Dark Fate, Chapter 75 (Patreon)

Yes, I did it. No, I am not sorry.

Chapter 75 – Unique

I gaped as Shadraus brought out the weapon he wanted to show me. Like, full on, completely unashamedly jaw trying its best to hit the floor. This was something I had never expected to see.

Unique weapons and armor generally came in two types. First, you had things like my armor, which generally came from System rewards, and were tied to an individual. Often, those items would grow alongside the individual. These were always really useful for the individual the System gave them to, but were generally useless for anyone else. Even if the user died, it was unlikely that someone else could then pick up the item and use it, unless they had some connection to the former user that the System recognized.

The potential power of these items was often times well and truly fathomless, bound only by the strength of their users. Of course, not all were so powerful. My own Spellmight Bracers of the Dark Lord were unique, certainly, but they weren’t god-tier powerful or anything. Their most powerful effect was adding 10% to my spell damage when I wasn’t in direct sunlight. Nothing to write home about, honestly, but useful no matter the level I was at.

Compare that to my Chimamire, which was insanely powerful, and would only grow more powerful as I increased in levels and got stronger. That scythe was only ‘Super Rare’, not ‘Unique’. That meant that there were more like it out in the world. Or, perhaps, just that more like it could be made, if someone wanted to and knew how.

And that was what set Unique items apart. They couldn’t be remade. Even for a lot of Artifacts, the potential for them to be remade, or copied, at least existed. Sure, you probably needed to be a god (or at least godly skills), have a certain powerset, extremely rare materials, and enough magical power to infuse into the thing to make it work, but it was possible. Might be a one in ten billion chance, but it could be done.

Unique items were, well, unique. Even the gods couldn’t duplicate them. Which is what made the second, far rarer, type of Unique items so special.

Crafted Unique items were products of mad genius or brilliant madness, combined with a touch of divine inspiration. They were the Rube Goldberg machines that went off flawlessly on the first try, and completely destroyed themselves in the process, so that it could never be replicated. They were not always the most powerful items, but the effects they produced were well outside the normal boundaries of the System.

The Potion of the Black Knight that I’d used in the last timeline, for instance, changed my race to being a Unique creature. Among other things, I was getting ten assigned attribute points per level baseline, and four more that I could distribute. My skills with weapons and armor increased dramatically, and I gained resistances to many kinds of damage. Essentially, it made me a one-man wrecking crew. That was the kind of potential that unique items had.

What I was looking at now was a Unique weapon. An absolute thing of beauty, really. It was a Colt .45, a Peacemaker, with engraved ivory stocks. The barrel, too, was engraved with runes of protection. Only, they did not protect the wielder, but rather the weapon itself, allowing it to channel the power it could unleash.

The velvet cushion in the carved wood box the gun came in also included spots for twelve bullets, but five spots were empty. Each of the seven remaining rounds looked to have been made specially. Indeed, even the casings of each of the twelve bullets was engraved, likely carrying some great enchantment to bestow upon the round when it was fired. Each one was a work of art, made to complement the gun they were paired with.

The Wayward Son

Type

Pistol

Rank

Unique

Damage

Ammo +   DEX

Damage   Type

Varies

This   ornately decorated Colt Single Action Army pistol, known as the Peacemaker,   has a long and storied history. Originally made by Samuel Colt himself from   meteoric iron, it was supposedly imbued with the power to kill anything, the   manifestation of the saying that “God created Man, but Sam Colt made them   equal.” While it might not be able to kill everything in existence or outside   of it, there are very few beings that won’t regret being on the wrong side of   this weapon.

This   weapon has two firing modes: Normal and Imbued shots. In addition, while the   weapon can take normal ammunition, or magic rounds.

Normal   Shot – Deals normal damage to target, based on ammunition used. Consumes ammunition   as normal.

Imbued   Shots – Charges shot with user’s MP. Adds MP invested into the shot to   damage.

Magic   Rounds – Created by channeling mana into the weapon. 600 MP creates 6 rounds,   which deal a base damage equal to the user’s INT at time of creation.

Indestructible   – This gun cannot be damaged or destroyed by any known means.

Starbolts

Type

Ammunition

Rank

Unique

Damage

Special

Damage   Type

Special

When   he made the Wayward Son, Colt also made twelve special bullets from the same   meteor he made the revolver with. These twelve bullets were said to be imbued   with the power to kill even the Devil himself. Five of the bullets have   already been fired, leaving nine remaining.

7/12   rounds remaining.

Death –   When fired from the Wayward Son, these rounds bypass all armor, protections,   and wardings. A single round is said to be able to kill any being inside or   outside of creation. How true that might be is unknown.

My mind reeled as I looked over the description. The actual weapon was as deadly as it was beautiful, even without the special rounds. But the ability to kill anything? That was insane! Even with the System, that was far too broken!

