Ch. 64 - Practicing Scales_Hidden Class: Handyman [Crafting, Coming of Age, Slice of Life LitRPG] - BOOK 1 STUBBED

Jack couldn't resist taking another look at the one piece of equipment that set him apart from the average noob. He held a fiery red ocarina. Its glossy glaze gleamed beautifully. A couple of passersby couldn't help but give Jack a second look, curious about the item.

After several tries and with Felix's guidance, he made this A+ grade ocarina.

Earthenware Ocarina (Rare)

Crafting grade: A+

Description: An iron red-glazed alto C clay ocarina handcrafted for a rich, mellow tone and smooth finish.

Durability: 36+20

Artistry: 15+5

Crafting grade bonus: +20 durability; +5 artistry.

Iron red glaze bonus: Epic songs are +15% more powerful.

In his first few ocarinas, Jack used turmeric yellow. It was the best glaze he knew. However, after making five instruments, he accumulated enough pottery experience points to buy a new kind of glaze. Out of curiosity and enticed by Felix, Jack ran to the counter where the pottery association’s NPC worked and exchanged 20,000 pottery XP for red glaze.

To make it, he needed iron oxide, or in other words, rust. Felix gladly shared some of his supplies with him to see what would happen if they crafted ocarinas in a different color. Their conclusion was mindblowing: the color of the glaze affected the type of song boosted by the instrument!

Yellow glazes boosted happy songs, while red glazes boosted epic songs. Following this logic, a blue ocarina probably boosted sad-sounding songs, a green ocarina, peaceful songs, etc. There was plenty of experimenting, and had he not told Felix he had somewhere else to be, the old man would have probably crafted a clay cage and kept Jack there as a guinea pig. He had never seen Felix bored with pottery, but he had never seen him this excited either. If Jack had let him, Felix would have spent the rest of the day crafting ocarinas.

In the end, they made ten ocarinas together before Jack left. Making ocarinas left and right felt unwise without even knowing their commercial value. Jack didn’t know how many he needed to level up his bard profession. What if these things were practically disposable, going bad after a few scales? It felt more prudent to keep these ten ocarinas and decide what to do with them after more experimenting.

It had been a few hours since he logged in. "Hey, cousin, how are you doing?" he messaged. Jack tapped his foot nervously, waiting for his cousin’s response. He used the time to check if any of the pieces of the bugkeeper set had sold yet and to research beekeeping. After a couple of minutes, Rob’s response finally came through.

"We'll take some hours. I'll call you when I'm done."

If his cousin had told him he would only take one hour, Jack would have gone into the woods and crafted a moss suit, the only clothing equipment he knew how to make and, therefore, the only equipment he could wear. However, since he would take some hours, it seemed the right time to become a beekeeper.

Jack retraced his steps to the entomology department of the zoo. It was easy. He had been here only a few hours ago with Amari, Horace, and Marie. He confidently marched past the guards at the gate and headed toward the entomology department.

The different bug-keeper NPCs walked to and fro, ignoring him. Jack treated them in kind and ignored them back. Moving past a habitat with two scorpions as giant as cats fighting each other, one with a papery nest with buzzing wasps, and yet another with a small pond and a few dragonflies, he finally found his destination.

The bee's habitat was encased in glass. It was filled with as many flowers as the habitat could hold, and, not proving to be enough to satisfy the bees, there were two feeders around which bees buzzed. The hive was a box at the back to provide the bees with some privacy and peace.

The glass muffled much of the sound, but the persistent buzz carried through. Prehistoric bees, like other insects, were larger than Jack was used to, but not by much. Jack’s experience with bees was sparse, but he’d seen bumblebees, the droning giant male bees whose flight sounded like a power drill.

In New Earth, it was as if the smallest bee was the same as a bumblebee. That begged the question of just how large prehistoric bumblebees were. Perhaps they had a similar size to the bee queen Amari captured. The sleeping monarch had been curled into a ball, but her wingspan was probably the same as Jack’s hand. That thing was huge.

Jack wasn't the only one trying to become a beekeeper. He spotted a girl in a simple linen dress, visibly tailored for a beginner, studying the exhibits. Her face almost practically touched the glass of the habitat. Jack wondered whether he should play the instrument or talk to the girl first.

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Sighing, he walked over to the girl. "Excuse me." The girl didn't look away from the glass. "Excuse me," Jack said, tapping her shoulder.

