"Oh my..."
The poison had certainly been effective. As Leon and Sierra walked through the tunnels, rat corpses littered the long corridor. This time Leon didn't need to hold the torch as Sierra had brought a lantern with her which he was now using instead.
As they reached as far as Leon had went in the tunnel Leon turned around.
"What do you think?"
"Amazing... I never expected you to be this good."
"Haha..."
Leon blushed a bit, he wasn't good with compliments, even when they were complimenting his skill of killing rats.
"Right, do you need any help cleaning this up?"
"if you could... Yes please."
Leon then started picking up a few of the rats, he did want to help Sierra but he also had another reason for doing this.
Item Collected: Rat Tail x1 Rat Fur x1
Yes this was his true intent! Collecting items. This was absolutely necessary, if you killed something you should collect the loot, it was natural to any gamer to do this. It seemed that all he needed to do was get close enough to the dead rats and then he would be prompted to pick up their items.
He wasn't sure about the limitations of his inventory, but he was going to test them out. He kept picking up items until the hallway was almost completely clean.
"Thank you, you've helped me out a lot here. I want to reward you but I don't have much to give..."
Sierra seemed to be in deep thought about something.
"There is this... If it's enough."
She held out three small blue crystals towards him.
Seeing his confusing Sierra quickly gave a description of the item.
"They're teleport items, they let you teleport to a location engraved on them. I use these to get to town when I need to buy supplies, since I'm employed as a tunnel caretaker I can get them really cheap, I'm sorry I can't offer more..."
Leon's eyes shone as he looked at the crystals. He had stopped listening after Sierra had told him that they let him travel to the town on this island.
"I only need one."
He picked up one of the crystals Sierra held out and looked at it, his eyes sparkling.
"Thank you for your help Sierra, with out you I would have been dead now."
"oh no, it's nothing. I hope we can meet again sometime."
"Of course."
He was only half-listening as he thought about finally getting to travel to a town.
And with those words he used the crystal. It felt like two invisible hands were pulling him upwards as he traveled. And then, he suddenly found himself next to a fountain made from white marble.
Around him there were many different houses made from timber, and there were a lot of people clad in all manners of different clothes wandering around.
"Wow..."
The city didn't have any walls surrounding it besides for a row of wooden poles which had been set up as a garrison together with a few towers. But that didn't mean the city was small, there were many houses and all manners of different stores. He could even see that some of the people walking by him were wearing things which weren't normal even in medieval times, a blonde girl wearing and armor made from green scales, a short man wearing a blue robe about twice as long as him.
He pulled himself together from staring in awe and decided it was time for him to do something. First he should probably check his status though, he must have leveled up from killing all those rats.
Name: Leon
Level: 9 (47%)
HP: 1700/1700
MP: 820/820
Stats: (+16 Points) STR: 1 VIT: 1 INT: 1 DEX: 1 AGI: 1
Special: Cha: 2
Skills: (+9 Points)
Holy Knight: [Lv.1 Slice <0%>] [Lv.1 Block <0%>]
Engineer: [Lv.1 Basic Engineering <22%>] [Lv.1 Creator's Eye <0%>]
Merchant: [Lv.1 Bartering <0%>] [Lv.Max Charisma]
Marshal: [Lv.1 Commander <0%>] [Lv.Max Charisma]
8 levels... That was more than he had expected. While it was definitely good that he reached such a high level so quickly there was also a problem, he had leveled up too quickly. As such, his skills weren't up to his current level which meant he was significantly weaker than anyone the same level as him. There was also the fact that he couldn't really unlock any new skills as that required him to level up his starter skills first.
Other than that there was also his inventory. It contained one hundred coins that each player started with as well as, 112 Rat tails, 214 Rat furs, 476 Rat teeth, 30 Rat Cores. He really had a lot. He was pretty sure he could sell this somewhere, and looking around he instantly noticed where.
There was a rather large stall near the fountain, and on the sign above it there was "Material Trader" written in large red letters.
There wasn't a line in front of it or anything, so he could just walk up and start selling his materials.
"Hello, what do you have for us?"
The girl didn't even look up from her clipboard as she asked him in a bored voice.
"How much is this worth?"
Leon took everything he had gotten from the rats out of his inventory, and as it fell down onto the table in a large pile that made it difficult for him to see the girl who sat behind the material trader's booth.
"I think it's about..."
He could tell the girl had just looked up to see the massive pile of items on the trader's bench.
