[D'sP] Random Fact Cashier Ninjutsu - Chapter 341 (Patreon)

OG didn’t give up right away at trying to scratch the ingot. After all, even pre-system, there were various alloys and treatments that could result in strong metals. He was doomed to fail.

The dagger that OG was using had dropped on the second floor, which he carried around for non-combat purposes. Until now, this worked. While it certainly had a tougher time cutting stuff from the deeper floors, mithril is a different story. It was impossible for the vendor trash tier dagger to even leave a mark. Unlike if it had been an iron bar, mithril is inherently magical. Just like how you need to forge it in an environment dense in world energy, to damage the ingot you’d need something containing dense enough energy.

Down in the core room, Ally is having a good laugh, watching the attempt and explaining the details. In particular, she passes onto Doyle that while not a hard and fast rule, things usually go by magnitudes of difference and tenths. Though someone else notices what OG is up to and passes the ingot over to Ruby, who recognizes it as a magic metal.

Ally can only sigh and regret the show was over. She shakes her head and grinned, ‘Like his dagger could even come close to scratching that ingot.’

Doyle, ‘Did not know that and what do you mean by magnitudes and tenths?’

Ally shrugs, ‘Of course you knew it, you just didn’t apply it to this situation. This is all based on the same reason pre-system stuff sucks. The bigger the difference is between energy density, the harder it is for the lower density thing to do anything to something with a higher density.’

Doyle, ‘But you mentioned that trying this with an iron ingot would have worked?’

Ally nods, ‘This has to do with why no one on the planet should have the ability to hurt your core right now. After all, your core is much more magical than an ingot of mithril.

‘See, even with magic thrown in, physics still has a say in how reality works. Sharp stuff is still sharp and heavy things are still heavy. If you threw a magicless rock at someone, while it might not hurt them, it could definitely knock them down.

‘However, mithril and other inherently mystical things start to break that balance in various ways. Even though that mithril ingot would have the same energy density on the fourteenth as an iron ingot you spawned there, the mithril has more of it. This emphasizes the breakpoints.’

Doyle, ‘And I assume those breakpoints are the magnitudes and tenths you mentioned? It feels like you’re aiming for this all being based on levels, but levels by themselves do nothing last I checked.’

Ally, ‘You’re right, levels don’t inherently do anything. However, they are indeed used as the scale and you can blame your kind for that.’

Doyle, ‘I don’t see most dungeons being able to convince an entire universe of something like that.’

Ally shrugs, ‘I guess technically it wasn’t willfully caused. However, dungeons did provided a convenient scale to measure things against.’

Doyle’s core rolls back and he sighs, ‘Our loot is standardized. In fact, you literally just said that when comparing a mithril and an iron ingot on the fourteenth floor.’

Ally laughs, ‘Yep! Loot matches the level of what dropped it or the floor’s minimum level if spawned in or harvested. This is why magnitudes and tenths aren’t a hard rule. It is based on the level of dungeon loot, which there is a spell to detect despite most other informational spells you would expect not existing.’

Doyle, ‘Let me guess. Since the density is standardized, it doesn’t actually know the “level”, but rather just detects said density and guesses?’

Ally puts two fingers close together, ‘Almost! You’re so close, but missing an important part. Dungeon loot isn’t only standardized, but homogeneous. You try and use the spell on something else, it won’t even be able to give a false level because of the variance. In fact, the spell only detects the level of loot that hasn’t been used outside of the dungeon it dropped in. Though even if you don’t use the loot, having the loot outside of the dungeon for long enough will eventually have it stop detecting as well.’

Doyle nods, ‘And the stuff about magnitudes and tenths is based on the level of dungeon loot as a shorthand for an item that is completely one energy density. Sort of like that science joke about spherical cows.’

Ally raises an eyebrow, ‘Well, I haven’t Herd that one before.’

Doyle groans, ‘Fair enough. Anyway, it started as a metaphor that poked fun at theoretical physics. Scientists would tend to reduce a problem to the simplest imaginable form so the calculations would be possible, even if in doing so it hinders the use of the model in a real situation. And of course, as with all, quote unquote, good jokes, it has since spread around to multiple disciplines.’

Ally scrunches her eyes shut and rubs the bridge of her nose, ‘I’ve dealt with a few people like that while learning how to be a dungeon fairy. After listening to them, you would think the best a floor can be is a straight line of rooms where each room has one more monster than the one before it.

‘So, uh, what was the original joke? I know a few people who would probably enjoy hearing it. Plus, if it is good enough, it would be a shame if the joke wasn’t spread beyond your planet.’

Doyle tilts to the side, ‘I’m sure someone will have come up with a similar joke out there, but whatever. At least it isn’t a pun. Though I don’t remember it perfectly, but here is what I’ve got.

‘Milk production was down at a farm, so the farmer asked for help from the local university. They put together a multidisciplinary team headed by a theoretical physicist and an intrusive investigation took place. The team returned to the university with notebooks crammed with data and the team leader was tasked with writing the report. Shortly after, the physicist returned to the farmer and said, “I have the solution, but it only works in the case of spherical cows in a vacuum.”

