Novels2Search
Third Hand
Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

The party entered the house and saw similiar layout to the 'Hunter's Hut'. On the ground level right at the right side of the doors was kitchen, on the other side of hallway there were stairs to the first floor. Toilet was placed between the stairs and the kitchen, on the left, connected to hallway was living room. Entering the living room Oliver saw table for 6 people on the right side of the room, on the left side there was fireplace with the couch infront of it and two armchairs on the sides.

Climbing the stairs the group found 6 doors on the sides and one door in the opposite side of the hallway. On the left and the right sides were the rooms with the bed and the drawer, opening last doors the team found bathroom with the wooden bathtub and the sink. Lorelei and Tye picked the rooms near the bathroom, while Oliver and Tobias took rooms in the middle. Rooms near the stairs were left as the guest rooms.

After leaving backpacks in their respactive rooms, the team wen't down and sat down near the fireplace.

"So we just split the cost and rewards up? Or some kind of house money?" started Oliver.

[You have been granted co-owner permission for the house number 23]

[Co-owner Lorelei wish to grant Citizen Tye co-owner permissions. Do you accept? Y/N]

[Citizen Tye become co-owner of the house number 23]

[Co-owner Lorelei wish to grant Citizen Tobias co-owner permissions. Do you accept? Y/N]

[Citizen Tobias become co-owner of the house number 23]

"That was fast, how much do we owe you Lorelei?" said Tye.

"6 Coin per person" anwsered Lorelei.

[Do you wish to transfer 6 to the Citizen Lorelei. Y/N]

[Citizen Lorelei accepted the transfer.]

"I would go with even split of the team rewards and costs, anything you collect while being alone is private, you can do small house upgrades by yourself, but bigger upgrades need to be talked through." said Lorelei.

"Fine with me, but what do you mean by 'bigger' upgrades?" asked Tobias.

"Size and outside look of the house and the bathroom" explained Lorelei.

"Bathroom is counted as big upgrade?" said suprised Oliver.

"Women thing, simply ask before doing anything in the bathroom" said Tye.

"Fine, I'm going to check the kitchen, after that I'm going to the shop, is anyone going with me?" Oliver said his plan for the evening.

"Right! How do we deal with cleaning the house?" asked Tye.

"There is permament cleaning service upgrade, but it cost's 100 Coins to buy." said Lorelei

[Do you wish to transfer 25 to the Citizen Lorelei. Y/N]

"Oliver why do you transfer 25 Coins to me?" Lorelei said while looking at Oliver.

"I'm giving my part for the cleaning services, I'm not going back to the cleaning" anwsered Oliver.

[Citizen Lorelei accepted the transfer.]

"So our first home upgrade is no more cleaning? Count me in!" cheered Tobias.

[Lorelei purchased ]

"So shopping in 15 minutes?" asked Tye.

"Yeah, I need to check if there is anything in the kitchen" Oliver said.

Oliver stand up and went to the kitchen, while girls and Tobias went to the top floor.

After checking drawers in the kitchen Oliver almost started crying. Wooden plates with wooden cutlery, only two low-iron cooking knifes, no frying pan. There was no stove, only the campfire with stands measured for the only pot Oliver could find. There was none of seasonings, meat or vegetables. No icebox, let's not dream about the fridge.

Oliver touched the Pin and though 'kitchen upgrades'

[House nr.23 upgrades]

Room: Kitchen

Grade: D-

Description: Starting point of the kitchen inside of the basic house building.

Next grade: D

Upgrade cost: 25 Sanctuary Coin

Description: Still a disgrace to call it a kitchen.

Unlock: 2 spice jar, low-iron cutlery, low-iron frying pan, basic kitchen tools, stand for the kitchen knives.

[Room: Kitchen has been upgraded]

[Grade: D- -> D]

[House nr.23 upgrades]

Room: Kitchen

Grade: D

Description: Starting point of the kitchen inside of the basic house building.

Next grade: D+

Upgrade cost: 50 Sanctuary Coin

Description: Still a disgrace to call it a kitchen.

Unlock: 2 spice jar, campfire change into the stone stove with 2 cooking spots, ice box.

"It hurts, but I still need to upgrade my room and there's still the shop." muttered Oliver while checking the cutlery.

'Quality is bad, but its better than eating with wood, frying pan is unbalanced and without the stove I'll need to hold it all the time while cooking. Great. I'm intrested in those spice jars' Oliver thought to himself while checking new stuff.

[Spice Jar - small bottomless container, able to hold only the kitchen releated materials. Keeps spice fresh, decrease weight by 99%. Able to keep one kind of spice at a time. Quality of the spice upgrade together with grade of the kitchen. Higher quality of the spice won't upgrade until grade of the kitchen catches up to the spice.]

"Why are you looking at this jar like on some kind of lover?" walking in Lorelei asked Oliver.

