus, he’d strengthened his connection to all his minions while here in the descent anyways. They could all telepathically communicate with him now, outside of Narg who’d not been present on the floors where he’d gained such boons, and all of them had a general idea of where he was at any given time through the solidified soul links chaining them all together.

So, realistically, they were just as likely to ask him directly or even locate him on their own rather than ask Retesh after he’d left their rented room. He didn’t know what they were up to, but he was glad to see that they were all getting along and having a good time. He could feel them a few blocks away and up a few floors in one of the skyscrapers, but Riven decided to let them do their things and didn’t head there directly given the extra time he’d be spending here anyways.

Meanwhile: Lizard, Fish, and Brute followed close behind Riven and Azmoth as the leading duo walked through the lower marketplace of the strange ethereal city. They were eager to please and after beginning to talk to the three, Riven found that the three volunteer soon-to-be-thralls had forgotten a lot about life in general. Questions about basic household items, clothes, where they were, and the taste of food were hot topics amongst the three - which led to Riven buying them a lot of different food stuffs from stall vendors along their stroll.

The vendors were abundant enough, that was for sure, and they eagerly tried to get Riven - who was an obvious delver here in the descent - to spend his points at businesses owned by the locals by letting him sample the street food in small quantities for free.

“Iris seems to like it.” Riven said, smiling and holding his baby daughter as she made a mess with some kind of icy, creamy, and very sugary golden paste a phantom had been selling in jars. It could only be described as a semi-liquid cake, and Riven had already cleaned out a few of the jars himself before stashing a couple dozen inside his spatial bag.

It was important to have soft food for Iris anyways, since he didn’t want her choking on anything - so he’d bought the vendor out entirely for the relatively absurd price of a couple hundred performance credits.

Fish hummed with delight and slurped from her own jar with a laugh. “This is amazing!”

“I can’t say I remember eating anything this good before.” Lizard chimed in, nodding his scaled white head with an open jar in either hand. “Thank you for the gesture, Riven.”

Brute scoffed at Lizard with a large roll of his eyes and trudged along, already having eaten his share. “You can’t remember eating anything this good because you don’t remember almost anything at all, you dimwit!”

“Yes, yes that’s true.” Lizard said, scratching the back of his neck with his tail. “No need to be rude though! I’m just enjoying the moment, unlike you - you gluttonous troll thing.”

“Can I hold your baby!?” Fish asked, and the merwoman jogged ahead to walk alongside Riven. “Please?”

Riven eyed Fish skeptically and shook his head. “Not to be mean, but not yet. After you three have actually become thralls - then sure. But until then I can’t be entirely sure that I trust you yet.”

“But afterwards I for sure can?” Fish pressed eagerly, staring down at the baby girl in Riven’s arms.

Riven nodded. “Of course.”

“Great!” Fish fell back in line. “I can wait until then! I just think your daughter is adorable, so don’t think I have nefarious intentions!”

“Oh I don’t! But safe is better than sorry.” Riven replied - only briefly stopping midway through his stride as a notification hit him.

[Your minion Athela has requested to utilize 292 Performance Credits for a purchase. Accept? Decline?]

[Your minion Fay has requested to utilize 311 Performance Credits for a purchase. Accept? Decline?]

[Your minion Genua has requested to utilize 197 Performance Credits for a purchase. Accept? Decline?]

Having more than 1.3 million credits to spend, he accepted each request and smirked to himself while heading towards the “Ascended District” - which was where all the really good stuff concerning floor rewards were supposed to be. Hopefully they’d found something good on their day out, as it was now obvious they were on a shopping trip with Kara. ℞ᴀꞐȎ𝐛Ε𐌔

Speaking of which…

He turned around and looked over the three soon to be thralls. They still had the same clothes they’d come with after exiting that blood portal where Riven had fought the clam, and none of them had any weapons anymore since Fay hadn’t bothered taking what she’d called “Junk” when originally abducting the three. The clothes were rather worse for wear too, having gone through a battle and not having been cleaned after being returned to them from a corner of Fay’s dungeon. In Lizard’s case, he didn’t even have a shirt on and only sported boots and pants - while Fish had a stained short-cropped witch’s outfit and Brute had on thick studded leathers over his pale green skin.

They really needed some new stuff, and he didn’t even know what their affinities were. If Narg was able to communicate and wasn’t in a state of everlasting seizure - Riven would have also bought him some new things as well. But despite their attempts to heal the beholder demon - he didn’t react to any potions of healing spells they had at their disposal, and would likely have to wait until they reached Lillith for insight on the matter. Truly disappointing considering that Narg had missed out on over half of the entire Abyssal Descent along with associated rewards.

