Unfortunately, Thomas would have to put his desire for vengeance against Hekrin on hold for the time being. He needed a solid plan, after all, just punching the old goat in the face wouldn't be enough to address his grievances with the dwarf! Revenge was just like a good prank, it took time and proper planning to pull off expertly! He couldn't help letting out a bit of a vicious smile as he wondered if Hekrin would 'force' him to learn Alchemy. If so... perhaps he could concoct something that would teach the old bastard a lesson!
After spending some time on delusions of making Hekrin pay, Thomas focused back on reality and gave Zella a warm smile, "Zella, I was hoping I would be able to purchase some fabric from you and make myself some clothing. I've spent most of my time since I was summoned here learning various professions so I haven't spent much time shopping. It would also be a great help if I could choose what I wanted to make from some of your patterns."
Zella walked to a section of the store counter and crouched down to pull out a very thick book that almost looked like a binder. It was filled to the brim with various patterns for male clothing, "I don't mind. I'll even be nice and sell you the cloth at cost. This is my first volume of men's clothing. The designs in here should be about what you can handle at your skill level."
Zella slid the book of patterns over to Thomas and gave him a warm smile. Thomas flipped open the cover of the book and began to browse through the various designs and patterns. What was the best part of a video game? Aside from having a ton of power and slaughtering monsters? It was wearing kick ass looking stuff of course! While looking through the book the only thing Thomas paid attention to was how 'cool' the finished product would look. Cool by his standards anyway. It didn't take him very long to settle on three articles of clothing. A pair of pants that would qualify as a 'relaxed fit' pair of jeans in the real world. A simple shirt with short sleeves and a three button collar and a light jacket to go over the shirt.
After selecting the patterns, Zella took Thomas over to browse through her fabrics. The majority of them were made of cotton or linen, but there were a few rolls of silk here and there. Thomas focused mostly on the cotton fabrics. Linen was somewhat itchy and silk was just too expensive for simple daily clothing, so he took the middle ground. For the pants, Thomas chose a very thick and durable cotton with a dark blue color, since the pattern reminded him of jeans he felt he should just go with that. For the shirt, he chose a nice dark gray breathable cotton. For his jacket, he went with a thick black cotton. Black went with everything.
With his cloth chosen, Zella measured out the necessary amounts and after calculating the cost turned to Thomas, "Your total comes to thirty gold."
Thomas nodded and fished out sixty of his hard-earned gold, "Can you make it two sets please?"
Without complaint, Zella fetched, measured, and cut a second set of the necessary fabrics to make Thomas's clothing. Once everything was ready, Thomas parted with his hard earned sixty gold and collected his materials. There were only a couple of hours left in the day so he wouldn't be able to complete even one outfit before closing time. That didn't stop him from taking the materials and the pattern into the back room and getting started though. Thomas spent the rest of the day tracing and cutting out all the pieces to the patterns for his clothing.
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With his work done for the day, Thomas headed for The Swans Nest and did his usual routine. The following morning he made his way back to Zella's Fashions to begin to sew together his new clothing. As long as he could get enough experience in his Tailoring profession today he wouldn't have to work at Zella's tomorrow and would be able to have a day off to do something different. He fully intended to get some exercise by either heading out of town or heading into the dungeon.
Arriving at Zella's, Thomas headed straight into the back room and fetched his materials to get to work. With everything already cut out the previous night he only needed to begin to stitch it together. Arranging his piles of cloth in a slightly better arrangement than previously, Thomas began to hem the various pieces. He followed the directions carefully and only hemmed the sections that would not become part of the seams. It only took him around two hours to finish working on the hems. The clothing he had selected would have more seams than hems.
Thomas began the next step by carefully sewing the seams of the pants together. He was tempted to activate his 'All Seeing Eyes' for this step to ensure that his clothing would be perfect, but he still felt that would be a complete waste of time. Unless he could somehow push the cloth past its limits and into the pseudo-magical realm, as he had with the iron at Rock's, it would be pointless. Instead, he just focused and aimed for a rating of excellent. It only took half an hour for him to finish the seams and begin work on the crotch of the pants. Since there were no zippers in AoG, yet, Thomas went with a button-up crotch instead.