I looked at the description again. “Wait, this was made by Sam Colt? The Sam Colt? How? Anything made before a few months ago shouldn’t be part of the System, much less something that had to have been made in the 1800s!”

Shadraus chuckled. “Yes, I wondered about that, myself. But the key is in the materials, I believe. ‘Meteoric iron’. In other words, metal that came from off the Earth. Asteroid or meteor was actually from outside the solar system, perhaps something brought in on a comet? Well, that would mean the material itself was imbued by the System before it reached Earth.”

I nodded once. “And the lack of the System doesn’t strip away a creature’s System-based abilities, merely suppresses them, makes it impossible to use abilities gained through the System.” I blinked as a thought came to me. “Wait, does that mean that dinosaur bones would be prime crafting materials?”

Shadraus grinned. “I will neither confirm nor deny that someone from the Smithsonian discovered that their T-Rex skeleton (the real one, not the cast they have on display) has some a magical aura to it.”

I took a breath to steady myself. That was huge. As big as the existence of the gun, itself. Bigger, maybe. This meant that if you could find artifacts that existed before the System went offline, you could use them to potentially create items of phenomenal power. I hadn’t heard even a ghost of this, the last time through!

But that was a problem for another time. I met the merchant’s gaze with my own. “How much for the gun, and the bullets?” I couldn’t let a weapon like this get out into the open, not when I had people I knew would all too happily use one of those bullets on me, and mine. If that punk James got his hands on it…

Shadraus sighed. “I showed it to you first, because you’re a friend, and because you’re one of the few people on the planet who could likely afford it, at the moment. However, I am not exaggerating when I tell you that this is the most expensive item in not just this shop, but the System Shop for all of Earth.”

“How much?”

“One point five billion gold.”

The price tag hit me like one of those cartoon anvils smacking a hungry coyote. One point five billion gold was no small order. The number of people who could just pass that kind of money around without doing some major restructuring of their finances was not large at all. The few who had that kind of money, before the Apocalypse, would have had to think quick to avoid getting killed by monsters or looters in the initial insanity. And how many of them would know to look into the System Shop for unique items like this?

Still, I knew that, if I didn’t buy it now, I probably wouldn’t get another chance. But one point five billion was a hit, even on my finances. I looked up at Shadraus. “Anything you can do to sweeten the deal?”

The lich considered for a moment. “Well, since you’re going to be buying such a big-ticket item, I can give you a deal on shuttles.” He grinned at my expression of shock. “Yeah, you forgot about needing to get all those new minions up into orbit, didn’t you? Anyways, I can give you a four for the price of two deal on some old Tel’tak shuttles.”

He tapped a button on the nearby console to bring up a hologram of a vaguely pyramid-like ship. “Older design, really solid, comes with shields and a cloaking device. Only problem is that it is unarmed, but you could modify them later, or just build armed versions once your minions design them. And I’ll throw in a compendium of design templates that your designers can use to get started with figuring out new tech and designing your own ships. All told, that would make the price 1,500,500,000 gold.”

I shook my head. “Damn, Shadraus, not coming down at all? Still, I can swing that. Though it definitely puts a hole in my budget. I’m going to need to get those asteroid miners producing sooner, rather than later.”

“Excellent, my friend.” Shadraus nodded as I transferred the money. “I know your wallet is hurting, but I think you’ve made some incredible choices. Even without the special rounds, that gun will definitely make people think twice about messing with you. Especially once you start getting specially made rounds, with higher base damage ratings on them, and then charging them.”

“Yes, I’m sure. Once gunsmiths start getting access to Adamant, I expect things will get nasty. Or, if they find out some way to work with Imbued Depleted Uranium. Things like that might punch a hole in a battleship’s hull and keep on going. Assuming you could fire it without it doing something nasty to you.”

“Ooh, I hadn’t considered the augmentations that could be made to existing science with magic added in.” The lich was genuinely excited now. “Not just for bullets! Grenades or incendiaries have so much potential, too! I’ll have to get in touch with a couple people. I was just reading about fluorine peroxide, and I’m really interested to see what would happen if you combined that with Elemental Fire.”

“I didn’t figure you for a chemistry buff, Shadraus.”

“Oh, this isn’t just chemistry! This is the chemistry of explosions! And that means it is the chemistry of money! The only problem with fluorine peroxide is that it is too unstable. Likes to blow up if you so much as look at it wrong, unless you keep it at somewhere like minus fifty-seven Celsius. But if you had magic to stabilize it, and combine it with elemental forces… Well, it could revolutionize the weapons industry, and net a very nice profit, not just on the material, but also on royalties from the process itself.”

I had to laugh at that. “Yeah, that sounds more like you. Now, I’m going to leave before you convince me to buy any more stuff that I don’t need. Because I’ve spent WAY too much in a single afternoon!”