Maybe if Riven saw something he thought the beholder demon would like, he’d get it just in case. Riven kinda felt bad for the guy, as he’d been so eager to please in the earlier floors like when he’d saved Nora from death at the hands of that burned titan chained in a lava pit.

“Hey Azmoth, go ahead and accompany these three to a tailor or clothes vendor of some sort.” Riven gestured at the poorly equipped Fish, Brute and Lizard. “Ask the vendor how to send me a request if you can’t figure it out by yourself and buy them a few outfits each.”

Azmoth grunted the affirmative and pointed in the direction from whence they came. “I saw vendor with clothes in window back two streets that way.”

“Thank you for your generosity, esteemed one.” Lizard commented with another low bow, and Fish smiled in delight while doing the same. Brute just copied Azmoth’s grunt with folded arms.

Riven waved them off and watched them disappear into the crowds of the street, and seeing that Iris had fallen asleep after finishing her jar of sweetened paste - he chuckled and moved on ahead.

It was time to see what kinds of floor rewards were available to him with the given amount of points they’d collected.

***

The Ascended District was in the very center of the ethereal city and entirely encased by a large pyramid-shaped roof. It was held up on a platform with each of the four corners supported by one of the downtown skyscrapers, and was far less busy than Riven would have expected it to be. The only other customers here were other individual delvers or teams of delvers from what he could see, with none of the natives buying anything here. There were natives working inside the stores as employees though, which were far more ornate than anything found down in the lower city, but there were only four of these stores in total with enormous amounts of various treasures in each glass storefront. The interior of each was even larger than Riven had expected and were spatially expanded when he briefly looked inside the first of them, and just from the aura cast out from some of these objects - he could tell that he wanted nearly everything here.

“Morgana’s Traits and Upgrades, Jitzi’s Growth Items, Dao Taboos & Treasures, and The Skill Shop.” Riven read off the names of the four signs hanging over each entrance, and began walking back inside the closest of them - Morgana’s Traits and Upgrades, to begin his shopping trip.

The smell of familiar perfume hit him full force when Athela nearly teleported out of the shadows. “Hey baby! How’s the kid!?”

“Just in time.” Riven said, handing over Iris to an excited Athela - who was making ‘gimme’ motions with her hands. “Don’t wake her up though, she just fell asleep. Where are the others?”

He looked around the spatially expanded room, where an arched ceiling full of sprouting crystals illuminated various displays and shelves of goods while a handful of other delvers commented on or examined the goods with local employees.

“Still shopping!” She said, upbeat and leaning into him with a loving nudge as they walked forward towards the main checkout counter. “Genua’s buying baby clothes again. That woman is obsessed, but I can’t really blame her! Fay’s trying out new lingerie she thinks you’d like, and Kara’s wanting to buy a bonded pet. She can’t afford anything on this floor in terms of pets so she’s exploring the less expensive options in the lower city.”

“They sell pets here?”

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“They do! Along with the necessary status page changes for bonding, which is super neat - but that’s all over in Jitzi’s Growth Items. Whatever you do, don’t buy anything until you’ve taken a look at all the goods in each of the stores. There’s some very interesting stuff up here.”

“What did you end up buying for yourself?”

“Oh, you know, some stuff regarding a tailoring profession down below where it’s cheaper. I’ve been wanting to expand my skills after making that cloak for you!” She pinched the fabric of his ‘Riven’s Happy Birthday Cloak’ - which was shadow-crafted on the outside and had a bloosilk interior. “Stuff like this. You have your enchanting and totem-making, but I want to start making clothes and leather armor. It’d be so fun!”

“You’d have unlimited threads to use, of the same grade that you are.”

“EXACTLY!”

Iris sputtered something in her sleep, and Riven playfully bopped Athela on the forehead for being too loud as she grumbled and glared his way.

Coming up to the desk under the sparkling crystal roof, the pair was addressed by a ghostly man at the counter who stood straight at attention with a larger than life smile. “Hello prestigious scions! How is the young couple doing today? That’s quite a cute child you’ve got there!”

Athela blushed, likely at the thought of having a child of her own.

Riven put an arm around Athela’s shoulders and brought her closer. “Thank you for the compliment. I was hoping to get a list of your wares before deciding on what to buy, do you have any such list? Or at least, categories of what you sell here so I can go take a look?”

“We most certainly do.” The ghost said, promptly producing a large paper scroll that he unfurled with a flash of light. Words began inscribing themselves onto the parchment a moment later in fancy stylized letters, and the ghost pointed to different listed categories set out along different areas of the paper. “Morgana’s Traits and Upgrades deals in - well - traits and upgrades. You can literally buy traits from Elysium itself in the form of crystals that can be absorbed, which are stocked on our shelves. You can also buy upgrades for different aspects of your status page, including abilities and spells you already have - though if you want new abilities you’ll have to find them over at The Skill Shop across the street. Just like the other stores here in the Ascended District, we are named after what Elysium has decided to store here for the best of the Unholy Foundational Pillar’s younglings. You can see that there are categories based on the type of affinity, whether or not it’s offensive or defensive or even combat related, and by what prerequisites are needed.”

