While flying to the Merchant guild, I land on a nearby tree to take a breather... "Phew, I feel really tired, I think I used up all of my mana," I thought as I opened my map again to make sure I'm heading in the right direction. I don't have a compass on me so I used the knowledge of where my starter house was as a guide to get me this far... why doesn't this game have a minimap? almost all games these days have one and now I feel almost as of I need one... huh? the map is glowing? well, less glowing and more there is a tiny white glowing dot in the middle that I hadn't noticed till just now... should I touch it?... as I reach out to touch it, I notice my ring glow more and more as it gets closer, so I swap from touching it with my pointer finger to my ring.

"Would you like to learn the skill, ?"

Yes/No

"that's... interesting, does my ring gather skills from items? for now, I'll say no, since I technically don't own this map, but the first thing that is mine will immediately be turned into a skill." I thought to myself before flying off again to the merchant guild, now more than excited to finish this tutorial and get started. I mean, getting skills for free is one of the strongest anime protagonist skills! although, according to the introduction video, you can get all manner of skills just by doing a certain task. Say if you lifted weights enough you would get the skill, so maybe it's not that great, in fact, the skill can probably be gotten by just making a map or two...

It didn't take long to get to the merchant guild after that, I did almost pass it as the door to the guild is way higher than the rest of the town, but thankfully the map had a little up arrow to signify that I needed to look up to see the guild. Inside I saw a simple desk that cut the large room in half, people here and there were doing random tasks from filing paperwork to reading the different posts on a wall covered in what I'm guessing is a quest board. Honestly, the amount of people around me is somewhat fear-inducing, but I'm going to be a merchant so I need to get over my anxiety.

"Hello young miss, is there anything I can help you with?" a charming woman asks as she walks over to me, easily noticing that I am unsure of what to do

"Um, y,yes I um, want be merchant..." ugh, I'm really going to need to get better at talking if I'm going to be a merchant.

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The woman nods her head, seemingly able to understand what I'm trying to say, and guides me to the back half of the tree, leading me down a short hall and a room to the side. "Please wait in here while I prepare the test for you." She says before walking out of the room. ...eh? test? Why am I being tested? The game just started, how am I supposed to know what to do? But before I can ask anything, she had already left and came back holding a leaf and a clear-looking crystal. "Here, this is a Grejah Leaf, it's used to make the lowest quality healing potions, we sell them to people at a price of 10 copper each, and since we buy everything at a 30% discount, we buy them from herb gatherers for 7 copper each." she says as she lowers it and raises the crystal in her other hand "This is a monster gem, specifically this one came from a squirrel, they have an extremely low chance of dropping from every monster, roughly about a 1/100 chance from the weakest of monsters, and 1/100,000 chance for monsters like dragons or liches, so their prices differ," she says before placing the crystal on a wooden table in the middle of the room. "Since this came from a squirrel, it only cost 1 silver, so how much do we buy it for?"

That was... a lot of information, however, the important part was that the guild buys everything at a 30% discount, and that gem specifically will be sold for one silver... well if we follow most fantasy logic, 100 copper will equal 1 silver, and a 30% discount of 100 is 70, so "The um, the guild would, would, um 70 copper?" The more I talk the more afraid my inability to speak like a normal person is going to cause me to be disqualified from being a merchant, but thankfully it doesn't seem like she's annoyed

"Alright, you should be good to go! any good merchant requires the Skill, so we just needed to make sure you had gotten the skill before you were officially signed off as a merchant," she says as she pulls out a bronze card, one about the size of an average playing card, but what does she mean by arithmetic skill?

"Um, I d,don't have th- the the the um, arithmetic skill I don't have..." I say trying to convey that I didn't learn the skill, which makes her stop and think for a second

"Hmm, you should've heard the divine voice with the holy screen pop in front of you no?" she says, which I'm guessing means when I get a skill I should hear something like "You unlocked the skill !" with a screen appearing in front of me, but that didn't happen "...well, sometimes it takes more than one question to gain the skill, let's try a few more questions... since you passed the test any math should be fine... so what's 43 times 12?"

"...516" took a second to do in my head but it's just basic multiplication, so it's not like it's hard math. however, from her slight grimace, it seems like she wasn't expecting such a quick reply

"Well I guess you have to be challenged to grow, so we'll take it up a notch, what's 925 divided by 37?"

"...25?" questions like these kept coming one after another, each time I was able to answer within a few seconds, after around 10 minutes or so she simply sighed "For someone who doesn't have the skill, you really are good at math" is what she said, but every question she asked was just whole numbers with nothing harder than PEMDAS so it was quite easy, especially for someone like me who was one of the highest rated merchant in EfroDoro Quest, I dealt with much harder math than these simple questions.

"Well, it honestly seems you are incapable of learning the skill, but with how good you are at it anyways I don't think you need it," She says in an almost complaining voice before handing me the bronze card, my name already on it with a picture of my pixie. Guess I'm officially a merchant now!