[p=center]Day 11[/p]
Since I have located Seoyoon and confirmed the fact that she was actually here in this city and was not mislead by my employer due to some issue or by mistake, I continued my life at the store my Scon in order to raise funds for a weapon when I get out of the city to fight and become stronger. From the first 10 day working for Scon I have made a total of 1 Gold and 20 Silver coins which was quite a bit for a beginner. It was only due to Scon being extra kind in my wages that I could make this much as well as the event of the guards giving the store carts of things to repair in which I helped Scon with a bit.
Because of yesterday with Scon telling me to go to the blacksmith with materials to be made into weapons, today I had to carry those weapons back to the store. It took me a total of an hour to carry them back due to the sheer weight of the weapons along with the fact that I did not want to even damage one of them by accident. Although I strained myself a bit due this event, I still didn’t gain one strength or any other stat just yet. It seems the natural growth of stats was really low unless you go beyond your limit constantly. However I have no plans on doing that just yet since my mission does not require such high growth and besides, doing so will take a majority of my time which may affect the mission itself.
“Ah good, now we can open up again” said Scon taking the weapons off my hands and placing them around the store so people can browse and buy.
Now is a good time than ever to describe the shop in more detail. The first thing is that the store is a good 20 by 20 metre large for the actual store with 10 by 20 metre back room for other things which was essentially Scon’s house. In the 20 by 20 metre space, there were a total of 5 shelves for weapons. Each shelf could hold around 30 weapons each so there was a total of around 150 weapons in display at a time. Naturally there were many other weapons in storage as well so this was not a problem. However the main problem was making sure there were enough stock at a time since people buy these weapons massively as they were very cheap and only the much stronger weapons cost gold.
Most of the weapons targeted at new players since everyone was still weak overall, cost around 20-50 silver a sword. This amount according to what I know is around a few days of hunting monsters outside the city.
For some time now my body is itching to fight monsters since I know this is a game. According to the game developer, Unicorn, the reason for this 4 week restriction was for mainly health reasons and to get the player used to the body. After that was the consideration to older players so they were swarmed with new players and finally so players can’t create new characters constantly to harass people. There were a dozen more reasons but these 3 summed it up well.
No matter the game, there were people who intentionally made it difficult for other people. In such a game like this, such a thing was even worse since you did not feel like it was simply a game anymore and it was more like the person doing the same thing to you in real life.
“Even so….”
I was very tempted to kill this person in front of me since he was bothering me since a while ago.
“Hey! Get me your best sword so I can use it!”
I simply let out a poker smile and ignored him going to another customer that was here before him.
However this man was still annoying as hell! Usually when such people annoy me like this, I could at least kill him without anyone knowing! This game unfortunately has a feature that is the bane of all killers. Namely the murderer mark which is only gained when they kill another player. NPCs don’t get this when they kill players and vis versa so quests which involve killing a NPC does not do much unless you are caught.
“Are you listening to me!?” the man shouted in my ear.
This person seems like a new player and definitely someone who changed his age and height and everything to look better. While he looked around 18 years old, he had the attitude of a 12 year old. The other customers are moving away now due to this person and are shopping elsewhere….my profits!
BANG!
I smashed my elbow into this player and knocked him out of the store. He didn’t die though he felt some pain even if it was only 30% of what it was. This brat held his stomach in pain and tears went out of his eyes.
“What’s going on?” asked a guard that was walking by. They were in charge of security in this city so naturally they would be a bit concern about someone crawling on the ground in pain.
“That person….” The brat still was crying and pointed his finger at me, “This person hit me!”
“Hmm? What’s going on?” asked Scon coming from the back room.
“This person was disrupting business and was harassing me” I replied without a care, “So I hit him lightly to throw him out of the store.”
Lots of things happened and the guards warned the player to not come here again if he valued his life.
[p=center]Day 12[/p]
The next day the annoying troll player returned and with some friends this time. I immediately sighed at this since this was so typical to spoiled brats that had too much time on their hands. Judging by the fact that this brat has a total of 2 more people with him means his friends are here as well and are just as bad or he paid them to come along.
“Dearest brat, if you remember the guards told you to stay the hell away” I smiled with my usual face and immediately said those words to him. His face twitched to this immediate insult. Well a number of people cannot take insults well enough. I suppose those who live in first world countries are used to be pampered to some extent and there are laws which prevent people from actively attacking someone physically or mentally.
The brat player pulled out a knife from his inventory and pointed it at me like he was some sort of action hero that was taking down the villain. To be honest this amount of danger was so low that my face could not help but to seem very bored at the moment.
“D-damn you!” the brat shouted.
