Chapter 45 - waking from dreams

It's not easy to make money out of thin air. Ask any entrepreneur. It takes money, ideas and work to start making money. But then, it would turn into rocket, it will keep on making more money till fuel/ money is present.

Saachi of the present had ideas, gut to work hard and harder but he was missing a key ingredient - money. The initial investment. He could borrow, the loan shark of the 'MINDERS' had promised to not scalp him while giving loan but Saachi was not ready. It would mean giving a favour in future. If worse come worse, he would borrow from that happy scalper but ...a bit of naive hope had budded in our hero's heart after having relatively easy life within the game.

The wake up call would come, earlier the better.

The first full college day after game was launched. So, Saachi's brain was still partly immersed in studies. Which meant he made mistakes when grinding. Good news - he was part of a party. Bad news - he was going to get a long, long, ultra long lecture. (Kylie was a saga poet in previous life, it seems. His lecture - " FOCUS!" .It was to the point, precise, no extra words used. Bree- glared once. She did not even utter a word but Saachi was shivering in fear, and felt he had heard hundreds of lectures explaining his stupidity in detail all at once. Royo- yeah, he would mint money if he were to become a pay per word author. He would become millionaire in no time.)

Saachi tried to explain that he had full day of class...that started another saga.... another lecture. " Kids these days .....blah blah blah....we used to work, then inside the game too we toiled. We never thought ourselves as celebrities just because we had made name in ranking lists or entered arenas. We even did guild grunt work....blah blah blah..."

Did this wake Saachi up from the dreams? Are you kidding? Royo is not a messiah or a hypnotic, that anyone will start believing after some words and gestures.

It made Saachi focus. Wow! Kylie's succinct lecture actually had answer. So today's grinding session was nearly silent. They were clearing areas around mines. Not the ones they had cleared when they were low leveled. That low level mine was sort of opening quest, a quest given to anyone who has enough level, to start new sub class of mining, thus available for every one. Sooner or later, it would be cleared again and again by players.

The map they were grinding was in borderline area between goblins and humans. Once they cleared nearby goblins, they would be able to head in and start mining better quality ores and more ores. As for the goblins within the mines.... aren't they just

EXP for this party? For this grinding session, Saachi had prepared even more inventory bags( shamelessly borrowed from village chief).

Apart from the first time when they had underestimated skills of miners and mini boss in level 1, it was a breeze. Mining is a boring job, that's why guilds and others handed this sort of jobs to gold farming companies and these companies inturn squeezed the dregs to all their worth. Still, the party came here. Two reasons - once guilds or many people's group found mines, they would rush in to have monopoly over that area and solo players can forget about mining unless paying the group an entry fee every time. The second, Saachi had a warehouse, of sorts, ( he could never explain exactly that he was a esteemed guest, with private guest room, to village chief). He promised to store the ores or other things for the party, for a nominal fee.

The fee amount was not discussed. Bree said she will pay fairly and he had to be satisfied with it.

So, everyone was mining like there was no tomorrow. The mining axe and gloves dropped by goblin miners gave extra joy.

Goblin mining axe - Uncommon - 15% increase in mining. +5% chance of mining higher level ore.

Goblin miner's gloves - Uncommon - 20% increase in rate of mining. +1% chance of mining higher level ore.

Axe was only one but there were 3 sets of gloves. There was a minor tussle between Royo and Niyam to use the mining axe. In the end, Niyam won because his rate of mining was very fast. Bree, the fair judge, awarded usuage of axe to Niyam. Royo could only sulk and be happy with gloves. He could be heard grumbling few times about a insane puny mage having more strength that a shield bearer.

The fast mining was not entirely due to strength though. Saachi had given least attribute points to strength, highest to wisdom. The trick was in the way mining was done. The mining walls would be renewed automatically after a set time, or else the mine would have been mined completely by goblins by now (or by players within a month).

The first few hits from newbie and experienced miner would be the same. But when distortion appeared in the wall after removing some ores, the experienced ones would mine in different way. They would increase fault lines whenever they mined, and pulling ores from faculties wall was very easy. The months spent in the horrible claustrophobia inducing mines helped Saachi this time.

He asked the question which was perplexing him greatly. ' What did collecting coins mean?' After he heard Bree say that, he had checked the sites after coming out of game. The shady sites were still offering good money, credits for all sorts of things including game coins.