I made my way to the Temple, ready to upgrade my first skill from Beginner to Apprentice tier. Butchery was different from most other skills in that regard. Most skills would increase the success rate by larger amount when levelling after hitting Apprentice. Not so for Butchery. It would still only increase by 1% per level. What would change though was the quality of the materials you produced when butchering.

Butchery - Level 20 (Beginner)

By taking the time to process dead mobs, you are able to get better percentages for dropping loot. At higher levels you’ll also get better quality.

Current Effects

Loot Chance: +20%

Normal Quality: Below Average

Chance of Higher Quality: 20% - Carcass Level

Chance of Lower Quality: -15% + Carcass Level

Stamina Consumed: 30 * Carcass Size

XP Gain: 10 XP per Level * Carcass Size

Progress: 1180/- XP

It occurred to me it was actually the first time I had pulled up the info on this particular skill, since it had functioned pretty much as I remembered, so I had not taken the time to look it over earlier.

“How can I help you?” a priest asked me as soon as I stepped into the Temple.

“Hello, I was hoping to upgrade one of my skills to the Apprentice tier.”

“I can take care of that right here, if you wish.”

“That’d be great, thank you.”

“I assume it’s Butchery you want upgraded, since it’s the only one that are eligible,” he said with a small smile.

“Unless you can make the others Apprentice tiered, then yes,” I joked. Failed, if the lack of response was any indicator.

The Gods are upgrading your skill Butchery to Apprentice tier. This will cost 1 Upgrade Point.

You currently have 6 Upgrade Points.

Do you wish to continue?

Yes/No

That was a no-brainer. In fact many of the yes or no prompts the game came with where no-brainers. However, they included them in an attempt to stop whiners complaining about decisions they had made, by making them confirm their bad decisions. Not that it helped much, at least not according to what I had heard.

I smiled at the priest. “Thank you. I was wondering if there was a way of upgrading a skill’s tier while out in the wild?”

I knew there was, but I figured it would be better if I just asked before starting to buy the upgrade tokens. The priest gave a big smile. “You’re welcome, and we’ve indeed managed to find a way for you to do it. There are something we call upgrade tokens, a small piece of wood, which you just burn on the campfire and you can upgrade your skill or spell.”

“How much are they?”

“Only a silver each, and they’re soul bound so there’s no chance of dropping them,” the priest answered.

‘Nor any way to trade them,’ I thought. Outloud I said, “I’ll take five.”

After handing him the coins and receiving the tokens I set course towards Fillard’s.

Butchery - Level 20 (Apprentice)

By taking the time to process dead mobs, you are able to get better percentages for dropping loot. At higher levels you’ll also get better quality.

Current Effects

Loot Chance: +20%

Normal Quality: Average

Chance of Higher Quality: 20% - Carcass Level

Chance of Lower Quality: -15% + Carcass Level

Stamina Consumed: 30 * Carcass Size

XP Gain: 10 XP per Level * Carcass Size

Progress: 1,180/21,000 XP

As expected nothing much had changed. Only the Normal Quality and that I could now earn XP from butchering stuff again. Except that I would need mobs from the forest to earn any XP at all, since any rabbits would be too levelled to give any XP. On the other hand the low levelled rabbits would make it much easier to get higher quality loot, meaning I would be earning a lot more coin from butchering them.

Stepping into Fillard’s, I saw him conversing with another player. A red haired female, dressed in a skintight black leather outfit.

“Are you sure you can’t lower the prices for me?” she asked in a sweet voice. Had a bit of a lilt and accent, something I only heard in old movies these days. Irish I think the accent was called. Accent being almost non-existent after the World Government had removed all other languages from the curriculum world-wide.

“Listen Miss, the prices are the prices, they’re Gods and Merchant Association enforced prices, nothing I can do about it,” Fillard said, sounding a bit annoying.

“Fine, I’ll be back later,” the customer said, turning around with a huff. She brushed past me, while muttering under her breath, “Stupid AI.”

Fillard turned his attention to me. “Ah, Damian. Welcome back, dear customer.”

“Hey Fillard,” I said with a smile. “Trouble with a customer?”

“Not for me to complain about others,” he said and then looked at the door. “But yes, she’s been in here five times trying to bargain since yesterday. Are all Travellers slow on the uptake?”

