The black screen slowly faded away as the colors of the virtual world filled his vision. With the return of his vision also came the return of his other senses. His ears perked up as the sound of the small creek babbled over the virtual rocks. The smell of the fresh forest filled his nose, along with the smell of something rather unsavory, the smell of poo? If it was giving off such a powerful smell did that mean it was close by or fresh? Well Noah would learn first hand that it was close by, the moment he took a step his foot landed right in the fresh pile. “Damn it...are you serious right now? Ugh what a way to start the day?” He tried to scrape off the poo off of his boot but he had little to no luck. It was clearly fresh, judging by the warm feeling it was giving his foot and the ripe smell. What could have left such large trackings in the woods though? He glanced around the area until his eyes caught the sight of a few prints. While he was no animal tamer or hunter, he was not blind to the fact that there were several large paw prints leading away from the site. Judging from the paw prints and the warm poo that whatever left the nice present for Noah was probably nearby and probably not some typical small disney style woodland creature. He went ahead and pulled out his wooden training sword and started to carefully follow the path, utilizing his rogue skills as much as he could, so that he would not make any unnecessary noise. The sun was high in the sky, possibly around noon or one o’clock in the game’s time, he was always thrown off a bit how the game mimicked the real world nearly perfectly. Technology really was something impressive, what people did fifty or sixty years ago was behind Noah. He bite his lip, a habit he had started to form when starting this game, though he was starting to catch himself do it in the real world as well. It was frightening how much his online persona was starting to branch into his real life one, even his roommates had started to take note. Mainly they were noticing that he was starting to become more of a shut in than he already was. Oh well, he enjoyed the game and as far as he could tell the game enjoyed his presence there. As long as he did not get stuck in some crazy murdering world like Sword Art Online ended up being, well he would be content. With each step he took, his foot would make the slightest of sounds, almost non at all. He was rather proud of himself. Since meeting Dempsey in the forest he’s rogue skills had gone up a pretty decent amount. While he was nowhere near her levels of expertise, he was not half bad. This proved to be true when he had ventured into the sewers under Stokbon City. It was a disgusting place. Filled with trash, roaches, vermin, and shockingly enough hobos. A smile crossed his face when he thought of the hobo he ran into there. The poor man was blitzed out of his mind, he could not even probably smell that sewage anymore, judging by how rough he was looking. He was a simple man at least, knew what was important to him and was willing to fight for it, too bad he was quickly turned into cockroach bait. A shitty move on his part but hey, it as four against one, what was Noah supposed to do? Become roach dinner? While he was not particularly fond of the smell and location of his first dungeon, it did seem fun and had him anxious to go into another. Though next time there needed to be a bit more planning done ahead of time, a group that was more diverse as well. Three melee fighters was not the best pairing in an area with such thin paths as the sewers. Plus the person they had that could heal also had to double as a person to buff them, debuff them, and trap others. Beatle really was the key role in that whole encounter. Noah did not find much treasure while he was down there, in fact he might not wanted to find anything down there. It would take days or weeks to rid of that god awful smell after all. He did though gain quite a bit of mastery points down there and was hoping to continue that ball rolling today with this bit of training. He was still at a crossroads on what he would do for his fourth and fifth mastery. All he knew right now was that he needed to improve on his two main combat ones and his armor. For the moment his leather crafting skills were to the point that he felt no need to dump more points in there. From what he has seen and encountered not too many leather crafters were around and their skills were at par with his. So far he had collected all the poor leather crafting recipes and was about halfway through the blue ones, granted he had chosen the three cheapest of the blue common recipes, it was still some good items to have. The sad fact though was that he had yet to craft himself and sort of armor. The materials it cost to craft were expensive and hard to come by out in the wild. You’d think he could just kill some creatures and skin them and stuff but wasn’t how the game worked it seemed. Oh well, most of his gold would go towards new recipes for now. That way he could get his shop going and compete with all the other big ones. Once he had at least all the common recipes he might focus on himself. That reminded Noah, it was not just himself anymore now was it? He had recently joined one of the premiere guilds of the game, Yulan Dragons. While he did not know too many members of the guild he happened to see them recruiting in the world chat and throughout the cities. Noah, feeling the need to find some groups to go exploring with, opted to join them. Currently he was giving them a decent deal on his armor, instead of charging commission he was just asking for simple tips. He could afford to do this at the lower tier armors, due to their recipes not being as costly as the higher grade ones. Once he started making the proficient tier and upward he might not be so generous...unfortunately. He was eager though, from what he had heard they were planning on all going on a mission here soon. Perhaps it would be exploring a dungeon like the sewers, that would be fun. Hopefully it was a place like exploring the beaches, exploring the countryside, heck even exploring the caves, anything but those smelly sewers. Not that he hated them that much, they were just gross. He wished there was an option to turn off his sense of smell in the game, if Beatle’s machine could restrict his speech surely there was a function to turn off the smell. One could only pray though.
