Chapter 67 - Trade Skill books (2/2)

”I guessed that young man,” said Arius calmly. ”I am Arius and have been an advisor to the royal guards for a long time. I came here to look at the new town and see if there are any strong foreign aggressors who might pose a danger,” continued Arius introducing himself and his purpose there.

”Nothing worth my effort here. The entire endeavor was boring. The only issue with this place is lack of provisions. They don't have enough food so as to scr.a.p.e me a decent meal here. This cabin was made by me just for fishing and gathering food. Help us gather some food and in return I will teach you a few simple tricks. They will surely be useful to you,” said mage as a list appeared in front of them.

The list included various things like manuals for fishing, enchantments, alchemy and other trade professions. But the most enticing things were skill books. Thought the skill books corresponded to the profession of mages and berserkers. The guy had very rare skill books too and he calls them simple tricks.

”Sir, we surely will try our best to help you,” said Rudra as he gathered all the meat, he had from hunting the monsters. He had also collected meat from Cave of wargs and had a total 56 meat pieces together. He began to regret leaving the meat at the storage of the shop he had rented.

”Tcch! It is not that easy to learn tricks from me,” said Arius as the costs below the skill appeared. They were all extremely high. Even the manual for fishing, enchantments cost 50 meats. The other skills like frost nova, Thunderstorm were in high hundreds.

”Don't underestimate them. They were improved versions made by me and not the cheap stuff you find at any shop. By the way I don't intend to spend more than 2 hours here and am partial to seafood. We can lend you some fishing equipment,” continued Arius.

At the same time, new prices for books appeared if they traded with fish. The prices were half the previous ones when using seafood. A new quest notification popped up.

New Quest: Help Sir Arius gather food (preferably seafood)

Reward: Skills and manuals.

Looking at the quest, Rudra was awfully tempted. He wanted Slaine to run back to the town and get all the meat he could from the shop. During Rudra's talk with Arius, Slaine was also contacted by Balthazar to check if they found anything useful in the plains.

”Found an NPC who is willing to provide skill books for meat. Get as much meat as you have immediately,” he replied sending an image of his location in the map.

”Balthazar is coming with meat supplies from the town,” he immediately informed his team. ”Get the fishing manual and learn. It is the best we can try. I doubt we can get enough meat on our own for any of the other main occupation skills,” suggested Slaine immediately.

Rudra was the only one who didn't yet learn any trade profession skill. He was the guild leader and had always focused on it. He wanted to learn merchant and engineering but were considered higher tier trade professions not available before level 10. Moreover, Slaine knew that Rudra was always had hunting and fishing experience in real life. So, he shouldn't have much issue in a virtual reality.

So, he was the one to learn fishing. Luckily, the book was better than the normal ones available in general shops. It directly improved his skill level to level 2. This was better than expected. But he still needed fishing supplies.

”Bill these guys need some bait and supplies. Loan them a few would you?” said Arius winking at the soldier. The soldier immediately bought out a fishing rod and supplies like bait and a storage case.

”Costs 5 silver per hour,” said the soldier stretching out his hand. It was clear that they system wasn't going to make it easy for them to gather skills easily. The rental rate was very high for some trade profession goods like these.

[Simple Fishing Rod] (Fishing Rod)

Min Skill: 0;

Min level: 1;

Damage: 15-20 per second;

Durability: 20/20;

The manual not only provide him the 2nd level of fishing skill but also provided information about how to tie bait properly to the fishing rod. It also contained information on different kinds of various kinds of fish that can be found in various environments.

Rudra seated himself on the fishing deck at a distance from Arius and swung his fishing rod in a direction a bit distant from Arius. It wasn't sensible for multiple people to fish at a same point. He also tried to imitate and learn from Arius after going through the book.

Fishing was quite similar to hunting other monsters, once a fish is hooked the players needs to maintain the fish on the hook. The damage is caused as long the fish is on hook and once it dies, it can be reeled in.

If the player stubbornly reels in the fish if it tries to swim away after being hooked without giving a care to how much force he feels, the fish would break away and it would also lower the durability of the fishing rod. This mechanism isn't exactly like real fishing obviously. But it was quite similar to the other games and made fishing a bit more of a challenge. But mostly fishing was considered one of the leisure activities of the game.

While Rudra was focused on fishing, the remaining continued to search for other monsters to collect more meat and Balthazar was coming towards them with more than 1500 meats. Each stack of meats contained up to 20 pieces which could be put in one slot of bag space. A single player has 20 slots of bag space by default. So, the seven of them could carry a maximum of 2800 meats.

Shadow even gave Merlin a few gold and had him buy up whatever meat he could find from the auction house along with the red moss as he went to shop to retrieve the stored meats. Merlin managed to get up to 300 meats from the auction house. Apart from that he also had all the meat the team and Shadow collected till now. He even had more than one variety of cooked meat.

Shadow also bought another sprinkler which he could have someone else in the team use. It would also enable the rest of the team to hunt monsters faster. If Merlin used a confusion skill like Terror Wave followed by Tetsujin and other holding the monster down, even a docile monster could be taken down easily.

With cave of wargs frequently producing meat, a lot of player began to sell it and Rudra stocked up his shop with them. These were all collected by Balthazar and his team. They filled their bag spaces with them and made way to the location specified by Slaine.

Rudra was also not bad. He soon got the hang of it and managed to pull up a few fish. Luckily, the fish were lower leveled one's with little health and he didn't need much to hold on to them for much time before he could reel them in. After 15 minutes of him starting, he had a steady rate of getting at least two fishes per minute.

In 30 minutes, Balthazar and his team managed to reach the cabin and contact Rudra. He immediately exchanged the 1500 meat pieces he had with Rudra, so that he could exchange for some skills.