Chapter 3| Rewarding Survivors

Looking down at the clothes that had come in the wooden box, Jay had a complicated expression on his face. The clothes consisted of underwear, a white shirt, a pair of socks, and a pair of jeans.

After a few moments, he put them on with a sigh, annoyed that he would be getting a bunch of goblin blood on all the clothes he had for the moment. Still, they were a good fit and there wasn't any source of water within the area that he could spot..

Next up was the iron weapon box. It was about a metre long but only a quarter of that in width. Opening it, he found a metal mace inside of it. It was a little less than a metre long but looked quite scary. It was a flanged mace, with four dull metal blades at the end of it. He didn't doubt those would be able to break through bones without a problem.

Holding the mace in his hand, it was quite heavy, which was most likely a good thing with a weapon like this. After a few test swings, he wanted to put the weapon away but realised he didn't have any way to properly keep it on him, so he put it on the ground for now.

The final box was the Bronze gear box, the only box of its tier he had gotten, from what was most likely the most difficult achievement to complete.

Mentally calling forwards the reward, a shining bronze box appeared from thin air, it was intricately crafted unlike the previous boxes with various motives spread across the box. On its front and its top it had a bronze emblem with a set of shining armour atop of it, signifying what Jay assumed was the 'gear' symbol.

After rubbing his hands together, Jay opened the latch to the bronze box and peered inside.

When he opened the box he had expected to find a piece of metal armour, perhaps a helmet or breastplate. But instead, within a box lay a suit, not a suit of armour, but a formal cobalt blue suit with a breast pocket and buttons running down its front.

For a few seconds, he remained silent in his confusion, recalling a line within the Tome of The End.

'Occasionally, rewards may seem odd or lacklustre, perhaps even infuriatingly bad. But you should always remember that the system is fair. A Bronze box will always be better than an iron box, there are no exceptions.'

Picking up the suit, he looked at it for a while before resolutely grabbing the goblin bone dagger and stabbing it towards the suit. Jay managed to get leverage on the suit but no matter how hard he pushed he couldn't produce a tear. He thought of trying to pierce it with the mace, but decided against it, just in case it did manage to breach the suit which had already proven it had at least some defensive properties.

Jay looked at the suit once more and noticed something odd. Despite using the bone knife which was still constantly dripping green blood, not the slightest hint of a stain could be seen on the suit. He moved over to the goblin corpse, lowering the suit so the botton of it was directly touching the mangled part of the corpse that had once been a face, before pulling it back to look at the effect the blood had on the suit. There was nothing, af if the blood had never touched the suit.

Jay accepted the development before putting the suit on, surprised that the suit didn't hinder his movement at all when he tried doing some stretches.

He knew that the suit would be able to aid him a lot as a bronze piece of equipment, according to the tome there were five different tiers of equipment within the tribulations. There were wood, iron, bronze, silver, and gold.

Wood was the most common by far. Things of this rank weren't too special, many mundane objects given by the system would get this tier as well.

Iron was a significant jump up. Items of the iron rank would generally be quite useful. Iron-ranked armor would be able to stop mundane weapons quite easily while iron-ranked weapons would punch through mundane armor with the same ease. Generally, survivors of the tribulations would have at least one or two pieces of iron equipment.

Bronze was another large leap forward in quality. Bronze equipment was significantly more capable and was the first tier that could be enchanted. Its rarity was also much more apparent with most people generally only being able to get a chance of getting this type of equipment near the end of the tribulation.

Silver and gold were even more outspoken, it was technically possible to gain these types of equipment during the tribulations but it hardly ever happened.

With the armor on, Jay picked up his mace and was about to begin practicing when he saw something from the corner of his eye.

From the direction of the same beach he had fought at, a woman was approaching. She was still naked but seemed quite a bit cleaner compared to Jay, with only a few droplets of green blood staining her face. The women seemed to be in her late twenties, with short hair that only reached her shoulders.

She seemed to be breathing heavily as she entered through the barrier, her gaze flicking towards Jay the moment she crossed the barrier. Jay could see the woman was wary but didn't do anything to make himself look less threatening, holding his mace, half his face covered in goblin blood with a mangled goblin corpse a few feet away from him.

The woman seemed uncertain for a few moments as he looked at Jay before moving further into the area. After seeing Jay wasn't about to say anything she opened his mouth, "I'm Trell…Who are you?"

"The name's Jay," he responded "You should open your boxes, who knows when we'll have to fight again."

After taking a moment to appraise Jay, Trell nodded, knowing about the boxes from the notification. It seemed that she had gotten three boxes. A wooden clothing box, a wooden survival box containing food and water, and an iron weapons box.

Trell's survival box didn't contain a backpack like Jay's and only had a few days' worth of food, unlike the iron box which gave a week's worth. Trell's weapon appeared to be a rapier. It was made out of steel and seemed about as well-crafted as Jay's mace.