"Well... This would be about... 100 gold per core, 2 gold per fur, 1 per tail, 1 per tooth. So in total that's 4016 gold."
The different materials were suddenly absorbed into a small bag in the girl's hands and the table was completely clean again.
"Here's your gold."
The transaction occurred instantly through his inventory being filled up with 4016 coins, so there was no physical gold coins being passed around.
"But I have to ask, why waste so much time killing rats? I mean sure, you don't look very capable with that clothing, but still, seems like a waste of time."
"I was just helping someone out up at the tunnels."
The girl looked up at him with shock in her eyes.
"Someone finally took that old lady's request? I was getting worried about what might happen. Just because we don't use the tunnels right now doesn't mean we won't be using them in the future..."
"I didn't take any request though, I just helped her after she saved you."
"Ah... Well you should take the reward for the quest anyway. Since you basically delivered the proof here, you should be able to turn in the quest over there."
She pointed towards a noticeboard which stood next to the large fountain in the center of town. A lot of people were crowding around the noticeboard, so Leon had some difficulty reaching it. But after he did so he instantly noticed it's purpose, it was to give out quests from the people in the town.
The quest seemed divided into three categories, green, yellow and red each marked by their own piece of cloth hung above the board. The yellow quests seemed to be mostly hunting quests, subsequently they also seemed to be the most accepted. Red quests seemed to be very dangerous, but there were still quite a few being accepted. Then there were the green quests, these were things like the rat extermination Leon had just done, simple quests like getting rid of vermin or even taking care of animals. Quite a few were being accepted here, but maybe even less than the red.
That made sense though, seeing how everyone here was more heavily armored than him, an probably higher level as well. He looked at the green quests for a few seconds before he quickly took a few of the papers before walking off.
Reward Received: 10 gold
It seemed the reward for the quest wasn't that high anyway. But he now had five new requests to do, all of almost the same nature.
"Let's get to work then."
---
His first request brought him through the streets of the town, he took note of the fact that this town was large, yet not large enough to get lost in. The landmarks were rather simple to find, and one could always follow the shoreline if they got lost.
He arrived at a timber cabin, it looked just the same as the others but due to the small sign hung outside he knew it was here.
"Hello?"
He opened the door as he asked to see if anyone was home.
This was supposed to be some sort of pharmacy, and he could definitely tell by the inside. Shelves lined the walls, and those shelves were filled with all sorts of different herbs and potions. The shop's counter stood towards the furthest wall, but the problem was that there was no one there.
"Guess I'll come back later..."
Just as he was about to leave he was stopped by a voice.
"Wait!"
The wooden door behind the counter flew open and a blonde boy came running out of it. He had eyes blue as the ocean water outside and he was wearing a leather apron on top of what seemed to be white cloth clothing.
"What do you want, dear customer?"
He spoke with a soft and friendly voice and gave Leon a bright smile, but judging by the way he spoke it didn't seem he was really used to this, that did make sense as he didn't seem much older than fifteen.
"I came here for this."
Leon placed the piece of paper on the counter.
"Ah, my sister wrote that.. But she's out now, so..."
The boy seemed confused about what to do.
"Well, I can come back later."
Leon tried to do his best to assure the boy that there was no urgency in the request. It was after all only the extermination of some bugs.
"No, we can do this. Come with me."
"Alright."
The blonde boy then took Leon with him into the back door, to the right and then downstairs.
"Ah, I forgot to ask your name!"
For some reason the boy seemed a bit jumpy, but Leon tried to pay it no mind.
"I'm Leon."
"Ah, I'm Lyle. Are you a new adventurer?"
"Yep, my first request."
They kept walking down the sitars to the basement. Lyle seemed more relaxed now.
"I'm also new to my job, maybe we can work together in the future."
No matter how he looked at it, NPC's in this game really were lifelike. Leon thought to himself as Rev opened the door to the basement.
The moment that door slid open, a black shadow flew right at it. Before Leon could even move, Lyle had already popped the cork of a small bottle he had held in his hand and the shadow instantly retreated. It seemed this shadow was actually a creature, a creature that looked like a large dung beetle with spikes covering it's back.
"You see? This is our storage, but these Battle beetles keep draining our storage..."
"I see. Well, let's go upstairs and we can lay out a plan."
"Alright."
Leon now knew what the infestation was, now he just needed to figure out how to kill it without actually touching it with his weapon.