Second World-Novel

"Treasure Box?"

The two of them were surprised to find a treasure box here. With a little bit of disappointment, they thought they gonna find a secret path out of here.

"Do you bring lockpick?" Jeanny asked.

"I did. Do you?" Jack replied.

She nodded, and said, "whoever managed to open it will get the treasure, what say you?"

"I'm okay with that arrangement."

"So how should we do it? We take turn unlocking it?"

"How many lockpick do you bring?" Jack asked instead.

"Five," Jeanny answered.

"What's your lockpick level?"

"Still basic apprentice. It's not like there are many treasure boxes lying around for practicing."

Jack nodded, "that's true. Well, in that case, you can go first trying all your five lockpikcs. If you managed to open it, I won't make a fuss about it."

"Are you serious? Won't that be unfair to you?" Jeanny felt Jack was just trying to be a gentleman by giving her the advantage.

"Have you ever tried opening a treasure chest with a lockpick before?" Jack asked back.

"No…"

"Then go ahead with your five lockpicks, don't worry about me."

Jeanny didn't argue anymore, she took out her lockpicks and get ready to insert them into the keyhole. She seemed to try to get the feel of the way.

"Do you know how to use the lockpicks?" Jack asked her.

"I've heard about the how from my guildmate, she read the information from a book in the library."

Since she didn't look confident enough, Jack gave her pointers about what to do, just like how Peniel instructed him on his first try.

"You have done it before?" Jeanny was amazed.

"Yes," Jack answered simply, and urged her to do it as he had instructed.

When the unlocking failed, she looked disappointed, then frowned and said, "I failed, but I get proficiency?"

Jack explained to her as Peniel had explained to him.

"Go ahead, try the next one," he said.

Not long after, she had broken all her five lockpicks. With a downcast expression, she stepped aside. "Your turn," she said.

Jack got to position in front of the treasure box and got to work. He had had quite a number of practices on the last treasure box, so his unlocking process felt natural.

"It seemed like you have done this many times before?" Jeanny asked as he saw the fluidness of Jack's unlocking.

"Many times, yes. Number of treasure box unlocked, only one," Jack replied.

"How many lockpicks you used to unlock that one treasure box?"

"Twenty six," he answered. Technically, one of the twenty six was John's, but it was pointless for him to go into details.

Jeanny face was blank. "no wonder you asked me to go first. You know my five lockpicks won't be enough to open this treasure box."

"Well, technically, if your luck is good, you can still open it with only five lockpicks. It's just that having less lockpicks meaning the odd was much lower." Jack didn't add that those twenty six tries were already aided by his enormous luck stat.

"How many lockpicks do you have actually?"

"Not including the one that has broken just now, one hundred."

"O– one hundred…?" Jeanny was stupefied. Who in the right mind would spent so many coins for simple lockpicks? But if she had known the odd of opening a treasure chest with lockpicks was so low, she might have bought more as well. She then took a mental note to buy more lockpicks after she got out of this dungeon.

Jack continued working on the treasure chest. It took him more tries this time. The treasure locks finally clicked and opened on his thirty sixth tries. Jack was depressed, he actually hoped he could fail a bit more times so that his Lockpick skill could upgrade to Intermediate Apprentice. Currently he was at proficiency of 998 points. Just a tiny 2 points left!

The treasure chest lid opened and revealed six items inside with some coins.

Jack glanced at Jeanny, and said, "how about we share half?"

"No, we have agreed on the term. These items are yours, fair and square."

Well, nobody could blame him for not being gentlemanly then. He took the out the items and checked them one by one. There was one uncommon magic staff, now he only needed three more to transform them into a rare staff. One normal medium armor chest piece, one normal medium armor boots, two steel ores, and one green color gemstone. Jack inspected the gemstone and found it to be a common grade Emerald. The coins were 12 silver coins and 58 copper coins.

Jack stored them all into his inventory bag unceremoniously.

He then walked around the room, checking on all the boulders to make sure he did not miss any markings from his God-eye monocle. But the only boulder with valuable was the one with that treasure box. Now they were back to their previous condition, still stuck inside this room with no path forward.

"What now?" Jeanny asked.

Jack did not know how to answer.

---------------

Silverwing and the others had spent almost thirty minutes entangling with the Giant Queen Ant. Most of the times they were just running around helplessly, trying to avoid the Queen's onslaught. During the time, The Queen Ant had shot another explosive air bullet two more times since the first. It took the Ant Queen quite a long interval in between shots.

Miraculously, no one had died yet. Several times they came close to dying, but they had still managed to use their restorative potions to get back to a safe threshold. However, because they were too busy trying to stay alive, they didn't deal much damage to the boss either. They could only chip its health little by little. The problem was, their restorative potion stock was getting thinner. At this rate, they would not be able to kill the boss before they ran out of their potions.

"How much potions do you still have?" Queen Magenta asked Selena.

"After this one, I only have three left," she said as she took out a bottle and emptied the content into her throat.

Queen Magenta was unwilling. They had tried their best but they could only bring the boss' health to almost half.

"I don't think the team from White Scarfs could last any longer as well," Selena said.

Warpath was also having difficulty. Despite his martial skill, the Queen Ant was too fast and too savage, he was quite skillful already to be able to deliver scant attacks from time to time.

When the boss' HP reached exactly 50%, it gave a soul-piercing shriek. The entire cavern hall shook from the sound.

---------------

Since they could not find any way forward. Jack and Jeanny ended up just sit down in a relax manner and having a chat. They were talking about several mundane things and also sharing tips about this game world.

"Tell her if she prefers using spear, she should choose Knight class for her Advanced class," Peniel said to Jack.

'Why is that?' Jack asked her in his mind.

"Because there is an elite class branching from Knight class that specialized in using spear as a weapon," she answered.

When Jack was about to told that information to Jeanny, they heard a sound that sounded like a monster shriek from the distant, not long after, the entire room shook.

"What's with the shaking?" Jeanny asked.

Jack stood up once the shaking was over. "The strange shriek seemed to be coming from that direction," he said as he walked towards where he heard the shriek was coming from.

"Huh?" He noticed the part of the wall straight ahead of him had shown some kind of marking in his God-Eye monocle.

That was not there before, Jack thought in his mind.

"Probably whatever caused the shaking had triggered it," Peniel explained.

He looked at the wall. The God-eye monocle was only showing a mark telling him that the wall held an important secret, this could be the hidden path they had been looking for, but the monocle did not inform him what to do about it. He placed his hands on it pressing on every surface to see if something could be moved, but with no success.

"What are you doing?" Jeanny asked as she came over. "We have already checked this part of the wall as well, right?"

Probably I can hit it like the boulder that held the treasure chest before? The thought came to Jack's mind.

With the idea, he took out his Storm Breaker. Jeanny was surprised by his action, but she didn't make any comment. Jack sent a slash onto the rock wall. A number of damages appear the same way as when he hit the boulder from before.

It was working! Jack exclaimed in his mind.