[p=center]Day 6[/p]
Logging back into the game I immediately went back to my job at Blackfur’s store where I sold items from the shop to players and brought items from players to the shop. Namely it was a job that was mainly bartering as there was no true fixed price on items since they are not exactly the same. All I have to rely on was the average standards and their values of items.
However it wasn’t that hard to sell items or to buy items as well since most of the things this store buys and sells are weapons and nothing else. I believe there is an armour store nearby as well which gets some attention from the players as well. Due to this these two stores had a close connection to make the most of a profit off the players that appear to take arms and armour up though only the richer players were able to afford armour since they were more expensive than weapons.
Another reason was that between a good weapon or a good set of armour, most people would go with the weapon since it would mean they would be able to kill things faster than trying to kill monsters with a crappy sword or with their fists and body. Because of this, a player in front of me was making a choice of a good weapon or armour.
“What should I do? I only have 1 gold to spend” the player lamented with his choice.
The player in question wanted to buy a good iron sword that had several bonuses to it such as increased strength and agility as well as increased damage and durability if possible. Namely sometime when a weapon is made, certain stats depending on how it was forged and the skill of the blacksmith in question, stats will appear on weapons or any equipment you can get.
Because you could gain stats without levelling up, these weapons were much more valuable to begin with by several folds. I have heard that a rare iron sword that had high damage and yet no restrictions on its use was being sold for thousands of dollars. This was an example of how popular this game was; perhaps I could spare some money to buy in game items to help with my gameplay though I don’t know the extent of the combat and its difficulties yet. They say someone trained in real life would have an easier time fighting in the game compared to normal people without experience.
But enough about that, I have to focus on the job and my job was to make sure this person brought something. Why wasn’t I trying to make him spend all of his money here and now? The answer is simply that it’s better for him to come back and spend more money here to upgrade his equipment later. Also Scon asked me to direct some traffic to the armour store as well.
“Perhaps you can buy a weaker sword for now and get some armour to increase your survivability rate. After you gain enough gold later doing this, you can buy the sword later. It’s not going anywhere.”
That was the suggestion that came from my mouth. Another thing was that my voice was awfully sweet and kind to the player while it was normally just blunt and cold as others would say.
The player looked flustered stuttering as he breathed and said in a panic, “Will you be here when I get back?”
I gave him a natural store smile and replied, “Of course.” I’ll be waiting for your next purchase for my own profit. Luckily those last few words did not slip out of my trained mouth. The player in the end under my guidance brought a cheap sword that could hold for a while with enough money to buy some decent armour from the armour store.
===========================================================================
You have gained the skill “Art of Communication”
===========================================================================
This was unusual, from what I know players can generate skills when they do enough of something long enough or meet a certain condition. There was a limit on the number of skills you can have however which made it important to choose which stats you really want. But for a beginner like me, generating one was good enough and I had more room for other skills as well.
I looked up the information on the stat from the game.
===========================================================================
Art of Communication Beginner Level 1
The ability to fluently speak your intention to others. The positive effects of your words will increase while the negative effects will decrease as this skill grows. It is possible to influence the actions of others to a certain point and convince people of what is what as well.
===========================================================================
Interesting, this stat will be useful as I work in this store. I checked my status window and this skill started at beginner level 1. I wonder how much this skill has to grow until I can trick people though tricking people is also determined by the choice of words, situations and influence you have under you before the actual tricking. Because I was interested in knowing the full extent of this new skill I gained, I continued working until night fell and I had to log off to do things out of game such as information gathering.
[p=center]Day 7[/p]
From the new skill called “Art of Communication”, I immediately noticed from the previous day that I could convince other people, more likely NPCs on buying or selling at a certain price. The effects on actual players seem less than NPCs however which was a bit disappointing. However due to the creation of this skill, I was able to sell 10% more with a price 5% higher than usual to NPCs.
