Novels2Search

Chapter 10: Gearing Up

Peter laid in the cabin for a bit before entering the game.

'That was close. Lucky for me I said 200 instead of 2000.'

After a few minutes of dreaming about getting rich, Peter turned the game on.

Slowly the world was formed in front of his eyes.

'I need to get some good blueprints for the ladies.'

Thinking so, Peter walked towards the auction house.

When he accessed the auction house, he received another 14,000 gold coins.

'This truly is profitable.'

Scrolling down the auction site, a few of the blueprints piqued Peter's interest.

Among them, there were a few high difficulty blueprints.

Flowing water armour set blueprint

Difficulty: B

Rarity: Uncommon

Cannot be mass-produced

Requires tier 2 blacksmith or above

100 men armour set blueprint

Difficulty: C

Rarity: Uncommon

Requires tier 2 blacksmith or above

Lightweight agility armour blueprints

Difficulty: B

Rarity: Uncommon

Requires tier 2 blacksmith it above

'That's enough for the armour, now what weapon blueprints are there?'

Sharpshooters bow blueprint

Difficulty: B

Increased crit chance

Elegant bow blueprint

Difficulty: B

Increased agility when equipped

Flow with the wind blueprint

Difficulty: A

Increased attack speed and strength

Trickshot blueprint

Difficulty: C

Chance to inflict double damage

'These look like good blueprints, and what do I pick for staffs.'

Healing Light blueprint

Difficulty: C

Elementary staff blueprint

Difficulty: B

Sturdy staff blueprint

Difficulty: C

Healers' choice blueprint

Difficulty: B

There were countless blueprints available in the auction house. Peter took two for the bow and two for the staff.

The staff and bow required wood to craft. Yew wood was one of the best sites to craft weapons at the current level and each sold for nearly 5-8 silver. It was rare to find them in the area and very few could chop it down.

'I should explore the map tomorrow.'

The blueprints in Peter's inventory were all exquisite. Now, all it needs is an able craftsman to birth them.

Peter went back to the reception to book for a small crafting space. Once inside he took out the yew wood to make the bow shaft. Small crafting rooms didn't provide any additional tools for crafting but the wood had to be chiselled to convert it to a bow.

Peter took out the blueprint 'flow with the wind' and checked out the features. It was quite long and the shaft must be extremely smooth. There shouldn't be any difference from the illustration. Peter started to work on the wood slowly chipping away the unnecessary parts.

It took twenty minutes for him to finish up the bow and string it.

Flow with the wind(R)

Creator: Blackbeak

Item level: 20

Attack speed: +250%

Strength: 60 (+20)

Agility: 50 (+10)

Passive: 10% increased attack when shot along with the wind.

Artisan bonus: Higher crit chance.

'That came out ok. I hope she likes it. Now for the staff.'

Peter took out another blueprint. Staffs were much easier to make. Even an ordinary branch can be used as a staff if you make the lower end pointy and the upper-end blob-like.

This time it was a lot better than Peter expected.

Healers' choice(R)

Creator: Blackbeak

Item level: 20

Casting speed: +110%

Healing strength : 50 (+15)

Agility: 30 (+10)

Passive: Have a chance to convert the damage taken to mana.

Artisan bonus: Chance to full heal target allies.

'I hope Mary likes it.'

'It's getting pretty late, I should go to sleep once I make the two-hander for Anya.'

Peter wanted to try and make a new unique weapon and he knew using a blueprint didn't work.

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This was the second unique item that he would be making and Peter was quite excited about it.

While Peter was busy crafting, the world outside had already turned chaotic. This was mostly due to the overpowering nature of the soldier armour.

The rumours of the overpowered nature had already spread to the ears of the top guilds in the country and most guild masters were trying to make sure that they got their hands on this set the moment it came upon the market. Sicily was being endlessly tortured by the yelling of these masters to make haste in getting the armour.

All of these events were fanned when Mistic Guards, a small guild, equipped all their 10 men and marched into the depths of the Alderriver Forest and fought a boss and killed it.

They released the video of it on the forums and this instantly got hyped. Although the boss was only level 20 and a human surge tactic could kill it in a few minutes, the important fact in the videos was that the boss couldn't break the defence of their main tanks.

This further resulted in a few of the advanced players claiming that the items were broken and the development team need to re-tweak the attributes of these armours.

To all these accusations, the dev team just shrugged it off saying it's normal armour it was within the expectation of a good crafters ability.

This led to the current situation of more and more people trying to imitate the success of 'Blackbeak' only to get disappointed.

They further went back to the forums to continue bitching that the equipment they created wasn't as decent only to get snubbed by the others calling them trash.

This resulted in the overnight glory of the blacksmith crafter 'Blackbeak'. These events became a great inspiration to the crafters as it rekindled their passion for the crafts.

'Much easier than I thought. This should be enough for the time being.'

Peter gradually did the finishing touch on the two-handed sword making the system go ding.

