[p=center]Day 16[/p]
Unfortunately I had to log off after the message appeared but Scon was very patient and at the next day this message was still there when I logged back in.
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You have gained the skill: Repair
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This message appeared in front of me telling me that I gained another skill thanks to Scon now. With this, I have a total of 3 skills. I suppose it is wise to tell you now that there is in fact a limit of skills you can have. The number is 10 skills until you gain a class in which this limit is lifted.
Skills and Spells from what I know are classified differently as well. Active Skills and Spells that need mana to use are usually something you don’t have a limit to. Over time the player would gain countless combat skills and having a limit on that would be counter-productive. Passive Skills that affect you in another way do have a limit to some extent as well. Although they are classified differently, I do not believe there is a proper limit to the number you can have. There is probably a way to get an unlimited or extremely high number of skills and spells on your character in this game. It was simply the way that this game was designed that such a thing could be possible to exist.
I checked the new skill I got.
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Repair Beginner Level 1
The ability to repair items using mana. Due to the low skill level, durability of items repaired will decrease until intermediate level.
Mana Cost: 10
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Like the ‘Identify’ skill, this skill also had a mana cost though a very low one which would benefit me even more when I level up enough times and gain more mana to use it more and more times. These two skills are something that most players want but will most likely won’t train at all using it only in convenient which means those who actual train these kinds of skills will be more sought after.
“Okay now I have to give you something to help you train this skill with. Take this nasty thing” said Scon as he handed over a rusted plate of some sort.
I looked at it and said, “Identify”
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Corroding Metal Plate of Regeneration Durability: 50/50
A plate that had been enchanted with the power to restore durability! Although corroding spell has also been placed on this plate making it impossible to regenerate its durability, the plate can still recover its maximum durability with time.
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I looked at it understanding Scon’s intentions. Using this I can easily train my repair skill whenever I have the time and mana though it will most likely be when I have the mana for a while with my mere 100 mana. I naturally regenerate 1 mana per minute out of battle which means I have to wait 1 hour and 40 minutes to use the ‘Repair’ skill 10 times. However there was another hidden intention Scon wasn’t letting on.
“You’re giving me this so I won’t have to lower the quality of the weapons in the store aren’t you?” I asked innocently with a kind voice and soft smile. Scon gave a rough smile back with eyes filled with greed saying, “I’m glad a human like you can understand me.”
With this, we went our separate ways with Scon doing things on his own and I, waiting for a customer to come in the store. It was the early morning which was actually one of the peak hours since players would go out to hunt from the morning and come back at the night which was the second peak hour. Times other than that are the same except for night where rarely anyone comes in so Scon never bothered to stay open that late.
I took the corroding metal plate to the side and took a hammer which Scon lend me in my hand as well. On the hard table the metal plate was placed and I aimed carefully.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
I hit the metal plate hard three times in a row.
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Corroding Metal Plate of Regeneration Durability: 49/50
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I was very surprised that it only lowered by one though this was in fact a good thing since less chance of durability lowering means more time to hunt continuously at once. I spend the rest of the day training the ‘Repair’ skill while doing my duty to the store.
[p=center]Day 17[/p]
A full day passed with me no even logging off in time and the ‘Repair’ skill was at 47% till Beginner Level 2.
“Scon was right….this is going to take a while” I remembered Scon laughing at me who was trying to level up the skill as fast as possible. If I recall his words were like, ‘rushing it will make it worse, try and make a hobby out of it’. Now I understand his words; getting a skill to the intermediate level as going to be difficult and hard work and will takes weeks and months to do. How many hundreds of times did I use this skill and yet it only increased by a mere 47%.
From what I heard from the information that was given to me on a daily basis to make my job easier, getting from beginner level 9 to level 10 where it would convert into the intermediate level was the hardest part so far. I can’t even imagine how hard it would be from the intermediate level to advance. Perhaps it will take more than a full year in real life for someone to appear with a skill in the advance level.
I sighed at this since it will take a while until I can possibly get to that level. Plus I still have to wait for another 11 days until I can go out of the city and hunt down monsters as well. Seoyoon would’ve gained the ability to leave the city 4 days before me so in another week. In that time I have no idea what will happen nor have the power to stop it. From the many reports on the game so far, she will probably die on the first day and respawn in time for me to go out.
While this game was realistic in a way, you could feel that it was game-like with all the skills and magic you can get. However what you don’t expect is that you with your fresh out characters are actually much weaker than the weakest monster, the rabbit which is something I heard is the equivalent to the slime in Dragon Quest. However from what I see, with stats barely over 10 by the time you get out there, it was pretty much a must that you would be killed so easily. I heard that, though the game is only more than a month released to the public that you can gain stats by training your body.
