V1C17

Parsed with an automated reader. The content accuracy is not guranteed.

The next morning, I do what I always do: buy some rabbit skewers and bread, wolf them down in a corner of the plaza, and head out of the city.

As I make my way out, a swarm of shady-looking people pour out from a well built and well decorated stone building. Some of them are red-faced and stumbling, as if they’ve already started drinking before the day’s even really begun. This is what we had talked about yesterday, the Adventurers Guild, and the fruits of their crooked labor are on full display. Their headquarters is the gaudiest building in the entire town.

“Did you hear? Apparently a wyvern attacked yesterday.”

“Oh, yeah, I did, but I was blacked out in the guild’s bar when it happened, so I didn’t notice a thing!”

“That was pretty much me too. But it got me thinking, you know? What if we rounded up a few young guys who’re staying at the guild, like we do when we go treant hunting, and feed them to a wyvern instead? While it eats them, we could take it out from behind, and then we could finally get a level!”

“Now that’s a good idea. You a genius or something? If the kiddos knew they’d be dying for our quality of life, they’d be totally on board. Hah! Alright, it’s settled. We’ll give it a shot next time a wyvern comes through.”

The two shady adventurers walking in front of me don’t seem to care that I can hear them. Sounds like they really do regularly sacrifice newbie adventurers to hunt treants. What garbage human beings. But still, how do they talk about this stuff so openly and still have people fall for their tricks? Is it because newbie adventurers are dumb as bricks, or are there just so many new faces passing through that it doesn’t matter?

Wait a minute. I killed a wyvern yesterday, right? But I’m still level zero. I’ve always lived under the assumption that I’d never level up, so I haven’t considered that maybe I should have. Eavesdropping on their conversation makes it click.

Old Man Japan had said yesterday that you have to kill a monster that’s at least level five to level up. What level’s a wyvern? They’re disaster-class, so they have to be at least five, right?

So then, why am I still level zero?

I can’t do much but ponder that question while my feet carry me out of the city. It’s not like I can just ask someone. Not about levels. Especially not those two adventurers, unless I want to bleed out in the street. They don’t seem like the sort to show mercy to anyone, even a kid like me, when their personal gain is on the line.

Old Man Japan would probably tell me, but then I’d have to explain that it was me who killed the wyvern. And that would naturally lead to having to explain the secret of the trash skill fruits too.

So… there’s nobody I can ask.

*****************

It bothers me for a while that I can’t figure out anything about leveling up, but I repeat Dad’s words to myself over and over again in my head until it doesn’t. “It’s normal for people to be level zero. It’s normal to have zero in all of your abilities. Anything higher than that is just a bonus.”

I shouldn’t ask for more. I already managed to get four useful skills by chance.

While I hunt shooting beans at the usual spot, I think things over. I’ve been hunting nothing but shooting beans for three years, monsters that even a five year-old can handle. That’s why I’ve never noticed the benefits of my Improved Critical Chance skill. The beans die in one hit anyways!

Eventually I fill up the sack I brought with immature shooting beans. I focus on it and think strongly, “Load.” The bag poofs out of existence immediately, and the contents of my cargo hold appear before my mind’s eye. It’s there, labeled and everything—sack (contains shooting beans).

This time, I focus my mind on taking the sack out. It plops out of nowhere straight into my hands. I do it again, storing the sack and taking it back out. And again. And then a few more times. Through this process, I learn that you don’t need a special word for storing or removing. You just need to think about how you want to put something away or how you want to take it back out. That’s it.

I discover something else that’s super useful. The ground around me is covered in heaps of skill fruits dropped by the beans I’ve hunted. I step back to fit them all into my vision and focus on wanting to store them. Immediately, every single one of the fruits disappears from the ground and reappears in my storage. This makes my life a lot easier! I don’t have to bend down to pick them up anymore, and I don’t have to worry about missing any. What’s more, as long as I have a bag in hand and focus on wanting them in the bag, I can move them straight from my cargo hold to the bag!

Then I notice something strange. I definitely shoved a whole wyvern in here yesterday, but it isn’t here. Instead, I have a bunch of items like Wyvern Meat, Wyvern Hide, Wyvern Blood, Wyvern Claws, and on and on. My skill butchered and processed the dead wyvern for me!

Out of curiosity, I take out a wyvern claw. A white, knife-like claw appears in my hand. Yep, that’s a wyvern claw, I guess.

I focus on the wyvern meat in my cargo hold.

Wyvern Meat – Extraordinarily delicious, but equally poisonous. Death guaranteed within three hours of consumption. Useful for assassination.

Well, that was very nice of it to write that all out for me. But what am I supposed to do, knowing it’s “useful for assassination”?

By the way, it’s not just the meat. The blood, organs and all the rest of the fleshy bits are all extremely poisonous and can be refined to make poisons. Not that I’m going to. I don’t need any of this weird stuff!

The hide, claws, and fangs can apparently be used to make weapons and armor, but I’m not planning on fighting anything, so that’s also useless for me. At the very least I can probably sell them for a bit of coin… if there was a way to do that without revealing that I’m the one who killed it!

Okay, so it seems the correct choice is just to ignore the wyvern parts for now. There’s no safe way for me to use them at the moment.

*****************

After I finish looking at all the wyvern bits and bobs I’ve collected, I notice some words I’ve never read before.

“Gold coins?”

I don’t remember picking up anything like that. I’m not even sure what a gold coin is.

I stretch out my hand, and one of them plops down onto my palm. It reminds me of a silver coin. It’s the same size, but yellow and shiny. Well, that makes sense. It says it’s a ‘coin,’ and it does definitely look like money.

But Dad had always told me that there two types of money in this country: silver coins and copper ones. I’d heard the same thing from Old Man Japan, and he knows everything.

Are these gold coins really money? And where the heck did they come from?

Could it be that the wyvern swallowed them at some point, and the butchering process pulled them out of its stomach and put them into my cargo hold?

Maybe these coins are something I can ask Old Man Japan about?