One Last System

"What the hell..." Mia muttered the second I opened the doors leading back to the main part of the shop.

Because the path that we took before was now nowhere to be seen, replaced by a diagonal wall that cut the path to the shop and a hole in what used to be a wall before.

'It's like an entire wall turned around,' I thought, looking for the signs of something like this happening.

And sure enough, after just a few seconds, I managed to locate a rail on which the wall turned to block the entrance to the warehouse while opening the way to the secret compartment of the store.

"This is where they hold all their valuable weapons," I replied offhandedly, slowly making my way through the secret tunnel.

Back in the game, there were no traps in this place... But that's mostly because I reached this location through the proper means, by completing an entire questline and then challenges.

"Be careful while we descend," I warned Mia the second I noticed the stairs.

So far, everything was going like I expected. But there was no telling whether or not those expectations would drag us into a hell lot of trouble!

"I will," Mia nodded her head, her face taking on a serious look.

We slowly descended the swirling staircase. As the secret room was actually hidden in the secret compartment of the building's basement, it only made sense for the path to be pretty weird like that.

And then, without any unsavory surprises, we reached the bottom of the stairs.

"It's here," I muttered, looking at simple, wooden doors.

It was the very first element of the underground that showed the effects of the time passing.

I reached out and touched the knob of the door... Only for my hand to push through, separating the metal piece from the wooden rest of the door.

And then, with its structure broken, the doors simply fell apart, turning into a pile of decayed wood.

"Huh?" Mia shrugged, not prepared for this kind of development.

In this place, nothing appeared to get old. Nothing appeared to decay with time. Yet, for the first time since we entered the ruins, something proved to be susceptible to this greatest killer in the universe.

"I didn't expect that," I admitted, looking impassively at the round door's knob left in my hand. Not knowing what should I do with it, I simply threw the item on the floor before stepping inside the secret room of the shop.

"At least this place is not a disappointment," I muttered, staring at the display shelves filled with all sorts of weapons.

This place was the high-end shop for the end-game players. And as anyone who played any game in the latter period of modernity knew, what an end-game shop it would be if it didn't offer stuff breaking the immersion?

After all, what players would bother to play the game if they couldn't pay with real money to look different than the others? To stand apart from the masses?

And while in the game that this place was clearly designed to look alike, the end-game not only meant great weapons for melee classes but silly upgrades for ranged classes as well.

"What are those things?" Mia asked, approaching the shelf stacked with handguns of all kinds. Some of them had futuristic designs that even I couldn't recognize!

"Guns," I replied, ignoring the part of the shop filled with weapons that I knew nothing about.

Because ultimately, I wasn't here for the guns. According to my private judgment, even a seventh-stage practitioner would become resilient enough for bullets to only amount to a nuisance for him.

"By going with the greatest caliber and penetration, maybe even people up to the tenth stage could be vulnerable to the guns," I muttered, looking around the place in search of the one thing that I wanted to upgrade in my equipment.

I was looking for a spear.

"Guns? Aren't those the weapons from your world?" Mia asked, looking at me sideways.

"Yeah, they are," I replied and nodded my head. "Don't ask me who brought them here, though. I don't even know how come they still exist instead of turning into a pile of rusted-out metal," I added.

I knew close to nothing about this place outside of the knowledge I gathered by playing the game. As such, I didn't know who built this place; I didn't know how they made everything seemingly resist the passage of time...

The only hint regarding those topics that I had was the sigma mark that the ruins were shaped in. As for what did it mean or if it had any meaning at all in the first place...

I couldn't say.

"Would you mind if I check some of them out?" Mia asked, leaning her head to the side. Her eyes sparkled with curiosity, showcasing just how eager the girl was to follow up her words with her actions.

"Just give me a moment," I replied with a smile. "There might be some securities in place. Also, even if you are pretty strong right now, I don't want to go and kill myself only because I wouldn't be able to accept your accidental death if you were to fire the gun at yourself," I added, raising my hand with forefinger outstretched and then swinging it to the sides as if I was scolding a child.

"I get it, I get it," Mia chuckled as she raised her hands only to put them behind her back and lock them together. "I won't touch anything before you tell me you are ready to oversee it."

This wasn't exactly what I intended... but it would work for now. Because between swords, daggers, spears, and guns, only with the latter, I couldn't trust Mia to handle it on her own.

"Now then, where are the spears," I muttered, moving around the cramped room.

It was never supposed to be a place where one could inspect the wares. Back in the game, one could simply talk to the NPC standing in the corner of the room to get a neat list of all the equipment along with its stats.

But I didn't have this sort of luxury right now, especially with how there wasn't a single NPC in the entire town.

Thankfully, the spears are a big kind of weapon. As such, finding it in this small place wasn't all that much of a challenge.

"Here it is," I muttered again, my lips forming a satisfied smile.

A dragon-slayer spear.

On the outside, one couldn't tell that it was a special weapon of any sort. It had a simple structure of a handle smoothly turning into a wider piece of material on which the blade itself was located.

There weren't any redundant decorative elements on the weapon, as if the developer behind it understood the principle of medieval weapons and took it into account when doing this project.

Still, out of all the spears that this shop had to offer, the dragon-slayer spear was definitely the most suited one for my current purpose.

Not even due to its stats, which, to be perfectly honest, were below the average for the end-game items.

It was all for the several bonuses that this spear offered to its wielder and towards certain species of enemies.

"What did you find?" Mia asked, approaching my side the moment she heard me talk silently to myself. "Is that it?" she then asked, her voice revealing just how much I betrayed her expectations.

"I know how it looks," I nodded my head with a small smile of a pro talking to a newbie about the best tactics of the game. "But trust me," I added, reaching out and grabbing the handle of the weapon before pulling it out of its rack. "There is a lot more to this spear than what you can see in it," I added, gently running my fingers down the handle.

Just by holding the spear in my hand, I could feel a tremendous power surging inside. It felt as if the spear started to steal my own energy the second I touched it, storing it somewhere inside its blade, only to then amplify it and...

And do nothing further.

This was the one downside of this spear, a downside that made players regard it as a B-tier weapon suitable only for a slim variety of builds.

'To think that it would suit me so well,' I thought when I noticed just how small the problem the gamers had with this weapon was when it laid in my hand.

The greatest downside of the dragon-slayer spear was its constant mana-drain status. Back in the game, there were only two classes that could have a build focused on mana enough to satisfy the requirement of the weapon within the frame of the prolonged, end-game fights.

But for the current me?

The mana suction of this spear was below the level of the mana I was losing just due to my aura projecting outwards!

"If this weapon is anywhere as good as I believe it is," I whispered, raising the spear so that the blade would end up perfectly at the level of my eyes. "Then I just tripled my power," I added, only to turn my eyes to the side, right where Mia observed every last of my movements.

"Is it really that good?" Mia asked, the look behind her eyes showcasing just how hard it was for her to accept such a simple, if not crude, weapon as something actually useful.

"I will show you what this spear is capable off later," I said before turning my head towards the other items in the store. "But in the meantime, do you have any weapons you would like to try out?"