The pants he'd made yesterday were simply laced together like a pair of shoes. Thomas didn't like that look so he modified the pants on the fly and instead took the time to sew reinforced buttonholes and the buttons. This would make the pants much more convenient. Convenient for what? Who knows, it wasn't like he'd ever had to use the restroom while inside of the game. That was one feature no sane game developer would include within the game, the need to relieve oneself. Sex, on the other hand, would be prevalent in any VRMMO with an adult player base. Not that Thomas planned to have sex anytime soon. It was just the condom principle at work. Better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it!
System Notice: You have created a pair of Normal cloth pants (modified). Quality: Excellent. You have gained 100 Tailoring experience.
Up next Thomas went to work on the dark gray shirt. It was a smaller article of clothing so it took less time for him to sew the seams together. He ended up spending more time on the buttonholes and buttons once again. Still, just an hour later Thomas finished the shirt with decent results.
System Notice: You have created a Normal cloth shirt. Quality: Excellent. You have gained 67 Tailoring experience.
With the first set of pants and shirt done, Thomas started on the second pair. He chose to postpone working on his jackets until the rest was done simply because the jacket was less important than the clothing he would be wearing daily. Over the next three hours, Thomas worked on and finished the second set of clothing and earned himself another 167 Tailoring experience. He was so close to rank 25 that he could practically taste it! Just ten more experience and he would have completed the quest for Hekrin with a whole day to spare!
With six hours left in the workday, Thomas was completely confident in his ability to gain that measly ten experience. He excitedly got to work on sewing together his first jacket. It was a simple light jacket that would provide a small amount of warmth but was mostly for the look of it. Thomas's fingers moved quickly, he even managed to ignore a few needle pricks to his fingers in his excitement to be finished tailoring. He had no intentions of picking up a needle again anytime soon if he could avoid it! Within three hours his first jacket was completed. A large portion of the time it took was spent reinforcing the buttonholes along the front of the jacket and securely attaching the buttons.
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System Notice: You have created a Normal light jacket. Quality: Excellent. You have gained 134 Tailoring experience.
With that notification, Thomas let out a deep sigh of relief. He had officially completed the quest for Hekrin, all he had to do now was to turn in the quest and he would be able to move onto the next step. Before he did that though, he intended to finish the second jacket and spend the entire day tomorrow doing something violent. He had yet to experience any combat in AoG and now that he had a free day on his hands, he fully intended to exploit every moment of it.
Three hours later Thomas finished his second jacket, grabbed all of his new clothing, bid farewell to Zella and made his way to The Swans Nest. Thomas passed his new clothing, along with two extra gold, to Maggie to add the extra clothing to the wash she would be doing for him tonight. He wanted to wash his new clothing before he wore them to make sure they were nice and clean. Thomas greatly enjoyed his orc loin roast dinner before retiring to his room for the night to relax and grind 'All Seeing Eyes' for a bit before using 'Serenity' to head to sleep.
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The following morning Thomas excitedly woke up, and after retrieving his clothing from Maggie, got dressed in his new outfit. After dressing, Thomas checked himself out an nodded in approval. The only part of the outfit he felt needed to be changed were his shoes. The pair he'd previously purchased were better than his starter set, but he really desired a good pair of sturdy black leather boots. He'd have to keep an eye out for a pair or make his own later. After strapping his magical kukri to his waist he headed downstairs to have a nice breakfast before heading into the city.
His first stop of the morning was the adventurers guild. The building wasn't very hard to find after asking a nearby guard for directions. If he was going to go out and do some fighting he might as well get a little extra while he was at it and complete a quest or two at the same time. Stepping into the guild Thomas wasn't really surprised at the layout. It was about what you would expect from a game who had a lead designer that seemed to be obsessed with Japanese isekai novels.
The first floor of the building was broken up into three sections. The section directly ahead of him was a line of counters with windows reminiscent of bank tellers where a line of beautiful women sat to deal with the adventurers. To his left was a wall covered in posters for various quests and to his right was a section filled with tables and chairs as well as a full liquor bar. Thomas had never understood why an adventurers guild would need a bar! Shaking his head, Thomas got into the shortest line at the service counter and waited his turn. The standard operating procedure would imply he needed to at least register first and become a low ranked adventurer.