He looked at me for a second, and then looked horrified at what he said. “Not you of course, I didn’t mean to offend. There’s just been some new people around that seems to not understand when you tell them no.”

“No offense taken,” I said with a laugh. “And yeah, some Travellers are pretty dense. They’re used to being treated as Gods or Heroes whenever they travel to another world.”

“Well, if they do something praiseworthy, they shall be afforded that luxury,” he said with a sad shake of his head. “Now what can I help you with? Got lots of stuff to sell now that you have been gone for almost a week?”

“Sorry, but I don’t have anything to sell.”

“What?” he asked incredulous.

“Only been butchering wolves, boars and bears, not a lot of loot on those.”

“What about their pelts?”

“Sorry, but they went to a new guildmate. The black haired woman I was in here buying seeds with,” I said.

“I remember her, but why not sell the pelts to me?”

“She needs it for Leatherworking.”

“I see,” Fillard said with a frown.

“Don’t fret, I’ll be sticking around town for at least three days and butcher a lot of rabbits,” I said. I then leaned forward a bit. “And I just upgraded Butchery to Apprentice.”

When he heard that, his face lit up with a big smile. “Congratulations. A more stable income of higher quality resources shall be welcome.”

“Indeed. I do have some poor and very poor quality seeds to sell you though,” I said and put up a few pouches of chamomile seeds. I had failed in producing any seeds of Below Average quality.

“Not much use for these, but they still have a value, so I’ll be buying them. Probably end up shipping them to one of the large trade cities,” he said with a frown. “Can I sell you some new seeds of higher quality?”

“Unfortunately not, not unless you’ve red, green or blue moss spores,” I said.

“Sorry, I don’t.”

“Thought so, but I do need some wooden skewers. A thousand should do.”

“At least you keep the carpenter’s apprentice in business,” he muttered.

“Don’t grumble so much, Blue Lotus is doing a lot of business with you,” I said with a laugh as we finished our transaction.

Afterwards I headed back to our new guild house, and went around back. The house took up around a third of the total area we owned, and the rest of the ground was now filled with grass. System generated, not planted.

Well, to say the rest of the guild grounds were grass would be a lie, I noticed a chicken coop set up to one side. Nise was busy feeding the inhabitants, so I ventured over to her.

“Hey,” I said from a good distance away, so as not to scare her.

“Oh, hey Damian,” she said after a quick look. She scooped up another handful of grain which she spread out in a large arc. The chickens immediately started moving around, trying to find the new grain.

“I see you finally got your chickens.”

“Yeah, I’m just glad that the poop doesn’t stink too much. In fact, I didn’t think there were poop in the game,” she said with a frown.

“There’s not a lot of it. Only domesticated animals leave it, and only while tended by someone with Tend Animal,” I said with a smile.

“Ugh, you could’ve warned me about that, I’ve to pay some of the kids to ferry it away,” she grumbled.

“Don’t do that, I’ll buy it from you.”

She stopped feeding the chickens and turned around to look at me. “What the heck for?”

“Fertilizer for the fields of course,” I said with a smile. “More ingredients, mean more crafting points. Meaning higher increase.”

“Shit, they just took it away.”

I laughed at her unintentional pun. “It’s okay, just save it tomorrow, will you?”

“Sure.”

“How about eggs?”

“Only got a couple of laying hens so far, but a day or two and the rest should start laying as well, but I’m going to increase the brood a lot before I start throwing eggs in your direction,” she said. “Though scrambled egg and some bacon for breakfast sounds pretty good. Do the boars drop bacon?”

“No.”

“Huh, I thought they would. I’ve seen bacon and ribs at the Butcher, so I thought they might.”

“They don’t, but they drop meat and fat. There’s a magic device called a Meat Mixer.”

“That’s a weird name,” she said before I could explain further.

“It is, but what it does is that if you throw boar fat and meat in it, you get boar bacon. Boar bones and meat, and you get some boar ribs. Chicken bones and meat give you wings or drums, depending on what you want,” I said.

“That’s pretty neat.”

“I guess. Though it would make more sense that you got the different cuts from the boar when you butchered it, instead of having to use a magic item to transform it into what you want.”