I cannot help but to thank the Gods that I cannot understand this illogical thought process of such people like this brat.
“Haaa!”
He charged at me with the knife at hand. I quickly analysed the situation, the knife was quite short and low quality as well so it won’t be able to kill me nor inflict a good enough wound to stop me. The two behind this brat seems to be somewhat trained in some way though they are not skilled enough to hide anything from my eyes.
My body remembering actions from real life moved forward as well as my hands moved to slip through the arms and grab the joints directly. I then twisted it and his arms were now pointing in the opposite directions.
“Ahhhh!”
I then kicked his face away since it was disgusting causing the two behind him to attack me as well. They threw punches but I easily dodged them and smashed my palm into the chin of one of them causing him to fall unconscious. I then moved and used focused power in my leg and crack the other’s knee from the side causing it to move to an unnatural position. This did not even take me a minute to finish and was something that I could do with my eyes closed.
Three flashes of light appeared around those bodies as they logged out immediately after the battle finished.
“Hmm….” I suppose they may come back with more people. I better ask Scon on what to do since this is his store in the first place. Plus if they get thrown in jail all the better. Even if they log out, they can only appear in jail in the game and cannot spend time out of the game to shorten their sentence. If they have a month sentence then they must spend a month in the jail and no shorter than that. Even if they die, they will still spawn in the jail.
It was a system that was designed to punish the player though most of the time players who commit serious crimes will just be killed over and over again by Kingdoms if they are seen.
I walked to the back room where Scon was taking a break and said:
“Scon there was another incident with that brat from last time” I bluntly said.
“And what about it?” Scon asked as if it an insignificant event.
“Broke the guy’s arms and did the same for another 2 that were with him. The guy had a knife so I had to incapacitate him” I replied. There was no need to get in the details. Plus there were a number of people who seem the event in question and it was in self-defence.
“That person was a freeman like you right?” Scon asked.
“Yes.”
“Then why is he so much…weaker than you? I suppose there are a number of different types of freeman but most of them are just simply tedious to interact with” said Scon sighing.
As this is a new game and the concept of virtual reality was something very new, a number of people believe this to be like any other game. However it was quickly made clear that the NPCs in this game are advanced, too advanced to the point that players could not tell the difference between themselves and players in this world other than they are the freemen and they are the natives. Even though they feel the same as other people, most just treat them right now as any other NPC character in any other game.
With no respect and pure ignorant. From what I know from observing Scon, he has a long history and a number of reasons of doing what he does right now. The level of detail to this game was surely too high that most people after a while will mistake this for another world….although they did say it was literally another world to step into for advertisement of the game.
The remainder of the day was spent with me selling and buying items from players and NPCs alike. There was a small drop in customers due to the earlier incident from certain people but for some reason, a number of young males and females visited the store more often now as well which was the main democratic of the game so far.
I just don’t get people these days, why did the actual number of customers increase? Was it because of the higher number of players in the game now or am I missing something?
[p=center]Day 13[/p]
Another day passed as I logged back into the game. Since a while back when I gained a total of two skills which were ‘Art of Communication’ and ‘Identify’, I used them both a number of times in order to gain some most money at least. ‘Art of Communication’ was at Beginner Level 5 now and was steady increasing the more I bargained with other people although it only grew that much when used with NPCs rather than players. Thanks to this skill increasing, I had more chances with NPCs to buy items at a lower price or sell items at a higher price than usual.
Although the skill did not affect the buying or selling points, since it fell on me to do that on my own manually, it made it so I would be insult them when I ask a price too low or too high when I’m buying or selling.
On the other hand, the ‘Identify’ skill was at Beginner Level 4 now and only grew that slowly because now I didn’t have a large batch of things to identify to increase the experience of the skill quickly. According to the experience I have with the skill, I will have a high chance of success the higher than level the skill is with identifying items. Even if it would take 30% to identify items at a level, the next level the chance will increase to 35% or higher. It was quite troublesome since there was a majority large chance that I will have to use the skill multiple times either way.
“Ah Alice, I need you to deliver some weapons to some customers” said Scon in the middle of the day when business was not at its best. I would understand since he wanted more people here when it was at peak hour at the store but now that there were little to none people here, it was the best time to make me do this task.
“Of course” I replied with a smile. I was getting quite good at the fake smile now to the point that common people think it was a natural smile.
“There are around 5 weapons you need to deliver. Here’s a map of the locations” Scon handed me a roughly drawn map of the city area.
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You have obtained Roughly Drawn Map
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Then he handed me 5 weapons that were wrapped in cloth. They were quite light and didn’t weigh that much compared to the other weapons I knew of in the store. Then he gave me a dagger that was silvery in colour though was completely plain in design.