After about twenty minutes of waiting, Thomas was greeted by an enthusiastic and energetic young human woman, "Hello! How can I help you today?"
Thomas gave the woman his best smile, it was always good to make a proper first impression. Half of the reason he made himself good looking was to give off a good first impression. Though he'd noticed at least half of the men in the guild could be male fashion models, while the other half would clearly be defined as 'ruggedly handsome'. That's the problem with VRMMO's, all the male players were generally very good looking in one way or another. He didn't even want to get started on all the women who could have easily started calamities on the scale of Troy back in the real world if they really looked like they did in the game.
The woman behind the counter was relatively attractive herself with her golden blonde hair pulled into a ponytail and her sparkling blue eyes. Thomas took a moment to take in the sight of her ample chest tightly wrapped up in what appeared to be a rather simple black outfit reminiscent of a suit before finally addressing her, "Sorry. I'm not really sure what the procedure here is. It's my first time here."
The woman covers her mouth with her delicate hand as she laughs lightly, "It's not a problem at all. The first thing we need to do is get you registered. It's a very simple process, we just need a drop of your blood to get it started."
After she finished speaking she bent over a little, giving Thomas a generous view down her valley, before she straightened up and placed a small tri-leg stand with a crystal ball above it onto the counter along with a small needle. She retrieved a small metal card and placed it beneath the stand and addressed Thomas while holding up the needle, "You just need to prick your finger and drip a drop of blood onto the crystal ball. After that, it will inscribe your guild card."
Thomas pricked his finger on the needle and dripped a drop of blood onto the crystal ball without any hesitation. The crystal ball began to glow in a soft blue light before emitting a soft stream of light out of its bottom and onto the small metal card. The card glowed with the same blue light for a few moments as text and a headshot of Thomas appears on it. It was a fucking drivers license!
After the crystal ball and the license stopped glowing the woman put the crystal ball away and picked up the card to examine it, "Oho, not bad for a newbie. You're a lot stronger than other otherworlders when they first come here. Been doing some training off of your own eh?"
She looked at Thomas and gave him a warm smile while holding out the metal card to him. After taking the metal card he examined it. Aside from his headshot, there was also his name, his attributes, and a guild rank currently set at one. After letting Thomas examine the card for a few moments the woman spoke up, "The first copy of the guild card is free, but if you lose it there will be a fee of 100 gold for a replacement. The guild card is used to keep track of your guild rank and your contributions to the guild. It will record your active quests, your completed quests, and your turned in quests. It will also keep track of any outstanding deeds you perform. Every guild member starts at rank one, as you complete quests you will receive points that will increase your guild rank as you gain more. Though anyone with a rank below 25 is still considered to be a novice. Now that you have your guild card you can accept any request placed on the notice board, though you may only accept requests above, or below, your rank by five. So for you, you can accept any request rank six or below. That's all!"
Thomas nodded to the woman and turned to look at the request board. It was time to pick up a quest or two and then head somewhere to experience real combat!
Spoiler: Character Sheet
Name: Thomas Darkrose Experience Gained: 5,823 Experience Spent: 4,390 Experience Remaining: 1,433 Power: 15 (+) 160 Exp Endurance: 15 (+) 160 Exp Agility: 15 (+) 160 Exp Magic: 15 (+) 160 Exp Innate Abilities:
* Transmutation ( A ) // Rank 1 // 0/20 Exp
* Quick Learner ( C ) // Rank 14 // 125/150 Exp
* All Seeing Eyes ( S ) // Rank 7 // 75/80 Exp
Skills:
* Serenity // Rank 7 // 67/80 Exp
* Blacksmithing // Rank 25 // 93/260 Exp
* Tailoring // Rank 25 // 258/260 Exp
Abilities:
* None
Titles:
* Magical Blacksmith
Guild Card Name: Thomas Darkrose
Rank: 1 // 0/20 Pts.
* Power: 15
* Endurance: 15
* Agility: 15
* Magic: 15
Quests: None