“True,” she said. “But think about it like this. Instead of only getting a certain amount of bacon from one boar, you can make as much as you want as long as you got the ingredients for it. No need for yucky parts like the head, ears, feet etcetera.”

“Very true,” I concurred. “When are your fields ready next time?”

“In a couple of hours, and then we’ll move them here, should be enough space for all of us.”

“That was the plan. Have Blaze’s mom buy two saplings and make her plant that as well. Ask Phil what kind of wood they would prefer.”

“Will that trigger a new skill?”

“Yeah, it’ll give her Forestry, it’s used for growing non-fruit trees.”

“Okay, I will.”

“Great, come find me when you’ve planted your new fields, I’ve some better bones for making bone meal with,” I said and walked into the house. I found my way into the basement, and set up a table in what would become the Alchemy Lab.

I started pulling moss out of my inventory, and put it in three large piles. I had enough to try Lesser Transmutation three times with the red moss, two times with the green and four times with the blue moss. Most of the moss had been collected by Marion on their trips through the Rabbit Warren dungeon, and had cost me a couple thousand contribution points. A piddly amount since I had a bit over 600,000 points. By far the largest amount of any in the guild. Most of the points stemming from Charms and coin donations. The count would have been higher, at over 900,000 if not for the fact I had given a large chunk of it to Ed’s party.

The 300,000 points had been spent on the next item I pulled out of my inventory. One of the special prizes in the castle dungeon. The one that increased the success rate of Lesser Transmutation by 2%. I quickly used the spool of silver thread to form the diagram I wanted.

Red Moss Spore

Lesser Transmutation Level: 2

Recipe Used: No

Effect of Lucky Charm: +1%

Effect of Transmutation Board: +2%

Quality: Below Average

Possible Outcomes

Failure - 46%

Flawed - 36%

Success - 18%

Base Experience: 90 XP

Mana Cost: 45

Not the best, but I had a good chance of getting what I needed. I sat down and started the mind numbingly boring task of channelling mana for 15 minutes, and then meditating, then rinse and repeat for three hours. Those three hours were disappointing, only two Successes and a single Flawed, the rest Failures. Of the two Successes I got spores for a single planting of red moss and a blue one, the flawed one was another blue one. I would sell the Poor spores to Fillard.

In the three hours that had passed, the Phils had also finished furnishing the growing room. I pulled up the information to see what goodness I had to play with.

Blue Lotus’ Guild House

Lotus Hall

Unassigned Rooms

0

First Floor

Philsmore’s Study

30 CPs

-Bunkroom-

5 CPs

-Bunkroom-

15 CPs

Hidden Vault

50 CPs

Ground Floor

Kitchen

120 CPs

Entry Hall

55 CPs

Great Hall

90 CPs

Kira’s Study

30 CPs

Ed’s Study

50 CPs

Storage Room

60 CPs

Basement

Growing Room

125 CPs

Alchemy Labs

45 CPs

The two bunkrooms were now locked, and could not be changed for another month. At that time we could maybe get some better furniture in there. The growing room had gotten another 45 Crafting Points to work with. Hopefully I could get some good bonuses with those.

Pulling up the options I saw that there were one to speed up growth which was interesting later on, but at the moment I was most interested in skill enhancing. I found two that was of immediate use for myself. One that increased Horticulture and one that increased Harvest.

The first 1% increase cost 30 points, followed by 60 for the next. Meaning I could go two in one and one in the other. The only question was which would be what. Horticulture would increase the chance of me getting Below Average quality material, while Harvest would increase how large a yield I would take away.

In the end I decided to go 2% for Harvest, because I already had bone meal to increase the chances of it staying Below Average, and when I started using the animated bones, the resulting bone meal would be even better. Add in some chicken shit as well, and I would be able to make a pretty good fertilizer soon.

After planting the moss and a quick trip to Fillard’s to buy seeds, I went to the backyard again, where I found Nise, Mia and Blaze’s mom planting their fields. I borrowed some tools to make a nice little plot for chamomile, since I was entitled to three plots with Horticulture at level 3

Soon after, I was done with that and asked the women to give me a list of what they had planted, so I knew what I would need to make fertilizer for. I decided to stay outside and grind the bones, because the Alchemy Lab was not done yet, so there were no bonus to staying in the dark basement. While I was grinding up bones, Mia started to butcher some rabbits nearby.

