The way back to town was a bit more interesting than it had been on the way to the Dungeon since there were groups of other Adventurers going about their business. Some of them who knew Kyle and Fi even greeted them as they walked past. Kyle and Fi stopped to chat with some of the Adventurers who had helped out at the school.

While Kyle wad chatting with some of his Adventurer acquaintances Fi stealthily brought up a notification that she had received after Kyle had lost his shit and read over it once more with a conflicted look on her face.

Congratulations your partner has unlocked the Berserker Skill!

Berserker- Mastery

Proficiency Level 0

This Mastery Skill increases the damage that you can deal the more damaged you are. However, be wary using this Skill as your defence decreases the more enraged you become. Users of this Skill will also experience a loss of control as HP decreases. Related Sub-Skills can also be unlocked.

Bonuses

For every 5% of HP missing the damage you deal increases by 1%.

Your defence decreases by 10% when you drop below 50% HP and drops a further 5 for every 10% after that.

Sub- Skills

· Enrage: Temporarily increases damage bonus. Cost: 10 HP. Duration: 10 seconds. Cooldown: 5 minutes.

Fi had decided not to tell Kyle that he had unlocked this Skill. Thankfully she also had the ability to remove things from the list of Skills that he could learn which would prevent him from knowing that he had unlocked the Skill. Normally companions used this ability to make sure that their partners didn’t have to sift through a bunch of Skills that they didn’t want to find the ones that they were interested in, but it could also be used like this. Normally Fi wouldn’t hesitate in showing him that he had earned this Skill, but she’d decided that he had enough things to worry about right now. Besides she knew that he was quite worried about his complete and utter loss of control after she had been attacked and this Skill would only prove to him that he had a problem.

“Fi, are you okay?” Kyle asked suddenly breaking her chain of thought.

“Uh, yeah,” she nodded. “Sorry I was just thinking about things.”

“What were you thinking about?” Kyle asked as he continued on his way back to town.

“Oh, I was just thinking about how quickly we’re going to get stronger now that we’ll be Levelling Up more frequently,” she replied quickly, and Kyle nodded in agreement.

“Yeah,” he sighed. “That’s true. Especially when you consider my status as a Divine Champion which means that I get more Stat Points to assign when I Level Up.”

“Right,” Fi nodded. “It’s going to take quite a bit more work for you to keep increasing your Skill Levels now as well. Luckily there are training rooms at every Adventurer’s Guild.”

“Yeah, they’re always pretty busy though,” Kyle agreed as he walked back through the city gates. “Well I suppose that we should head back to the Guild and get our reward before selling all of the stuff that we looted and get some stuff that I can put Inscriptions on.”

“I take it you’re planning on buying arrows like Zerah suggested?” Fi asked her previous worries now forgotten.

“Yup, I’ll also rent a space at the Guild and see if anyone wants any basic Inscriptions,” Kyle nodded. As it wasn’t unusual for Adventurers to have Crafting Skills the Guild also provided spaces where these Skills could be practiced. Other Adventurers could then get things like weapons, armour or potions from the people who rented these spaces. This was actually a reasonable source of income for people who had Crafting Skills and allowed other Adventurers to get the things that they wanted cheaper than they could if they went to a store in town. This was partly because most of the Adventurers who did have Crafting Skills had lower Proficiency Levels than the people who Crafted things for a living which. Since things like Inscribed items were normally quite expensive Kyle was pretty sure that he would be able to make a decent profit from the lower ranked Adventurers who simply couldn’t afford Inscribed items otherwise.

“That sounds like a good plan,” Fi nodded happily. “If you’re able to sell a reasonable number of Inscribed items then I think that we’ll have had a very successful day indeed.”

Kyle nodded in agreement as they continued on their way through town back towards the Guild. Once inside they walked up to the counter where Caley was waiting for them with a smile.

“Hey Kyle, that was fast,” the young woman laughed. “But I suppose that’s to be expected of you.”

“Here are the poison sacs,” Fi replied with a chuckle as she took a sack out of her Inventory. Caley wrinkled her nose as she opened the sack and the pungent smell of the poison sacs washed over her and nodded.

“Looks like this is everything,” she nodded after a couple of seconds. “Here’s your reward. Now I suggest you go and get cleaned up before anything else. You’re not as dirty as some Adventurer’s that have walked in here, but you still smell like you’ve been dragged through a battlefield. There’s a place where you can do that out the back.”