“I would like to buy…”
“I would like to buy…”
“Do you have…”
All of these customers for the store were all manipulated by me to buy certain items in which were less popular than other items but then after stocks fell due to the recent selling became more wanted and less in stock which increased the price up higher. After the short trend in which the items were once again unpopular, the more valuable and more useful weapons were sold at a steady rate. When those more expensive items were lower in stock, I directed players and NPCs alike to the cheaper products renewing the cycle again.
It was thanks to this system of buying and selling that I was able to make some extra money. To the extent of my wealth, it was still low of only a mere 16 silver which however was quite high for a new player like me. Now that I have a small amount of wealth, I once again decided to go off and explore this city in more detail since I need to at least confirm that Seoyoon is here.
I asked to take the rest of the day off in which Scon agreed since I was making him more profit than usual and then went to the less populated areas of the city this time. Immediately entering these areas, I noticed that there were poorer people here that only wore rags and ate only rotten or expired food to live. It was a sight that you could not get used to and yet is there in every world.
Those who have lost opportunities and those who never got an opportunity for success in any way and yet those who live a good life claim it was their fault while taking more and more from them. It was the injustice of the current system of currency the world had and it seems like this world was also influenced by it.
However I directed my eyes away from these sights and focused on finding the one called Seoyoon since it was my mission to observe and protect her from anything and everything that threatens her. Moving through the alleyways I noticed that there were more people around strangely…no it was not that but they were following me. Muggers? Thieves? I did not know but it was bad news for me.
I immediately took a roundabout around them with roads that had more people on them, people that actually give a damn and ensure nothing troublesome happens to me. It was the benefit of my appearance I guess but men tend to try and look good in front of beautiful women and try to appeal to them by protecting them. Such people are annoying but useful at times. I remember there was once an idiot that gladly took several bullets for me to escape from a job went wrong. Hours later, when I got back to the shop, Scon called for me and directed me to the back room where he said the following.
“I have heard that the guards have gone on an expedition and are coming back. So that means have store and many others who have the repair skill will be getting a lot of weapons to repair soon. Because of this I want you to at least be able to identify weapons and sort them to the most damage to the least.”
I wondered why he did not ask if I wanted to help him.
“The reason why I cannot teach you any of my blacksmithing skills is because you are not my apprentice! And dwarves do not take non-dwarves as apprentices that easily. You are a good shopkeeper aye, but I have seen nothing of ye blacksmithing skills.”
Nor do I intend to become a blacksmith in any way. Being a blacksmith means you will have to spend most of your time hammering at the forge and are unable to move about that much due to the price of portable forges. It is because of this, despite the opportunity to make weapons for myself that I must not wish to become a blacksmith.
“Alice however there is good news. I can still teach you the identify skill that is very useful in many ways. You will not be able to use it like magicians and their kind but to identify weapons and the like, this will be enough. Now hold out your hand.”
Following Scon’s words, I held out my hand for him in which he placed a book on my hand and chanted some words before a message from the game appeared in front of me.
===========================================================================
You have gained the skill “Identify”
===========================================================================
===========================================================================
Identify Beginner Level 1
The ability to identify items that have not been identified yet to reveal information about it.
Cost: 10 mana
===========================================================================
[p=center]Day 8[/p]
The very next day when I logged back into the game, Scon was there and instructed me to identify as many weapons as I could in order to level the skill up as much as possible. The reason for this was brought to my attention immediately. The skill while being new had a high chance of failure due to this. Because this skill was still at Beginner Level 1, it would take me several tries to identify even the most simplest of items. And because this skill costed mana to use which was limited, I could only try to identify 10 at a time.
The method in which Scon used to allow me to learn the skill was an interesting one as well. The method he used was something that only a master of that skill can use to past down knowledge to others. Along with earning the skill itself or learning it from a skill book, this was another way to learn skills quickly.
“Identify!”
“Identify!”
“Identify!”
