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Streets of Kuō Town
"You’ve got to be kidding ." Issei muttered, one eyebrow twitching madly. "This is the entrance to the first dungeon?"
His travels had taken him to a dilapidated building with a sign above the door proudly declaring ’Manekineko Gaming Systems, est. 1997’ in dirty and discoloured letters. The small two-story building looked like it hadn’t seen an ounce of care in at least a few years, if not a full decade, and was covered in either chipped paint or festooned with graffiti. The main entrance was boarded shut and the windows on the ground floor were broken and blocked by large planks of plywood. Issei couldn’t see the second-story windows, but he guessed they were the sa.
’Whatever spirit or intelligence is inside the [Gaming Gear] has a very weird sense of humour.’ the Sekiryūtei thought with a scowl. ’This has to be the most idiotic place to have the entrance to a dungeon. There’s just no way that there’s one here...right?’
Sadly, if Issei’s ti playing video gas and watching ani had taught him anything, it was that there were a lot of ways to hide sothing in plain sight; spacial pockets, alternate dinsions, bent space...the list went on. He wasn’t sure if that applied to real magic (and he was still getting used to that idea) but he wasn’t willing to rule it out just yet. Hell, for all he knew so of the ani, manga, and gaming companies out there were owned by real supernaturals and they used their magic as inspiration or a template or sothing.
Since there was no way for sothing like an actual physical dungeon to be hidden in the city proper, that ant that there was likely sothing along those lines coming into play here.
Taking a quick look around, the dual Sacred Gear wielder let out a slight sight of relief when he noticed no one around. In fact, it looked like the entire street had been abandoned for a while, all the businesses mirroring the small gaming company in various levels. If Issei were to judge, he’d bet that they’d all closed down at roughly the sa ti, within a couple of years of the Manekineko company at least.
That in and of itself was rather suspicious and, more than that, even if the street was located in the ’rougher’ section of Kuō Town, it was incredibly suspicious that an entire street would be abandoned for the better part of a decade without anyone moving in. Property in a city the size of Kuō was fairly valuable after all and he was sure soone would have tried to ’reinvigorate the neighbourhood’ or sothing by now.
There was definitely sothing supernatural going on here, and Issei was willing to bet his porn he was going to be falling face-first into the middle of it.
Getting inside the building itself wasn’t an issue. The plywood blocking the windows was already half-rotted. A quick solid blow from a [Power Strike] enhanced fist shattered it into splinters and a swipe from the sa cleared any broken glass remaining on the window itself. If anyone even noticed it, they’d likely attribute it to either teenage vandalism (which it kinda sorta was) or so holess person breaking in to scavenge or sleep.
Now it was just a matter of finding the dungeon entrance.
Scattered all over the two-story building were the remnants of the small ga-soft company, which had worked on PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 gas from what Issei could tell from the mouldering posters decorating the walls. He collected what few parts looked to be valuable and/or useful as he went, mostly because he was completely tapped out money-wise thanks to purchasing his Base Core and his magic signature concealing cloak.
The ground floor was a bust aside from the odd knick-knack here and there, so Issei cautiously headed up the stairs to the second floor. His caution had less to do than any fear of an ambush by monsters or so other threat and more with his worries that the stairs or floor might collapse beneath him or even the entire building falling down around his ears. Whoever had built this place had obviously gone for the cheapest options available and he really didn’t want to see if his HP would survive having a building drop on top of him.
"Hello, what do we have here...?" Issei muttered as he stepped into the last room of the building, which was the company manager’s office. Carved into the floor in front of the desk was a magic circle, with odd script written around the circumference. "Well, looks like so genius decided to ss with magic and ended up winning themselves a Darwin Award."
Why say that? Because the dried-up corpse of a man wearing a ragged business suit sat against the front of the desk. Clutched in his right hand was a dagger of so sort, while a thick book was on the floor under where the shrivelled remnants of his left arm hung.
Issei quickly used [Observe] on both of them to make sure they weren’t cursed or sothing.
[Cheap Steel Imitation Atha]
A mass produced and rather poorly made version of an atha, a ritual dagger used in pagan rituals. Despite being made from an alloy, which actually diffuses gathered magical energy past a certain point, this item can still act as a fully functional casting implent, albeit a rather poor one.
Durability: 40/100
Slashing Damage: 25
Piercing Damage: S
Bludgeoning Damage: 10
Abilities: [Casting Implent], [MP Diffusion]
[Cheap and Badly Made Grimoire]
A grimoire is a book of magic, usually made from thick parchnt and covered with stout leather. This one...isn’t. Fashioned from A4 paper and covered in plastic, any mystical qualities that this book could possess are severely dampened as a result, and anything written within is suspect as a result of the dubious nature of its maker’s knowledge.
Durability: 5/50
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