So... my plan to earn as many skills as possible was halted almost immediately... First off, barely any collectibles spawned outside of town; in the past hour, I found 4 things that seemed like materials I could possibly get skills from and/or sell

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Inventory:

Stick x 21

Stone x 16

Ploasia Flower x 3

Mysdal Herb x 1

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That's right, after searching for an entire hour, I got a bunch of sticks, rocks, and barely anything sellable... I mean, there were plenty of wild hogs and slimes, as well as a snake or two I saw hidden in the bushes, but with my abysmal strength of 1, I decided to simply fly away instead of dying a pointless death by trying to fight them for monster parts.

And you wanna know what the worst part is?

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Active skill 1 of 1:

: Level 1

Inactive skills 4 of 5:

: Level 1

: Level 1 (Earned from Stick)

Grow sticks at the cost of mana; the more mana used, the stronger the stick.

: Level 1 (Earned from Rock)

Skin turns to rock, granting higher DEF but sets DEX to 0.

: Level 1 (Earned from Ploasia Flower)

If the User is consumed while the skill is active, opponent will start taking poison damage.

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On the bright side, I can attack now by making a weapon through , raise my survivability with , and if, in a fight where I get swallowed up, I can use to hopefully get spit back out! ...At least, that was what I thought would happen, but it turned out not to be the case. , just like the name implies, makes sticks, and even if I put in all my effort, they are still as brittle as a stick, only having 1 durability, the best they could be used for is probably as fire starter. has the issue of setting my DEX to 0, which after testing it out, I learned that my speed stat is based on DEX, and with a DEX of zero... I am entirely unable to move. so it's also useless. And seriously!? needs me to get eaten to be used!? Hell no!

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Hmm? you want to know where the skill for my Mysdal Herb is? Well, apparently....

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Failure

Item (Mysdal Herb) is too high ranked an item! (Rank E)

Maximum rank availible for skill gathering: F

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...My ring can only gather F-rank skills, and Mysdal Herb is an E-rank item. Means no skills for me... at least it'll probably make me a small amount of money back in town... Surprisingly, it turned out that the most powerful skill I've gotten on this adventure was from a blade of grass...

Now, you might think, "What about ? You create sticks, then sell them! Infinite profit!" but sticks are just that, sticks. You find them lying everywhere in a forest, and if I spend all my mana on stick-making, I can make 3 sticks... And when I went back to sell everything, I learned they were only being sold as a single copper coin for a bundle of ten, not to mention the fact that it takes a solid 5 minutes to restore my mana completely... The stones, on the other hand, weren't being sold at all. The best I could do with them is probably try and bargain with a mason worker or blacksmith. Thankfully, The Ploasia Flowers were being sold as 3 copper a flower, and the Mysdal herb I could sell it for 7 copper, so after selling everything, I earned 18 copper... this is way too inefficient...

let's see, 3 sticks every 5 minutes for an hour would be 36 sticks, meaning 3.6 copper an hour. On the other hand, I could go back out to the forest edge and look for more things to scavenge... and even though I only have a sample size of one, let's say 18 copper is the average... it would take a little over 5 and a half hours of scavaging to get a single silver coin...

"Ex, excuse me, um h,how much is an um, apoth, an apothecary set?" I asked the man behind the counter; my plan is to keep scavaging for random stuff to sell until I can get an apothecary set, this way I can make potions and sell those instead. Potions are consumable, meaning they will almost always be in high demand no matter what stage of the game people are in.

"Ah, an aspiring potion brewer, are we? well, the cheapest apothecary set is the beginner's set; you can buy it for 3 silver." Eh? that'll take nearly 17 hours!? Was selling the map back then really that much of a time saver!? "Hmm, judging by that reaction, I'm guessing you don't have 3 silver on you, huh? Well, if you'd like, why not try map-making? a piece of chalk is only 40 copper, and you can either buy thatch paper for 10 copper or make it yourself through the skill. Thus making it the cheapest production to start with. Not to mention, we need more maps right now, so we're currently buying them at 33 copper for a decent map!" Did...did he know I have the skill? No, he just said it's the cheapest to start with... still it looks like I will need to continue working, but this time I'll need to only be out looking for things to sell for a few hours... haaa, alright! time for the hardest part of today....

"U-um, I um have only... 18 c-copper... where do you, you you, um suggest herb-gathering?" I should have started with asking this question before I went out the first time, but I really didn't want to talk to someone if I could have avoided it.