The ghost held up a finger. “Be warned though, do not try to steal anything here. Though you may technically attempt to do it, you’ll get a one way ticket to obliteration and a permanent death if you get caught by any of our wards or employees.”

Riven’s eyebrows raised up. “Elysium actually allows us to attempt theft? That’s surprising.”

The ghost nodded. “Oh yes, it’s certainly doable and some particularly skilled thieves get away with it. But yet again, I wouldn’t recommend it. We’re required to tell new arrivals about this opportunity, but know that any employee who catches someone attempting to steal gets a very large bonus in the form of performance credits - so we’re inclined to report you to Elysium immediately for your quick execution or worse should any attempt be made.”

Athela and Riven exchanged glances.

“Noted.” Riven said, scanning the aisles filled with different colors and shapes of crystals and gems. Some were small, while other larger displays were the size of a person. “How about we just figure out what you have for sale, and go from there? Do you mind helping us out?”

“Certainly.” The ghost said. “Now what is it you’d like to know? Do you want recommendations, or is there a specific subset of stuff you’d like me to help you look for as we go over our wares?”

It turned out the traits and upgrades were nothing to scoff at, and the list was incredibly helpful as Riven didn’t have to wander amongst a bunch of glowing rocks that he’d otherwise have to evaluate with his mana sense to get a feel for. It was a very lengthy list of traits that would allow a person to gain additional experience from kills by 100%, to doubling your minion slots, to even being able to create your own baby-gods if you managed to get ahold of the correct spiritual ingredients. The upgrade stones on the other hand were in one of two categories - very generalized, or very specific. There was an upgrade stone that allowed someone to upgrade the spell “Jogi’s Potent Swarm of Flying Frogs” for example, which would create far deadlier killer frogs but needed that very specific spell in order to upgrade it. While the generalized upgrades weren’t usually as potent but could be applied to numerous things, like the ability to upgrade an ability of your choice by 20% potency. Or an upgrade stone that’d allow your cultivation to select a specific trait for the natural path of ascendancy, creating a version of the trait one or many tiers above the F-grade. There was even sets of upgrade stones that specifically targeted stats, and would change a selected stat into either an affinity-based stat, or an enhanced stat that would increase the efficacy of every single stat point you put into that pool. These crystals, gems and stones however were all incredibly expensive - even for Riven, who by the vendor’s proclamation had one of the highest performance credit pools they’d ever seen.

***

Jitzi’s Growth Items was far different than Morgana’s Traits and Upgrades. In Jitzi’s Growth Items you could actually tell what you were looking at most of the time without exploring the spiritual or magical aspects of each item, and just as Athela had said - Jtizi’s Growth Items also had pets. Apparently Elysium considered pets as growth items? Riven really wasn’t sure why but maybe he was missing something here.

Large fire salamanders, drakes, dragons, griffons, shadow beasts, giant spiders, abyssal goats, nine-tailed foxes, void mantis, and hellsteeds were amongst the first rung of stables located on the left side - but they were all rather young and not fully grown. All of them were also top quality pets, with incredibly potent bloodlines and serious potential for growth - and they came with an added bond-slot for pets in your status page should you choose to buy. After that, it was far more surprising. Harpies, imps, humans, dwarves, elves, goblins, orcs, incubi, succubi, devils, ghouls, skresh, draconians, and many more of the enlightened races were imprinted with strange slave sigils infused with abyssal energies in the forms of pentagrams on their foreheads. They all, each and every one of them, seemed completely oblivious to their surroundings as well and did not interact with any attempt at speaking that Riven or Athela made; though two of them did make eye contact before they were beaten by the staff for their actions. When the staff were asked why that was and who these people were, the answer was simple: These people had been caught thieving, and instead of dying they’d sold their souls to the Abyssal Descent for another chance at life under a permanent slave contract via Elysium’s apparently irreversible soul bindings. It was to the point that they couldn’t even function without an owner, making their choice to steal a truly poor one that they couldn’t just get out of if their original owner died. Many of them were actually prominent, or once prominent scions themselves - though even more of them were delvers down on their luck not being able to afford the things they’d wanted to buy. They’d tried their hand at thievery, and now paid the price, waiting here forever until someone bought them to remove them from this abyssal prison. What was even more interesting was that they didn’t count as minions, but filled the same ‘pet’ slot that you’d get if you bought any of the animals.