For the entire day I was identifying items left and right of low quality. The reason for this is that I have a much higher chance of identifying common items than rarer items. The difficulty and chance of identifying items decrease as the level of the item increase as well as whether it is a rare item and or if it is a magical item as well. Simply put, you need to a magician to identify rare magical items since they are the only class to be able reach the Advance level of identify while other classes can only reach intermediate level in which they can identify most rare or magical item with several tries.
===========================================================================
Identify levelled up
===========================================================================
Throughout half a day, I continued to practice this and the skill reached beginner level 3 which to be honest was faster than I expected. However it seems that rapidly using a skill like this increases the experience it gains quite a bit. But according to what I know, the higher level a skill is, the more experience it requires in order for it to level up. Something that reached the intermediate level would easily take 10 times longer to level up than in the beginner level while there hasn’t been anyone who reached the advance level in a skill yet even a month into the game’s release.
“Alice, what’s ye progress?” asked Scon seeing that he needs me tomorrow to help in take care of the influx of weapons and items coming in.
“Beginner Level 3” I replied.
Scon sighed in relief and said, “That’s good enough to identify most of the items. The guards aren’t that strong compared to war veterans. Naturally their weapons aren’t that great either and are mostly low grade weapons in my book.”
Scon took the time to explain to me of weapon grade which was a surprising concept to me since there have been no indication from the information gathered so far that such a thing existed in the game.
“Weapons have different ranks and are mostly dependent on the grade of the material used. Low grade material includes iron while high grade material includes Mithril. After that is on the skill of the blacksmith in question. A master blacksmith is able to create a top grade weapon even from iron ore while an incompetent blacksmith can only make a low grade weapon at best even with Mithril if they even succeed in using the material!”
According to Scon there were different methods in blacksmithing which will results in different results. There were also many different types of materials that could be used for weapons and armour. Monster leather and bones could also be used as well. Monster fangs and scales are also commonly used to make top ranked weapons.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“What top ranked weapons? They’re weapons that are above the norm and have special features in them. While even low ranked weapons may have added stats which increase ye power here and there, top tier weapons give something more valuable. It may be something useless like being able to flip the sword in the air easily or something valuable like increase damage to a certain creature. The thing that brings out a top ranked weapon is not the skill of the blacksmith most of the time, but the materials used. Something made of dragon scale is bound to have some special options in them.”
Scon then spent the next hour talking about how horrible Dragons are and how they should all be wiped off the continent itself. It was at this time that I chose to ask a certain question.
“Are there other continents?”
It was a simple question bit Scon frown and thought about it deeply.
“There may be…but according to legend and folktale, they are too far away from us that even the largest ships with years of supplies cannot get to them” Scon shook his head, “There have been many tales of our ancestor coming from distant lands to this continent and even now there are strange thing popping up that are not from this continent at all…an example are you freeman! Coming from the heavens in blazing lights. Mine you, even though we natives were expecting your lot for years, the sight of so many lights that came from out of nowhere shocked many people! Haha!”
In a good mood, Scon continued to tell tales as well as making sure that my skill increased in experience. Thanks to this, when the rest of the day ended, my skill increased my a further one level increasing it to beginner level 4 which can now identify armour properly as well.
[p=center]Day 9[/p]
Today was the day in which Scon was waiting for since he would get a higher profit than usual when the guards ask him to repair their gear. Namely 5 guards with carts of worn out weapons and armour appeared in the early morning. They greeted Scon:
“Morning Scon, we’ll pay the usual 10% more if you do this by day’s end” said one of the guards.
Scon nodded and we took the carts into the shop. There were a total of easily 100 different weapons and even more armour. To repair of all these equipment was impossible no matter how you look at it. The guards soon left Scon and the shop to let him do his work. After starting to sort out the different equipment in different grades, Scon placed a sign up in front of his shop which said that they were closed for the day.
“Alice what are you doing? Start identifying and sort them out to the best to the worst. I’m going to start with this pile.”