“Ah, yeah,” Kyle nodded blushing slightly in embarrassment. “Sorry.”

“Hah, you’re far from the first beginner Adventurer to walk in here looking like that,” Caley laughed. “Still we’d all appreciate it if you would clean yourself off before coming inside next time.”

“Sure,” Kyle nodded awkwardly. “I’ll, ah just go do that then.”

Kyle quickly walked out the back entrance and went into a small room where there were a number of stalls where people could clean themselves off. There was also a metal box that was covered in Inscriptions which could clean and dry your clothes in about a minute. Apparently, the design was partially based on machines that existed back on the old world where Humans like Kyle himself had originally come from. However not only were those machines not powered by mana like this one was they also only cleaned things and the clothes that they cleaned had to be dried by other methods.

These magical machines were so expensive that that they could only be afforded by fairly well-off families so this just showed how much money the Adventurer’s Guild made that it could afford to buy several off these cleaning machines just for a place for Adventurers to clean themselves off when they got back from hunting monsters.

Once he had finished cleaning up and putting his clothes back on Kyle headed towards the merchant quarter of town feeling refreshed. He had to visit several shops to sell all of his loot and browsed a few of them for things that he might need. He decided to hold off on buying new armour for now, but he did end up buying a selection of potions from the alchemist’s shop as well as a number of weak Soul Stones that he could use for Inscribing the heads of the arrows he was going to buy.

Once he had done that, he headed to the hunting shop that Zerah had told him about in search of arrows that were suitable for him to Inscribe. Walking into the store Kyle immediately noticed how busy it was. Leonie’s Hunting Goods wasn’t a very large store but there were at least 10 customers either looking at the goods on display or waiting in line to pay for what they had chosen.

After looking around for a few moments Kyle made his way over to where the arrows were being sold. The store was selling them in bundles of twenty arrows for 5 copper, so Kyle picked up 5 bundles and headed over to the end of the queue of people waiting to be served. There were only two other people in the queue, so it didn’t take very long for him to but the arrows from the nice middle-aged woman behind the counter.

When he got back to the Guild, he made his way up to the counter once more and asked Caley if he could hire a Crafting area to use.

“Sure thing,” she nodded. “What Crafting Skill will you be practicing and what can you make?”

So, Kyle explained that he had the Inscriptions Skill but could only make a few Inscriptions at this point.

“That’s not a problem,” Caley replied. “Not many people unlock the Inscriptions Skill so even the ones that you can make will be popular enough among the newbie Adventurers. And even the higher Levelled Adventurers will be interested if you can start selling arrows that have been Inscribed with even a weak Flame Inscription.”

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“Yeah that’s what I thought,” Kyle nodded. “So how much do I owe you?”

“Well you don’t need to use one of the Crafting areas with any equipment, so it’ll only cost you 1 silver,” Caley replied with a smile as Kyle handed over the money that he owed her. “Excellent. Follow me I’ll take you to your Crafting area and get everything else set up so that people know what you’re doing.”

Caley stepped out from behind her counter and after letting the other receptionist who Kyle noted was the haughty woman who had refused to let them talk to Alistair when they had tried to tell him about the Imperial activity near Farholt. She noticed him glance her way and immediately averted her gaze. Kyle couldn’t blame her for this reaction, but he didn’t blame her for what happened. He only blamed the Empire.

Kyle followed Caley to a small room where he was ushered inside by the friendly young woman who immediately sat down at the desk in the middle of the room and double-checked all of the information that Kyle had already given her and advised him on what he should charge for the Inscriptions that he could make and the arrows that he was planning on selling as soon as he had finished Inscribing them. Kyle suggested that people who provided their own Soul Stones could get a discount and Caley suggested that he might be interested in buying Soul Stones as well which Kyle readily agreed to.

“Alright then that works well,” Caley nodded once they were done. “Do you want some time to set up or shall I post the notice right away?”

“Could you give me about an hour?” Kyle asked after thinking about it for a bit. “That way I’ll be able to start selling the arrows right away and people who want different things won’t have to wait. If I get the arrows done quicker, I’ll send Fi to let you know.”

“Sounds good,” Caley nodded. “Come and let me know when you’re done with the room so that I can get it cleaned up for the next person who want to use it. Or if you want to reserve it for the next day.”