She shrieked, sending Jack a few steps back. "What?" she answered without looking away from the glass.

"I'm sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I will watch the bees for a few hours, and since I'm also a bard, I'll be practicing my instrument. Does it bother you if I play?" Jack asked.

Hearing that Jack was just being polite, the girl’s tense expression softened, and she smiled. "Oh, don't mind me. My avatar looks at the glass, but I'm doing something else online. I won’t even be able to hear you."

"Oh, okay. Cool."

Jack double-checked that no other players were nearby and sat on one of the many benches before the habitats, where visitors could admire the insects. He brought one of the yellow ocarinas to his mouth without taking his eyes off the glass.

Jack made a C note while looking at a worker bee landing on a flower. Due to the many glass surfaces in the entomology department, the acoustics weren’t the best, and the room sounded a little echoey, but the ocarina still retained a pleasant tone. Emboldened, Jack moved to the D note. Instead of carrying on, he practiced the transition between the two notes.

C. D. C. D.

He did so slowly at first, trying to understand the fastest way to get his fingers from one position to the other, and then tried faster.

C, D, C, D, C, D.

Once he felt confident, he moved on to the following note and practiced the transition between D and E.

D. E. D. E. D, E, D, E.

Scales were a crucial building block in music. Every song on the planet resorted to this progression, in whole or at least in parts. If he knew how to transition quickly between the notes of a scale, he would have taken an essential step in mastering the instrument and playing anything he fancied. He kept practicing, and once he had spent time with each pair of notes, he tried playing a full scale.

His fingers betrayed him more than once, but he managed to make the whole thing in the end. It sounded almost serviceable.

C, D, E, D (Oops! I meant F.) F, G, A, B, C, B, A, E (Argh, that should have been a G!) G, F, E, D, C.

You’ve played [Major Scale].

Success rate: D.

+2 Bard XP.

So that’s how you progress in the bard profession. By playing. Just like in real life. Trying not to get carried away with such a slight boost to XP, Jack repeated the scale slowly. Even though he could summon the image of where his fingers should go, his muscles didn’t respond to his commands, and the whole thing sounded forced and staggered.

After a few minutes, Jack felt it was time to push it to the next step. He tapped his foot and made himself play one note per second. The extra pressure made him miss more times, but it was essential to play with a beat. Otherwise, he would be all over the place as he started playing more complicated things.

While looking at the bees, Jack played the scale again from the top.

The scale went up and down several times, and after a while, one of the bugkeepers approached the girl who had been watching the bees. They chatted for a bit, but Jack was so immersed in the scale that he couldn’t make out any of the words. He didn’t need to, though. After a few moments, the NPC disappeared, and the girl jumped in triumph, celebrating. She threw a quick thumbs-up at Jack and ran off. She must have unlocked the beekeeper profession.

Jack didn’t care. He was happily busy. By now, Jack could play a scale at two notes per second. Forcing himself not to look at the instrument was good practice. It helped him focus only on the sound. He felt that other than his speed, his rhythm was getting better, and with that, he was gaining more experience.

You’ve played [Major Scale].

Success rate: B.

+5 Bard XP.

After he had played 100 times the major scale, his [Self-Taught] skill kicked in, and he unlocked the ocarina as an instrument.

Self Taught, Lvl. 1

Description: Practice makes perfect. You can learn to play any instrument by spending a little time on it.

Effects:

Do 100 major scales in an instrument to unlock its mastery and instrument-specific skills.

Major Scale

Description: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, B, A, G, F, E, D, C.

[Self Taught] has activated. You’ve learned [Ocarina Mastery, Lvl. 1].

Ocarina Mastery (Rare)

Description: You’ve become proficient in the art of ocarina-playing. You can use the clay flute to bring life to a party or tears to someone’s eyes.

Effects:

You can play all level 1 ocarina melodies.

The effect was pretty simple, but the sad thing was that he didn’t know any melodies yet! Perhaps he had to grind a few levels in the bard profession first, or he had to buy a musical sheet somewhere. How could someone learn a song in this game? Did he have to write his own?

Shrugging, Jack kept playing the scale again and again and again. As he repeated the sequence of movements, his muscle memory began doing the heavy lifting for him, freeing his mind to think.

How many years has it been since I did this on the guitar? Just how many hours did I spend playing scales and riffs back then? Just how many hundreds of hours?!