Spiteful Healer: Book One - A LitRPG Adventure, page 5
Quest Complete!
Skill Learned: Mining (Beginner)
Level Up! Your accumulated experience has increased your Mining skill to level 4.
Mining – Level 4 (Beginner)
Improves your efficiency and skill when mining ore. Higher levels increase your chance of finding rare gemstones and higher-quality ore when mining any type of ore you’ve been taught how to mine. The chances vary depending on the difficulty of the ore being mined.
Ore Proficiencies: Copper
After closing the notifications that popped up, a new quest notification appeared in Winter’s interface, floating in the center of his vision.
Quest: Mine 3 or more copper ore of 50% quality or higher and bring them to Chief Miner Belthas in the Craftsman Guildhall basement of Orm Village.
Objective: 0/3 Copper Ore Mined [Quality: 50%+]
Quest Giver: Chief Miner Belthas
Reward: [Mining Proficiency: Iron]
Difficulty: Easy
Restrictions: None
[]ACCEPT []DECLINE
Winter hit the accept button without hesitation by tapping his finger on the menu in front of him.
“Thank you for your instructions. I won’t let you down,” Winter said, reading over the notifications before returning upstairs. He felt a sense of accomplishment for reaching level 4 already and walked with a strut out of the Guildhall. His next goal was to determine the value of his haul.
Using the signs in town and guidance from the guards, he navigated the streets of Orm to find the Market Exchange Tracker, a specialized NPC that kept track of the value of items across the Shattered World Online. He’d gathered that much information from asking around a few of the still-open shops.
When he found the building and entered to speak with the NPC, rather than getting a menu that had the information he wanted, he was shown a collection of crates with scrolls, all labeled. He located the crate marked ‘Ore’ and singled out the scroll marked ‘Copper.’ Once he unrolled the scroll, he saw a list showing each island’s average selling price of copper ore. His face drooped when he saw the numbers.
Low-quality ore fetched 1 silver piece each, while high-quality ore went for 10 silver pieces. Winter did some quick calculations. With 100 silver coins equaling one gold, his haul of copper would only bring in about 6 gold—roughly 6 cents according to Derrick’s conversion rate.
“Make money with this game? Are you kidding me?” he shouted in disbelief.
“Not with low-quality copper, that’s for sure. Woof!” a familiar voice said from behind him. Winter turned to see Ruffily entering the building. She headed for a crate that listed weapon prices. Winter put the scroll away and approached her.
“How would you do it?” he asked.
“Me? I’m not interested in making money, but if you want to, you should craft items from the copper and sell them. Work your way up to higher-level materials. Not many players are selling high-quality iron, and I don’t think anyone’s found mithril yet. So, high-quality iron is where it’s at right now. Woof!” She unfurled a scroll showing iron weapon values. “Most players are in that level range, and crafted items are usually better than the ones dropped by dungeon creatures. Woof! If you make high-quality iron weapons and enchant them, you’ll make at least 2,000 gold per craft.”
“That’s like 20 dollars. Is it hard to do?”
“It takes a lot of hard work, quests, and grinding. Woof! Enchanting is a crafting profession that can only be learned by a class that uses magic. Most magic users don’t bother with Blacksmithing. You also need good materials for hilts from Woodcutting and Leatherworking and silk from Weaving. It all comes together. Woof! You can work with other crafters or try to level everything yourself, but that’s a lot of hard work.”
“So, it’s about figuring out whether it’s more efficient to make everything yourself or outsource some parts,” Winter mused.
“Exactly. Woof! But crafting isn’t the only way to make money. You can make money hunting, building, farming, performing, or getting a job as a knight or mercenary. Many guilds pay a lot for high-level players to help in castle sieges. Woof!”
“Got it. I’ll have to figure out the best method. Thanks for all the information.”
“No problem. Woof! You can add me to your friends list if you have more questions. I’m happy to help newcomers to Orm! Woof! The population is small, so we have to stick together!” She smiled, tapping her menu until he received a friend request.
“Sure. Let me know if I can help you with anything, too.” Winter accepted the request and smiled back as he left the building.
Knowing that it wasn’t worth selling the raw ore, he decided to use it to start leveling his crafting skills instead. To begin with, he visited a few other shops to see what it would take to make his own copper pickaxes to become self-sufficient. After learning he would need wood to make the handles, he decided to go all out and acquire all available gathering professions.
After another hour of playing, he left the Craftsman Guildhall with three new gathering quests and tools. He’d received quests to learn Woodcutting, Herbalism, and Creature Harvesting and bought a copper axe, a copper skinning knife, and another copper pickaxe by trading some of his gathered ore. He’d also gotten a good deal on fresh apples from a farming player, trading 25 copper ore for 50 apples. After completing his trades, he was left with 500 copper ore and 23 silver.
The sun began to rise as he headed to the western edge of the village of Orm. Before heading out, he checked the simulation time, noting it was past midnight in the real world. Deciding to call it a day, he ended the simulation and stepped out of the sim-box to the buzzing of an incoming phone call.
“What’s up?” Eli answered.
“You’re finally out. What’ve you been doing?” Derrick asked.