‘And of course there are a ton of variants to it. I’m honestly surprised how well that came out, if I’m to be honest. Then again, I did pick up a ton of jokes and facts like that while working as a cashier. Some people just want to talk and that joke comes easily if they are buying milk.

‘Though I got more mileage out of facts because the customer wouldn’t have to get a joke for a fact to work. For instance, we had an ice cream topping that would go on as a liquid, but then solidify, creating a shell. Most people didn’t know how that stuff worked so explaining it got me out of a ton of social interaction. See, it wasn’t some strange chemical nonsense. They had simply mixed in coconut oil, which is solid around room temperature. And once that was out I could natter on about how I always thought it was something strange or how it still wasn’t healthy, but not as bad as I thought.’

Ally chuckled, ‘I can definitely tell you’ve had some practice with that. It just flowed out with a well-practiced flair and despite using telepathy, you managed to go into a customer service voice. I bet if you had a face, it would have had a customer service smile as well.’

Doyle, ‘Ugh, don’t me started on that sort of nonsense. I had to work at making sure I wouldn’t just automatically say stuff like “have a nice day” when people would pass me outside of work. That was literally just an automatic reaction I had near the end.’

Ally groaned and stuck her tongue out. ‘There are certainly some places like that out in the universe. Thankfully, most places that have any kind of out of system traffic tend to drop such things. There are too many cultures and at least in this universe, we’ve settled on saying less. After all, I know of at least five subspecies of human that through various means can detect whether such a goodbye was sincere and would take it as an insult if it wasn’t.’

Doyle, ‘But won’t there also be cultures that require such niceties?’

Ally rolls her eyes, ‘Well, that’s their problem. We’ve settled on not speaking as the passive side of things if you don’t know what to do. Way too many beastkin, other such beings, and even humans on this very planet with certain conditions will freeze up when shocked or not knowing what to do. You don’t blame the deerkin for freezing up when you suddenly shine a light in their eyes and you don’t get to be mad at a cashier for not wishing you a good day when you leave.’

From there, Ally and Doyle talk a bit more about his life before magic arrived and generally compare the cultural differences.

All the while, Ruby and Ace are examining the mithril ingot. By this point, they suspect what it is, but to truly confirm it, they’ll have to try and forge the ingot in a regular fire. They would have likely kept quiet about what they thought the ingot was until then, except for OG. He was excited by his discovery and kept badgering them about what it was, even if it was just a guess.

Ruby was the first to fold under the pressure. “We think it might be mithril.”

Jack, “You think the ingot is mithril? I would figure that wouldn’t be a hard thing to determine. Either it is mithril or it isn’t. From what little the guide talked about the stuff, should be pretty easy to tell. Send some mana through the ingot and if your mana goes faster than anything else we’ve been using, odds are it’s mithril.”

Ruby shook her head, “If only it was that easy! Sure, since we gained ingot from a dungeon instead of mining it out in the wild, odds are this is generic mithril. But it doesn’t have to be.”

Ace nods, “Unlike how things worked before, magic means even iron isn’t always just iron. Black, cold, deep, and more! Each of those is technically iron, but because of how magic has interacted with the very atoms themselves, they have different properties.”

Ruby sighs, “Mithril, while technically not a magical metal, gets lumped in with them as it shares an annoying property with the others. There is no such thing as ‘pure’ mithril. It isn’t an alloy, mind you, but mithril also doesn’t have a specific place on the periodic table either.

“All of the mystical metals on a certain level are more conceptual than not. However, they exist under specific names because the concept has solidified around it. Mithril conducts magic better than any mortal metal. Not even gold can match it, even when conducting lightning magic.

“So yeah, if I had to say one way or another, this is generic mithril. But! And this is important. It might be a variant of mithril. Now, this obviously isn’t blood mithril, that stuff’s red. Not blood red, mind you, but a bright vivid red, nonetheless.”

OG, “Why is this important? Like, I assume the blood mithril likely does an even better job at conducting blood energy or maybe when used in a blood ritual. But, I also assume it still works as mithril.”

Ace grimaces, “Yes, but the extra side effects are important. Blood mithril doesn’t just conduct blood energy better. When melted down in a special manner, it literally becomes a blood substitute.

“What is more worrying, is that some of the mithril variants can do some nasty things to the power running through them. For instance, someone had a tutorial guide tell a cautionary story about using random gear you find on dead things. A person picked up a ‘mithril’ wand and ended up dying mysteriously, at least it was a mystery until they analyzed the wand more closely. The variety of mithril used to make the wand interacted with magic flowing through it strangely and would put off what was basically magical radiation.

“Don’t get me wrong, that variety of mithril isn’t a bad thing. You just need to know what you’re handling. While the person that told us this story didn’t remember everything, but they were mostly certain the guide had offhandedly mentioned the want had been made for a species that could use the energy it gave off to heal.”

Ruby nods, “And we both doubt this metal is a dangerous form of mithril. You’re more likely to come across situations like that when buying goods from intergalactic traders or delving on planets other than your own. Dungeons rarely develop loot that is dangerous to the main species that inhabit the planet they form on. I don’t know why so many guides made sure to point that out, but I guess it will be good information for when we can finally get visitors to the planet.”

Using Authority - Chapter 340

Actually Advancing - Chapter 342