Chapter 807: Nevermore: Merit Points

Jake felt pretty good about having one submission down, with only nine more to go. His written plans were already entirely off just from him deciding to submit a damn conversation as a Creation, but Jake didn't regret it at all. In fact, he believed it was a great move.

He wasn't blind to his own uniqueness, and he got the feeling being unique counted even more than the attendant let on, but this wasn't the only reason he submitted the encounter. While Jake had gone over the things that mattered for Creations, it could all be boiled down to one thing: Records.

The Records infused into an object were the only true determiner. More quality Records would mean higher quality and rarity, with the Architect giving an even higher evaluation if it was solely your Records. However, the final product - its overall Records - still mattered. And where could Jake get more Records than from a Bound God with power that surpassed even Primordials? From a being that was the living personification of the most known World Wonder in the entire multiverse? Not that his own Records were anything to look down on either.

So, yeah. Jake was wholly satisfied with his first submission. Also, it was entirely different from anything else Jake could possibly submit, meaning that even if it ended up being a bit of a dud, it wouldn't drag down the overall evaluation much compared to if Jake had just submitted another kind of poison or some inferior product.

Having exited the room with the Architect, Jake also felt that the livestream was back on. He briefly looked up and waved as he went to check out some of the other interesting places in the House of the Architect. Being on the top floor, he decided to just go down and check what was on every floor. Or, at the very least, check what the signs there said.

Flying down one floor, Jake saw only a single door once more. Curious, Jake went close as he entered it, and the moment he did, he felt the livestream getting cut off again. Frowning, Jake felt space around him expand as he found himself standing in a nearly entirely white room with a single attendant right by the door and a number of portals floating all around him. In total, he counted nine portals.

"Welcome to the portal room, Creator. Is there anything I can help you with?" the male attendant, who looked like a butler with his slightly altered uniform, asked.

"Could you tell me a bit about this room?"

"Most certainly. The portal room allows you to travel to several worlds to acquire certain types of materials you may require. This includes people you may need for your creative processes or certain limited ingredients for your more regular crafts. Do be aware that these worlds are uniquely created by the Architect herself and will not have many of the usual ingredients you may experience from a natural world. Instead, they will only serve as catalysts or objectives for certain merit missions," the attendant politely explained.

"When you say people, do you also mean people to potentially teach if I want to submit an improved student as a Creation?" Jake asked, also biting onto the last part about merit missions but putting off that topic for now. He would go visit the merit place later to figure out how all of that worked.

"Most certainly," the attendant answered with a smile. "Do you want me to explain the properties of each world?"

Jake didn't hesitate as he agreed, allowing the attendant to do his thing. It wasn't a waste of time either. Jake learned that each world was widely different, with varying properties, cultures, and whatnot. One of the worlds he instantly wrote off as it was an entirely underwater world, making Jake question if the Architect knew how to design dungeons properly. It was a bit embarrassing, really, considering she literally was a dungeon. Then again, it wasn't like he had to go there, so maybe he could consider it barely forgivable to have an optional water level.

As for the other eight worlds, Jake quickly narrowed it down to three he definitely had to visit. One was a vast planet that was pure wilderness, the other was a highly established metropolis, while the third was your regular medieval setting with different factions and whatnot. His plan for these worlds was to primarily look for people he could potentially teach.

Jake had never seen himself as much of a teacher, but considering the nature of this Challenge Dungeon and that he had not just a legendary teaching skill but was a human with his teaching-related race skills, Jake decided he should at least give it a shot. If not, he would learn not to waste time doing something like that later in his life.

Leaving the portal room, Jake checked out more floors and quickly got an understanding of the place. All the different floors had varying crafting rooms and themes. Entire floors were dedicated to alchemy, others to smithing, tailoring, engineering, and woodworking... the number of rooms was almost endless. Plus, Jake had a strong feeling that should someone with a really unique profession come along, the Architect would accommodate them and make a suitable room.

He also learned that whenever Jake entered one of these many rooms, the livestream would be cut off. Jake reckoned this was to stop even the Wyrmgod from gathering too much information, or maybe it was just the Architect being petty and wanting to show off that this was her Challenge Dungeon and for others to stop snooping. In either case, Jake liked knowing he could do whatever he wanted without worrying. He wasn't afraid of the Architect leaking anything, as she already knew far more than she should and hadn't shared it yet.

