Chapter 3
The next day was almost businesslike in its efficiency. We talked a little over the usual breakfast: waffles, fruit smoothies, omelets, and a small salad. We logged in at 7:00A.M., so we had about 20 hours of playing time until lunch. I went to work and was able to clean 3/4 the Smithy, as the repairing and polishing I did previously carried over a bit. Working 8 straight hours also helped. I had also become stronger thanks to the training hall, so cleaning was a bit less draining. After obtaining my pay and another sandwich for my good work, I ran over to the shop and bought a bunch of blocky wood, which was less than a silver, and a standard carving knife for 2 silvers. The handicraft skill would help me when I started blacksmithing, and starting to sculpt sooner rather than later would be preferable as I had a very long way to go. Putting it aside for now though, I then went to the training hall and threw myself with a vengeance at the scarecrow for 12 hours and increased strength, dexterity, endurance, and vitality by 2. Yun-Jin had occasionally come over to stock me up with food she had made. She had reached level 3 in handicraft and had learned both the cooking and tailoring skills. She had been promoted, received a well-deserved pay raise, and actively started cooking. Her restaurant had hired another young adventurer in her place to be the kitchen hand.
And so a week rolled by in real life as Yun-Jin and I fought the temptation to hunt outside because we hadn’t reached our immediate goals yet. My goal was to complete basic training, and Yun-Jin’s goal was to complete archery training. As we had taken jobs and didn’t play at unhealthy levels like some other people did, our progress wasn’t the best based on each individual skill. Once our diverse array of skills and our gold stash were taken into account, however, we were doing very well. I had finally reached intermediate in repair skill, and learned the blacksmith skill. Yun-Jin’s cooking skill had also reached intermediate, and had mastered all the basic spells for each element in RR. This included fireball, where a ball of fire is summoned and thrown at the attacker. ice ball, where a ball of ice is summoned and thrown at the attacker. Shock, which delivered an electric shock to an opponent, causing confusion and possible stunning. Dark cloud, which summoned a dark cloud, which engulfed the opponent, hampering their vision. At higher levels of proficiency this would darken the opponent’s mood and even sap health later on. Healing, which raised the user’s or an ally’s health. Holy light, which would cause a bright light, causing confusion, and possible stunning. Dark creatures and undead would lose hp according to their proximity to the light. Marsh, which softened the ground and hampered movement. Wind howl, which causes the opponent’s accuracy to drop and cause them to be pushed back.
We finally achieved our goal of completing basic training. I received the sword, and Yun-Jin received a bow and some arrows. Joyfully, we completely slaughtered the animals we came upon, whether it be a rabbit, fox, deer, or wolf. My sculpting improved greatly as I sat in the grass observing the different animals. I even started mimicking each of them so as to improve my understanding of them. I looked absolutely ridiculous, and Yun-Jin decided to just hunt on the other side of the town when I was “training.” I got to see a lot of different behaviors, which was unfortunate for them because I could practically predict their every move in battle. I also started going to the gym. I proceeded over to the free-weight section and started squatting, benching, and deadlifting. My lifts in real life were around 235, 185, and 305 pounds. Thanks to my constant training at the training hall and the heavy work at work, I matched my RL weights easily. Then again, there were monsters lifting over a thousand pounds with specialized, condensed weights. These were mostly NPCs as only users who invested everything into strength could get near them. My strength and vitality shot up, but my dexterity remained the same, with only a little progress in endurance. I didn’t matter. I made my way to the track and practiced sprinting as far as I could before burning out. As before, I could only sprint an eighth of the track at first but quickly progressed to about half. This time my dexterity and endurance were the beneficiaries.
Ping!
Running.
With practice, you can run and sprint faster, and when used in combat, can barrel into an enemy, causing damage, stun, and confusion.
+2 Dexterity
+2 Endurance
Sweet. I tried running for distance, and this time my dexterity rose slowly, while my endurance rose faster. Unfortunately, I couldn’t yet do pull-ups and handstand push-ups as I was able to do in real life, but I cooled down with some old-fashioned push-ups. Amazingly, as time passed, my body seemed to recover faster and faster, although I ended up having to eat 8 of my 10 rye bread pieces and draining my water. Other people noticed my progress and near perfect form, and approached.
“Hello good sir, my name’s Brian. What’s yours?”
“Meadow. Nice to meet you. You looked strong over there.”
