Cherreads

Chapter 280 - Essence of the Golden Die

By consuming the fizzy, carbonated, superlatively good and bizarrely lucky-tasting beverage, you gain the power to modify the results of your actions.

*You gain one Golden Die, a strange and ponderously heavy gold-plated die of mysterious origin that is only half there, appearing in your hand when you intend to use it and otherwise somewhere else. This Die can be allocated to a kind of action or situation, along with the number of 'sides' it can express ranging from a flip of a coin to a hundred sided die, with a tendency to be more powerful the more narrow its domain and the higher its unpredictability. Actions range from throwing a punch, catching objects, observing a subject, even more passive things like reading or thinking. Situations range from being initiated into a conversation, getting lost, falling asleep or even just the general day to day routine. When attached to one of these, it can be mentally cast any time its action or situation is invoked, modifying the results or process of it and twisting probability and possibility to improve it according to your subjective desires. Results can grow beyond what should be possible given the variables involved, building off any existing skill or luck and applying the result on top of that. An example of such, a critical roll that enabled a professional speed reader to outright comprehend an entire book after glancing at a single page, and a professional slacker to drag out more hours than there are in a day to get the benefits of a night of sleep from a power nap.

*By building up your baseline skill, knowledge and experience of a skill or situation a Golden Die modifies, you can occasionally spontaneously generate new Golden Dice bound to the same, creating a Dicepool. These Dice are pre-allocated to this Dicepool but you can still determine each of their 'sides' when they first appear. This is retroactive, generating an appropriate number of Golden Dice for any degrees of skill, knowledge and experience you have beyond the minimum that you would have otherwise got. However, these retroactive Dice are only generated once you have a Golden Die allocated to their domain. All of this also applies to Silver Dice, just with wording swapped around.

*Golden Dice can be degraded into Silver Dice at a one to two ratio, though Silver Dice cannot be transformed back into Golden Dice. These Silver Dice are instead allocated to a kind of attribute or quality you possess, along with the number of 'sides' it can express ranging from a flip of a coin to a hundred sided die, with a tendency to be more powerful the more narrow its domain and the higher its unpredictability. Attributes range from classical strength and intelligence, to more specific ones such as clarity of sight, movement speed, parallel processing, respiration, finger dexterity, skin toughness and so on. When attached to one of these it is rolled for the first and last time, permanently bound to perpetual effect, boosting the attribute and bending physics as it relates to you in order to improve it according to your subjective desires. The benefits can grow beyond what should be possible given the physics involved, building off any existing ability and applying the mod on top of that.

*Silver Dice can be degraded into Copper Dice at a one to four ratio, though Copper Dice cannot be transformed back into Silver Dice. These Copper Dice are instead allocated to a kind of good or service, along with the number of 'sides' it can express ranging from a flip of a coin to a hundred sided die, with a tendency to be of higher quality and benefit the higher its unpredictability. Goods and services range from snacks, haircuts, clothes, showers, raw materials, transport and so on. When allocated to one of these, the Copper Die is burned away to either produce the good or grant the service in question. Much like the other Dice, enough Copper Dice with the right rolls can produce unnaturally quality goods and supernaturally effective services.

*Finally, after allocating your Golden Die you'll feel an eerie presence, before a new type of Die is introduced to you by a mysterious entity possessing your first Golden Die. Once a day you can summon a crimson-plated die, feather-light and uncomfortably cold, it almost seems to watch you with a vaguely malicious intent. These Red Dice are randomly allocated to cause trouble for yourself in various ways or just chaos in general, along with a random number of 'sides' ranging from the flip of a coin to a hundred sided die, with a tendency to be more potentially dangerous the more unpredictable it is. Nonetheless, it remains your decision when to cast them. The trouble and chaos it can cause ranges from summoning opponents or monsters intent on your death, with varying degrees of intelligence, power and length of stay, to triggering an unlucky situation or overall generalized bad luck, setting a conflict into motion between you and some party, releasing a natural disaster, inflicting some manner of harm or effect on you and so on. By surviving or beating these troubles the mayhem and chaos is harvested into strange unrealized energy, amount of course scaling with the trouble you face. This energy can be condensed into unbound Golden Dice, Silver Dice or Copper Dice. Additionally, by taking on the worst of the worst Red rolls you can typically catalyze enough energy into the extremely rare Black Dice. Black Dice work much like Golden and Silver Dice and can be used in either way, but rather than being allocated to your innate abilities and skills, they are allocated to other Dice or Dicepools, as well as your ability to use them and the situation in which they see use. You can also burn away a Black Die to reallocate and reroll all your Dice.

More Chapters