A Person with Morals gets Transported to Another World [LitRPG] [Satire]

It took some time, but I was finally able to calm down. I put aside the horror I had just witnessed and continued with the task at hand. Telling my comrades about what happened would only have needlessly scared them.

When I stepped further into the secret room, a popup appeared.

[Lockpicker Quest Completed: Unlock a secret in a dungeon.]

[Reward: +3 Slot Tokens]

I mentally cheered. This was exactly the kind of reward that I wanted. If I could, I would convert every reward I got into slot tokens. In my eyes they were far more valuable than items and other such things. Each token was equivalent in benefit to a level-up. I could use them to roll the dice and try for stats, titles, and skills that could help me in my goals.

Though the irony wasn’t lost on me that I never would have completed this quest if not for items like the pocket telescope and wall compass. Yet still, I wanted more slot tokens. Maybe I just wanted to pull the lever of the machine again.

In any case, the tokens could be spent later.

[New Lockpicker Quest: Unlock your third eye.]

What the heck did that have to do with lockpicking? These quests were getting both too silly and too difficult. I vaguely knew of the third eye, but I wasn’t exactly a spiritual genius. My acupuncture knowledge was the furthest I had travelled towards enlightenment. Was I going to have to start meditating to complete this quest? This System had to be screwing with me.

I travelled further into the mid-sized room with my teammates. The only thing of note that I could see were several boxes all piled up together. I lit a torch of my own and got closer to them.

Each wooden box was the size of three crates lined up. Of course, a crate was the size of two chests, and a chest was equivalent in volume to three bins.

On the side of each box were the words, ‘Holy Water’.

Newmill exhaled in relief. “See. Your conspiracy about the Church was wrong, Yarm. They’re just storing holy water here. Nothing suspicious.”

“Don’t be so sure,” said Penrin. She and I were on the same wavelength.

I said, “This makes things only more suspicious. Think about it. Why would they go through the trouble of storing holy water in such a concealed location? Why go through the effort of transporting it here when they could have just taken it into the city?”

Newmill shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t want it to get stolen. Or they didn’t have enough storage space.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be so naïve. They tried to hide the existence of this place from me when I went to the cathedral, and it’s practically impossible to organically locate this secret area. There’s no way that they’re storing something ordinary here. I’m willing to bet my left nut that there isn’t actually holy water in these boxes.”

Penrin and I opened the boxes together. Inside each box were various containers of holy water. Some clear vials, jugs, and bottles.  

Newmill huffed and looked at me haughtily. “What was that about your left nut?” he said with a smirk.

Penrin lifted a vial to the light of her torch. “I don’t believe this is all holy water either. It would make no sense if it was.” She tilted the vial to look for any abnormality, but the liquid inside just looked like water.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” I said and popped the cork off of a vial. I chugged the contents and let out a satisfied sound while smacking my lips.

“Yarm!” Penrin screamed. “What are you doing?”

Newmill looked worried and said, “Stop ingesting random things! It’s not safe.”

“Ah, don’t worry. I can always use Cleanse if it’s poison.” This time I opened a jug and started sipping from it.

Penrin yanked the jug from my hands. “Stop it! Your Cleanse skill won’t matter if it’s a quick-acting poison. You could be dead within half a second if it was.”

“What? Oh no.” That wasn’t good. I put my finger in my mouth and tried to make myself vomit the holy water out.

“There’s no point now, you doofus.” Penrin put the lid back on the jug and placed it back into the box. “We shouldn’t tamper with the contents too much. The owner of these boxes might notice when they come back.”

Speaking of coming back, I noticed a large sheet of paper in one of the boxes that read, ‘To be cleared before dungeon reversion on Monday’. The fact that a day of the week was specified meant that these boxes were probably moved quite regularly.

I placed my bottom on the edges of a box and tried to make sense of things. “This stuff just tastes like water. Why would they need to hide it like this? From how much is here, they must use it a lot. Could they really just be using it innocuously?”

“Yes,” said Newmill. “It’s simple holy water to be handed out to the Church’s constituents and that’s the end of the story. I’m sure there’s a good and normal reason they keep it all here.”

Penrin asked, “I wonder what need there is for so many different containers. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to transport this stuff in barrels? They could bottle it inside the cathedral.”

Try as I might, I couldn’t understand the purpose of all this. I needed more clues. I refilled the vial that I had drunk with water from my own bottle. Penrin and I closed everything up so that it all looked like it hadn’t been touched.

I opened the map to see if the marker had changed and it did. There was now a green checkmark. A new marker had also appeared at the cathedral. Clicking it, I saw a new objective.

[Figure out the mystery behind the Holy Water.]

It seemed the answers I was looking for were at the cathedral. That was where I assumed them to be anyway. I didn’t know how necessary it was for me to be spending time on this mystery. What if it was all a nothing-burger and I had been wasting my efforts?

I then noticed there was another green checkmark at the southern gate. I guessed I had also completed that objective. I clicked on both checkmarks.

[Reward: Evidence of the Sect Massacre]

[Reward: Holy Water Vial]

Once again, the System had disappointed me. Evidence of a crime that no one wanted to punish was useless. And as for the second, I had hundreds of vials to choose from if I wanted them. Why did the System feel the need to give me a vial of basically normal water that had been blessed?

I tucked away the items without care. At least I had gained some slot tokens from this whole ordeal.