“Yes, but I’ve been stuck at that weight for a while now, I was wondering if you could help.”
“Oh don’t mind me. I’m just a weak and lowly beginner.”
“Nonsense! You seem to know what you are doing and are progressing quite nicely.”
So I made friends with a couple NPCs and gave them tips on form. Although stats and combat training were essential, making friends was also quite important as it increased the probability of quests and made for a much more pleasurable gaming experience.
The rabbits were around level 3, the fox was around level 5-7, and the wolves were around level 10-15. I didn’t fight a rabbit at first, and simply mimicked its movements. When the rabbits realized that I wasn’t attacking them, they came closer and didn’t attack. By the time I could mimic them we were jumping up and down side by side on all fours. At that moment I suddenly stopped, took out my sword and helplessly slaughtered the bunnies, while securing my experience for sculpture mastery. I did the same with foxes and wolves. I gained infamy doing this. We fought separately against rabbits and foxes, as they were too easy to defeat when both of us attacked together. Once we reached level 7, which took 2 days of hunting, we decided to hunt a wolf together. Yun-Jin slowed it down with Marsh, then I went in a slaughtered it. Sometimes the wolf was able to escape Marsh, then as the wolf and I faced off, Yun-Jin would shoot arrows. I blocked the wolf from touching Yun-Jin. Once we reached level 10, the wolves became too easy together, so we split up. Yun-Jin became adept at aiming her spells, thanks to her archery skill. As her magic mastery rose, the spells became faster and stronger so the animals would have less time to dodge. Deer were weaker than wolves, but more difficult to kill because they could run away so quickly. Once I was able to mimic them completely, I was able to follow them fast enough to take them down.
Yun-Jin usually used a lot of evasion tactics, but she was good at healing, so it didn’t matter much how much damage she took. The durability of her equipment was a different story, so I helped her out gleefully. Once the wolves were too close to her for comfort, she usually blew them away with wind spells then rained fire and ice upon their heads. Once the wolves got too easy, Yun-Jin got really sadistic. She would hit the wolves and take out most of their life, then heal them and beat them up again. This also earned her infamy. Yun-Jin still had much more to read in the library and I wanted to reach intermediate in sculpting and blacksmithing, For two months all I did was sculpt statues and create weapons and armor. Rolling in gold, I gave away all my wooden sculptures for free to the poor, who either kept them or sold them for a profit. The sculptures made with other material such as stone were sold off to wealthier people. I also asked Yun-Jin to give me specific training, and she thought it was a good idea too. My idea was that Yun-Jin would blast me with sustained cold, and over time my cold resistance would rise. She joined me in this voluntary torture. Because it would cause a precipitous drop in fame if this were to be seen in public, we bought a small shack on the outskirts of the town where the poorer people lived. I was well known in the area but we moved in in the dead of night because I didn’t want to alienate any of our neighbors. The shack was half the size of our apartment in RL, but we only needed it for one reason only. I made sure the inside couldn’t be seen from the outside. Our shack soon had a reputation of emitting icy coldness out onto the street. Due to complaints, we first installed insulation in the house until Yun-Jin was confident she could contain the cold. This resulted in a sudden rise in her magic mastery and the cold generated was much colder. As we constantly lost health and succumbed to colds, Yun-Jin’s mastery of the healing spell rose accordingly. By the time our ice resistance had reached 50%, it wasn’t efficient to continue the practice for now. Yun-Jin would need more magic mastery to drop the temperature even further. We then repeated the same procedure with fire and electricity. Setting ourselves on fire and electrocuting ourselves was irrational to the extreme, but it worked. We had to soundproof our shack because of the screams heard up and down the street. Our shack was the only residence never broken into, as people thought our place was haunted. Guards were deployed to our house one time because it was so bad. When they heard both of us screaming inside, five NPC guards burst through the front door swords drawn. A small crowd had formed outside, too frightened to venture inside. Seeing one person on fire and the other twitching on the floor with electric sparks running across her body must have been bizarre and traumatic. One of the guards was versed in magic and cast an ice spell on me and an Earth spell on Yun-Jin, covering her in dirt. They tried to arrest me once we recovered, obviously because I was a male, and this was clearly a case of domestic abuse. Of course Yun-Jin had set me on fire and electrocuted herself, but the guards only offered her mental counseling when she explained this to them. Her emphatic declarations of love for me only made the guards think I was controlling her through fear. They arrested both of us as they saw us as “dangers to ourselves and to humanity.” We contacted our bosses of our situation, and due to the high fame our NPC bosses had, we were released with a warning that we would stay locked up next time even if the king himself demanded our release.
