Imperator

Chapter 3

Nile logged back into RR in a horrible mood. In the last few hours he had gone from having the best day to the shittiest ever. Thankfully RR was perfect for stress release and in the concentration of killing rabbits he could forget his worries for a while. Nile had reached the point with his archery that it only took 5 arrows to kill a rabbit. Thanks to this even though he was a support class he was still able to solo hunt rabbits for a couple of hours. After he reached level 12 he was in a slightly better mood. He decided to send a whisper to Baron and the two of them met up and planned to resume hunting after a trip to the market.

Nile and baron had hunted thousands of rabbits and hundreds of foxes without ever selling off their loot. Aside from easily stackable items like money or arrows, pelts and meat could only be stacked up to 100 in each inventory slot. They each have several full stacks of different items and were close to filling up their inventories. Nile had extensively researched RR and had found that the best way to sell loot was to hire a merchant. Usually they would get between 5-10% increase in sales price. After they took a commission of several percents you were left with a couple more percents worth of money. Usually this amount would be negligible, however, with the amount they were selling it would amount to a significant sum. 

It wasn't very hard to find a merchant. They were selling their services like every other vendor in the market. Baron and Nile hired the merchant who was shouting he could raise profit by 7% while only taking 2% as a fee. Even with such low profit it was beneficial to the merchants because they could get experience in various skills and raise intimacy with shop keepers. When the merchant was done selling off the loot he reported he sold the loot for 9% above market price. Even with the increase he still only took 2% commission. They had handed him 1,247 rabbit pelts, 73 rabbit legs, 174 fox pelts, and 12 fox meats in exchange for 7, 820 coppers. Baron contributed the most loot and so he took 4,000 coppers while Nile took the remaining 3,820. Combined with Baron's money from pick-pocketing he now had an astronomical sum of 1 gold and 23 silvers or 12,300 coppers. 

They spent a small amount of money on food and decided to go back hunting. When they arrived at the hunting grounds it was overwhelmed with players. In the couple hours they had been gone an extra hundred or so people had arrived. Fortunately they were mainly hunting rabbits, so although there was a scarcity of bunnies, there was still plenty of foxes left. Still the increase in people made it harder to hunt and they kept getting interrupting by players asking to join their party. In a sea a beginners, joining a slightly higher level party to leech off of was the goal of many. 

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Baron and Nile continued hunting foxes until Nile hit level 20. Unlike Baron, Nile had to log off a minimum of 2 hours a day allowing Baron to maintain a 3 level gap between the two of them. Nile assumed Baron logged off when he did, however, several times he had come back and Baron had leveled up. It was suspicious, but he didn't have a reason to suspect anything and just let it slide. Baron had reached level 23. His level was on par with most professional gamers. The highest leveled player, Bad Ray, had only reached 27. Even while grinding as much as possible, once a player gets into the 20's it starts getting increasingly hard and tedious to raise even 1 level. 

Now that they were into the 20's Nile decided they could start hunting lower level wolves. About an hours walk outside the north exit of Sai, there is a great forest stretching 100 miles north and west. According to rumors from the locals the innermost parts are home to high level monsters. There have been many cases of merchants tying to take a shortcut through the woods only to never be seen again. Because this rumor there were players who theorized that the innermost parts of the forest would have tons of loot from the merchants.  Even still, no one has ventured far enough into the forest to confirm or deny this. Players who have tried to go deeper always end up dead. Its not that there are high leveled monsters, it's that wolves start coming in packs of up to 30, and each one is between level 20-30. Fortunately the outskirts of the forest is home to lone wolves which are much easier to kill. The wolves are often regarded as the next step in hunting after foxes