To make some small talk I asked, “So, had a productive morning?”

“Yeah, I was visiting the leatherworker to get some specialized tools and blueprints for some drying frames. Don’t really need them for the rabbits fur since they’re so small, but it’s better to get some for the bigger skins. Phil will be making some,” she replied. “Also got my hands on the equipment needed to start spinning and weaving the cotton into usable fabrics.”

“That’s good. How is Alicia doing?”

“She’s good. She’s moping a bit, because I scolded her about the whole emergency debacle.”

“Haven’t seen her outside of meals, so was wondering.”

“Well, she’s grounded. Not allowed to pester you, nor go to the pool,” Mia said.

I chuckled at that. “Well, I won’t say the peace hasn’t been nice, but she’s welcome to ask me for help with her game. When I’m not playing Carn, that is.”

“I don’t need you to tell me how to raise my daughter,” she said a bit heatedly.

“Woah, I’m not telling you to unground her. I’m just saying that she’s welcome to ask for help when I’m on a break,” I said, holding my hands up as if surrendering. “That’s all, no lectures, no judgement.”

“Sorry,” she mumbled. “Miss Elleby is well meaning, but don’t need her to tell how to raise my daughter.”

“I’m not going to get involved, but knowing her, she means well. And you trusted her enough to take care of Alicia, when you didn’t think you would get out of there.”

“And that gives her the right to dictate how I should raise Alicia?”

“No, I’m just pointing out that if I was not here, she would be raising Alicia. So it might not be a bad idea to just listen, and have a quiet but honest conversation with Miss Elleby. It’s your decision in the end, whether you’ll listen to her or not,” I said and ended the conversation there. No need to get involved in it more than necessary.

It was nice working with uncommon materials. Though the lowered base chance made it a bit harder, the pay off in the end would be worth it. Normally the base chance for Below Average materials would be 10, before adding levels and other modifiers and provide 15 crafting points. For Uncommon Below Average materials, the base chance was 7, but provided 45 crafting points.

Fertilizer for Tiny Chamomile Plot

Alchemy Level: 6

Recipe Used: Yes

Effect of Lucky Charm: +1%

Uncommon Material Detected

Combined Crafting Points: 45

Highest Crafting Points of the Materials: 15 (45)

Possible Outcomes

Failure - 56%

Flawed - 28%

Success - 14%

Exceptional - 2%

Brilliant - 0%

Master Work - 0%

Base Experience: 10 XP

Stamina Cost: 40

Meaning instead of a maximum of 4% increase, I was able to make a 7% increase on a normal Success, 8% on an Exceptional one and 6% on a Flawed. The reason why it was not higher, was because the first four increases from 1% to 5% cost 5 crafting points per increase, while it cost 10 points for each increase after that. Still the higher increase was definitely worth it.

It took me another three hours to make enough fertilizer for all the fields, and by that time Ed’s party was chomping at the bits for running the Ancient Outpost. They had already gone through the Rabbit Warren, and taken the other crafters out to gather sour joys and cut down wood. I was torn between missing out on the Mentor XP from Mia, and getting closer to learning runes.

In the end, Mia assured me she had enough tanning to do to keep her occupied for a couple of hours, so I set course towards Ilat with Ed’s party. It showed me how stretched thin I was, I could not do everything I wanted myself, nor be everywhere. I really wanted to run the Ancient Outpost every time it was possible, but also needed Ed’s party to run the Castle Ruins for money and XP.

The best solution would be for Marion or Blaze to learn the short range group teleport, when it was levelled up enough it could transport up to fifteen people over a long distance, cutting travelling down to mere minutes instead of half a day. However, the spell scroll would cost at least ten thousand platinum if we were lucky enough to find one, or require one of them to reach level 75.

In the meantime, we really needed to save up for some mounts, and wait for Nise’s skills got to a higher level. Then again we also needed coin for the magical contracts, and pay taxes and room fees. We had not even 20% of the amount we needed to pay for the monthly expenses, and we were halfway through the month.

I could feel a headache starting to form.