Congratulations on creating a unique rare item. You have gained +10 blacksmith fame.

'A unique rare sword. Nice.'

Peter was happy with his new creation.

Two handed sword(R) (#012bb000001)

Creator: Blackbeak

Item level: 20

Cannot be upgraded.

Strength: 120 (+60)

Abilities:

Crit chance boost (passive)

Crit damage boost (passive)

Fracture on crit hit.

Artisan bonus:

Full counter: 100% chance to inflict 10% hp damage to a player or player pet when target's attack is successfully blocked.

'Please rename the unique weapon #012bb000001.'

'I get to name my weapons too? The attributes make it look more like a hammer than a sword.'

"Bone Crushing Greatsword"

Item successfully named and placed into the database.

'I should call the girls to see where they are at. It's getting too late.'

Ring... Ring...

"Hey, where are you guys at? I have been waiting for so long."

"We just got to the town. This place is nice. Did you start making the soldier armours yet? Those assholes keep pestering me over it."

"No, I was working on your weapons. Get to the smithy quick."

"Be right there."

It took the girls a few minutes to find Peter back at the Smithy.

"You guys look tired. What happened?"

"Try pressing ignore when fighting through monsters." Anya retorted rolling her eyes.

"So, I heard you made us some weapons." Sicily's pointy gaze hushed Anya instantly.

"Well, it took a lot of time. Here. It took me like 2-3 hours to make them all."

The girls received their new weapons and inspected their stats.

"You made these?" Sicily couldn't keep it in her for too long.

"How can he make something this good?" Anya was murmuring to Mary at the back while she held the unique sword tightly.

"Thank you." Mary's voice was almost inaudible.

"Who knew you had a blacksmith's gene." Sicily started laughing.

The three girls kept detailing why they came to the town then.

It was impossible for small guilds to fight for territories. Although the girls had a territory token, it was still not enough since they need a massive amount of money and people to further develop the territory.

Guild wars will soon take place and so it was almost certain that they would lose it even if they occupied one.

The next best option was to get an instance base. This is a non-PVP guild quarter which also prevents others from entering the instance. This mode of setup also meant that they wouldn't be able to use the benefits received from a territory like growing herbs and massive base size.

The guild masters of territories had a noble title associated with their name which also further improved their power. This meant that most of these guild masters could mobilise the NPC army to help them with peace and balance in the territory and their corresponding maps.

Instances on the other hand were outside the living world of Almost Heaven. Also unlike territories, the instances were heavily charged compared to the territories. This was a huge drawback since gold is an issue when this early in the game.

Since the instances were rented based on the space required, this was most suitable for the smaller guild. For a four-man guild like Sicily's, it was best to rent out an instance.

The price of instances varied depending on where the instance was located at. The cost of instances almost tripled moving from the local town to the major cities.

"So you guys plan to make an instance guild quarters here." Peter understood the basic idea and also felt like it was a good idea. They could always move out as they progressed through the game.

Peter had planned to open a shop to sell his items. The auction house took a high 25% tax on items auctioned. The tax on the local stores is only 4% for the smaller shops. While the larger ones cost heavily making them not worth it.

Peter already had enough money to open a small store and soon he planned on doing just that.

While Peter was about to log out, he received a friend request. Since most people didn't know who vision was and only knew Blackbeak, Peter got curious and accepted it.

He immediately received a call from the other side.

"You are Blackbeak, right?"

"How do you know that?", Peter was becoming a bit worried. No one was supposed to know his real identity apart from the three demons who just left to go look for a good bounty quest.

"Doesn't make a difference. Listen I plan on forming a merchant guild in the game and we could use people like you. Would you like to join? We get quite a lot of commission from really rich players."

"Sorry, not interested."

"Let me know when you change your mind. It's quite hard to sell items at the right price".

"Sorry, not interested."

Peter went ahead and closed the call without waiting for an answer.

"Weird people."

After checking through his inventory he made sure that he had enough items to mass produce a bunch of armour for Sicily. Then he logged out to sleep. It was almost morning.

"He cut the call midway. Sir, how should we proceed?" A young man in his twenties closed his flip phone with a flick turning towards his boss.

There were multiple personal in the room working on different systems each busy monitoring some weird graphs.

"Jude," the man in black called out to another staff who appeared to be supervising the floor.

"Yes sir." A woman in her forties rushed towards him at top speed.

"Are you sure he has talent? Isn't it too early in the game to conclude he could become an asset?"

"The charts show that he has potential. It's still too early to determine if he will work with us."

"How high was his ability rated?"

"In the top 1%."

The man in black turned towards the young man with the flip phone.

"So what do you think? Is it possible he has a strong backer?"

"He has a strong attitude but it's not possible to determine his backing. The call was cut short."

"Keep monitoring him. I want to know what he does from now on. If you can find any valuable information, notify me immediately."

"Dismissed"

The black suit slowly disappeared from the room breaking apart into shards. The rest returned back to their work as the room again became silent.