Running will increase agility and lifting heavy weights will increase strength. Intelligence and Wisdom can be increased by reading while stamina increases whenever you use it up a lot at a time for a while. For someone like me, this was a simple fact but many people especially in the gaming orientated Korea are lazy even though I believe most of them one way or another go through military training after a certain age. Because of this you would kinda expect things to go more smoothly but there are still so many people dying so fast in the beginner areas. But…that’s not my problem yet.
Taking out the Metal Plate that I have been using for training my ‘Repair’ skill I went on it for a while again…namely 10 times until my mana completely disappeared. Because of this I would take regular breaks when my mana fully filled up and then used it all up once again on training the ‘Repair’ skill. After a couple of times doing this, the experience bar for the skill increased to a good 60%. It seems that that main reason why this skill was taking a while to increase was that due to my mana limits although without this metal plate to use, it would most definitely be due to a lack of damaged goods to repair. For this act of making my life easier, I am very thankful to Scon.
Later on in the day where there were more customers coming in since it was getting near dark and some of them want to buy or at least browse through the weapons, a young child in more than 10 years old approached me all of a sudden.
“Big Sis, please help me!” she said clinging to my leg.
“….”
What is with this kind of development, I do hope it is not one of those developments you read in second-rate stories.
“Please save my older brother!” the young child screamed.
“….”
Ah…it is one of kinds of developments.
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Save the Older Brother!
A young child has requested for you to save her older brother. Details will be explained if you accept the quest.
Rank: Unknown
Reward: Unknown
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I looked at the young child on my leg and the crowd that was gathering. There was something off about this whole situation. I know what I will do now since it is the most logical choice for a person like me. I looked down coldly at the child on my leg and said:
“I refuse.”
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You have refused the quest
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Hearing this, the young child ran away crying and I went with my business as normal.
[p=center]Day 18[/p]
Due to the incident yesterday, there was a larger crowd gathered at the store now. The rumours of the cold hearted person refusing a quest from the young tearful child have spread quite far and my intimacy with players and NPCs alike dropped quite a bit. Comments such as ‘How could you do that’ and ‘You have no heart’ have been said quite a bit in the morning alone.
“Alice did you have to deny the girl’s request like that?” asked Scon when there weren’t that many people around.
“If I didn’t then she would be still stuck to my leg” I replied calmly. Strangely enough Scon’s relationship with me didn’t change at all. It seems he had a trained heart as well to see that and not bat an eye.
Well it was as expected since I did deny the quest in front of a large group of people. However I think there was something else that was causing the spread of the rumours…hmm….I wonder what the core case was. Either way I have no regret in not accepting the quest since it seems like too much trouble and plus I don’t know where it will lead. The quest rank and reward were not shown which troubled me the most….something was off with that quest and that would be fatal in the end. It’s better to leave it to someone else in that case.
I have no interest with the rewards though if it is useful then there may be some regret. Right now having a small advantage over other players isn’t that great since it is certain that another player will find something even more valuable in the end.
Later that day some knight from the castle came to the shop for some reason. They immediately greeted Scon with a smile.
“It’s been a while, how have you been?” said the leader of those knights. That particular knight seemed to be a Royal Knight that had better armour that was elegant in design than the others who seem to be common knights with normal heavy armour you can see all the time.
Scon too greeted them back quite happily, “What brings you lot here? Don’t tell me….you broke my weapons again” though near the end he had a grumpy look with the possibility his weapons were broken.
“No no, of course not. In fact we’re not here for you but that assistant of yours over there” the Royal Knight looked at me with a gaze. In that moment my senses flared off telling me to run….this man was….powerful…at least level 200 or even more. He was someone I wouldn’t be able to face for a very long time I believe.
However I still maintained my poker face in front of this man.
“Yesterday a young girl approached you seeking help correct?” the Royal Knight asked.
Ah…it was due to the rumours. Damn is just denying help to one person enough to get you in gaol for this?
“Yes though I didn’t accept” I replied.
With that the Royal Knight along with the other knights at the same time sighed in relief for some reason. Was that the right thing to do?
“At that very same day, multiple freemen went to infiltrate the Royal Palace” the Royal Knight said startling both me and Scon at the same time.
“!”
“Then…” Scon only managed to say.
The Royal Knight smiled calmly and said, “They were all captured though the young girl was gone by then. However we believe it may be some sort of monster since….it had that kind of feeling. Then I heard that someone actual rejected that kind of request” he looked at me at the end.