Noah activated his palm screen to look over the messages him and his fellow guildmates had been passing along the past few days. The sewers having a new level was a hot topic not only in the guild chat but world chat as well. Lucky for Noah and Yulan Dragons, they had three members that knew the location of these inner sewers, since Noah was the one that actually was able to discover the hidden area. The group he was with earlier was a bit reluctant to go deeper into the sewers since none of them had been properly geared and stocked up on items or other goodies. Noah really had only focused on his one handed slash skill since leaving the sewers a few days ago. It became apparent that his offensive skills were going to help him going against more powerful enemies, especially since he had not even really obtained much armor. It was silly, he was a leather worker but had never made a single piece for himself. Shit was too expensive. It seemed that a small group had been picked to go explore this new area though, Noah was a bit excited since he was picked to join this group. While his rogue skill was not the most skilled in the guild, it was higher than most. Seemed that he would most likely play scout again. He was wary of splitting up this time around, he had been ambushed by 3 roaches and a hobo at once last time, Admiral was double teamed as well, it was clear that these sewers were full of enemies. He was a bit relieved to find out that Jack was coming with him. Noah had heard a couple of rumors throughout the world of Jack’s skills. Seems that he was making a name for himself rather quickly. The Roland fellow had bought a few pieces of armor from Noah as well, it would be nice to see his work in action. Heck who knows perhaps Roland would be impress with its defensive properties that he would keep coming back to Noah for more business. Those recipes were so expensive. While he had made most of his money back on them at this point, there was still at least two common tier recipes he had left and the one uncommon recipe that he had seen was far from his budget’s range. Right now though his plan was to buy the last two common recipe, get his other skills up and wait for player’s pockets to become a bit deeper before grabbing the uncommon recipes. No point investing hundreds and hundreds of gold in a single recipe if nobody was able to afford it anytime soon. As much as he would love to buy them and one of the shops that the game was promoting, he was far too poor and loose with his money to save up for that kind of stuff. His best bet would be getting one of these rare recipes in a drop or something from a dungeon, though what kind of crafting recipe he’d find in a dungeon like the sewers was beyond him, plus that raised the question of did he want to keep that recipe? He had not earned jack shit in the last go around from the sewers expedition, well he did find some trash and potentially made a friend with that stray hobo down there; if he had some booze with him that is. He sighed as he pulled up the mini map of the region. Most of the area had been unexplored by him. Really he had mainly stayed to the main paths in most of the regions he had been to so far. He was not fully competent in his skills to go solo in the wilds just yet, though his one handed slash skill really was improving pretty quickly. He needed to improve his weapon though, it was just a wooden training sword, not even meant to cut too much, really if anything it was a blunt object at this point in time. He was getting close to the point that he could unlock a fourth mastery, which was both exciting and nerve racking. What should he do or pick? So far he had used his rogue’s natural acrobatic skills to complement his sword skill, should he ignore gaining a fourth one for now and focus on improving the two main ones he already had? It would make certain situations much easier but did not help his shortcomings, also known as range and defense. Right now his defense was moving faster than an attack would hit but that would be useless in certain area of effect based attacks not to mention those that were faster than him. So far he had been lucky and was able to stay relatively unscathed but the more he would explore and go deeper into the world the more dangerous it would eventually become. There was also the issue of his lack of range. Enemies that stayed away from his general range would become complicated to strike and he needed to rely on others to handle them. Range skills would also become somewhat useful against those that were too dangerous to approach in close combat due to their sheer strength. He had heard rumors of mysterious skills that seemed to be unlocked by different quests, events, or by other means. Perhaps he should go to Stokbon or some other major city and see if he could find one of these rare quests and learn a new skill or two. Though it also would not hurt for him to get his rogue one up a tier first... He should focus on what he had right now and improve on them before jumping into a new one. Though he might allow himself to become a jack of all trades, it also meant that he would not excel in any set of skills, a double edge sword for sure. How could Noah really get his rogue skill up to par though? Should he head to Stokbon and just stalk different people, pickpocket NPCs, break into homes? All sounded thrilling and adventurous but none sounded like they would really get him much but thrown in the jail. Noah was no thief, he liked to see himself as more of a treasure hunter or adventurer than anything. There had to be ruins around this world that was left unexplored wasn’t there? He found that hidden entrance to the sewers but perhaps there was a cave or two laying around in the woods. That or some old castle or fort that had been taking over by sorcerers or something. Who knew exactly what was out there, all he knew was that there had to be at least something. He pulled out his palm screen and started looking over what the heck was even around him. There seemed to be some cliffs off a few hundred meters to his west, almost a kilometer from what he could tell. The trees around him were so thick that it made it impossible for him to see the mountain from this exact location. Feeling that his chance of finding a cave to explore or something else to do was probably much higher near the mountain that randomly in the forest, Noah took off in the direction with hope in his heart.