After checking out all the rooms, he went to the final thing he wanted to check out: the Merit Points Exchange. It was on the ground floor and prominently displayed. The exchange itself was a huge building, and walking inside, Jake saw hundreds of attendants who all looked busy at work. Jake felt pretty weird about it, considering he was the only one who would ever visit the place, and most of the work they did just seemed like they were trying to look busy.

Trying to ignore it, Jake went to the main counter within the exchange to talk to one of five attendants who manned the counter... again, why the hell were there five when this was a damn Challenge Dungeon only one person could enter at a time?

"Welcome to the Merit Points Exchange; how may I help you?" the attendant asked, mirroring the speech pattern of the one in the portal room.

"Could you give me some general information on..."

To skip over all the boring parts, the Merit Points Exchange was exactly as Jake predicted. You could get missions or turn in stuff to get Merit Points and then spend these Merit Points on ingredients for crafting. Jake also quickly realized the easiest way to "game" the exchange, though he was pretty damn sure his genius plan was just the way it was supposed to be used.

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If Jake bought, let's say, materials for ten concoctions, he would be able to sell back the products from these ten concoctions for more than he used the materials on. A lot more. In fact, they would even buy back failed products, which could lead to quite a nice feedback loop.

Jake could experiment and try to make a Creation using materials from the exchange, and then he could sell back his failed products for more Merit Points to purchase even more materials. So, while it seemed like Jake had to grind out Merit Points to be able to craft anything, it wasn't that bad.

Alas, he still has to get that initial batch of Merit Points to get the entire loop started. Looking through the different missions, he quickly found a few he could do within some of the portal rooms. Though they did all look very boring.

Merit Point Mission: Collect 500 Remonotous Fruits

Current Progress: Remonotous Fruits collected (0/500)

Reward: 750 Merit Points

This first one was just to go collect a bunch of fruits in that jungle world he had seen before in the portal room. The second mission he also prepared to pick up was one that took place in the medieval world, where he had to deliver a bunch of letters, with the third one in the metropolis perhaps the most uninspired of them all.

Merit Point Mission: Deliver 12 letters to their destination.

Current Progress: Letters delivered (0/12)

Reward: 500 Merit Points

And the third one... where he had to quite literally return lost pets. But at least this one rewarded more than the others.

Merit Point Mission: Return 5 lost pets to their respective owners.

Current Progress: Pets returned (0/5)

Reward: 1000 Merit Points

While they didn't give a lot of points, Jake wanted them to check out these two worlds anyway. He also ultimately needed some Merit Points. Also, on a side note, one could only select one mission for each world at a time, so that did suck a bit. Jake always liked it in games when he could pick up several quests in the same area and do them all at once. Made him feel like he was being clever and more efficient than the game expected, despite knowing deep down the developers designed it to be done that way.

"I want these three for now," Jake said to the attendant and handed him the three papers. Because, yes, despite there being a system menu, they also used paper.

"Very well," the attendant said with his perfect customer service smile. "Are there any other missions you would like to accept, or would you like to spend your Merit Points?"

"Maybe I would if I had any," Jake joked back, the friendly yet deadpan of the attendant not changing.

"The Creator currently possesses 5000 Merit Points," the attendant just said instead, Jake needing a second to double-take he had heard right.

"Oh damn," Jake said. "So you start with 5000 or something?"

"Each submission rewards Merit Points to allow the Creator to keep up their creative endeavors," the attendant explained.

"Well, wouldn't you know..." Jake smiled to himself, feeling like he had gamed the system even more than he first thought with that first submission.

"I would know indeed," the attendant answered his rhetorical question, making Jake quickly decide to get away from the creepy, perfect-acting attendants. Despite not necessarily having to do the missions as he did have some points, Jake still decided to give them a go, as he wanted to explore those three worlds no matter what, and doing the missions anyway while in there just seemed like the efficient thing to do.

Starting with the jungle world, Jake went straight to the portal room and into this world. The moment he stepped through, he appeared standing atop a large cliff, staring down as an endless jungle appeared before him.