“The quest ranking and reward were not indicated and the fact that the quest’s information will be given after accepting is too suspicious. Too much risk so it’s logical to reject it” I replied immediately even though there was no question asked. I knew from his face that that was the question he was going to ask and I simply answered it without delay.
The conversation continued with information being given to me as well as a small favour in which I would tell the Knights if the young girl that was definitely not a young girl if she appears. In exchange I would get contribution points from the Kingdom.
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
What are Contribution Points? They are a number which indicates how much you helped a Kingdom or Organisation. It is essentially favour points in which you can cash in for weapons, troops or even favours of your own to the Kingdoms. It was something that everyone wanted from the moment that information about it was revealed to the public. However getting these points are very difficult even more so than getting Fame. You need to do a large contribution to the Kingdom to get a small amount of this but you also gain influence in the Kingdoms as well. Namely getting a large amount of contribution points from a Kingdom was the first step in taking over the Kingdom and become King and then Emperor in this game.
I suppose it is useful and you need to use everything you have in order to succeed no matter the world but I am not that idiotic to sacrifice other things to get contribution points if it is negative to me in the end.
I spent the rest of the day as usual and managed to get the ‘Repair’ skill to Beginner Level 2
[p=center]Day 19[/p]
Logging back into the game, I only have 9 more days until I can finally get out of the city! However I noticed that I didn’t have any combat skills to back me up even though I do have an iron dagger to use for the moment. Combined with my ‘Identify’ and ‘Repair’ skill it is possible for me to survive for a while if I get a water and food source in the wild. The only problem is that I am weaker than the common warrior or archer since I do not have any combat skills.
During my previous 18 days I have done a number of things but haven’t gotten that much stat gain at all. Right now my stats were like this.
[quart=Name,Alignment]Alice,Neutral[/quart][quart=Level,Profession]1,None[/quart]
Status Window
Race
Humann
Title
None
Health
121
Mana
111
[quart=Fame,Infamy]0,0[/quart][quart=Strength,Agility]11,12[/quart][quart=Intelligence,Wisdom]14,13[/quart][quart=Vitality,Stamina]11,14[/quart][quart=Offense,Defense]10,10[/quart]
[quart=Light,Dark]0%,0%[/quart][quart=Fire,Ice]0%,0%[/quart][quart=Earth,Lightning]0%,0%[/quart][quart=Wind,Nature]0%,0%[/quart]
Magic Resistance
0%
Elemental Resistance
I soon found out that certain stats also increases the Health and Mana pools I have. Naturally Vitality increases health by 20 points but so does strength by 1 point. Intelligence and Wisdom both increases Mana but by only a bit compared to how much Health increases. Intelligence increases Mana by 2 points each while Wisdom increases it by 1 point each.
To be honest, this amount of stat gain during 4 weeks was actually very good. There are some people have not even gained one stat during this time and wasted their time. For those who have read books for this time, their intelligence and wisdom stats were about the 20 range while those who have discovered doing the basic training increases stats as well also tried to increase their physical stats like that. However most gave up after only a few days though they still gained one or two points here and there. In today’s society where more and more physical labour activities were being replaced by machines, people were more inclined to not do straining activities at all. However if it was in their limits then they would do it.
The majority of the day was spent like any other with me working at the store and training my skills slowly to make them useful in the future. From what I see, I need to increase my level to make training the ‘Repair’ skill more efficient. If I had 1000 mana then I could train it by using it 100 times at a time which would definitely make things a lot easier in the future. But most classes except for magic oriented ones had low mana.
At level 50, a mage has around 500 mana while other classes have around 200 mana at most with some even lower than even that. However health and mana apparently stacks up and increases even more, the higher than level and as such, a level 50 which was still the peak level so far can easily take on several level 30s at once. I suppose that this difference will decrease later on but levelling was extremely important early on, even more so than stats or skills. But still, I have no interest in those kinds of things. Given the chance, I would want to get stronger but not make an obsession for it.
Hours passed with these thoughts and eventually night fell. The store closed down for the night and I was about to log out as well. But…
“Big Sis….help me” said a certain young girl that I have seen before.
Scon was already asleep so he can’t help even if he tried and there was no one else on the street. This was….unusual.
“What happened to the other people here?” I asked.
The young girl smiled and said innocently, “I ate them.”
A sudden chill was felt in that moment. I, by instincts back away a bit feeling this pressure coming from her.
“What do you want? I denied your quest and others accepted didn’t they?” I started to panic since I really did not know what I was dealing with here.
