Chapter 170: Well Earned Rewards
With the influx of Epic Grade items, the mood in Marimgar was high, even as they cleared the area around the base of monsters, and brought the Armoured Boar carcasses in to be butchered and placed in cold storage for later use.
Gerry had a theory that the reason so many of their people had reached level 0 and even become heroes was that they were eating plants of this new world, with a higher energy content, and possibly even mana in them.
There was no way for them to test that theory with the equipment that they had, but it was as good of a guess as any.
And after asking around, neither the Arks nor the underwater base had seen any new heroes. The Arks had level 0 humans, but not nearly as many as Marimgar had managed, relative to their population.
It was mostly idle talk as they all worked to clear away the corpses, so that the next wave couldn’t use them to breach the walls.
Between that and the repair teams, there were no idle hands in the city, and none of them had found any time to see what the new Goblin King Dungeon was all about.
It was level 3, not a difficult place for most of the heroes to challenge.
But it would be the next logical training spot for those who were moving up from the Rat Demon Dungeon.
Now, they had the ability to let the new heroes work their way up to at least level four or five without leaving the walls. That was enough that they would soon catch up to the basic requirements for the invasion, if they did manage to get some time off between Trials.
Level five warriors were strong enough to hold off the Ogres, but only just. They relied mostly on gear and healing to do it, while the level nine and ten warriors were so powerful that they could easily face off against the overgrown monsters on their own merits.
The System didn’t tell them what level the enemies were, but comparing them to warriors was a good baseline. So, it was decided that an Ogre was somewhere around level seven or eight, as that was where most combat classes could fight them alone with a reasonable chance of survival.
Nobody thought that they would ever see the day that they were actually able to fight an enemy in a battle where they were the ones with superior numbers, but it was still a good measure.
The heroes made a few adjustments to their teams, based on what everyone had gotten, and the skills they had available to them.
Some teams had people who specialized in the same thing. Which didn’t matter at the start, as everyone had the same basic skills. But now that they were getting more powerful, it was better to balance the single target and area damage specialists between teams, and to shake up the groups, so that they didn’t get complacent.
Kalli didn’t take any part in it, she left it to them to do themselves.
Partially because she wanted them to show their abilities, and partially because it was the only way that she could think of to welcome all these new heroes into the group.
It was their first trial in Marimgar, they had just received the same three Epic Grade rewards that Kalli had, while everyone else got the hard mode reward for {Hold The Wall} and at least a few rewards for {Hero of Marimgar}, the kill count quest.
The city was practically swimming in rewards today, and most of them were directed at combat abilities of the heroes, except for the Epic Grade rewards, which were much more varied.
Gerry had even received a magical spice bottle, which could replicate a spice blend for him to use.
For their head chef, having his own unlimited blend of kitchen pepper was practically a miracle.
Most of the other rewards were also personalized to the users, with only a few that didn’t seem to fit. Or that fit in a way that the recipient wasn’t willing to publicly admit.
One of the male mages had received a lovely armoured battle gown that looked like a princess dress with plate in all the right places to emphasize the physique.
But not a man’s physique.
Honestly, Kalli thought it should be fine. It would fit to the body, so it wasn’t going to give him "Boob Armour" like some fantasy video game. But the powder blue and silver motif was apparently too much for him.
It could be the system trolling him.
That wouldn’t be the first time that someone had suspected that the System was giving them rewards for its own entertainment. Yara had received a maid outfit from one of the Uncommon Grade boxes.
A very short and frilly maid outfit.
However, she had no intentions of giving it up, even though it wasn’t a bonded item.
As she handed out items on request of the heroes, Kalli spent a few moments wondering who her friend was saving that particular outfit for, then focused her attention back on the people in the room as stomping feet made everyone turn.
Reggie had just walked in, and he had a heavy power armour suit similar in quality to the one that Kalli had received, though it was not a flying suit, along with a shiny new Epic Grade shield that had its own mana powered forcefield.
It was very impressive looking.
"Well, I might have gotten off to a rough start with that death today, but the System has blessed me anyhow. This suit has four hundred points of armour, more than four times what my old one did.
Add the shield to it, and I won’t have to worry nearly as much about taking damage," he declared.
"And it comes with a full helmet, so I don’t have to look at your face," Yara added helpfully.
"I will have you know that many of the ladies appreciate my fine features."
Yara gave him a doubtful look, and a number of his friends chuckled. They had all known each other since kindergarten, and were long since used to Yara bullying Reggie. But for those who didn’t know their history, it almost looked like she was the tsundere type, who didn’t know how to show affection.
That couldn’t be further from the truth. They were lifelong rivals, and it had started from the simplest of conflicts.
They both preferred the same seat in the classroom.