Chapter 58: Chapter 15: Part 2
- Arthas -
With nothing else to do, I returned and found Shiroe and Star first.
"How was your side of things?" Shiroe asked.
"Better than I could have expected. There was a quest at the antique shop. We will need to go to Grove number thirteen."
"Oh. What's the reward?"
"The man said it was some old treasure map. We just need to find a guy who coats ships there. I don't know what that even means. I personally think the guy was scamming me but I got a quest so it would be a waste not to try."
"Yeah. It's not like we have much to do here." Star agreed.
"Let's go there tomorrow then. By the way, did you guys find anything good?"
"Oh the weapons here are all high quality. There were weapons for T5 and some even for T6 but the price…"
"Too much eh… Well, we are mostly all T4 and might reach T5 in a while so there is no need to hurry. By the time everyone of us is T5, we will have enough to get the weapons sold here."
"I know but… you should have seen the stats on those weapons. They even had guns. Old fashioned but still guns. Man… I missed the feel of those babies." Star said with a longing look.
In our time together, we had come to know of his obsessions with blades and especially guns.
"What Class do you need to use those?" I asked, curiously.
"None, I could use them right now but hey, I can still keep one for my personal amusement."
"You could always get one if we have leftover money when going back. How much did it cost?" I offered.
"One hundred and fifty thousand…"
Damn…
"Probably the next time we visit then."
"Yeah. It's a bit too much for now. Either way, it was a T5 Weapon."
We roamed around talking about random topics like these when we found Veena and Elaine.
They didn't have any luck with the medicine recipes either.
Since none of us got anything, we decided to visit the Tourist Area, the Entertainment Sector to have some fun.
The entertainment sector had many attractions. From a theme part to casinos for people to gamble. There were even places where we could play games and win prizes.
We decided to visit one such place on Star's insistence. The reason for his insistence was the game itself.
A shooting game.
His name Shooting Star was well deserved.
The funny thing was that the guy had legally changed his name to that back in the real world too, something he confessed when drunk once.
Was he using his real name in the game or his in-game name in the real world?
We didn't know… what we did know was that this was just another fact which showed his obsession with guns.
We let him do what he wanted, actually buying popcorn and sitting back to watch his performance. He didn't disappoint either.
The shop had different levels for the games, each level having different prices for the tries. Star went and cleared till the fifth level and won himself a skill book and… a gun. Seriously, what kind of luck was that?
All it took was 1000 Gold for that.
"You weren't bragging. You really are skilled with a gun." Shiroe said as we met the guy after the game.
"Told you, didn't I?" He said, still playing with his new guy.
It was a flintlock pistol.
The thing would have cost at least seventy five thousand outside.
Obviously the first thing which came to our mind was to make easy money from this unfortunately, there was no glitch there. A player could only win once a month after which they were forbidden from participating for the rest of the month.
As for the higher levels. Star's level didn't meet the requirements.
Seeing one of us winning, the rest of us were hyped up too and participated in different types of games too. We decided to only use a thousand gold coins for each person to not gamble away all our money.
I tried one with a bow and arrow and got to the fourth round although I didn't win. I hadn't spent that much time with a bow and arrow recently so my skill levels were still low.
I did get some common stuff though.
Shiroe and the ladies however decided to gamble in the casino instead.
Funny enough, that stint got them a new Class unlocked.
Gambler.
Gambler needs one win at any casino to be unlocked.
It was a T3 Class. Nothing special in terms of fighting, mainly a sneak attacker. There was however a special thing in Gambler which other classes didn't have.
A Special Stat increase per level.
Gambler gave +3 to LCK per level which was a stat we had received at random when the game started.
The Luck Stat was assigned randomly between one and a hundred when the character was created.
After that, there had been no way to increase LCK except for some one time consumable items like Four Leaved Clovers or Rabbit's Foot which had an abysmal chance of dropping.
This stat determined the Critical Hit Rate as well as Drops to a certain extent. The drop rate depended on whoever made the last hit. There was also a rumour that this stat increased the rate of random quest encounters.
Safe to say, we all played one after the other to get the class.
This class was the same as any production class. Instead of just fighting, one could gamble at any game established location to gain experience. The Exp gain was more if they won and less if they lost, depending on the money consumed, so in theory, one could get from Level 1 to Level 30 in minutes as long as they had enough money to spend. Unfortunately, that amount would be mind boggling.
"That was fun. It's been a long time since I last gambled. Glad to see that my skills haven't gotten rusty yet." Veena said happily.
"Easy for you to say Miss Veena. You won sixteen thousand. I lost five. I don't feel so good." Star sighed. "Seriously, you all have incredible poker faces. Arty is a natural. Elaine doesn't even flinch if somewhere were to drop a bomb beside her and Shiroe, well, he's Shiroe. I am the only one who sucks at gambling."
"Our group managed to make more money than we spent. That's already better than I had expected." I shrugged. We made a total of thirty two thousand gold… even after excluding the money Star lost. Veena won sixteen thousand alone.
No surprises there. She had centuries of experience.
I had played when I went to parties with my mom and I could keep one hell of a poker face due to my condition. Elaine on the other hand had her maid training to keep that stoic look on.
