Dreamland MMORPG: Sea Wolf

Chapter 6: A Helping Hand (4)

The man handed him a large, seemingly unrefined hunk of metal in the shape of a club. The old man had lifted it effortlessly, but to Leon it took extreme effort only to lift the club above his waist.

"For the coming few times, we will be practicing swings with this."

And so they did, Leon took to practicing on the training dummies with the giant metal club while he simultaneously accepted and dealt with different requests from people, all concerning the extermination of different creatures. Like this, he spent around three days in Dreamland. Not much of his stats increased, but his engineering did go up two levels.

Also, he only managed to increase his Slash by 1 level, since the dummies gave so little XP. It also seemed his regular leveling speed had slowed down to a crawl once he reached level 15, leaving him there at the moment. He had also invested his Stat Points, so his stats were currently like this:

Name: Leon

Level: 15 (3%)

HP: 6200/6200

MP: 1000/1000

Stats: (+8 Points)  STR: 10 VIT: 10 INT: 1 DEX: 1 AGI: 5

Special: Cha: 2

Skills: (+16 Points)

Holy Knight: [Lv.2 Slice <52%>] [Lv.1 Block <0%>]

Engineer: [Lv.3 Basic Engineering <13%>] [Lv.1 Creator's Eye <0%>]

Merchant: [Lv.1 Bartering <7%>] [Lv.Max Charisma]

Marshal: [Lv.1 Commander <0%>] [Lv.Max Charisma]

Soul:
Soul Level: Weakling
Soul: 0/100
Soul Perks Unlocked: 0
Soul Perks Availible: 7
Soul points Availible: 0

He had only chosen to distribute stats into the areas he felt were necessary for him to barely survive, he was still planning out how to use the rest. He felt he had one extra skill point for some reason, though he didn't know why.

He hadn't left the city, but he felt like he had gotten quite a lot done in the game so far. He had also made a few contacts around the city, some public some... Less public. But useful, nevertheless.

He had also gotten the information on exactly how he could acquire new skill trees, though he had yet to do it. The method was simple, find a skill book, acquire the skill, and bam. Skill books could be bought at the library, but they were all very expensive. The prices were also slightly based off community opinion.

He had plans on getting the skills for the farmer skill tree, but he couldn't exactly afford to waste his money, he would need some seeds first. But this came later, right now he was heading over to the Golden Road Apothecary so he could meet Lyle, he had become quite good friends with the boy after he helped him.

Lyle was quite a talented alchemist, though he was burdened by the fact he could not come up with his own recipes. That was a necessity for an alchemist, and as such he considered himself a failure, but recently together with Leon he had been coming up with a few recipes. Though Leon knew little of the actual process of alchemy, by combining effects of different plants he could help Lyle with what he though would be useful for a potion.

But today, it seemed Lyle was busy. As Leon entered the store, he noticed the line was  much longer than usual and at the same time seemed to be moving much faster. He decided it wasn't really his time to disturb Lyle now, so he turned around to leave, but he was called out to by none other than Lyle.

The blonde boy wasn't sitting behind the counter, rather he was standing by the shelves and helping customers with what they should order.

"Leon!"

The boy walked up to him, but only after making short the customer had got the right item. He had a bright smile on his lips, and he was much more energetic than usual.

"What's up, Lyle?"

"Sis came back!"

Lyle spoke like he was proud of it. And Leon could guess he was. Lyle did speak a lot about his sister, he called her a "Master Alchemist" and often talked about how great it was that someone in his small family was a part of a large trading guild. He really looked up to her, that was easy to see.

"That's great. Seems like you're busy now, so I'll just come back later..."

Leon was about to leave, but Lyle stopped him by grabbing his arm.

"No. Sis wanted to meet you, so you should come with me."

"Well, sure. I guess."

Leon was surprised at how pushy Lyle was being, so he didn't really have the opportunity to talk back. He was dragged towards the back room, sadly the girl at the counter was surrounded by customers, so there was no time for him to catch a glimpse of her.

He sat down on a chair at the table in the back room as usual and looked at the book of herbs. He talked a bit to Lyle and asked a few questions about different things, and then she came in through the door.

The girl had long, blonde hair and blue eyes. Her cheeks were rosy and her skin white, she was probably in her early twenties as well. She was wearing a white apron on top of an also white leather outfit. Her outfit was tight enough that it perfectly managed to accentuate her curves.

She was definitely a beauty, but she also seemed extremely tired at the moment.

"Lyle... take over for me... Please."

She leaned against the wall, breathing heavily.

"Yes sis!"

The boy skipped out of the door, happy to be of use. The moment the door closed behind him and Leon was left in there with the woman, her heavy breathing stopped. She turned her head towards him and gave him a businesslike smile.

"So you're Leon?"

"Yes."

She didn't seem to be in need of a particularly long answer, so he didn't give her one.

"Then I take it you've been helping Lyle out a bit recently?"

"I've been trying to, yes."

"But from what I've heard, you use poison, please remember this is an apohtecary."

She was getting closer and closer to him, and her tone was getting more and more threatening. He really did enjoy how lifelike the AI was in this game.

"Oh please, Lyle can easily distinguish between poison and potion. And I don't have any need to make poisons here, not now at least."

"That's good..."

The girl seemed calmer.

"Are you really just going to take my word for it?"

The girl reeled backwards as if she had just been insulted.

"Of course not! You will have to show me everything you've shown Lyle. Ah, I almost forgot. My name's Ira, pleased to make your acquaintance."

She gave a slight bow and sat down next to Leon.

"Right..."

The rest of Leon's time in the game that day was spent explaining the recipes and making new ones with Ira while Lyle stood at the desk talking to the many customers.