Peddling

After forcing the others to buy themselves more iron to make themselves more swords I worked on making tree vermin scabbards. While leaving the smithy I went ahead and started yelling, "Selling three heavy longswords here! Sixty gold per! Selling three heavy longswords here! Sixty gold per! Yell 'here' if -!"

[Acquired Skill: Hawking]

[+10XP]

[Fusing Skills: Barter+Hawking]

[Fused Skill: Peddling]

[+50XP]

Even though somebody not too far away called out, "Here," I was quickly elbowed in the ribs by Ivana.

"There's no Hawking after twenty-two-hundred hours," she says furiously, holding onto her brother's shoulders to hop up high and look ahead. "You're lucky that wasn't a guard, they'll reel you in and give you a fine. We lost ten gold and got a reputation that way."

Shrugging her off since things were working out, I went on over to where the yell came from and found another group of five players sitting on some wooden public benches in Traveler Outfits and a variety of spare equipment. The one who yelled back to me was a tall feline beastman name that looked like two-meter tall black panther on two legs with brindle red patterning in his fur. His and several other currently had their names on public and his name was a classic I Got Skooma.

Presenting the man with a tree vermin scabbard containing the 'heavy longsword', I say, "Even if you don't buy from me, I want your name in my friend's list because you're the first best reference I've run into."

"Go ahead," he replies while drawing the sword and holding it up to examine. "What's up with this design, bro? The damage is six more than my iron sword right now, but the straight blade kind of throws me off."

"It's for greater weight in thrusting impacts," I reply while opening my menus to to send him a friend request. "A sword that tapers would slip into armor more easily, but this one has more meat behind the point for punching through some defenses like heavy leather armor and lighter metal armors easily. It's not folded steel or the damage would be higher and it could get into proper plating, but I'll be making that soon once my levels and stats are higher. I just started in my afternoon and I'll be waking up in another hour or so."

Once he accepted my friend request I saw that his own level was currently at seventeen. He was mid-late range for current ranking players but from his remark about the sword I could imagine he was not in any rankings quite yet. Then again, his character started with a natural Strength of twenty and at his level he probably had enough strength to make a sword of sixteen do more than twice its damage.

"Level twelve and you haven't been playing for twenty-four real hours yet?" Skooma asks after examining my own levels, bringing the attention of the other players to us. "This is my third night and I still have a few hours left, what's your secret?"

Remembering that the Elder Oak Passage was to the southeast, I say, "Just wander through the woods and focus on the temporary event locations on your compass bars, you'll get decent loot and one or two confrontations between events. I haven't even done any quests since I left the tutorial, got to the city a couple hours ago. If I were you guys, I'd head southwest and westward around the older logging areas. Climb trees if you want to bait nightwings," I add with a wink.

"Oh, those guys already know my name," the panther beastman chuckles with a human voice while sheathing the sword. "Sixty, you said? I'll take it. The last sword I was looking at did twenty for one-twenty gold. I said nah, gold is gonna change values too soon to spend like that with an NPC. You going to make a habit of making good stuff?"

"I made suits like this vest with light helms like these in a carriage with only a dagger for tools," I say proudly, taking out a vest and masked skullcap to show off as he takes out a small cloth sack of coins. "Otherwise, I'll be working on me for a minute." Then we exchanged goods and gold.

[Peddling Leveled x2]

[+30XP]

"Yo, Agnes, check these out," Skooma says while tossing the vest and skullcap a short and childish looking halfling girl carrying a too-tall staff bearing a short quarts prismatic spearhead on top. "Your alchemy can make that suit your needs, right? The defense is as good as your current robes, too, and the hat is even better. Plus, goblin gives you resistances like I said! Next time you blow yourself up in close-range attacks it won't be so bad."

Making faces at the giant panther, the halfling girl called Agnes eventually appraises the equipment before saying, "Yeah, and since it comes from demonic origin it can help my summoning as well. How much?"

"Let's say sixty, same as the sword for a set of armor," I reply while taking out the rest of a full suit. "Since it's demonic origins you want, if you give me some dusk imp skins I'll make you a set of armor from both hides and put some treatment on it as well for free… call it a personal investment. Also, your robes are an outer wear so they will still function on top of this armor."

Counting out another bag of gold himself, Skooma tosses it over while holding the rest of the armor suit and says, "We should still have a few from a recent quest. Two suits, by the way. You said you're getting off soon? When will you be back on? We've got another mage friend so if we don't have enough imp hides for another of those combined suits then maybe we can go hunting together for 'em next time we play."

Handing over a second suit of goblin armor, I say, "I'll probably be back on when you're waking up, I have chores to do but it's a Saturday so I should be back on two or so real hours later."