"Check this jar" said happy Oliver while shoving the jar in Lorelei's face.

"That's some system magic right there" Lorelei praised the air.

[Tye purchased ]

[Grade: D- -> D]

[Tobias purchased ]

[Grade: D- -> D]

"What is the house upgrade?!" shouted Oliver.

"It was cheaper to buy than upgrading beds one by one" said Tobias while walking downstairs.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"What's the cost?" asked Oliver.

"Single bed 5 Coins, while this was 25 Coins" anwsered Tobias.

"Short-term lost, but long-term gain huh? I'm sending you Coins for my bed." said Oliver

[Do you wish to transfer 5 to the Citizen Tobias. Y/N]

"Oh, you don't need to, you just upgraded the kitchen." said Tobias

"Yeah, but the kitchen is my teritorry" countered Oliver.

[Citizen Tobias accepted the transfer.]

"I'm sending too" said Lorelei.

"Are we going guys?" asked Tye while walking downstairs "I hope that they sell some clothes in this shop."

"Ready" said Lorelei and Tobias.

"I'll take the Sack and I'm ready" Oliver said while going upstairs.

Oliver walked inside the room, he saw the bed and cringed. 'mattres and single pillow filled with hay? what was the upgrade? better quality of hay?'

He took the Sack and got downstairs and asked "How did the bed looked like before upgrade? I only saw blanket before."

"Under the blanked there was the hay" anwsered Tobias

"What do you mean by hay?" Lorelei asked sceptically looking at Tobias.

"Well, just hay. Now it's mattres filled with hay." said Tobias

"Don't forget the pillow." added Oliver.

"Can we buy second upgrade now and check the resoults after the shopping?" asked Tye.

[Do you wish to transfer 13 to the Citizen Lorelei. Y/N]

[Citizen Lorelei accepted the transfer.]

[Lorelei purchased ]

[Grade: D -> D+]

"Ok, shopping time!" chereed Tye.

Group left the house and went to the shop, in the few minutes they were standing in front of it. While they entered, small bell rang few times. The team was surprised, the shop is bigger on the inside. From outside the shop is smaller than the basic houses, but on the inside it is three times bigger than their house.

"Welcome in the general shop of the System brand. How I can help you?" the team was greeted by lizzard man.

[Race - Lizzard-folk

Name - ??

Age - ??

Gender - Male

Class - ??

Highest Attribute: ??

Threat - Death]

"Hello, we would like to know what we can buy in this shop." Lorelei started.

"You can buy a lot of things in there, the general categories are food, drinks, kitchen and toilet utensils, furniture, medical components, cleaning products, potions, armors, weapons, ability books, clothes and adventure gear such as torches, flint and steel, ropes, tents and many more. Please remember that this branch of the shop is new so most of the items are of the basic quality and quantity." shop assistant word-barraged the group.

"He said it in one breath, wow" mutered suprised Oliver.

Oliver got elblowed by Tye "that was rude"

"It wasn't rude, it was my admiration." said Oliver in his defence.

"Haha, don't worry miss, I pride myself in quick talking. Any new questions?" laughed and said the clerk.

"Are there on sale any bags of holding?" asked Lorelei.

"Any storage related items will be sold only after this shop branch made 10,000 Sanctuary Coins of profit." said apologicaly shopkeeper.

"How does those ability books work?" asked intested Oliver.

"Ability books as their name suggest allow one to learn general or class related skills. There are few criterias of how ability books are priced such as, method of learning, grade and the type." explained the salesman.

"What does method of learning means? Is there anything beside reading it?" asked Tye.

"Yes, beside reading and comprehenting it, as we call it traditional method. There are ability books that are feed to the memory, it vastly decrease time requrriement to learn the ability at the cost of lower mastery level, this learning way is called transfer method. Both methods have their own pros and cons." said the clerk.

"Lower mastery level?" said Tobias.

"Abilites learned via the traditional method can start at higher level, highest starting level of ability learned from the book is 0.9, while using the transfer method, new ability starts with 0.1 level, the only recorded way to have higher starting level while using transfer method is to have very similiar ability, which in process of the learning can be merged with the new ability. Results of the merging are diffrent from case to case basis." explained the shopkeeper while the team looked at him with big eyes.

"What are the types of ability books?" asked Oliver

"There are 7 types of the ability books, offensive, defensive, aura, perception, support, healing and body strengthening. All of those have 2 subtypes, the active and the passive." anwsered the clerk.

"Thank you for the anwsers, I belive its all for now." said Lorelei.

"No problem, hope you find what are you looking for" responded the salesman.

The group dispersed around the shop, everyone looking for their own needs. Oliver went to the food area and took bundle of the onion and the paprika, salt and pepper 'simple skewers to test the quality of the boar's meat', as the drinks he took the 3 liter bottles of the cider and the ale.

