The Mech Touch

As Ves and Ketis stood before the Wishing Fountain, the former explained a few details about the Wishing Fountain's strange lottery drawing process.

He also mentioned many of the strange and powerful prizes that he managed to win from the Wishing Fountain.

"...and that is how a man like myself unwillingly gained a feminine Flower Parasol. Don't get me wrong. It is definitely a powerful high-level artifact that has good growth and development potential. It is just not something that a man would want to get caught with. The artifact itself is also biased against men. It is only truly willing to unveil its full power in the hands of a woman."

"I see." Ketis said with a bemused expression.

The Wishing Fountain truly embodied the randomness of a lottery. While the more valuable lottery tickets always guaranteed a prize award, they did not promise to give their holders exactly what they wanted!

However, as long as the lottery ticket holder got lucky, they had the potential to obtain goods worth hundreds if not thousands of AP that was normally unattainable through other means!

Therefore, the Wishing Fountain was still one of the most valuable facilities of the Mech Designer System. It gave people like Ves hope of obtaining a boon that was powerful enough to change their lives.

Ves had benefited a lot from the prizes of the Wishing Fountain. Now, he hoped that Ketis would be able to get lucky and start to accumulate her own collection of valuables.

"Here." He said as he pulled out a golden lottery ticket from his pocket and dropped it onto the woman's palm. "This is my welcome gift to you. It only costs 5 AP to purchase this ticket, and there is a chance that you might end up winning nothing, but there is always the chance of obtaining a treasure of untold value. Did you know that I originally obtained Lucky from one of my very first lottery draws?"

"Truly?"

"Yes. How else did I manage to obtain a gem cat so advanced at the start of my career?"

Ketis' eyes grew red as she stared intensely at the simple looking golden lottery ticket.

Although it did not convey as much wealth and promise as the radiant lottery ticket that Ves had shown off earlier, the golden ticket still represented a huge array of possibilities.

Would she be able to get lucky as well and obtain a lifelong companion that could grow a lot more powerful over time?

She did not know the answer, but that was why she wanted to give this a try. She did not hesitate any longer and immediately tossed the ticket into the fountain as instructed.

The Wishing Fountain absorbed the ticket before the water began to glow gold.

Soon enough, the fountain spat out a black boot of an ancient style.

Ketis catched the piece of footwear and looked at it with puzzlement. "That's it? Where is the other boot?"

[Congratulations! You have won a replica of Tye-Kayense's Left Boot!]

"..."

Ves became speechless. Was Ketis' luck that terrible? Although the design of the boot was rather interesting, he did not sense it was made out of any powerful or exceptional materials at all. It was just a boot that any shoemaker could make in his own workshop in a matter of days!

Perhaps believing that there may be more to this prize than was apparent on the surface, Ketis did not hesitate to bend down, remove her left shoe and put on Tye-Kayense's left boot.

"It is a perfect fit." The swordmaster said. "It fits me better than my old shoe."

"Do you notice anything else? Does it provide you with a surge of strength or anything?"

"...No. It is just a boot. A Comfortable black boot, but still just a boot."

Well, that was a waste of a golden lottery ticket. It was a good thing that he still had 9 of them left.

Once Ketis came to terms with the reality that she was not able to win a prize as special as Lucky today, she shrugged her shoulders and was ready to resume her tour of the System Space.

"Er, Ketis?"

"What is it, Ves."

"Aren't you going to change back to your shoe? The boot looks a bit discordant on you. It has been a literal age since asymmetric footwear was last in fashion."

Ketis smirked back. "I don't care about fashion. This boot fits me so well that I don't want to switch back anymore. Besides, I want to keep wearing it if only to confirm that it doesn't come with anything special. I might even have someone craft a mirror copy of this boot so that it won't look out of place anymore."

That was a sensible idea, assuming that the mysterious boot granted by the Wishing Fountain did not secretly carry a curse or any other nefarious dangers.

Though Ves was pretty sure that there was absolutely nothing extraordinary about Tye-Kayense's Left Boot, who knew whether he could trust the System's description!

"Be careful, Ketis. From my own experiences with the System, it never lies about anything it says or describes, but it can still mislead you by withholding important information. It never told me where Lucky came from or who made it. Perhaps what makes this boot special is not its inherent power or the lack of it, but the significance of its appearance to others. Maybe a hidden Compact cultist that is hiding among the population of red humanity would instantly mistake you as a descendant of a great enemy and go after your life."

Although the theory sounded plausible, it was also a very far-fetched scenario. Ketis did not take it too seriously.

"Let us move onto the next facility. I am curious to see what else this place has to offer."

The pair left the Wishing Fountain and moved up to the Divine Bazaar.

