CH 30

At long last we’ve gotten to right before the Second Half begins.

With the Second Half is right at hand, a new city was finally discovered by the advanced crowd1.

The city’s name is [Nexia]; with the discovery of the new city both the advanced players and the crafter players are in a huge state of excitement.

With a new city found, the possibility for new weapons and armor, and things that can be made by the crafters, to be uncovered is great.

Since Nexia is connected to the first city, Faust, with a Warp Portal, all players are able to travel between the two, so the city that was congested from everyone coming to see it eventually calmed down.

All of the best crafters jumped to Nexia, working hard on creating weapons and armor.

Adding to that, since new mining areas were also found, the available amount-to-player ratio of the until-now expensive steel and silver, as well as light metal and other iron-related material has overall increased, and it’s good that the price is starting to drop all around.

Beginning with the advanced group, all the combat-focused players started improving their equipment and have begun to move out to capture the places that were difficult to deal with up until now.

From that movement a small amount of monsters’ materials, like leather and shells, have gradually begun to circulate; transactions between players have begun to get lively.

Along with the circulation of new equipment starting, some opinions against the event have as appeared on the forums.

Since there’s naturally a lot of player who are bad with PvP, there’s the fear that if you don’t separate out the players with similar strengths and goals to some degree for the event, it will only be a matter of course for disputes to break out.

But with the new town happily discovered before the event begins, a new idea has come out as a way to separate the laid-back players from the frontline, combat-oriented players.

In other words, it’s an idea to keep the PvP purposes for the players different between the first city Faust and the new city Nexia.

The separation is Faust City will be for the players bad with PvP, Nexia city will be for players good at PvP.

In Faust City all the attack and defense is left to the Fairies, with players mainly giving instructions. With this “instruction style”, even if you’re bad at PvP, leaving it up to your Fairy will still give you a good enough chance at winning;

The main purpose is for advancing your Fairy’s status evolution.

On the other hand, Nexia is a gathering of the players who fight with everything they got, with the “come at me for the ultimate battle” type of flow.

Dividing the event into two areas like that can help avoid the dangerous possibility so it started to be spread all over.

There wasn’t a single trace of opposition from the management’s side, like erasing the posts on the forums, so it was taken that they approved through silence.

Though the way the management ended up reacting was expected; since it was just about the competition without any contents relating to game abuse they can agree to it.

Within all that, I’ve visited the new city to check it out.

My aim is to get my hands on food materials, wood materials, and iron-related materials.

I immediately head to the grocers and, finally, wheat, barley and other grain-like cereals have made their appearance.

Also, since cooking sets, like Advanced and Experienced sets, are being sold, it looks like I have the possibility of expanding my repertoire.

But since I don’t have the Skill Level to handle the Advanced Chef set yet, the NPC clerk refused when I asked for it.

It can’t be helped, so I start preparing to gather wood and iron.

Without the Intermediate sets I can’t cut or dig out the wood and mining crafting items in this area,so I have to switch over.

Processing iron itself uses tools that the forge crafting stations are equipped with, so until now I haven’t had to make the change.

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After some expenses I hurry and leave the city to gather wood and ore materials.

Of course on the way I moved without a sound due to <Thief Step>, checked around with <Farsight>, and continuously used <Danger Perception> to avoid having monsters find me.

The good blacksmiths ask their player acquaintances to escort and guard them, but because I don’t have any connections I feel comfortable enough to ask I’m stuck with sneaking around like this.

When spotting a monster I can’t do anything but run away with everything I have and it’ll be disastrous if I take too long and it becomes a Train.

Defeating it in combat is impossible naa; even when the advanced group has all their equipment prepared thoroughly there have been stories where they’re barely able to fight through, so the me right now probably won’t be able to kick out enough damage with shooting my bow.

If I don’t rank up my X-Bow, whip, and shoe attachment I won’t be able to level my Skills naa.

Happily, the place the wood usable for woodworking materials is located doesn’t have many monsters’ presences; somehow the foresting is a success.

Since I’m completely unprotected when I’m gathering wood, I was breaking out into a cold sweat and nervously chopping.

―――――――――

I am forced to give up on digging for iron ore.

The monsters are frighteningly packed together; the road to the tunnel is completely blocked off. With such a large amount of monsters clustered together, I have no confidence that I can glide through them even if I use the <Stealth> line of Skills and Arts at full force.

If I use <High Jump> to jump over them then <Stealth> related effects will disappear without a doubt, and if <Stealth> disappears once there’s nowhere I can hide, nor can I reactivate it.

It’s likely that with so many monsters gathered together, players who came to mine in the tunnel had to repeatedly try just running their way through.

Once you enter the tunnel the monsters here won’t enter – that’s the information that’s spreading around between all the blacksmiths.

After forcing your way in, all you have to do is mine and wait until the monsters give up and naturally go back …the people who have this idea probably continuously enter.

And if they have everybody do it, it’s not impossible to gather rather than scatter.

What they do when it’s time to return … space transition magic to return to town still hasn’t been discovered so they probably return the worst possible way by Death Penalty.

I don’t want to imitate that, naa; mining is second to life.

I’ll deal with the iron some other time, for now I can think about a way to use the new wood materials and tinker with the X-Bow …I probably won’t be able to easily innovate a new type of bow; I’ve gotten used to handling the X-Bow, a regular bow just won’t be enough.

It’s something that stands out in a bad way, but I’ve already gotten used it, and the jeers and insults that used to come at the beginning aren’t there anymore so, maa, it’s fine.

Whatever I decide to do, when the Second Half starts, contracting with a Fairy is my maximum priority.

With a such a large late start, I’m in a situation where I have to work hard; for the present I should probably do PvP everyday …

When it comes time to PvP, even if I’m just collecting losses I can’t stop.

I‘ll split off for the sake of a Fairy.

And after a long time the maintenance has begun; the curtain rises on the Second Half.

SKILLS

[Hunting Bow]Lv38   [Kicking Assault]Lv5   [Farsight]Lv45

[Wind Magic]Lv43   [Craftsmanship]Lv39

[Cooking]Lv40   [Stealth]Lv32   [Physical Ability Reinforcement]Lv12

[Thief]Lv30   [Whip]Lv32

Reserved Skill(s)

[Blacksmithing]Lv25   [Woodworking]Lv24   [Alchemy]Lv35

I finally got around to including the names for the new and original cities.