A system prompt popped up in front of him a second or so later, displaying his current mission for the world, which included a picture of the fruit he had to go collect a whole bunch of. Playing a bit with the system, Jake was surprised to see he had no way to bring up how many Merit Points he currently had, so that was a bit weird and annoying.

Jake also considered for a moment if these Merit Points would be transferred to Nevermore Points in the same way the Colosseum Points had. Yeah, that was definitely a question to ask one of those attendants once he got back, assuming they would even give him an answer.

Focusing on the world in front of him, Jake summoned his wings. Stretching them a bit, it felt good to fully spread them out and be able to do some long-distance flying. Jumping off the cliff, Jake took flight as he soared over the tall trees while observing the life beneath them.

He saw many different sorts of beasts everywhere, with plenty of plant lifeforms also sitting here and there. Looking at one of the many beasts, Jake identified it.

[Crystalheart Lynx - lvl 200]

It was barely C-grade, and as Jake Identified a few more, he realized all of them were level 200 with not a single exception. It was definitely like this by design, making the danger level practically non-existent. Jake had no plans on hunting these beasts down, as he simply had no reason to.

As he continued to scan the world around him, he noticed one thing that was very off. Sense of the Malefic Viper usually picked up a lot of things when Jake traveled in wilderness areas, but here it stayed entirely silent. This indicated there were no alchemical ingredients anywhere within his detection range, and as a Perception enthusiast, Jake had quite a high detection range.

Alright, so the attendant was right. No materials to collect here, Jake thought. Flying down, Jake landed on the ground so his boots could touch the undergrowth. Their passive ability to detect natural treasures activated as always but remained just as quiet as his Sense.

It was a bit of a bummer, as Jake had hoped there were some secret hidden items or something the attendant had purposefully not talked about. Alas, this did not appear to be the case.

Continuing to fly around, Jake soon picked up a familiar fruit with a Pulse of Perception. Once he got over there, Jake saw several familiar trees that all had these fruits growing on them. Monkey-like monsters guarded the fruits, and when Jake Identified them, he was a bit surprised.

[Fruit-gulping Primate - lvl 242]

Level 242 was quite a bit higher than the usual level 200s wandering around. Not that it was any problem for Jake. Not wanting to bother with them, he flew down to collect the fruits. He flew straight up to one to pull it off its stem, but right as he did, the entire fruit exploded, covering him in juices.

"Fucking hell," Jake cursed to himself as he saw through his sphere a monkey on the other of the tree successfully took a fruit off a tree, pissing Jake off even more.

Gritting his teeth, Jake got close to another fruit as a monkey not sitting far away spotted him and jumped to a branch nearby as it screeched at him.

Jake turned his head and looked it in the eye. "You sure you wanna do this?"

The monkey looked at him for a second before taking a step back as Jake stopped it. "Oh no, you started this."

Seemingly realizing it was in trouble, the monkey began hollering loudly, and within a dozen seconds, Jake found himself surrounded by nearly a hundred angry-looking monkeys. Yet none of them ever got within ten meters. Honestly, it was a pretty good situation for Jake.

"Five hundred fruits," Jake said. "Give me five hundred, and I leave."

"Uh? Uh uh!" the largest monkey said. Jake instantly got the gist of what it wanted to communicate. He also quickly confirmed this was the leader, making things a lot easier.

[Fruit-gulping Primate Alpha - lvl 250]

"This is not a negotiation," Jake said as he looked at the monkey, faintly activating Gaze and Pride. "This is a business proposal where you have no leverage whatsoever."

"Uh!" the monkey leader yelled loudly, and just as Jake thought it was about to attack, it reached over to a fruit next to it and plucked it off the tree in a weird fashion that made it not explode before holding it out in front of it toward Jake. "Uh?"

Jake summoned a string of mana to quickly snatch the fruit before putting it in his spatial storage as the quest progressed. "See? Isn't this easier?"

The big monkey yelled, and about five minutes later, Jake flew off again, having done some great business. He had received five hundred fruits, and the monkeys had avoided dying premature deaths while receiving a free bonus of generational trauma toward winged humans.