“?”
“You will need this in case someone attacks you. I would do this myself but I have a certain amount of trust in your fighting skills” said Scon before leaving me to my task.
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The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Iron Dagger Durability: 20/20 Damage: 10-15
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Before a left the store, I looked at the map. Despite the bad handwriting, the map was surprisingly detailed and had places which I should go through and places I shouldn’t go through. Judging by all these things that he had prepared, these were the so called ‘custom weapons’ in which Scon wanted before but couldn’t get from that blacksmith since the level was too high.
Does this mean Scon had another person make them? Or did he process the blacksmithing skill at a much higher level than that other blacksmith? I have seen him in the back room more often lately for a pass couple of days and responsibility for the store slowly shifted to me as well during that time. Well it was not my problem at all what he did in his spare time.
I strapped on the dagger to my side and carried the 5 clothed weapons to the locations that were pointed out on the map. After around 10 minutes of walking, I made it to the first location. It was a Blade Master Guild I believe. I entered it and went to the receptionist.
“I’m here to deliver a weapon to someone here” I said.
“Umm…who is the receiver?” asked the Receptionist.
I looked at the note and said, “The guild master who ordered a custom weapon to be made” I handed over the cloth weapon and left to the other locations. These events repeated itself for another 5 times in various locations where it seems there was a strong NPC that wanted a weapon from Scon.
However upon walking to the fifth and final location with the last weapon at hand, I was stopped by various people who seems shady, feels shady and look shady! They couldn’t get any shadier than they were.
“Let us carry that for you” said one of the 5 people here with a smile that had no generosity to me. They immediately surrounded me on all sides to block any escape. It seems they did this before. When one of them was about to touch me I drew my dagger at my side and immediately slashed the throat of the person killing him. After that I went in a flash and attacked the other 4 people who wanted the last cloth weapon. In an instant, with my skill from reality in this game, they all died.
When I delivered the last clothed weapon, I immediately logged off not paying attention to what message the game gave me.
[p=center]Day 14[/p]
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You have killed 5 players, gained the Murderer Mark
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Gained no Infamy due to players having high infamy and was known to steal items from residents from city. Murderer Mark will only last until statement has been made from city.
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Hmm….that would explain the flashing red name on my forehead and the fact there was a red diamond on my forehead as well. The murderer mark, the only sign in which the game gives you that a player killed another player. In my case it was 5 players but for reasons above, the game did not give me any infamy along with the murderer mark. However the reaction of players and NPCs alike were similar in a way.
“Ah, Murderer! Run away!”
“Don’t come near meeee!”
Yeah, having a murderer mark is really bad in the middle of town. However the guards didn’t react at much though only gave me some glares here and there. It seems they knew of the how I got this mark to begin with. Honestly I was only thankful the place I logged out from was near to the store so not too much commotion was gained because of me. However even Scon was shocked at the sign on my forehead.
“Wow! What did you….wait it had to do with the delivery didn’t it? Damn so someone did attack you and from the looks of it already, there were multiple people who ganged up on you” said Scon in displeasure.
I was more honestly surprised that he knew so much detail on the attack though that isn’t my biggest problem so far.
“If you’re wondering, I did complete the delivery fine after the ‘incident’” I said to Scon.
Scon scratched his beard and pondered for a bit. Most likely thinking of what to do now. Since he is an NPC and part of this city, he knows about what is to happen to me next which was the city determining what to do with me though normally they would either drive me out of town or kill me though both were impossible since I can’t leave town for more than half a month later by their own laws and Scon was on my side so killing me was also impossible as well.
“To be honest, I need to have a talk with some officials on why there were some people trying to steal my works even if they didn’t know it was my weapons that you were carrying. A number of people know you work for me though it seems the word isn’t entirely out there yet” said Scon.
It seems like he was going to do some things that will in the end result with this murderer mark disappearing. There were a number of ways to get rid of the murderer mark though it was not that well known yet.
The first was simply waiting it out which would last around a few weeks to months, the second was to do good deeds to cancel out the bad though it takes many times more good deeds than the original bad deed. The last which was rarely done was to pay money, no ‘donate’ to churches to have it removed after a certain amount of money was ‘donated’. Something about the Gods sparing your evil deeds and such happen and the murderer mark along with most of your infamy will disappear.
The only reason why this last method was not used commonly was that one, there weren’t that many players with this mark. And two, it takes a lot of money to get rid of the mark via a church which may cost hundreds of gold in the end.
“I’m going to go now so the store has to be closed. Don’t do anything since you won’t be accounted for any more killings until I get back with an official to clear the mark off.”
