Raiding Heaven’s Treasury

There was no one in front of the Treasury. There was no door nor gate either. I guess Heavens don’t get raided too often.

I entered.

Inside was also empty with the exception of furniture and a single note on the desk. I picked it up.

“If one of you fuckers moves another fucking item when I’m not here

I will fucking smash that fucking Throne on your empty little heads.

If you have to take something note down the item no. and other details in the books”

Scary. Even fucking scary. Some angels do swear indeed. I hope to never meet the Treasurer. Look at it – the F ratio in the first sentence is almost 1 to 6, while whole note is about 1:10. He or she is not a believer of commas apparently.

If I recall correctly these were the first swear word I have heard since coming to Thrope.

Next room reminded me of a smaller version of Heaven’s Library. Books containing record were neatly arranged on both sides.

I picked up a few labeled “Taken From #X” with the highest numbers. There were also some labeled “Put In #X” and “Balance #X of #Y”

I hope I have picked the right ones to fill.

Some form of bureaucracy exist even in Heavens, huh?

With the second-to-last book in hand, that had some blank entries to fill in, I proceeded forward.

Next hall was truly enormous!

It was divided into sections partitioned with glass(?) panes. The section I was in had various types of coins as well as some paper notes. I think the only currencies that were missing were the ones used by divine beings.

First was obviously Divinity itself, while the second was a virtual merit-based currency that had no physical manifestation. In a way Heavens were a lot like a MMO game or.. Earth’s contemporary banking system. The Throne would issue merits, called “Blessings” that could be traded around for resources or favors.

The other corner of the section had various containers, probably intended for money carrying.

I located the coinage used by citizens of Ythall and surrounding areas. There were bronze, silver, gold and whitegold coins. The whitegold coins were mostly casted from platinum. I noticed the platinum was written in the Augmented Reality screen in italics. I inquired further and found out there is no such word in language used by celestials nor any Thrope language. There was no value attached to the coins. I guess it was a blind spot of Appraisal.

I wanted to take the lowest denominations as possible as per not-attracting-attention clause. It should be the bronze coins, but unfortunately there were only 16 such coins in Treasury. They differed in size. Smallest had a hole in the middle, medium was thin flake disc, while the largest was about two millimeter thick medallion. There were some faces and numbers on them that were probably dates to remember some events. Maybe the date of minting that particular coin?

I think the largest and the smallest were casted while the flake one must have been pressed and cut from bronze sheet. I took 13 coins, being careful to leave the 3 oldest examples for reference.

Next were the silver ones, which existed in two sizes. Both were of thick medallion type. I wanted to take some round amount of them, but.. they were again existing in only meager amounts on the shelf. 97 coins of which I took 95 were still the most silver I had ever seen in my life.

My eyes moved toward the golden ones. There were three types. Two of them were round medallions, while third, largest one was a small square tablet. I took 500 of the smallest ones. Having plenty choice I picked mostly the newly minted ones.

Hopefully this would be enough for a while. I had no idea what was all that metals worth on the local market. What was the purchasing power of a small gold coin? What was it equal to in terms of yens ¥?

¥.¥

I gathered all my loot on one of the tables:

Small gold            500

Large silver             38

Small silver             57

Large bronze            4

Medium bronze       4

Small Bronze            5

I looked for the appropriate containers among shelves. I picked two old-looking coin purses. Checked their leather strings just in case of pickpockets. They were still sturdy. I filled one with all my bronze and solitary small silver. I put 25 small silvers in the other.

I picked a few caskets and small chests. Each was intended for a single type of coinage to make sure I was able to easily keep track of them.

I moved everything to my room in palace. Yup I had one. Though it was mostly empty, even missing walls in many places. Quite drafty. Not that there were unpleasant winds in Heaven.

My togas were not ideal for attaching purse strings so I was stuck carrying them until I find some proper clothes.

I took a glance at the remaining money. I understand wooden, ceramic or seashell money, but I wonder what civilization would actually use human or humanoid skulls? Some giants or perhaps necromancers? Maybe demons?