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Yeah right.
Once fire, ice, and electricity resistance reached 50%, we tried to build air resistance, but it severely damaged our house the first time, so we had to do it outdoors. We decided to try to find a secluded place once we left the town.
Yun-Jin eventually read all the books in the library. Her cooking was now Intermediate Level 5. I had achieved Intermediate Level 1 with Blacksmithing and Sculpting. By this time, my relationship with the poor people became strained as they avoided me due to my training. Only the beggars took my sculptures now. Some were glad to see me go as they thought I was bad luck to be around, but most were sad because I had never been unpleasant towards them. Yun-Jin and I both informed our bosses that we would be leaving, and they both got watery eyed, although Horaim said a he got smoke in his eyes, and the head cook said it was due to excessive onions and peppers in the kitchen. Horaim gave me my own blacksmith set as a good bye present and the head cook gave Yun-Jin one of her own cooking knives. Yun-Jin couldn’t use it yet because her skill and level were too low. She thanked her all the same. We tried to sell the shack but it was a fruitless endeavor. I decided to dismantle it and sold its parts on a slight loss. The place was cheap initially, but the insulation and soundproofing wasn’t. It didn’t matter as Yun-Jin and I were quite wealthy. We usually just saved our money, and it started piling up. We left our gold at a bank, and they charged us 1% of it per year. This translated to 1% every 3 months in real life, but our crafting skills were at a level in which the money just rolled in. Unplanned was our intermediate skill in knife mastery due to her cooking and my sculpting. We decided to learn knife throwing. Yun-Jin obviously had much better aim than me, thanks to her archery and magic projectiles, but this accuracy would help me also later on.
As we left the city and looked back, we checked our stats, and could only shout and yell with pride.
“Stat window.”
Character name: Meadow
Alignment: Neutral
Level: 26
Profession: Blacksmith Warrior
Title: Masochist
Reputation: 412
Infamy: 126
Vitality: 369
Mana: 100
Strength: 274
Dexterity: 238
Endurance: 316
Wisdom: 174
Intelligence: 10
Luck: 24
Leadership: 45
Attack: 87
Defense: 73
Fire Resistance: 35%
Ice Resistance: 35%
Earth Resistance: 0
Air Resistance: 1%
Electricity Resistance: 35%
Holy Resistance: 0
Dark Resistance: 0
Sword Mastery (Intermediate Lvl. 3 (36%))
Identify (Intermediate Lvl. 2 (65%))
Repair (Intermediate Lvl. 4 (9%))
Sharpening (Intermediate Lvl. 1 (51%))
Polish (Intermediate Lvl. 2 (94%))
Handicraft (Intermediate Lvl. 1 (6%))
Sculpting (Intermediate Lvl. 1 (24%))
Blacksmithing (Intermediate Lvl. 4 (11%))
“Stat window.”
Character name: Sunshine
Alignment: Neutral
Level: 24
Profession: Cook, Tailor
Title: Abuser
Reputation: 537
Infamy: 147
Vitality: 105
Mana: 100
Strength: 81
Dexterity: 289
Endurance: 276
Wisdom: 187
Intelligence: 276
Luck: 10
Leadership: 64
Attack: 52
Defense: 67
Fire Resistance: 40%
Ice Resistance: 40%
Earth Resistance: 0
Air Resistance: 0%
Electricity Resistance: 40%
Holy Resistance: 0
Dark Resistance: 0
Magic Mastery (Intermediate Lvl. 7 (19%))
Archery Mastery (Intermediate Lvl. 2 (72%))
Tailoring (Beginner Lvl. 9 (47%))
Sharpening (Beginner Lvl. 8 (51%))
Polish (Intermediate Lvl. 2 (94%))
Cooking (Intermediate Lvl. 5 (23%)
Handicraft Skill (Intermediate Lvl. 3 (34%)
We refused any quests that were too simple or required us to leave the city. This caused our reputation to drop a bit, but it was a necessary sacrifice. Our stats were way above our levels due to our lack of experience points. We obliterated the monsters in our way. We went to various towns and did various quests pertaining to tailoring for her and sculpting for me.