World Seed: Game Start (20 page)

The
businessman nodded once again. “Very well, I can help you with
that, right this way.” He grinned broadly, leading me back to
the front of the store. Showing me one of the items on his shelf, he
picked up a small dagger. Though, this one looked a bit more high
tech than the last one. All along the blade were several tiny
teeth-like protrusions, and along the length of the blade was a black
display. “This is a basic Chain Dagger. Honestly, most everyone
gets one of these shortly after they receive their class. Just put a
little bit of mana into it, and…” As he speaks, the
teeth of the dagger began moving back and forth wildly, giving it the
appearance of a small chainsaw.

“
I’m
scared to ask… how much is it?”

He
chuckled, seeing my rather obvious hesitation. “Oh, don’t
worry. You can afford it. Three silver for the dagger, and it’s
yours. That’d take your earnings from the snake down to five
silvers.”

I
was almost relieved that I was now earning as much as I had
originally expected, even if I was also receiving a full suit of
snake mail armor and a dagger as a gift. I immediately agreed to the
exchange, and he handed me five silver coins, as well as the dagger
he had shown me. I could probably see about getting a better bow…
but I’m afraid it’d cost too much.

After
leaving Harlan’s store with the promise to be back the
following day to pick up the armor, I bumped into Jacobs. Unlike
before, he was now equipped with a rather elegant looking mage’s
robe, and his staff had a black gemstone at the tip. “Oh, hey
there Falenel. Haven’t seen you around lately.” He then
cast a glance somewhere up above me, where I assume a certain pair of
birds were flying in circles.

“
Sorry,
was practicing my class skills. Just came back this time to sell
stuff and order some new gear.” I looked at his robe, then down
to my own tattered starter outfit. I need to visit a tailor…

“
Oh?
Well, I’ve gotten started on Enchanting, so let me know when
you have the gear and I’ll see what I can do for it.”

Hearing
that, I looked up quickly, and pulled out my two weapons for him to
look at. “Can you do anything for these?” I asked with a
bit of hope in my voice.

He
chuckled, looking over the weapons. “I can’t work with
the Chain Dagger, since it’s already fully enchanted by design.
If it was made purely with tech, I’d be able to do something.
As for the bow… the materials used are too basic for most
enchantments. Best I could do would be to put a durability
enchantment on it.”

I
sighed dejectedly when I learned that my new dagger wouldn’t
get an upgrade, but nodded slightly at the offer for the bow.
“Thanks.” He put his finger above the bow, and began
tracing runic patterns along the wood, which glowed as his finger
passed over it. I felt a rather considerable amount of mana being
poured into the wood before he stopped.

“
There,
that should be good to make it last a while, though I’d suggest
upgrading soon. I’ll be in town a couple more days, but then
I’m heading off to the capital.”

I
was a bit confused at how quickly and easily the enchantment took
place. Now magic dust, no special words, just drawing a few patterns
with magic? I felt ripped off with my alchemy now. Glancing at his
level in my contact list, I saw that he had just hit 16. Since he was
being sent off to the city, I decided to set that as my own goal
before leaving as well. “Thanks again. You pick up any other
magic yet, or still focusing on Gravity?”

He
smirked slightly, nodding his head. “I’m aiming to be a
Stellar Mage. So far I have Gravity and Void Magic, but in the
capital I heard that there was someone capable of teaching the other
magic types I needed. Oh, and I found out how to teach someone a
school of magic. It’s not as hard as we thought.”

I
tilted my head curiously, waiting for him to continue. “Anyone
can teach a school of magic after they train it to Novice rank. Only
a few people have already gotten that far, but once you do, all you
have to do is attune yourself to the school of magic, and let someone
else copy it. It won’t automatically teach them the spell, but
it’s an easier learning method than books.”

I
nodded slightly, thinking it over. “Guess until you hit that
rank, your magic isn’t well trained enough to provide a decent
copy or something. Since you learned a second school of magic, don’t
suppose you know how much they charge to learn?”

He
thought about it for a moment. “Mine was a class related thing,
so I didn’t pay for it. But I did try to. However, the Mage’s
Guild requires a fee of ten silver to learn a new school of magic,
and the tower here is an affiliate of the Mage’s Guild.”

I
suddenly thought of my previous fifteen silver from killing the
snake, and how it had dwindled to five. Six if you count the silver I
already had. “Well, I’ll see about learning one when I
can. I still haven’t finished mastering all of my class
abilities yet.” I gave a somewhat regretful glance upwards to
the two circling birds, who happily dove down to perch on my
shoulders.

After
that, the two of us parted ways, and I moved to the inn to buy a room
for the day. I could at least train one affinity while in this town
waiting for my armor. Curious, I took a glance at my character info
and skills, since I hadn’t done so in a while except to assign
points.

Chapter 18:
Chocolate Orange?

The
rest of the day was spent cultivating my Plant Affinity in the room I
had rented. Surprisingly, this affinity was increasing faster than
either my Wind Affinity or Earth Affinity had, but that was likely
thanks to the elven village being made entirely out of plants. Long
story short, I managed to get 5% affinity before dinner, and received
a lovely ability to go with it.

Again,
I quickly selected no. I didn’t want to become a Plant Lord,
but a Xeno-Shifter. They seemed pretty different to me, as one dealt
with plants whilst the other dealt with sentient species. I shuddered
again as I thought about what I’d need to do to get that
Sub-Class.

For
some reason, the game decided that Plant Affinity would start out as
a full star rank, rather than half star. Maybe if had extra potency
since it relied on there actually being a plant to control? Either
way, it was getting to be time for dinner, so I pulled the brown
orange(I really need to find out what this thing is called or I’ll
go crazy from thinking about colors) and studied it. Deciding to
immediately test out my new ability, I focused on the fruit in my
hand, and gently pulled the seeds out of it.

Within
moment, six tiny seeds fell out from the bottom of the fruit and into
my hand. I smiled in satisfaction, before willing the skin to peel
itself from the fruit. I was a bit surprised this worked to be
honest, but again, moments later the thick skin of the whatchamafruit
was peeled. If not for my previous inspection with my mana, I’d
be worried that this might not be safe to eat. However, I knew,
therefore I shrugged and took a bite of it.

…

This
just should not be possible… I was frozen in place after that
first bite. Not because of a status effect or anything, just yet
another of this world’s surprises. How can it taste like
chocolate!?

I
was now determined to do everything in my power to bring this
miraculous chocolate orange to the real world. I mean, come on! It’s
chocolate that is actually good for you! My eyes looked down to the
six seeds I had extracted from the fruit, causing me to grin broadly.
Now I just had to figure out how to create these seeds from others in
order to make it work.

Looking
over to my birds, Yin and Yang, I noticed that Yang was moping a bit.
Yin, however, seemed to be puffing her chest out and boasting. If I
had to guess, Yin was the one that brought me the chocolate orange.
Reaching over to pet her head to congratulate her, I then tried to
communicate that I wanted more apples and chocolate oranges. They
seemed to be learning fairly well, or just were able to understand
from the bond we had, because they immediately flew off through a
hole in the wall that served as a window.

About
half an hour later, they returned. Yin was carrying three chocolate
oranges in her tail feathers, while Yang was carrying three apples.
Using the same trick I had tried on the previous chocolate orange, I
first extracted all of the seeds from each fruit. Then, I carefully
analyzed each with my mana.