After the stables and slave pens came the more typical items Riven would have guessed there to be in a place named after growth items. Swords, scythes, spears, shields, staves, armor, boots, trinkets, and jewelry were in abundance with seriously potent effects. There was an amulet that you could stuff the souls of your enemies into, and those souls would die in your place should you take a potentially fatal blow. There was a ghostly plasma scythe that couldn’t be blocked by physical means and did direct soul damage. There was even a shield created from a dead elder god from a lost C-grade pantheon that’d been obliterated in a war with the heavens, and it still had some of that god’s lingering soul fragments present within the shield.

Then there were the oddities. A living miniature star, a pot that could swallow light, a carriage made from the abyss. There were also a number of guild hall add-ons here that were technically growth items that’d become more powerful as you did - and could not only bind to a guild hall, but change the rest of the guild hall too. This category interested Riven as he’d been warned by Lillith that they may end up using that guild hall more and more frequently in the future. Athela had immediately latched onto a very pricey nether merging stone that’d allow her family, and Fay’s family, to cross between their nether realms and even PARTIALLY merge their nether realms with the guild hall itself as an anchor point - and she made Riven promise to buy it with more than a little prodding. It even had 3 merge slots for 3 different nether realms, so he could potentially get someone else from the Church of Gluttony in on this too.

Seeing how happy she got when he said yes was more than worth the money he’d spend, he was sure. And it’d be kind of nice to have the two demonic clans in and out of the guild hall anyways, providing protection for Iris whenever he was gone if nothing else. Weren’t their clans going to be extended family? It shouldn’t hurt to have them around.

Leaving Jitzi’s Growth Items behind and moving on to Dao Taboos & Treasures, Riven’s aura sense was berated by tens of thousands of other auras emanating from various species of plants, natural crystal formations, keepsakes of long dead cultivators infused with their insights, and different taboo treasures. He made sure not to make it too obvious as other delvers shopping nearby came and went, but he made particular note of all the Blood-affiliated treasures marked as taboo that could help him better understand the pearl he had and the secrets it held. Many of these treasures would be great for a cultivation room he was planning on building in his guild hall anyways, and he marked down over a dozen of them that he would potentially buy for future use.

Finally, The Skill Shop was at hand. Grimoires, ability tomes, and skill scrolls were in abundance. Riven actually hadn’t seen ability tomes and skill scrolls since early on in Negrada’s dungeon before he’d become a vampire, and grimoires had been rare as well - with Fay’s viper grimoire being one of the very few he’d come across over the past two years. The Elysium Altar in Brightsville occasionally had a few of them pass through the available buy lists but were always gobbled up in an instant, making it luck of the draw on who was able to get ahold of them. The trade communes of Negrada and The Blood Moon Requiem also provided a few different ability tomes or grimoires - but Riven didn’t remember any of them ever having specifically provided skill scrolls to the public before. Or even to him for that matter. Skill scrolls in particular were incredibly expensive because they automatically fused with a person’s soul to provide a skill, and were infused with the knowledge of a master craftsman who also happened to have knowledge of that skill. To be both a master craftsman, usually proficient in both enchanting and scribing, and then also have an ability worth a damn to spend years infusing your knowledge into a scroll for - well it just wasn’t done very often even on a multiversal level. But here in the Ascended District of the Abyssal Descent - there were dozens of them. Many of which were Tier 2, Tier 3, and even some Tier 4 spells, miracles, and martial arts. One in particular scroll caught his eye, an infernal ability that would allow him to summon his actual soul pillar into the world around him and create a cataclysmic explosion of hellfire as it dropped from the skies onto a targeted area. It was essentially a precision nuke, and using it would temporarily shatter his infernal pillar along with all the abilities associated with it until the pillar put itself back together again. Based on the descriptions, it was exactly what he was looking for in terms of extremely hard-hitting finishing strikes. He really only had Blood Nova for something like that, and it often was a harder hitter - sure - but didn’t provide the amount of umph his entire mana pool could actually provide. This spell though, could.

[Your minion Azmoth has requested to utilize 66 Performance Credits for a purchase. Accept? Decline?]

“Master.” Azmoth pinged him through their internal link. “I finish basic clothing of Fish, Lizard, and Brute. We come meet you now.”

“Good! Good, I’ll see you soon.” Riven replied, accepting the transaction for Azmoth while still going over the scrolls in the last store. Meanwhile Athela rocked Iris back and forth on a bench provided by one of the local staff. “Athela is already here. Retesh and the rest of the girls are coming over now, I’ll see you when you get here. We have some deciding to do on what we want to buy, because even with what the merchants claim to be an absurd amount of points - I don’t have nearly enough to buy all the things I think we need.”