Next few hours were a blur.

There were warehouses filled with raw materials, warehouses of armor and all the different kind of weaponry. I picked up everything I could ever need down there. I chose clothes and armor that closely resembled what Ythall commoners and adventurers would wear. Makes me wonder though why the names of the pieces I have picked bore words like ‘dragon’ or ‘godly’ and such as adjectives.

Yup.

I won’t stick out of crowd now.

As a weapon of choice I have picked a staple of all fantasy – the SWORD! On the second thought a war pick would be much more useful in many cases. Since such picks have a tendency of getting stuck I would use a short sword as a backup weapon. I have PICKed spares of both just in case.

Still.

The advantage of inventory is that I can choose everything in here. Let’s take more backup weapons. Daggers (including throwables), spear, longsword, two-hander, warhammer, mace, halberd, axe, scythe just for lulz, longbow, shortbow, crossbow and their corresponding ammo. I skipped on stuff like slings, as I am no David and simply it would be too difficult to learn how to properly aim that.

I made sure all the weapons were “level-appropriate” or at least “appearance-appropriate” for a beginner adventurer. I have marked those that looked more useful and powerful in case of emergency.

Full plate armor would be my main defense, but I couldn’t imagine myself wearing it while casually strolling through town. It’s not possible to don it on your own as well. Thankfully the helpful AR label says “onesize fit all”. Let’s save that for dungeon.

Just in case some leather armaments would do nice.

I picked some magic channeling equipment like wands and staves. My knowledge of arcane magic was at most superficial. As for other magical equipment I browsed through and picked what suited my fancy. In particular there was a collection of immunity rings that probably covered every ailment that existed on Thrope.

If only they weren’t rings..

I have seen what wearing a wedding band can do to a careless mountaineer.. flesh was stripped and skin flayed when he presumably got the ring stuck on a rock. That photo and story gave me a minor case of ringphobia.

Also equipping them would make gripping the weapon that much harder.

I still had them packed up.

I went around aimlessly and found many interesting items. There was a metal sun with few extra-long sunshines ending with various ports. It had an ominous name “Electrical Sun Nyan”. This was obviously a magical device generating a constant alternating current via those sunshines.

In other words a magical charger for phones and other electrical devices.

Shame though I was not kidnapped with any electrical appliance!!!

Completely useless!

Or..

Maybe not.

Quick search revealed a single electrical appliance. Except it used mana so charger was not useful. You will have your time to shine, Nyan! When the civilization on Thrope reaches modern age that is.

The Laiskuger, apparently was a device for cooking some kind of a grain. The description provided by Identify did not specify what grain exactly. A creation of an isekaied person, Hiiro.

Isekaied person? Japanese name?

Could it be?

It was a rice cooker, alright. Why was the name warped so much?

And also there is no rice in Heavens.

I guess I will have a bowl of rice some other time.

- Rice, rice baby

- Rice, rice baby

I whispered to myself and only the echo answered.

At this point my quite spacious room was beginning to get messy. I tried experimenting with the rules governing the space and time inside of it.

For starters it would be smarter to disable gravity for non-living things. Scratch that. For all the thing with exception of all the celestials of my Household.

If I were to put a pet in there it shouldn’t move. Same with hostile critters. Imagine catching a thousand rats and releasing a rat plague on the enemy.

I have also made a small section with the time stopped inside. As a rule of thumb anything would deteriorate much slower in Heavens due to their inherent nature. In case I would like to put like mountain worth of hot lave inside it would still cool down if the time was not stopped.

Why would I need so much lava?

Never mind. Bad example.

If I put a steaming hot, fresh from oven pizza inside time-stopped storage I will still be able to enjoy it a month after. If there were any pizzas in this barbaric world, that is.

Increasing the volumetric capacity of the room was quite easy.

For all those changes I had the help of the Throne. I wouldn’t be able to da any spatial magic without it. It probably would not work in the material world either.

Now my “inventory” skill have reached the desired cheat level.

Good.

I made a note in both my journal and Treasury’s registries of what I “borrowed”.

