Chapter 13 Instead of Becoming an Adventurer I Chose to Fish

The walk back to the town was filled with a lot of conversation. The only topic we talked about was the elemental. Apparently, even for the dwarves, that elemental was something they had never seen.

We also talked about how we would defeat one if we ever had to fight one. The dwarves seemed to know that you needed magic, but not much more than that. So when we got back to the town, they went off to do their own thing while I went to the library.

I was getting quite familiar with it and where I could find things, so it didn’t take too long for me to have a book open on elementals to understand what kinds of creatures they were.

Apparently, there were all kinds of elementals, but usually they only showed up with any kind of regularity starting at B-ranked worlds. So the fact that one could survive all the way down at F-rank meant it was an extremely rare specimen.

The dwarves were right about the need for magic, as regular attacks didn’t do damage to most of the elementals. The positive thing was that some types of skills were still classified as magical attacks.

The only things that weren’t were basically skills that increased durability or sharpness and things like that, but if it imbued something into the weapon, even if the skill was just Heavy Strike, it would still do damage.

This book seemed especially informative, as there were even gear setups with the recommended and required enhancements to even survive, let alone defeat, such monsters.

The gear that was described was very interesting. Like having effects of water resistance and needing at least three pieces of gear with it. That was some useful information. This also meant that items that you wore were more significant than I originally thought, and overall more complex.

It seems that I have another lecture I need to find to learn more about gear. That list was growing longer and longer. It seems that I need to get back into the habit of going to lectures; otherwise, this list of mine will never get finished.

Before heading to the hall where you could look up lectures, I headed back to my room, folded up all the dirty clothes I had, and headed towards the supply building.

There was a decent line for almost every service they provided, but it wasn’t hard to see what I needed to do with my dirty clothes. I placed them on the counter.

“How long does it usually take before I get my clothes back?” I asked. The clerk behind the counter was already grabbing at my clothing, but my words made him hesitate.

He looked at my clothes. “Oh, are these not standard issue?”

“They are,” I quickly replied.

“Then they are cleaned instantly,” he said, with a sincere smile now on his face. He dropped my clothes into a chute and then, from the shelves, picked up the same-sized clothes and placed them on the counter.

“Standard clothes we just exchange. Makes things simpler and quicker. If you have your own clothes, it usually takes a day, and we give you a ticket that you can use to get your clothes back. Also, always check your pockets.”

“Makes sense, thanks for the clarification.” And just like that, I walked away, letting another person hand in their dirty clothing.

Now that I was here, it was also a good chance to get my monthly allowance. With the clean clothing still occupying one of my hands, I queued up in another line, but there were only a few people in front. Soon another clerk looked at me, and I quickly started explaining why I was here.

“I would like to withdraw my monthly allowance.”

“Yes, of course. Please show me your identification.” For a moment, I was confused, but then I remembered.

A bit awkwardly, I managed to pull up one of my sleeves enough to show my identification tattoo. The clerk used some type of device. He then pulled out from the register 800 dollars. They were all in paper currency.

“I kinda expected them to be gold coins or something?” The clerk laughed at that.

“You aren’t the first one to think so, but yea gold is too valuable of a material to be used as currency. Although, in some places they still do use it. Also, be careful with this. While we discourage and punish stealing harshly, it does still happen.”

“Thank you,” I said while putting the bundle of bills into my pocket, but actually making them appear inside my inventory. A quick glance showed that I filled up almost two slots. It seemed that I had gotten sixteen individual bills, each one worth fifty dollars.

I was about to leave when I realized that I would be getting change, and that would start to take up a lot of space in my inventory. “Do you know of any good places to buy a wallet?”

“It’s actually best if you make stuff like that yourself. You would also get it a lot cheaper, as inside the workshops you would only need to pay the cost of the materials. Unless you want an enhanced wallet, although the amount of money you just got simply wouldn’t be enough.”

“Got it, I’ll keep that in mind.” I guessed I wasn’t in any hurry to spend my money, and he was right, it seemed that making stuff myself was quite important for improving a lot of the professions, and you needed to improve them all to continue to advance.

I spent quite a lot of time looking up different types of lectures and ended up signing up for one that was actually inside a proper building and was not just one lecture, but multiple ones across multiple days. The first lecture was a couple of days away.

