Walking cautiously through the square door into the temple's underground passage, Crucis hid once more in the rocky left wall of the tunnel as he heard the door slam shut. Looking near the area where the Raptors had last attacked, he saw that the frustrated Garulus had already returned a couple of times to reclaim his corpse, but been killed each time by the Raptors. Since Garulus had already dropped a corpse here, his other deaths were marked with small gravestones. Crucis made sure that nobody was nearby, then walked up to Garulus' corpse and looted it.

  Looking through his inventory, Crucis first checked on the [Silver Orb] artifact. The artifact's description stated that it allows you to transfer an ability from one low-level weapon to another low-level weapon, creating a hybrid weapon with the special abilities of both weapons. This was obviously important to archers, since it allowed them to combine different kinds of basic arrows, such as [Fire Arrow] and [Poison Arrow], to create powerful hybrids. While these arrows could be more difficult to aim, the effect could be highly powerful once the archers had enough skill to use them accurately. However, it was still powerful for most other classes early on, since it could give their low-level weapon powerful additional perks. Over time, this effectiveness would typically wane, because even combining low-level weapon effects would not make up for forgoing the power of a higher-level weapon. At Crucis' level, it could be very powerful, and he planned to use it as soon as he returned to Kruxol and could sort through the weapons he had in Storage.

  From Garulus, Crucis didn't get many drops, since the Mage had just left town and wasn't carrying much. However, he did receive an [Uncut Amethyst] gem, that probably dropped from one of the Raptors, and a [Temple Amulet] which gave +20% INT when in the Temple. Seeing the amethyst, he remembered that his new [Silver Crucifix Dagger] had one gem slot within its hilt. He had gained a gem from the treasure in the labyrinth. He took the [Amethyst] from his inventory, and checking on its description saw that it was rated as of 'medium-high quality,' and hence would raise his weapon's attack speed by 30%. Carefully parting the small slot, he placed the gem inside his dagger's black hilt and then closed the opening. The gem was now hidden inside his dagger's hilt, and he felt that the dagger was lighter and easier to move, with its base weapon speed increased to 200%.

  There was still almost an hour until his red name wore off, so Crucis decided to pass that time by reading a few of the items marked [Light Novel] in his inventory. He had picked them up while exploring and looting players in the labyrinth. The first one began like this:

  Crucis found the tone of this light novel slightly peculiar, but liked the protagonist. He made a note to read it further. Crucis had heard that the obscure Necromancer sub-class had the ability to transform into a Grim Reaper-like figure, and he thought that this would be more interesting if they also became servants of Satan who could not form harems. Leafing through his inventory again, he found another item marked as a [Light Novel]. This one displayed a message before opening:

  [This text was not in your favoured language, so our systems have translated it automatically. The text you will read is machine translated.]

  While Crucis enjoyed this story, he wasn't used to reading this kind of translation. He decided that he shouldn't read too much of it at once, as it might drive him insane. He looked through his inventory for another [Light Novel].

  The answer to the question 'to be or not to be,' if you were a chicken, would invariably be 'both.' If you were a river crab? Then you would not ask such impertinent questions!

  Crucis sighed slightly on reading this passage by the Prince Hamlet, and decided to take a break from reading light novels.