Scon took a large crate which held 20 or so weapons. I took the same number and started to identify them bit by bit. Although most of these weapons took one try to identify, there were a few weapons that took 2 or 3 times. Any more than that, I immediately handed them to Scon since I would use up too much mana in other case and I would not be able to identify more weapons and armour if I didn’t.
Several hours passed and around half the items were identified with around a third of them being repaired by Scon. Frankly the speed, in which Scon was doing things whether it was identifying items or repairing them, was too fast that his hands burred as he moved. Even though he identified roughly the same amount of items as me, he was also repairing the majority of them at the same time while helping me as well. Another thing was that Scon throughout the hours did not take a single break at all while after I ran out of mana which commonly happened, I would sort the items in value for in to repair. Scon was going through the low quality items quickly but was also repairing the higher quality items which he identified on his own. It was quite fascinating to see a master in his art doing his work.
Eventually, after a total of 7 hours of non-stop work, we had finished this request from the guards.
“That took shorter than I expected! This is mostly due to you Alice. Having someone to help out is really nice….I should try and get more freemen when you leave” said Scon praising me.
I decided to act humble at this moment.
“Not at all, I only did a little work compared to you and at my speed, I was afraid of pulling you down!”
“Haha! You have a good tongue though it won’t get you that far with dwarves! I’ll tell you a small secret here, other than dwarves themselves, the next most favoured are you humans. After that are those despicable elves and don’t you dare mention those orcs! The best way to be friendly with all dwarves for you is to restore a tarnished honour. In my kind’s history there are a few parts in which we are not proud of or parts that were lost and twisted with time. Find them and tell the world of the truth for the dwarves and we may even treat you are one as our own!”
I smiled at these words. As this game was only recently released a month or so ago, there haven’t been much on the personal relationships between the races. Naturally the majority of the races aren’t on the friendliest terms and as such you need to consider your race for the future as well but Scon here just told me a method of increasing relationships with dwarves even though I’m not one!
“If I were to find such a thing, then I would definitely help” I said in reply to his words.
“Ye, such things are rarer than some of the rarest gems and metals. It’s only by chance that you can find such a thing.”
I nodded and Scon reopened the store back to normal business. Due to several hours of being closed, there had been some players that waited for the shop to reopen. According to some words with other players, the weapons here were a grade higher than most stores and even only costs a bit less than other stores as well. However there was only limited stock and because of that, players wanted to buy quickly which pushed the price up higher than the average price.
After another 2 hours of selling weapons to players, the shop closed one more time for the rest of the day and the guards returned for their weapons and armour that have been repaired.
“Ohhh! This quality…I haven’t seen this sword of mine in this state since I brought it years ago!” said one guard surprised of the new shiny look of his sword. From what I remember, that sword was partly rusted and chipped and brittle from long use. To think blacksmithing can do that….no it was through the repair skill combined with the high expertise with the blacksmithing skill that resulted in this.
I would like to ask Scon to learn blacksmithing from him but from what I know, the chance of that happening was like a star falling to the ground. He would generally not teach anyone unless they wish to fully pursuit the art of blacksmithing and is a dwarf.
“Thank you are your work, here’s a promised amount as always” said another guard that was clearly more experienced than the first one. Soon they packed the weapons and armour on their carts and left. Scon gave me a single gold coin for my help, accounting for the profits that were gained as well.
[p=center]Day 10[/p]
Another day passed as I logged back into the game. Due to the recent sales, Scon’s store lacked the required weapons to sell due to the days’ worth of selling without restock. Because of this, I was required to do the same task as before which was carrying materials to the blacksmith down the street to let him make weapons.