I see, so I can go on a killing spree and only death can stop me then though I have no plans on doing that right now.
Watching the outside of the closed store, I noticed that was one particular person that I immediately recognised due to his very distorted and disgusting face. He was alone now and soon walked around the place.
I decided to do this one thing just this one time out of selfishness.
I followed him hiding, away from sight from anyone and then waited until he foolishly went into an alleyway which was literally the place you would most likely get killed via a surprise attack or worse. I would imagine these kinds of places were the life of the city when it at night with all sorts of shady deals being made!
“Y-you!” the person otherwise known as the brat player stuttered.
“Die.”
There was no emotion, no feelings but there was a hint of satisfaction when I killed him by stabbing the dagger into his throat directly. A few messages appeared and such but before I could read them I disappeared from the alleyway, the scene of the crime and got back to the store waiting for Scon to come back.
[p=center]Day 15[/p]
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Murderer Mark has been removed
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“Ah”
The red flashing name above my sight disappeared without a word.
“Now then, I will leave now” said the official that came back with Scon to remove the murderer mark from me.
From what I heard, a number of things were said by Scon including the fact that those people were about to steal very powerful weapons crafted by Scon himself and he had suspicions that someone may have been behind me. Naturally with a top-tier blacksmith worrying about this, they had to give into his demands and as such, the time in which I had this mark was very short.
Thankfully there was a good system that controls the Murderer Mark and Infamy. In any time you kill another player unless they have the murderer mark or is part of war, you get the Murderer Mark. In such cases it seems that you only gain infamy when other people know that you did the act. In other words, Infamy is exactly the same as Fame except that it is a negative thing to your name. To be honest, no one knows yet of how infamy will affect you latter on but since it’s a bad thing in general, people try very hard to avoid this.
Actions like stealing or attacking other people will cause infamy to grow after a certain point when rumours of you spread while intimacy towards other NPCs rapidly decrease at the same time. However there are some benefits to infamy I would believe since it is in the game. Say…high infamy could allow you to get along more with bandits and evil type characters in the game.
“Now I don’t need to worry about other players attacking me…” I muttered. Things calmed down when people knew the Mark disappeared from me. Frankly most players were afraid of those with the murderer mark since they have killed and possibly can kill again without much to hold them back.
“Ay, I was quite shocked that you got that mark so suddenly. Well it is my fault partly in giving you a job that would result in this. Tell you what, you can keep that dagger since you seem handy with it” said Scon. He looked at my hands and then said after some thinking, “Your hands seem very agile and precise at least for a human. Say….do you want to follow the path of blacksmithing?”
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Accept Blacksmith Class from Scon?
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This message appeared in front of me was a class change window. I could either accept or deny this class. Accepting will rapidly increase intimacy with Scon but denying will decrease intimacy a bit. However I have no plans on getting an indoor class unless Seoyoon decides to stay in the city as well.
“I cannot accept Scon” I replied.
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You have denied the class
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Scon looked disappointed and said, “I guess it may be too much for someone as young and skilled as you. However if you wish to pursuit the path of blacksmithing there is another way without becoming a blacksmith itself.”
“Ho?”
My eyes glimmered since this was very valuable information. Getting a skill that was not part of your class was extremely difficult. This was even more difficult for skills that revolve around certain classes like production skills. Mainly, those who have gone through the 4 week deadlock chose fighting classes and were testing them out.
People soon found out that getting a class was easy enough. It was changing it afterwards that was extremely difficult. However say you wanted a certain skill like blacksmithing but still wanted to go with a combat class. Usually you only had two choices which was deciding on only one class and abandoning the other. And now Scon was opening a path that allowed both options.
“The method is simple. You need the repair skill which all blacksmiths have and improve it until it reaches intermediate level. This is very difficult itself and takes years of repairing. Before it reaches intermediate level, the durability of the items you repair will decrease a bit each time you repair it. It is only when it reaches intermediate level that the item will be repaired without this side-effect and when you can learn the blacksmithing skill from anyone!”
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You have gained the skill: Repair
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Author's Notes:
- Word Count: 4400~
- This chapter was mainly about explaining what was some of the features of the game + getting the repair skill. Next chapter will mainly be training up the skill and near the end will connect to the second half the 4 weeks.
- Also an update on things since many of you want that Sequel Series of 'The Unfortunate Fool'. First 8 chapters of vol 1 is done. Pretty fast unless you consider the first 6 chapters were already written back around volume 5 of 'The Unfortunate Fool'. I'm going to slow down writing that and focus on this....but maybe in a few days to weeks I might release the prologue(s) as a start though Uni is starting again.....