“Oh” the girl looked disappointed and said, “I ate them since they were too weak. But you are one of the strong. I can feel it.”
Cold Sweat broke out. This was bad, really bad were the only thoughts on my mind right now. I never felt this way in real life at all but something like this in a game could…
“I’m going to take you Big Sis! If it’s you then…” Those were the last words I heard.
[p=center]Day 20[/p]
When I woke up I was….in some sort of building like a castle or something like that since only those kinds of buildings would be completely made of stone in these areas. I looked around and while there were windows…well holes with bars on them, no light came through. The only light source I had was from a touch that was hung on a wall of this room.
“Where am I?” I wondered aloud.
It had been a day since…that. The only reason I knew it was a day was because I checked my hunger levels and it seems that only a few hours passed when I fainted from something. However looking around I could not help but think this place was very similar to a concept I knew.
“A prison?!”
No matter how I looked at it, it was some sort of prison or dungeon under the castle. Not the dungeon where monsters lived but dungeons as in a hidden place that the lord of a castle would use to torture and keep prisoners of value. Not a very pleasant thing to be in right now especially with the setting of this game.
In this square room with nothing in it besides one touch, there was one ‘exit’. There was nothing there…no it was too dark to tell and it only gave that impression. I took the single touch with me and walked into the dark corridor. I also drew my dagger that was still on me as a safety measure. I still could not help but feel this unease from all directions.
“Even with light…I can’t even see the walls to this corridor.”
Was there even walls? Did I pass through it already? Where am I? These thought echoed in my mind endlessly as I simply walked forward. However in the end I made it to some desk. It was very simple but it had some markings of an unknown language to me. A book was placed on the centre of this desk and there was nothing else there at all besides a black knife of some sort.
“I shouldn’t touch this knife….”
It was most likely going to be a cursed item at least. There are many types of items but the worse ones were curse items that had horrible effects on you while being nearly impossible to remove without help from a priest from a church along with certain key ingredients to remove it.
I then looked at the book. It looked new and was similar to the ones that were printed at mass in real life. The quality of it was much higher than the ones in this world for sure. The book itself was mainly red with black outlines and black symbols and texts on the cover. There was a sinister aura coming from this book but it seems unless I touch it, then I cannot escape from this place.
However the moment I touched it, the sinister aura exploded around me lighting up the place in the process.
“What the!”
I looked around wildly and in this large room there were…
“Demons?!”
Their body was covered with the sinister aura that was of a dark purple mixed with black and red. However even without that most of them looked like monsters either way and no matter whom the person their reaction would still be ‘Demon’.
[Hahahahaha, this is the next candidate for the test?] one of the demons that was larger than the others spoke up in a human tongue. The other demons, I counted at least 20 all laughed at the same time and then spoke in some language as well. All of them were at least 5 metres tall or long and most likely have enough power to completely destroy a city at least.
Then at the centre of them was a small human body. I immediately recognised it since it was she who brought me here in the first place.
“You!!!” I let out a shout without realising it.
“Big Sis, it’s time for you to become one of us” said the girl without a hint of emotion in her eyes now. Even though she smiled, I could only feel fear from it.
“The others from before failed from the start. They could not even get here and even those who did after so much effort were eaten immediately by the book” said the girl, “Because I like you the most I brought you here so you won’t need to sneak in! Now all you have to do is overcome this.”
I let out a frown. What kind of horrible development is this?
Then without warning the sinister aura from the book flew out from it and went inside me.
“Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”
This kind of pain…..even for me…..too much….
“Work hard Big Sis, if you fail even your immortal soul won’t be spared.”
How time passed since this began? This pain continued to rip apart everything of me and repaired it to only rip it apart again and again! Hours most likely passed and I lost my voice from screaming too much.
I don’t know what happened next but….
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You have obtained the ‘Book of Demons’
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“Ah! You passed! Congratulation Big Sis!” said the girl in happiness. There was a strange sense of kinship that I felt from her now.
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For the changes to take pass you will be immediately logged out and refused logging in for a total of 1 month in real life. Please be patient as these changes finish for your character
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What the…..
With that I awoke back in reality without warning.
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Author's Notes:
- Word Count: 4200~
- Well now I have finally did the 'prologue' of this story, I can finally get into the action which is the true interesting part.
- All yeah...since chapter 1, this had been done like a journal similar to Re:Monster as in it tells what happens each day. But now I'm going change to the format like in 'The Unfortunate Fool' which is pretty much going to mean more detail in certain things. Frankly it's much harder for me to write in this journal style...so I'm going to change it back from now on....don't even want to think about rewriting all of this so the style is the same....