V1C8

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

Old Man Japan waits for Osshan to settle before continuing his explanation.

“Clearly, you’re the kind of kid who can’t help but mess up because you refuse to listen when people talk. Am I wrong, boy? I don’t know if you could do a poorer job adjusting to this world if you tried.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but, with that foolish stunt you just pulled, you managed to completely waste one of your precious skills.”

Osshan looks unconvinced. “Are you kidding me? You’re making way too big a deal out of me taking a little bite of that gross-ass fruit.”

Old Man Japan lets out an exasperated sigh. “Do you know how to check your own ability scores?”

“Yeah, I had that brat teach me earlier!”

“Well then, can you look at the section that lists your skills for me? Tell me what’s written there.”

“Whoah! I’ve got a skill! ‘Improved Critical Chance’? That sounds freaking awesome!”

He sure sounds happy. Old Man Japan and I exchange looks, and I can’t help but slump my shoulders.

He fixes Osshan with a firm look. “You should know that, in this world, that skill is commonly considered to be the worst of even the trash skills—”

“Why?! When you’re fighting with a stronger enemy, a lucky critical strike can turn the tide! And this skill increases your chances! How could that be trash?!” Osshan interrupts Old Man Japan’s explanation, slamming his hands down on the table.

There he goes again, not listening all the way until the end.

Old Man Japan raises his hand in a pacifying gesture. “There’s no need to jump down my throat. If my memory is correct, your Improved Critical Chance is currently recorded as ‘1% up’. That may sound good, and it would be, if it increased your total critical hit rate by one percent. But it doesn’t. Instead…”

He explains that even a master swordsman only gets a critical hit one time in every thousand, which apparently is a 0.1% critical hit rate. Improved Critical Chance doesn’t boost this to 1.1%; instead, your 0.1% critical hit rate becomes 1% better. Or, in other words, you apparently get a critical hit rate of 0.101%.

“… So, you can see that one’s critical hit rate is truly negligible. They say that it increases to 300% at tenth level. However, that leaves even a master swordsman with only a 0.4% chance. You can well imagine how low an amateur’s hit rate would be…”

He also mentions that there wasn’t any record in the library of someone actually raising it to level ten, probably because it would be ‘a ridiculous exercise in futility’. Meaning that the 300% increase is a guess based on its increases at lower levels.

Osshan, for his part, looks pale as a ghost, and we haven’t even gotten to the really bad part yet.

“… Now, if this were a game and you could train as many skills as you’d like, having one or two trash skills wouldn’t be a problem. However, this world isn’t a game. In this world, for your entire life, you’ll only be able to acquire four skills at most. And worse, once you acquire a skill, you can’t get rid of it.” He taps his fingers on the desk and fixes Osshan with his eye. “One of a potential handful of skills, and you’ve wasted it with trash.”

Osshan hangs his head. “Oh shit…”

Seems like he finally realizes that his foolish actions have earned him a mistake he can never take back.

Old Man Japan pats him gently on the back. “You don’t need to be depressed about it. Let’s be positive! You still have room for three more skills. If you make sure those are good ones, you’ll be just fine.”

“You’re right! There’s no point in getting upset about one little mistake. I’ll get the three best freaking skills to make up for it!” Osshan yells excitedly, raising his head.

You sure got over that quick. I mean, sure, you’re right that there’s no point worrying over spilled milk, but you need to reflect a little bit, or you’ll be swimming in it soon enough.

Old Man Japan looks at Osshan, pity plain on his face. “About that… While skills themselves don’t have ranks associated with them, they do have prices. And, unfortunately, those prices are very high for the useful ones. They come from high-level monsters, which level-zero folks have no chance of defeating. In particular, it will probably be impossible to get any kind of combat skill.”

That’s something that I also already knew—that you can buy good skills at the store. Even the cheapest one, Improved Foraging, will set you back three silver. That’s a price I can’t afford with my income.

By the way, all of my skills are trash skills, since the only Skill Fruits I’ve eaten are from Shooting Beans. I mean look, it’s free food—it’d be wasteful not to! You might think that they’re all too bitter to eat, but you’d be wrong. It all depends on how you eat them.

According to Old Man Japan, combat skills are absurdly costly, and you can’t even find them in a country town like this.

Now that he mentions it, I have never seen one. I wonder what types there are.

But even worse, there’s more to raising a skill than meets the eye. Each time you level up a skill, you have to eat three times more fruit to get to the next one. So, you start with one at level one; but then you need three for level two; and then nine for level three, and so on. The cost to level up increases like crazy!

Osshan pinches the bridge of his nose. “That’s crap. You want me to burn all of my money on micro-transactions? It’s ridiculous that I have to pay just to increase my skills. Come on, are you sure I can’t just kill monsters and grab some Skill Fruits for free?”

“Micro-transactions? I’ve told you several times already to stop thinking about this like a game.

“Look, let’s think about the cheapest Skill Fruit you can buy. These drop from monsters called Treants, which are apparently around level three in terms of strength. Take ten adventurers with some experience, and they can barely defeat one. What chance would you have?”

It’s not that monsters weaker than Treants don’t drop Skill Fruits. It’s just that anything weaker only drops Trash Skill Fruits, just like Shooting Beans.

“Damn, for real? That’s so freaking lame.” Osshan spits out.

This guy. He’s sulking now, and for what? Gathering skills—like Improved Foraging—are useful. Why does he want to fight so badly?