Ves did not need to explain too much how Ketis could benefit from this place. As long as she earned enough AP, she could exchange for all kinds of amazing goods and materials that the Bazaar had on rotation at the time!

"The System used to give me access to a huge catalog of goods, but the problem was that most of it was unaffordable to me." Ves explained to the second user of the System. "After upgrading to Version 2.0, the System changed to the current model, which is to offer a selection of several hundred random high-quality goods. There isn't as much variety as before, but you can rest assured that each of this stuff is worth the AP. For example, I have found the Qi Restoration Potion to be extremely useful in emergencies. If I had more AP, I would have bought a few of them in order to stockpile them in the Vault."

Ketis could certainly understand the usefulness of a potion that could restore her extraordinary power in an instant, but that was not what caught her attention.

Instead, she moved over to the section of the Divine Bazaar that offered all kinds of strange and weird materials that she was pretty sure was not available on the open market.

[Radenka Metal]

Price: 55 Ascension Points

A rare exotic metal that originated from Randenka, a planet that was destroyed in a conflict that occurred in the distant past. Radenka Metal is a popular material to forge bladed weapons due to its excellent ability to hold an edge. It combines well with heavenly materials and can be further strengthened and sharpened by imbuing it with the power of metal.

[Trellband Steel]

Price 500 Ascension Points

Trellband Steel is a valuable alloy of multiple high-grade exotics as well as phasewater originally developed by the orven race. Trellband Steel is the favored material used by the high-caste members of the orven race to forge sacrificial daggers. The orven elders and leaders believe that using daggers made out of this Trellband Steel will increase their chances of evolving into phase lords. One of the reasons why they hold this belief is that a dagger made out of this alloy can cut through spatial barriers and energy shields enhanced by phasewater.

[Hiseen Sharpening Stone]

Price: 10 Ascension Points

A sharpening stone created and used by the Hiseen, an ancient brotherhood of swordsmen who sought to train themselves into breaking 10,000 laws with their swords. The Hiseen were convinced that the best way to break every enemy and obstacle in their path was to sharpen their swords to the point where they can cut the immaterial as easily as the material. The Hiseen Sharpening Stone is made out of a special combination of exotic and hyper materials that when used with a specific technique, is able to physically sharpen most swords to the point where they gain a monomolecular edge.

Although the Divine Bazaar did not provide too many offerings related to swordmasters, Ketis already found a small selection of goods that could easily allow her to progress her swordsmanship by leaps and bounds!

Anyone who thought that swordmasters did not need to invest much money in order to progress was wrong.

Just because swordmasters did not rely on huge and expensive mechs to channel their full power did not mean that capital was irrelevant.

Gear mattered just as much to a swordmaster like Ketis. If she was able to forge a powerful new sword or upgrade the Bloodsinger with superior materials like the ones offered in the Divine Bazaar, she was incredibly hopeful that she would be able to master new techniques and elevate her swordsmanship to a higher level.

"This Bazaar is amazing." Ketis said. "I will definitely return here on a frequent basis. No matter whether I come as a mech designer or a swordmaster, this Bazaar should definitely present me with relevant offers. The only issue is the price…"

She had 0 AP to her name. The System did not provide her with a welcome gift of AP, which meant that she needed to start earning it from scratch.

If not for the fact that Ves was awfully short on AP himself, he would have been willing to transfer a few dozen of it for her to get started with using the System.

In fact, Ves was not even sure whether the System had an option that allowed users to send AP to each other.

He could explore that later. He still needed to finish the tour.

"Come. There is something really exciting up ahead."

They left the Divine Bazaar and approached a large and mystical tree that dangled many weirdly shaped fruit from its long and noodly branches.

Ketis looked up at the willow-like tree and stared at the descriptions of all of the enlightenment fruits.

"So this is where you obtained the fruits that allowed people like Tusa and Isobel to master entirely new skills out of nowhere. The fruits you purchased here must be why they mastered shadow and explosion powers, correct?"

Ves was impressed that she was able to make this connection. "That is true. The fruits here all cost a lot of AP, but they are definitely worth the price. You only have to ingest them to master the knowledge contained within. You won't be able to master it perfectly, but you will gain enough proficiency to be able to use what you have learned in your mech design projects right away. The Tree of Possibilities and its predecessor are the reasons why I have been able to progress so damn quickly. Without the frequent infusion of lots of advanced skills and knowledge packages, I would have still remained stuck as an Apprentice Mech Designer at my age!"

Ketis fully understood the significance of the Tree of Possibilities. She immediately thought back on her own problems and shortcomings and knew that she could solve most of them as long as she started to ingest a half-a-dozen enlightenment fruits related to mech design.

She began to see the Tree of Possibilities in the same way as Ves.

This was more than just a tree. It had the potential to become one of the chief contributors to her future success!

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