"Good, sounds like we're about the same age. I'm fifteen and we're all friends from our school," he adds, personalizing things a bit. "Except Agnes, she's my older sister who's already graduated."

Deciding I might as well since I had already brought up investing in them, I say, "Seventeen, can't speak for the rest of my friends though. I'm going to go ahead and head back to my inn to log out and get my day out of the way, see you guys next time." Then, I led my friends away while listening to their farewells.

A few minutes later once I felt like were were out of hearing from a giant panther, I say, "You guys log out and handle your stuff, too. I've got something special to show you guys as soon as we're back that should help you gain a few skill and character levels."

Twenty minutes of game time later I had left a note for Lana saying I would be vanished for a while and then logged out. It was around seven in the morning but my parents were already awake in the house. I made a show of waking up and cleaning up before coming downstairs to make myself some simple eggs and toast for breakfast. They, of course, were shocked.

"Honey, we bought him a video game he can play in his sleep and he woke up an hour after us," my mom says with mock worry, coming over to where I was going through the fridge to pretend to take my temperature. "Dear, he's on fire! Hurry, get the keys."

"It's a new game, he probably died and rage quit," my father replies with a smirk before hurried drinking from his coffee. "How'd it go? Meet any young a beautiful gamer guys with girl characters?"

"It's going well," I reply calmly. "Most people will spend most of their time fast traveling their entire trip and then run a bunch of simple experience quests in the cities or towns to get around level nine or so. I pioneered a dungeon that nobody SHOULD know exists until next Friday at about three in the morning. I'm level twelve with my first day, made some business friends, and when I get back on I'm going to take my friends to run the dungeon I found while waiting on the main group to group up."

"Oh, not bad, so no deaths yet?" Dad asks curiously, actually looking up from his phone with a nod of approval. "I did some research on player statistics for that game, Bygone Era, level ten is already decent for first twenty-four hours. Pioneering a dungeon, now, that's pretty lucky. I wonder how nobody else found it."

Cracking an egg at the stove, I say, "Because at least half the players will herd like sheep toward a dungeon that has already been found while the other half will either think that's the only one around and look to another region or they won't even bother. My dungeon won't even be around but for another month or two in game so by the time the AI announces it at the end of the silent period the rest of the world will only get to use it for about a week. And even then, you can only do it once every twelve hours and it's a survival challenge instead of an exploration."

Frowning a little, my father says, "Those usually only give basic drops and money for kills, but they can still be profitable even if they don't drop special gear. What kind of mobs do you face?"

"I just love knowing what you two nerds are talking about," my mother remarks with a smirk from where she was still eating at the table.

Ignoring the remark about me being a nerd, I say, "Goblins. I only did the unlocking challenge, which is surviving up to wave ten, but after wave ten this mini boss showed up that was like a foot taller than me and three hundred pounds heavier. The overpowered knight who is probably a hundred magic years old ended the challenge with a single attack I couldn't even see. Gave me a title, bow recipe, and as many of each loot item as goblins I killed because of the first clear reward. Fifty-five."

My father's porcelain coffee mug that was originally relaxing in his hand was suddenly smashing on the table to spill its steamy contents everywhere. "Fuck!" My dad yelled suddenly, jumping up from his seat as my mother got up as well. Hurrying to find some paper towels to clean with, he says, "You're kidding, right? Fifty-five goblins? Do you have any idea how many videos of them killing weak players are trending right now?"

Not even bothering to turn around this entire time while cooking, I say, "Nope, never bothered watching those. I only looked up the stuff relevant to me when I wasn't busy preparing for the game for the past couple months. You were here, weren't you?"

"Yeah, swinging sticks and throwing kicks in the yard is one thing, fifty-five goblins in a video game supposedly without using the assistance system or a class is pretty hard to believe," he argues while cleaning up the mess he made. "I have a coworker who plays and he let me fistfight one of his friends when I told him you would be playing this last week. Leo, fighting in that game is nearly the same as fighting here in the kitchen. Could you beat me?"

"I have the Undaunted title from beating an enemy over twice my level stronger than me, I could fight you," I say without any care for the fact that he was the one who taught me mixed martial arts when I was a kid. "We could put some gloves on right now, old man."

"Who're you call-" he starts to say until my mother cuts him off.

"Not today," is all she said and the entire kitchen went silent.

After that little moment I hurried through the rest of my breakfast before rushing through some laundry and then taking care of our small but privately fences suburban front and back yards. When I was done, I threw the clothes in the dryer and set to work doing some light cleaning in our basement. These were the brunt of the chores that I had to do to get away with devoting so much of my spare time to a virtual reality video game.

That and I had to spend about an hour every other day doing one hundred push-ups, sit-ups, and one-legged squats while listening to my father lecture me about how seriously I should consider my future as well as the ethics of fighting in games instead of reality like I used to.

*