[NR] Chapter 157 - So That Armor the Wight Had On (Patreon)

Looting finished, Jason noticed he had gotten a system message. It had been a while since one popped up, so what it might be for interested him. It was a simple message. He had gotten two hp, one stamina, and one control for the fight. It had been so long since the last time his stats grew that the message shocked him. Not that he would complain, though the boost in control was weird.

Finished with everything the group moves on and nothing else happened that day. Now with camp set out Courtney takes out the armor. She had done little research on the area, but knew about the common artifacts.

After a more in-depth look over it, Courtney lets out a low sigh. “Originally this was armor for a low to mid range officer, likely higher than level 35 but below 50 so well into the third bottleneck. Also likely a mercenary as the armor isn’t local. Should sell easily enough, but is worth less than 30 gold. For something like this I advise we just sell it to the guild. It would take too much effort to find a good buyer.”

“Though if there is an auction house that might be a better choice. I bet there are a few necro types near here on the lookout for gear of this specific vintage. However as it isn’t locally sourced gear that might knock a few gold off the price.”

Rosha tilts her head, “Why would it matter where it came from? Armor is armor isn’t it?”

Courtney shrugs, “for the most part it is. However with undead some factors tilt the scale. Even though their levels can grow, sentient undead work best with stuff they did before death. This means that local undead will be able to use their armor skills best with local armor. Best of course would be to have the armor they wore in life, but not always possible. Next best will be stuff like what we have here. Armor from that time period. Of course we have foreign armor which is less than stellar but as one of the first groups we met was mercs there should be enough need for it.”

“If this armor was in original condition, it would be worth a lot more of course. But undead tend to be used in a swarm style of combat. You can’t be outfitting every skeleton you have in armor worth 200 gold a pop. Instead, you throw most of them in cheap leather gear and the few sapient undead in cheap stuff like this.”

“Though there is one final little quirk that can make armor like this worth it. Sadly, this one doesn’t have it, but some of them will develop effects specific to the undead. The best known one is that armor made for a specific regiment can develop bonuses that ease the skill penalty non-sapient undead have if the undead had been in that regiment in life.”

“For instance, there was a well-known group of heavy infantry made of rhinofolk in this one country. We don’t know when, but the country fell and this group all died at once from a magic tsunami which washed them out to sea. One of the first players to be a necromancer found their final resting place and of course raised them all. Normally heavy infantry isn’t that good of an undead option as they rely heavily on skills. However, the armor found at the site spurred him to raise them. It allowed any undead raised from a member of that group to use their heavy armor skill at 75 percent of what it was in life. Rich players skipped trying to offer gold for that group of undead and went straight to offering kingdoms and positions of power. It was a big deal to say the least.”

Jason nods, “Yeah, I watched a video of some guy analyzing that during school. If that happened now, it is likely that major corporations would fight tooth and nail for it. The person who found it would come out with the wellbeing of their families guaranteed for a few generations, no matter what happens. Good thing if you try to kill people for this purpose, it doesn’t work out. The armor just won’t pick up the effects when you try.”

“It seems the company didn’t want anyone to gain an immortal legion too. Then again, I never really understood the idea behind trying that anyway. Either the group would be too low level to be worth it or they are high enough level that you’re better off just letting them continue to grow.”

Rosha shrugs, “fair enough. I can see there is much more to this subject than I care to know. Anyway, what I got out of that is we can sell it for less than 30 gold and if we get lucky who can guess. Maybe we get lucky and there is a collector or some other nonsense in the town. You both explained some stuff, but what I want to know now is when do we eat?”

Courtney and Jason are both struck silent. Jason blinks a few times, “I guess we can eat right now.”

Dinner finished Jason putters around with his garden. It is now his first day of travel with his new bonus, and he wanted to see what it did for the soil. The answer to that though is nothing much. Through his new sense of nature he can tell it is good soil, but he realized his mistake. Jason hadn’t actually checked what it was like this morning. The good news is that his Energy herbs had matured so he could feed Lily fresh berries. Plus the other herbs are nearly mature as well. Not that he had any clue what to do with the others. Though speaking of Lily, he checks on her again. After the xp poison nonsense she had gotten better, but the strange number signs in her xp values hadn’t gone away. At least not when he had checked last night, or the night before, or the night before that.