“I’ll do that,” Kyle agreed. If he managed to do well today, he might as well rent the same room for tomorrow. No point in passing up money or Skill experience after all.

Once Caley left Fi took all of the things that he needed out of her Inventory Kyle looked at the small pile of Soul Stones he had collected. He’d bought a few Soul Stones from the school store before he left so he should have more than enough to Inscribe all of the arrows that he had bought.

“Well then I guess that I’d better get started,” he sighed as he picked up his Inscribing tool and one of the smaller dimmer Soul Stones and placed the Soul Stone on one end of the tool. The Inscribing tool immediately started draining the energy out of the Soul Stone and a small bar on the side lit up slightly to let Kyle know how many Soul Points had been in the stone. Kyle then removed the stone over a small basket which was lucky as the crystal turned to dust.

Taking one of the arrows that he had bought Kyle sighed irritably. Until he unlocked the Mass Inscription Sub-Skill Inscribing the heads of all of the arrows was going to be a difficult and time-consuming affair but hopefully it would be worth it.

Placing the sharp end of his Inscribing tool on the arrowhead he started to draw a pattern of stylised flames. When he was done each arrowhead would only deal 1 or 2 extra fire damage and since they were smaller than anything he had worked on before there was a decent chance that he was going to damage at least half of them but that was okay because arrows didn’t have high Durability anyway. Besides it was actually what happened when Inscribed arrows ran out of Durability that they were their most useful.

Items that lost all of their Durability broke and became completely unusable. Usually these broken items could be repaired by a skilled artisan, but Inscribed items were different. When an Inscribed item broke it couldn’t be repaired no matter how good the craftsman you took it to was. This meant that you had to keep your Inscribed weapons and armour very well maintained. Except, of course for items that were cheap and easily replaced like arrows and darts. Even arrows of the highest quality were very cheap and impossible to repair anyway so when Inscribed arrowheads became very low on Durability they were usually kept (very carefully) until there was a particularly hard to defeat enemy that the archer needed to fight. This was because when an item as small as an Inscribed arrowhead broke it did so explosively and dealt a larger amount of damage than they would normally.

As he worked on the arrowheads Kyle’s speed increased and he became much more efficient in his use of the energy from the Soul Stones. He also started to make less mistakes and damage the arrowheads less as he practiced but it was still pretty hard work and he had to take several breaks before his hand started to cramp.

“Kyle, I have good news!” Fi said happily during one of these breaks. “You’ve finally unlocked the Mass Inscriptions Sub-Skill!”

“Oh, thank god,” Kyle groaned. “My hand is so sore from making all of these Inscriptions.”

“You do realise that you’ll still have to Inscribe more arrowheads even with this new Sub-Skill, right?” Fi laughed. “It only works within seconds of an Inscription being completed.”

“Yeah I know,” Kyle sighed. “But it will save me from having to do another 40 of these things by hand.”

“I know you already know how Mass Inscriptions works but do you want to have a look for yourself since you’re on break right now?” Fi asked and Kyle nodded in agreement, so she brought up the notification so that he could read it.

Sub-Skill Unlocked!

Mass Inscriptions: This Sub-Skill allows you to copy an Inscription that you have just made onto more items. Only works on items of similar shape and quality. Increases the Soul Point cost for the Inscription by 125% for every copy that you want to make. Please be aware that copying the Inscription too many times at once increases the likelihood of failure.

“Yeah that increased cost is really going to cause problems if I do too many,” Kyle muttered once he had finished reading the description of his new Sub-Skill.

“True but it saves you about 3 minutes for every arrowhead that you copy the Inscription onto,” Fi replied. “Besides its not like Inscribing an arrowhead uses up that many Soul Points anyway.”

“True,” Kyle nodded. “Well, I’d better get back to it then.”

Not that long after he got back to Inscribing the arrowheads the first of his customers peeked in through the door.’

“Excuse me are you the one making Inscriptions?” The young Elvish woman asked curiously.

“Yes, that’s correct. Did you want me to Inscribe something or buy some of the arrows that I’ve Inscribed?” Kyle asked politely as he turned towards her. He didn’t recognise her but then he didn’t know that many of the rookie Adventurers so that wasn’t really that surprising.

The Elvish woman’s face paled slightly when she saw Kyle’s faintly glowing blue eyes. She knew that glowing blue eyes were one of the main identifying features of an Aethereal Human which were practically impossible to find outside of the Empire.