My first quest would then be: “Return thy Loot”. Especially money.

Maybe it should be “Gather Faith” or “Protect Thrope”, but those two were non-quantifiable. Nevertheless I wrote them down on second and third position in my journal, since the first was already occupied.

On the next pages I had reserved space for each of those quests’ details.

I scribbled down “Find some rice”. Don’t know, if it is appropriate for a journal entry?

I would start making daily and random notes from the last page.

Journal complete!

Unfortunately I couldn’t think of the way to make it auto-update. I mean I could hire a scribe, minstrel or a bard to follow me around and.. yeah.. he or she could even compose a rousing epic ballad about me.

I felt it would be too bothersome.

Now I had my beginner’s gear, quest journal, inventory all complete.

What was I missing from my isekais interface? Hmm..

Mini-map!

I tried live-querying Throne for current map. I ordered it to show hostile, neutral and allies in different colors. Not surprisingly there were only allies in Heaven. The center of the map was marked with a golden star. That was probably meeeee!

What else?

I had the expanded functions of the Throne labeled as Identify, Status Check, Appraisal and Grant Skill. Identify would tell you information about non-living things, Status Check would tell you information about living things and Appraisal would simply return the price range. Grant skill was a way to gain skills memorized by the Throne. Apparently it would appear a luminous orb made of mana, but could also be applied directly to myself or anyone else in my Heavenly Household.

The first three were treated as “genuine” skills down there. Mine were obviously leveled up to the maximum level possible.

Since they relied on the data gathering capabilities of the Throne of Thrope they would stop working correctly the minute you left this world or encounter some otherworldly things. It would thus be nice to learn analyzing skill that wouldn’t rely on Heavens.

What else?

Checking stats (statistics) and experience points to next level would be nice.

I was surprised to find level of a person could be displayed to the percentile! Still the first time I have used the Status Check there was a prompt saying the level is only an estimation. While experience points (or XP for short) could be displayed with sufficiently leveled up Status Check they were a fake notation. In other words you would not get stronger by leveling up. It was when you got stronger by normal means that your level would go up.

I wonder which Chuuni throne god had set it up like that.

When I first used that skill to view my own status it glared at me.

“GOD OF effing THROPE”

Minus the effing part.

I requested to view my status from outsider perspective with varying level of identification skills. No matter which, it was still showing too many confidential details. If the believers knew I was going to wander around, there would soon be no believer at all.

That, obviously, was contrary to my goals.

Getting status falsifying skill should be easy-peasy.

Especially since there were such skills available for Thrope residents. They were really rarely appearing skills though.

As Throne system administrator I could alter information seen by anyone with the skill level in those skills lower than 10. And level 10 was reserved for me only!

Muahahahaha!

Even archangels only had 9th level credentials, heh.

I decided on creating three “levels” of available information.

First, for level 10 and 9 everything would be available.

Second, low level skill-holders would see me as human with lower level skills wherever appropriate.

After checking the average level distribution of Status Check among population I picked an already rare level of 4 as middle information tier. In Ythall there were only about a dozen or so people with 4+ levels.

Thus anyone between level 4 and 8 would see my second cooked up identity. I have just made it up – I would have race called “Blessed Human”, title “Blessed by Heavens”, it would even show a very rare skill “Fake Status” leveled up to 4. This skill level was to signify that anyone with Status Check at or above level 4 could see through the fabrication. Of course I never learned such skill.

According to Throne and Library there were countless skills for hiding information about oneself. None other were tied to the Throne of Thrope. Some could be easily seen through by Heavens, while some other were unfathomable. They were probably what some otherworldly invasions brought in as cultural exchange. Maybe they were a response to the rise of Throne and non-Throne identification skills. Throne faking skills were easily seen through by a non-Throne data-gathering ones.

I queried such existing identification skills, but they had almost died out. Throne skills, while somewhat fake and externally outsourced were probably preferred by locals. Perhaps they were easier to learn. Such approach was prone to leave them vulnerable to anything that Throne couldn’t or had yet to analyze.

I have put researching those skills on the list of things to do in free time.