It was recommended to only be taken after you had a class, because at the end the lecturer would test your capabilities for spellcraft. All of that confused me, because why wouldn’t you want to know beforehand if you could cast real spells?

It took me longer than I wanted to admit to find that answer. It was actually quite a simple answer. Any class you picked didn’t restrict you from using spells, and it seemed that classes could be evolved over time. So if you got good enough with spellcasting, your class could change into one that would help you do that better in your own unique way.

What a class was, was still a bit confusing; that’s why I also looked up a lecture on that. It seemed that I would always have a busy schedule.

When I woke up the next day, most of the dreams I had were of the copper elemental. Fortunately, they weren’t the scary kind, they were just nice dreams.

There was no reason for me to stop doing the five skills too, hopefully to get the looting III, so gathering was next. This time I headed out through the gate near the training grounds, but instead of following the road towards the dungeon, I went through the training ground, going further north into the forest there.

I was a bit unnerved having to walk into the forest without anyone else being around, but I wanted to get a couple of hours of gathering in before I headed towards the lecture about what classes are. Also, I wanted to know what the difference was between gathering and harvesting.

“Already someone’s here. Please tell me you’re not new?” The old-looking woman who was in charge of this profession work area and the lecturer asked me.

“I am new,” I said a bit hesitantly, as this was the first time a lecturer had seemed rude.

“Fine. I will start out by explaining the difference between gathering and harvesting, because for some reason that’s always a problem for everyone. You get gathering experience if what you gather is not planted by people.”

She stopped then, like that explained everything. She started to walk away from me, but when I didn’t follow, she looked back.

“Let’s go.”

I started to follow, but I just needed to ask.

“Could you explain that a bit more? So you mean like the act of planting changes the kind of profession experience you get, for some reason?”

She looked back at me with only one eye.

“At least you picked things up fast. That exactly makes the difference. Although, if you don’t do it properly, you get a mix of both, but that’s not the best way of going about it.”

To my surprise, she actually continued to explain, but the essence stayed the same. It seems that the very act of purposely planting something and then afterwards harvesting it would give you harvesting profession experience.

On the flip side, when you gathered from this forest, for example, everything here—the different types of berries that were all around—this would give gathering profession experience.

“When we first started, I handed everyone a testing stone, as even here some berries might turn dangerous almost overnight. But some weren’t diligent enough. So my rule is: no eating any of the berries, because I will be going through each one of them later. Is that understood?”

“Yes,” I quickly answered back, and what followed was a quick explanation on how to pick berries, which I already knew, as I had done so back on Earth. These ones were quite different from what I knew, and I couldn’t taste them to know if any of them had at least a similar taste to the berries I knew.

A couple of hours later, I reached level 3 after having picked four baskets full of berries. The forest seemed quite endless, but there were clear markings and obvious pathways to walk, so I could always find my way back.

There seemed to be so much food here, and some of the birds seemed to agree, as sometimes it felt like I was fighting with some of them, as it seemed they had trouble getting the berries off the bushes.

The reason was quite clear, most of these had quite nasty spikes all over, and my hands did have a few scratches, but I think I managed well enough. After dropping off the last basket, the lecturer handed me a handful of berries.

“These are all safe. You did a good job. You’d be surprised at how many crushed berries I have to toss.”

After popping one of the berries in my mouth, as soon as I chewed on it, sweet juice burst out that tasted unlike anything I’ve ever had before. After having eaten the same food for so long, this was wonderful.

I ate two more, but the rest I put into my inventory so I could snack on them later. When I made it back, I realized that I was almost late to the lecture. It was really hard to accurately tell what time it was, especially inside the forest. As I had thought I still had plenty of time left.

The lecture had just started when I made it, but it seemed no one cared that I was a bit late.

“All individual. So even if your class name is the same, each one of you could have a completely different skill set. While professions are what strengthen your very being, a class is a way of using that strength to exert your will outside of it.”

I had missed the start a bit, but the context helped me figure out what that was. This lecturer was quite dry, and it was hard to keep attention on what he was saying, but taking notes helped.

By the end of it, I understood a lot better what a class was. Class and professions were basically different sides of the same coin. So, no stat points like in some games, but each level of your class and profession would help you be stronger.

How all of this worked seemed quite similar to what games used to be like, but it had a touch of realism which really helps me cope with all of this, as it makes everything feel real, even with all the ridiculousness that’s going on. I have been going with the flow pretty well, and I think I’m adjusting, but sometimes all of this still seems unbelievable.