After the food area he went to check the weapons, he found same quality of the weapons as the ones from tutorial, he left the axe stands with disappointment.

Oliver then walked around looking for the ability book section and found 4 small bookcases, each of the bookcase had diffrent label: general, non-combat, physical and magic. Thanks to the title on the book spine and the , he knew that, each of the bookcase only had 5 diffrent abilities in 3 copies each. After checking all of them, Oliver only found 4 books that he was intrested in.

[Meditation

Grade: C+

Type: Support

Subtype: Passive

Method: Transfer

Description: Basic meditation technique, helps with natural body regeneration. While having very small short-term gains, it's very high grade as basic ability is all thanks to the unlimited potential of the ability.]

[Cost: 100 Sanctuary Coin]

[Throw

Grade: D+

Type: Offensive

Subtype: Active

Method: Traditional

Description: Contains many basic throwing techniques. Increase accuracy of throwed item.]

[Cost: 75 Sanctuary Coin]

[Blade

Grade: C-

Type: Support

Subtype: Passive

Method: Traditional

Description: Bread and butter of anyone using bladed items. Increase blade's sharpness.]

[Cost: 150 Sanctuary Coin]

[Bear's Strenght

Grade: D

Type: Body strengthening

Subtype: Passive

Method: Transfer

Description: Basic body strengthening technique, this manual focus on increasing Str attribute.

Caution: Any body strengthening technique increase expierience needed to level up.]

[Cost: 500 Sanctuary Coin]

While Oliver was checking the books, Lorelei and Tobias came over. After few minutes the group left the ability books and went to the counter, Tye was waiting for them near the doors, she held an ability book on her lap. Tobias went first with a bottle similiar to Oliver's and some toilet utensils, next Lorelei with 2 quivers full of the arows, 3 small brown bags and a weird looking fruit. When Oliver heard price of the fruit he almost dropped the drinks '30 Coins for damn fruit?!'.

"Bundle of the onion and the paprika 1 Coin each, 1kg of salt and peper 3 Coins each, 3 liters of basic cider 5 Coins and 3 liters of basic ale is 3 Coins. In total of 16 Coins." counted the salesman.

[Do you wish to pay 16 Sanctuary Coin for the groceries? Y/N]

Oliver accepted and started packing his stuff into the Sack, while he asked "Can I ask how does body strengthening works and what the caution means?"

"Body strengthening techniques increase one's attribute gain per level. Each body strengthening technique of the D grade increase expierience needed to level up by flat 5%, expierience needed from previous levels is placed in to the level you are at. You won't feel too big of a diffrence with two or three books at early levels, but it can snowball later on." explained the clerk.

"So it's best to learn it early?" Tobias joined in.

"No, you gain attributes for the levels you already gained, you can learn it early to gain help while leveling or wait for higher level and then gain burst of attributes at cost of staying longer at the level." anwsered the shopkeeper.

"Oh! I forgot to mention before, ability books are the consumable type, after one person learn the book it will dissipate. Books of the traditional method are unreadable by other people when one start learning from it, you can forfeit learning of the traditional book, but it comes with discarding parts of the book from memory, which is very unplesant feeling." explained the salesman.

"There is no multiple use books at all?" asked Tye.

"There are, but only when description explicitly say's so, which is quite rare" said the clerk.

"Thank you for your kind anwsers, we will be going now" Lorelei thanked, while rest of the party said their goodbye's.

"No problem, hope you have good night and come back again soon." the seller said goodbye to the group.

The team left the shop and went towards the house.

[Local time: 19:23:47]

Stat Sheet

Race - Human

Name - Oliver Hormoz

Age - 21

Gender - Male

Class I - Warrior Lv.10

Class II - N/A

Specialization - Grinder(U)

Title - Monster Slayer II

Sanctuary Coins: 55

Stats:

HP: 500/500

HP Regen: 27,5/Hr

Stamina: 410/440

Stamina Regen: 47,92/Min

Mana: 210/210

Mana Regen: 32,2/Hr

Attributes:

STR:25

AGI:19,5

DEX:22,5

END:20

VIT:22

WILL:23

INT:15

WIS:14

CHA:11

Free Points:2

General Skills:

Active:

- Observe 0.7

Passive:

- Compass 0.4

- Iron stomach 0.5

- Sneaking 0.3

- Path to Sanctuary 0.3

- Suprise attack 0.1

- Information resistance 0.3

- Pain resistance 0.3

I Class: Warrior (+1 to Str,Vit,End,Will. +0,5 to Agi,Dex. +1 Free Point per level.)

Active:

- Heavy Swing 0.5

Passive:

- Battle lust 0.1

- Basic weapon mastery 0.4

- Basic armor mastery-medium 0.3

II Class: N/A