Chapter Forty seven

One of the reasons why Artha didn't sit and relax before was he knew he would waste some time while awaiting his regular customers. His stall had his signature sign - potions for credits. Only wholesale orders taken.

The disclaimer was because few players had disturbed his rest by showing off their prowess and wanted to purchase few potions. Artha was trying to multitask. He had his tome open and the progress bar was moving very slowly. If he didn't focus on the book, the progress bar would stop and reloading it took too much time. He could only be pretinious prick and add the disclaimer. Few players had already eyed him and keeping watch on him. This watching was far more creepier than yesterday's monitoring. Would he get hunted or robbed?

Just two more of his regular customers had to come. He would close the stall and run to inn. Now he had a new thing to worry about and manage.

Then....it happened. The village got its first player apprentice. A blacksmith apprentice was chosen from a bunch of players. There was no melodramatic display. The newest addition in steele next to park was not updated with a fanfare. Still every new addition, even for the silliest reasons, would be noted and spread all around.

"Deebak! We finally got an apprentice!"

" Mama mia! Who is this Fierce Panther? How could he become apprentice so early? Do you think he will share his talent with us, fellow villagers?"

"Good Lord! How come an indie took the first slot?"

" Ya think those guild smild people are burning 🔥."

"Where is Fierce Panther? Brother, you want a girlfriend?"

" You want a boyfriend?"

"Wanna come over to my place?"

Pfff . Oh, they meant to their workshop!

"How does 5000 credits a month fixed salary + commission sound? Wanna join us?"

" Hahaha, you beggars! Our brother said Fierce Panther brother is a great man. Anything less than elite player pay scale is a shame to him. Brother, join us. Enjoy the lifestyle of a elite."

"You know, brother Fierce Panther, these people are all liars. They dangle the carrot but you won't be enjoy it. Come and join us and enjoy the life. Our master is best in enjoying minuate of life. Whatever is your request, it will get fulfilled, no questions asked. You can lord over others in real life. Isn't that a great idea?"

Poor Fierce Panther, spoiled for choices. Well, not exactly poor. The poor were his friends. They had helped him to gather and made him eligible for application. Due to which, they could not complete their tasks and were nearly half to one level lower than Fierce Panther.

This was moment of truth for them. Would Fierce Panther will rise up alone or pull in his friends too? Or will he still show loyalty but betray as soon as good offer comes?

See, Fierce Panther was an indie, an independent player. Now he has turned into rare human resource. Depending on his real life situation, he can become chivalrous, money hungry, power hungry or anything in between.

Artha saw that the famed guilds had offered standard payment option. Only the newly made guilds, rich tycoons and power tripped scions were showering him with glorious and expensive offers. It made sense in a way. Get an apprentice and advertising your guild. Two birds killed in one stone.

The best friends of Fierce Panther were hugging and laughing with joy, grinning happily with various offers he was recieving. Poor saps! Ah, the innocent youth!

Artha had lost focus, so he could not longer 'read' the book. He decisively closed it, closed the stall too. He then informed remaining tardy customers to meet him on the way to the maps.

He was spending next few hours with Dragon Slayers. And he found even men gossiped. And they gossiped worse than ladies. Another myth busted. Probably because they had killed a field boss before, the progress they had made was a bit more than Bloody Rose. How did Artha find out when he was playing with reserves instead of elites? Because the reserves were in the moving to and from between two maps, sometimes giving support to main team, some time working as logistics, and sometimes as backup. Each time they formed a backup, it was to be cannon fodder to explore a new portion of the map.

Dragon slayers method of playing was different from Bloody Rose. It felt like that to Artha. It might be true or it might be due to observer bias as he was watching two entirely different type of players. Bloody Rose elites obviously played different than reserves of Dragon Slayers.

Obviously the the difference between his level and monster level was less. This meant he could potentially kill monsters faster but get less XP overall as there would be less bonus for killing monsters above the level.

The Dragon Slayers reserve team was more guys than gals but there was sort of regular office pal sort of vibe between all of them. The girls could cuss, crack poor jokes or discuss something entirely philosophical if they had mind for it. The guys talked mostly about money and girls. Their girlfriends, life partners or blind dates. See, these people were playing the game as a job, a job with targets to be fulfilled. So half the joy gone already. All left is pride and sense of belonging to the great guild.

But most of the players, boys or girls, all wanted to get promoted to elite team. So they practiced, perfected, learnt. That's why they ran towards elites to be backups even at the risk of getting killed, just to get few chances of learning from elites.

The monster maps in the game started turning more and more difficult and complex as the levels slowly increased. From the initial closed level 0 map with moles to the recently discovered high level maps in the jungles, the difficulty was increased, the terrain got changed, monsters behaviour changed. There was as no more clear cut division between the maps or monster zones. A level 3 map may suddenly become level 4 or level 6 maps if taken few steps more.

The guilds had perfected the way of exploring maps. The experts just opened the new maps and searched for hard to crack bosses. The elite progressed in the map, slowly and surely pacing the way for next wave containing reserves who had to finish the map and make it detailed enough for the normies or normal players of guild to grind. The entirety was Artha's conjuncture. He felt this way was best way to utilise human resource. Maybe guilds followed that method or they had their own perfect way.

The main thing was that elites and reserves might be just 100 feet away but battling entirely different sort of monsters. Unless you are used to it, the chances of aggroing some other monster was very high. That's the reason why these reserves had one baby sitter next to Artha to prevent him from being kamakazi.