===========================================================================
You have gained 1 Strength
===========================================================================
Due to these actions, I gained 1 strength stat which made it slightly easier than before to carry thing. It should be according to the numbers 10% easier to do tasks that require strength than before. Stats were important all game but especially during the early levels, stats were even more important due to the higher effects it had on you. Because of this, the difference between level 1 and level 30 characters which was currently the upper tier of players was extremely high. You don’t even have to mention how much stronger gear you can have at the higher levels. So far NPCs had the highest levels in numbers and reality. It was discovered a while back that well trained soldiers were around level 100 while knights were around level 200 in average. However for more powerful NPCs such as Royal Knight who protect the King directly, their average level is much higher at 300 which was an impossible height for normal players right now seeing that they have barely started so far.
Seeing that I wouldn’t be doing any kind of work now, I left to explore the city once again to try and find the target Seoyoon. To be honest, I have been slacking off due to the sheer power this game has to draw you in. Avoiding the backstreets since Seoyoon is not likely to be there anyway, I explored the other areas such as the residential area where there were fewer players.
The reason was simply that players did not own a house there and most jobs were at the market area so why would they go there unless it was for a quest or sheer curiosity. Because of this, the area was much quieter than you would expect with most people living there the elderly for the most part.
If it was this place, then maybe the target Seoyoon was here all the time. I haven’t been here at all so it may be possible since Seoyoon is logged into the game often as part of her treatment from her doctor.
“Excuse me, may I ask a question?” I asked approaching an old elderly woman in her late 60s. Asking something in a neutral way will allow you to determine what kind of character they are. It was something I learnt from dealing with NPCs a while back.
Generally most NPCs were friendly enough to players but there were some that were stubborn or simply hated you for no good reason at all to the point that you would think that certain sensitive groups would complain about this as some sort of discrimination and would preach how they were wronged.
However besides that NPCs had a weird way of interacting with players. It is simply that your actions will spread to other NPCs eventually as you do small things and will only spread faster if you do big things that will earn you fame. However small actions have a small radius of effect on NPCs and even if you do something for someone on the other side of the city, NPCs from this side of the city wouldn’t necessary know or care about it unless it involves them in some way.
“Yes dear?” said the elderly woman in a kind voice.
I smiled inside since it was the kind elderly character you would find often in stories that would help you if you ask.
“Have you seen….”
I started describing Seoyoon as best I can from the photo I got of her. According to the information, Seoyoon is socially disabled as in she rarely if ever communicates with others and does not speak. Also the part where she looks like a goddess helped a lot in describing her. It was as simply as saying ‘She seems to be blessed with Freya’s beauty’ that the old elderly woman immediately knew who I was talking about.
“Ah yes, that young dear is staying with a friend of mine since she seems lost in this world. If you head to the end of the street and make a left then a right, you should find her.”
With these directions, I thanked the old elderly woman and went to where she described. Upon walking to where Seoyoon was, I found that she was helping out clean the house of that person that had taken her in for a bit.
“….”
According to the information I know, Seoyoon is not likely to communicate with me at all. Plus there was nothing in the mission details that required me to interact with Seoyoon. It was just enough to confirm that she was there once in a while and to track her when she leaves the city eventually to see her fighting ability.
With that, I made a mental note on her location but did not return to the store just yet. I continued to walk around talking with various people on various topics in order to increase the knowledge I had of this place.
As of all worlds, the elderly have more information on things than you think. They lived a long life and know from various sources of what was happening. Thanks to this I got some information that other players did not have yet. With this, I logged out.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author's Notes:
- Word Count: 4600~
- Second chapter out....
- Not exactly writing much these days. Taking long breaks on doing other things plus writing that other series more than this one...damn writing the first 8 chapters to this series will be a pain since all the stuff I want to write about is after the boring first 4 weeks.....should I just skip days 11-40...? Hmm....going to try and get to at least day 20 to set up some basic skills for the MC at least....plus need to introduce that character that gives the MC the unique skills that I want to write about....so much to do but too lazy to do it all...
- Also writing in microsoft word is seemingly more annoying than in open office for some reason...