“Messing around in Orm. Why?”
“You were on the news. Keldan livestreamed himself PKing you, bragging to everyone that he’d killed Makaroth’s son.”
“Oh yeah, that guy was really happy about that. Made a weird speech and everything. Jeremy’s fault.”
“Keldan’s the top player at our school. He’s got a lot of fans. Sorry, man. It’s my fault this happened,” Derrick apologized.
“Relax, who cares?”
“Everyone online is making a big deal about it. They’re talking about how Makaroth’s son started playing and are wondering how good you’ll be.”
“Oh… People take this stuff way too seriously. I’m only trying to figure out how to make some money,” Eli yawned. “I don’t get any penalties for dying at level 1, right?”
“Nah, you don’t drop gear until level 6, and the logout penalty only goes up to 6 hours at level 6. They’re the ones who get a penalty. A pretty big one too, since they killed an innocent level 1 player. They’ll lose a lot of reputation points,” Derrick reassured him.
“Then it’s no problem if I stay level 1, right? No one will bug me unless they’re idiots.”
“Hah, yeah, I guess. You’re planning on staying level 1?”
“Dunno, I’ll see. Gonna crash. Let’s go again tomorrow,” Eli replied.
“Ahhhh! I knew you’d have fun! Alright, sweet. See ya tomorrow,” Derrick said with enthusiasm before hanging up.
Chapter Four
DEBUT
Eli stepped off the bus in front of his school the following morning. As usual, the entrance was crowded with other students driving up in their Autopods, stepping out, and letting their pods automatically find parking spots.
Before Eli could enter the school building, he found himself cut off by a group of his peers. He recognized a few of their faces, though he didn’t know their names.
“Hey, Winters, I’m sorry about last night, man,” said a tall brown-haired boy who looked to be the leader of the group.
“Last night?” Eli looked confused. He glanced between them for a second until he recognized Jeremy as one of the group and pieced it together.
“Yeah, we killed you outside of Orm, remember? Your dad’s one of the top players, so we got tons of views for it. No hard feelings, right?”
“Yeah, no worries, Kelman.” Eli shrugged him off and moved to walk around them.
“Keldan. His name’s Keldan. You know? He’s kind of famous,” one of the girls in the group corrected Eli.
“Right, my bad. Keldan.”
“Jeez, this guy. Acting like that ’cause he’s Makaroth’s son,” Jeremy mumbled quietly to the others, but Eli could still hear him. Eli shook his head to himself and ignored it.
He noticed a lot more stares than usual as he walked through the halls to get to his first-period class on the third floor.
Instead of desks, the classroom had sim-boxes, much older models than the one Eli had at home. He took a seat in his sim-box, leaving the top open and off to the side, preparing himself for the lesson.
As he did, he noticed everyone who entered the room had something to say while looking in his direction. Among the students mumbling was the player behind Keldan, whom Eli had never noticed before. When the teacher stepped into the room, the whispering stopped, and Keldan took a seat in the sim-box in front of Eli’s.
“It’s the last week before your exams,” the teacher addressed the class as he sat down. “We’ll be continuing with review and self-study. If you have any questions about anything we’ve gone over during this semester, let me know, and we’ll go over it together. Just because you’re almost done with school doesn’t mean you can mess around, so if I catch any of you in any game simulations, you’ll have sim-box privileges revoked. Now get to it.”
Immediately after he finished talking, several sim-boxes in the classroom closed. Eli pulled the thick user manual and encyclopedia books on The Shattered World Online out of his bag and opened the scanning tray for his sim-box. He did his best to cover up what he put on the scanner, and once it was done, he paused to look at Keldan’s closed sim-box.
An idea popped into his head, and he waited until the teacher was looking away before reaching forward to tap open the scanning tray of Keldan’s sim-box and placing the user manual on it. He cleared his throat to get the teacher to look in his direction as he settled into his sim-box.
“What’d I say about leaving the scanning trays open…” the teacher muttered as he spotted Keldan’s open tray, got up from his desk, and marched toward it. Eli left his sim-box slightly ajar to hear “Are you kidding me?” from the teacher before Keldan’s simulation was forcibly cancelled and the box opened up. “Get out of there. You’ll be studying the old-fashioned way today, where I can keep my eyes on you.”
“Huh? Why? What’d I do wrong?” Keldan replied in bewilderment. Eli smirked and closed his sim-box, loading up his office simulation.
He spent the entire day studying all the details about the game he could at simulation speed 4. He finished learning the basics in the user manual fairly quickly before moving on to user-created content.
By picking through hearsay, some bad advice, and various methods and guides players had put together, he was able to grasp the basics. The game was still in its infancy, and it looked as though new guides were popping up every day to replace the old ones.
The game’s economy revolved around raw materials, well-crafted goods, and rare items that dropped off monsters. Bounties and hunting were profitable at high levels, but selling high-quality, high-demand items appeared to be the easiest, most lucrative option to make money—both items that related to fighting enemies as well as casual, decorative items for in-game houses or fashion.
Unfortunately, it would require Eli to reach high levels in crafting to be able to make highly sought-after items at low material costs, so the latter half of his study session was redirected toward the fastest ways to raise his crafting skill levels.