Then she recalled what Caley had told her when she had asked about the person making the Inscriptions. Caley had been very clear that Kyle was trustworthy and pleasant to work with, so she decided to trust the other young woman and stepped inside the room.

“It’s nice to meet you Kyle,” she said as she held out a hand which he politely shook. “I’m Fervah and I’d like to buy some of the arrows that you’ve Inscribed.”

“Nice to meet you too Fervah,” Kyle replied with a smile. “How many arrows were you looking for. I’ve got 70 arrows Inscribed already but if you want more than that you’ll just have to give me a few minutes.”

“Uh, I think that 30 will be enough for now,” she replied with a slightly strained chuckle. “That’s 1 silver, right?”

“That’s right,” Kyle nodded. “Feel free to pick the arrows that you want. I haven’t had time to bundle them up yet. You can talk to Fi when you have the thirty arrows that you want to buy.”

“Oh, okay,” Fervah nodded before cautiously sitting down opposite Kyle and started picking up and examining the arrows that he had Inscribed.

A small smile on his face Kyle got back to work. A few minutes later once he had Inscribed and copied his Minor Flame Inscription onto another two batches of arrows, he looked up to see Fervah watching him intently.

“Can I help you with something else?” Kyle asked making the Elvish woman jump slightly.

“Uh, no I was just watching you,” she replied as her face turned red from embarrassment. “I’ve never actually seen someone Inscribing something. It looks pretty difficult.”

“It is,” Kyle nodded in agreement. “Normally its not too bad, especially with my Dexterity but Inscribing things like arrowheads requires a lot of control or the Inscription won’t work. And that’s the best-case scenario.”

“Uh, what’s the worst-case scenario?” Fervah asked cautiously.

“The arrowhead explodes,” Kyle replied with a shrug. “The explosion would only be powerful enough to knock of a handful of Hit Points but it’s still not very pleasant.”

“Ah, I might just get going then,” Fervah replied as she quickly got up. “Don’t worry I’ve already paid for the arrows.”

“She has,” Fi nodded. “Have a very nice evening Fervah.”

“I will thank you,” she replied. “Will you be making more Inscriptions tomorrow?”

“Maybe, I haven’t decided yet,” Kyle replied. “But if decide to then I’ll make sure to let Caley know before I go to bed so that the notice will be up all day.”

“Okay well I hope that things go well for you,” Fervah nodded. “Anyway, I’ll see you later.”

And with that she closed the door behind her.

“Well that was interesting,” Fi muttered. “I think she was a bit worried about your eyes.”

“Yeah,” Kyle sighed. “I hadn’t even considered that might be an issue.”

“Well she seems happy now at least,” Fi laughed. “Maybe you’ll have your first repeat customer.”

“Well that wouldn’t be a bad thing,” Kyle replied. “Anyway, I’d better get back to work.”

Over the next few hours several more customers came in and either bought some arrows or asked for specific Inscriptions. Before long Kyle ran out of Soul Stones and had to call it a night much to the disappointment of a young man who had been hoping that he would be able to get a Minor Flame Inscription for his sword.

In the end Kyle told him that he would be making more Inscriptions tomorrow. This was actually an easy enough decision since he had easily made almost 2 gold from the Inscriptions and arrows which was much more than he had made from his Dungeon diving earlier. Granted he had chosen a much easier Quest than he could have but still it was pretty telling. He had also gained 2 Skill Proficiency Levels in Inscriptions which brought it up to Proficiency Level 6.

“Ugh,” Kyle groaned once they were back at the inn. “That was rough.”

“Yeah,” Fi nodded. “You were busier than I thought that you would be. Still Caley was happy to rent the room out to you again tomorrow.”

“At least I won’t have to Inscribe quite so many arrowheads by hand tomorrow,” Kyle sighed. “Maybe we should go on a harder Quest tomorrow though.”

“Are you sure?” Fi asked. “I thought you were considering taking another easy one?”

“Hey, I’m just making a suggestion,” Kyle replied.

The two continued their conversation until the waitress came over with the food that they had ordered and once they were done eating, they went back to their room and went to sleep. In the end they had decided to take on a slightly more difficult Quest the next day so getting a good night’s sleep and waking up early was important so that they could get a good Quest before all the other Adventurers took them.