That was not to say Star was bad… he was just not lucky. He had a luck stat of 15 while the lowest among the rest was Elaine with 33.
"Hey, you won the shooting game. Even Arty couldn't get that high of a score. We all have our specialities I guess? By the way, what Skill Book did you win?"
"Hmm, something called Soru or something. I didn't check. Hold on a moment." He brought out the skill book from his inventory and checked. "Yeah, Soru. It's a movement technique. Not exactly my type of Skill. Are any of you interested?"
Soru? Movement Skill?
Is it the Six Styles of Marine Skill?
"I don't have any good movement skills. Will be useful for me." The only way I could move at high speeds right now was using Hiten Mitsurugi skills and all of them were attack skills. None of them were pure movement skills.
"Still scared by that Rhino last time." Star smirked as he threw the book to me.
"Hey, don't you remember the size of that monster? Its horn was the size of my body and my attacks barely worked on it. Obviously I was scared." It was the single scariest experience of my entire life.
I used the Skill Book and the details appeared in front of me.
Soru [Level 1/100] [Exp: 0/200]
One of the Six Techniques of Rokushiki which grants the user superhuman speed.
Covers a distance of up to five metres at 250% speed.
Cooldown: 2 mins
Distance increases by 0.1 metre, speed increases by 5% and cool down decreases by 1 second per level.
Note: This Skill is the part of a set six skills called the Rokushiki. Skills of this set can be combined and used together.
Holy crap, that's amazing.
Does that mean I can learn and combine other skills too?
We reached our hotel by the time it was dark outside and went to have dinner first.
Our group sat on one of the tables and ordered while deciding what to do tomorrow. The Auction was the day after tomorrow. I told them that I would do a quest.
Star wanted to try raising some luck which meant he was probably going to gamble. Veena and Elaine decided to watch over him so that he didn't lose too much. That meant Shiroe and I would be searching for Shakky's Ripoff Bar tomorrow.
As we were having dinner Shiroe sometimes kept looking behind me, a slight look showed that he was looking at two other players, a guy and a woman.
The guy had a medium build and looked around my age. The funny thing about him was his style. He styled himself after the Three Musketeers, donning a red cavalier hat with a plume, leather armour, tabard, and wearing a rapier at his waist. He looked like he was straight out of the three musketeers story.
The woman on the other hand, had a buxom figure, wore her chestnut-coloured hair in a ponytail, donned crimson-red armour, and used a spear as her weapon. She looked to be in her twenties.
The guy was humming a tune while the woman was casually drinking beer.
I suddenly got a message from Shiroe and looked at him oddly.
'Can you check the user ids of those two players?'
I nodded and did just that.
The lady was called Suikazura, a Knight and the guy was named Whistler, a bard. Shiroe's eyes widened as he read the name and he excused himself before getting up.
We all looked at him as he walked to that table and started talking with the two and within seconds he was fistbumping with the guy and greeting the woman.
"They seem to know each other." Star said.
"Hmm."
Shiroe pointed towards our table and invited them to sit with us.
"Guys, these are my friends from Elder Tales. She is Suikazura-san and he is Whistler. They were two of the best players I knew from the game. We have gone on many difficult quests together."
"Hello, come on, join us. There is more than enough room here." We welcomed the group. Shiroe talked with them and we found out that they had come here on a whim. Suikazura-san wanted to have to go to the beach while Whistler wanted to see pirates to see if they had any new songs for him to learn.
Whistler was a happy go lucky type of a guy who was always in his own mood.
Suikazura-san on the other hand was a calm person who didn't speak much and preferred to listen quietly. She was a housewife, three years into her marriage. She was from a well to do family, with her husband owning a business of his own and was mostly away due to that. She started playing games to stave off her loneliness.
From what Shiroe told us about her, she was known as the strongest housewife in Elder Tales, very amiable usually but merciless in battle and was a member of the Tea Party.
"Why don't you two join our guild if you are not in one yet?" Shiroe invited.
"Oh, you joined a guild? I thought you didn't like being in one." Whistler asked.
"Ah… well, this is a guild we started and you know, things are different here. We need every advantage we can get." Shiroe said, scratching his cheek.
"Eh, Shiroe was a loner? He doesn't seem like that." Star asked, surprised.
"Not to say he was a loner. He just didn't like the strict rules most top level guilds had. I could understand that. Those people were utter hardasses." Whistler said. "Shiroe was in fact invited by many guilds. He just didn't join or stay in any for a long period of time. By the way, what's your Guild Name?" He asked, as he took a sip of his drink.
"Fairy Tail." I replied, making the guy choke on his drink and look at us incredulously.
Even the woman was looking at us the same way.
"Seriously?"
"Yes. Arthas here is the Guild Master." Shiroe explained. Unfortunately, we didn't have any empty slots in the Guild right now, five being sold to Gareth's group and one for Elaine.
Although the progress for the next level had reached 38% so we would be getting more slots in about two to three weeks at best.
They decided to join us for now and would be added to the guild when the guild levels up.
We will need to keep twenty slots on the side next time for such cases. What if we found a friend or family member in the future?
We had to purchase two more tickets for them to attend the auction. They joined us to share the rooms.