Most advice pointed to either ‘hard work and grinding’ or a few expensive, hard-to-obtain equipment pieces found in dungeons that’d boost efficiency and experience gained for specific crafting skills. However, when he dug deeper and looked at more obscure references, he stumbled upon an unbelievably good skill that was hardly mentioned.
On a forum for one of the many Shattered World news sites, a mage class player with an identifying spell made a post, claiming to have used the identify spell on a crusader class player and found him with a unique passive skill no one had seen before. The skill granted the crusader 100% experience in all skills not directly related to combat but -100% experience in all offensive skills.
Most replies to the forum post thought the mage had made it up, but some reporters and admins investigated it further, interviewing the crusader a week later. He denied having such a skill, and an identify spell was used—only to see that the crusader indeed had no such skill.
Eli was ready to move on; it wasn’t the first dead-end post he’d read today. However, the mage continued to argue that he knew what he’d seen and persisted with the investigation, even long beyond the point that others stopped reading or replying to the post.
The mage revealed the level of the crusader (31), the three deities he was worshipping for his divine power at the time (certain divine-based classes required you to worship at least one of the Shattered World’s deities), and was able to find out the last few quests he had completed. One high-level quest had required the crusader to travel across the Unath Mountains, an uncleared, extremely high-level region, which took the crusader almost a month to complete due to him suicide-running through the zone, seeking out the safest path until finally finishing the quest.
Eli thought about this information for a while, doing his own research on the Unath Mountains, the deities, and possibly the quests, trying to see if such a skill actually existed. He slowly began to piece together a theory on the nature of the skill and how he might be able to obtain it—it seemed far-fetched, but he was eager to try it out.
When the school day finished, he headed out of the building, getting more awkward stares from strangers. Loitering in the front foyer, he spotted the group of PKers huddled together. As he passed them, he saw them staring back at him with stink eyes, still not sure what was going on. At that moment, he accidentally walked into another student carrying a stack of sim-box discs, knocking them out of her hands.
“Ah, sorry, sorry about that,” he apologized, looking to see the girl who’d fallen on her bottom, the discs scattered about. He heard a few chuckles from onlookers. The girl looked up at him in shock. He recognized her from some of his classes; she was short and on the heavy side, with braces on her teeth and long black hair.
He politely reached down to help her back up. She quickly took his hand, and her face turned red. Without asking, he gathered the sim-discs he had knocked out of her hands. They looked like miniature CDs locked in clear plastic flat boxes. As he picked them up, Derrick arrived in the foyer and joined in.
“Sup, Eli,” he said as he gathered a few discs, the girl watching in silence.
“Hey.” Eli nodded to Derrick, handing the stack of sim-discs to the girl. “Sorry about that,” he apologized again. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.” She took them and bowed, making a weird ‘mmph’ sound.
“You ready to continue the adventure in Orm?” Derrick grinned.
“Yeah. I have an idea of what I want to do now,” Eli replied as the two walked off, the girl remaining stationary for a moment. She looked as though she wanted to speak, but nothing had come out by the time they’d walked out of the building.
“Oh really? What’s the plan?” Derrick inquired.
“You might not like it much,” Eli warned him.
“No chance. Anything we do is gonna be fun in that game. Oh man!” Derrick squealed with excitement. “I’m gonna bolt to the Sim Center. See you in-game!” He ran off down the street.
“It’s faster to take the bus!” Eli shouted after him.
“Not when you run as fast as I do!” Derrick shouted back.
Eli got home, took off his shoes, and headed straight upstairs to find his mother stepping out of the sim-box.
“I timed it just right!” She smiled as she saw him. “How was your day?”
“Great. You were playing? Do you want to play more?”
“No, no, I’ve been there all day. I’ve got some errands to run. You go ahead and have fun,” she replied while walking past him. “Don’t forget to wipe it down when you’re done. Don’t want it to get all smelly.”
“Got it,” Eli replied.
As he sat inside and recalibrated the sim-box, he thought about what it’d be like to play with his mom and started making plans to spend the first batch of money on her. Once the simulation loaded, his eyes went blank for a moment, and afterward, he was standing on the outskirts of Orm.
It was a lot busier than he’d remembered, and many of the nearby players pointed in his direction, whispering and staring at him before his avatar had finished materializing. He made eye contact with a few of them, but that didn’t deter their staring.
Sighing to himself, he checked his friends list to see that Ruffily was online, but Davoth wasn’t yet.
He decided to ignore them as best he could and begin his plan to acquire the unique skill he’d researched. His first stop was inside the village of Orm. He traveled toward the graveyard where he’d revived the night before. A small wooden church with a bright white 10-pointed star carved into the bell tower was built at the graveyard’s edge.
Many players watched as he entered, and some followed him to see what he was doing. They tried to be stealthy about it, but it was way too obvious for Eli not to notice.
He walked straight to the back of the church toward the head priestess, a lady with long curly black hair. She wore dark robes adorned with a white 10-pointed star and was standing behind a podium on an elevated platform. The white text above her head read [Priestess Clara – Level 41].