After that, I did some training and then went back to pick more berries, getting myself to level 4. The next day was filled with more berry picking and more combat training. The instructors here were really good, and each day I felt I was getting better at fighting with a knife and a blunt one-handed weapon.

When the day was almost over, I also went fishing. It seemed that today the fish were particularly in the mood for some bread balls, as I was catching quite a few. When I killed my fourth fish for the day, something finally happened that I had been waiting for quite a while.

It was incredibly strange to feel my looting skill trigger. There was no outside indication that anything happened, but I was certain the skill triggered.

Did I just not get anything? Before I started to look around on the ground for some loot that might have dropped, there was another feeling that was so quick I almost didn’t notice it.

As I pulled up my inventory screen, another slot was occupied. That was convenient, it seemed that loot was automatically placed inside my inventory. I wondered what would happen if my inventory was already full.

Anyways, it seemed that I got my first piece of loot, some fish meat. That was quite disappointing, but nobody knew about this meat, so I could keep it.

It took two more days of berry picking, combat training and then finishing at the end of the day before I finally reached level 10 of gathering.

Instead of going to the library, which was the closest, I instead headed towards the dungeon. For some reason, the library felt too exposed, too many eyes constantly watching. Perhaps I was a bit paranoid, and probably they also had someone always watching the system obelisk near the dungeon as well, but going there felt better.

As I placed my hand upon it, with many people around doing similar, as this was quite a busy time around the dungeon, I saw the choice I had available and opened up my status page.

Instead of seeing the choice immediately, for the second time ever I decided to open up my status page.

Ray Wilson — Human, male, age 27, origins: Earth 85C

Class: Open

Trait: None

Skills:

Novice Greater Memory

Inventory I

Looting I

Professions:

Farmer — level 0

Gatherer — level 10

Harvester — level 0

Miner — level 10

Fisher — level 2

Trapper — level 10

Cook — level 0

Brewer — level 0

Butcher — level 0

Mason — level 0

Carpenter — level 0

Smith — level 0

Tailor — level 0

Weaver — level 0

Potter — level 0

Scribe — level 14

Engineer — level 0

Mapper — level 0

Performer — level 0

Keeper — level 14

It was slowly getting there, but most everything was still at 0. My evening fishing had also resulted in me getting my fishing to level 2.

If I didn’t already have my looting skill, I would have been worried that I messed something up, but now that the looting skill had triggered at least once, I wasn’t worried. Next, I opened up my choices:

Poison Detection

Durable Skin

Looting II

I blinked a few times, not understanding what I was seeing. All three of these choices were amazing. Poison Detection would be super useful, and Durable Skin also seemed really good, they were unfortunately just basic abilities, but how did I manage to get Looting II?

I mean, of course I was going to pick that. Upgrading an existing skill felt different, but also nice.

During the walk back, I was in deep thought, as I never expected to be able to get that. Now I didn’t fully understand what that “two” meant, but it was obviously twice as good as one. That made me chuckle a bit.

Learning about different ranks of skills just became a bit more important. I added that to my notes just in case.

I didn’t head straight back to my apartment. Instead, when I reached the gate near the training ground for the first time, I headed south, walking along the wall of the town. The road was going a bit downhill, but it wasn’t that steep.

I passed another gate, looking inside to see a lot more people walking the streets. That road should be the main one that headed towards the center of the town. I continued to walk further south towards the river that was the southern border of the town.

The river itself was actually quite wide, with two high arching bridges going over it, one in front of me, while the other was at the other end of the town. There seemed to be some river transport ships docked here, where they were offloading and loading cargo onto them.

The riverboats seemed just small enough that they would be able to squeeze underneath the bridges. There were also some people fishing here, which caught my interest, but I forced myself to continue moving forward, walking across the bridge.

Here there was a sort of forest, but it was in orderly rows and filled with trees that seemed to carry all types of fruits and nuts. It seemed that some of the trees were currently off-season, while some seemed ready to be picked.

This was the place where we would be getting harvesting experience. It was just this profession and fishing left to be gotten to level 10, and then I needed to make a choice.

If I was going to keep up the appearance of not getting the looting skill and going back through these five professions, leveling them up a bit more. But I honestly didn’t know whether I wanted to do that or not, as each level past 10 took more and more time.