Chapter 85 - Engineering

"I think I need to work a lot on my fighting skills. I could definitely use a bit of practice along with you," said Rudra accepting his offer. He realized the importance of this far quickly than most players would.

The game would be mostly dominated by players who were good at physical co-ordination and had strong co-ordination. Due to this game most people who spend used to spend their lives playing games or software companies and other jobs which didn't provide much exercise, slowly started to divert their interest in physical games and activities. Most guilds would soon hire even coaches and experts to help them with physical activities.

Balthazar had already been planning for the same. The reason he was able to become a vice-leader of a guild was because he had good skills due to him being an assassin for two years and that experience made him an extremely, cautions and ruthless man. Many other players were wary of going against him and that gave him quite a good reputation and respect.

He knew that doing this as soon as possible would benefit both his friends and him. Moreover, the fights against the alien apes would also intensify, soon and the better their physical skill and stamina, the better their chances of survival during tough times.

He already had plans to send Lucius and Salazar somnium headgears so that they could practice his skills with them. It would provide him thrice the time compared to real life. He also knew from his previous life, a few people he could hire.

Moreover, he could also contact Rodrigo and few other old military men who had been in special operation, to teach players. They would have enough experience and skill to teach players at least the basics of fighting and a few techniques. It could be considered as a job for them who are past the retirement age.

Such people would soon be contacted by the military in a few months to help train new soldiers. The somnium technology would become a method to teach and train various things. Not only old people at military but a lot of old people who were famous at their fields and physically inept or incapable of using it began using the somnium technology to teach others.

"Yes, we can go and practice fights in the arenas. I think most players would be interested in this. If, we want to have a fixed room, we better keep a room booked with password and let our guild members fight against each other, so that at least one of them always has the room. Many others would realize the need for practice, and it would get harder later," continued Shadow.

"Yes, we might need to do that. I will inform Slaine and have a few guys maintain a few rooms. But I think, it might not be enough. We need to hire a few coaches to help with the same. I will contact my father. He might actually a bit helpful at this," said Rudra

"Why don't we go and try to check the engineering trade profession?" asked Shadow. It was the best time for them to try out engineering. Being the only ones in the city, they wouldn't have much competition. They could easily search and gather for materials and tools for it. They just collected a decent amount combat points and they could get whatever they needed from the shops here.

Engineering was a profession that was concentrated around making tools. All engineering items are considered tools and they are used by almost all main occupations and trade professions. From this perspective, it looked like they have the largest consumer base compared to any other trade profession. The only issue was that most of their products would be considered luxuries by a large number of players.

Virtual Games had begun as a way to entertain and enjoy oneself. Though professional gaming organizations and competitions are a common thing, a majority of the players wouldn't be professional and played to escape from the troubles of daily life. Armaments and potions were a necessity to enjoy the game due to the nature of the games, but tools were not. Only gaming organizations who needed to have a relatively higher speed and quality of progress in the game or the rich who didn't like to work much in a game were the frequent customers of tools.

Thus, engineering trade profession has a smaller consumer base than one would expect compared to alchemists and forgers. The good thing about this was that the price of the tools was higher as they took lot more effort and finesse than potions or armaments. As they game progressed, the difficulty of it would increase exponentially.

Engineers could produce a bunch of tools like firecrackers, explosives, diving goggles, etc that would be allow a player to quickly hunt monsters and explore places. Though explosives could be used to speed up the process of getting experience, it wasn't very profitable as it would cause the dead monsters to be useless. Vita-nova was far too close to reality. A player actually needed to spend time to forage dead monsters and if the monster sustained many injuries most of its body would become useless. To prevent this from happening, players would try their best to only attack on the known weak spots of monsters.

Even with these drawbacks, the competition among the players and zeal to see the name on leaderboard would tempt many players in using explosives. These explosives and bombs created by engineers would also be very useful in clearing quests, especially the quests like clearing the path to the city.

Armed with a bunch of explosives, the players would have a chance to escape life threatening situations. In situations, a player surrounded by monsters, they could use these tools to find a way out of the encirclement. They could also be used to frighten monsters or thin their herds.

Shadow and the Crimson Realm guild had plans to get more players to the city, the next morning. Having a few tools like explosives in their arsenal would allow them to finish this mission with much more ease and speed.

Though Shadow Tyrant had already used up all his four trade profession slots, he could replace one as long as he was in a city or town. He decided to forego herbalist skill for now as he could easily get hold of all the materials from the shop and auction house anyway. He also has a guild to support him in collecting materials. Moreover, he already knew that the first upgrade of the game would remove the cap on the number of trade profession slots. So, he would be able to relearn it later. To him, engineering was of vital importance in his immediate quests.

He planned to go and find the daggers that the lord of shadows left in the cave as shown in the memory fragment. The cave would be occupied by a number of gnomes and there would be trials to reach the weapon. He would definitely need some fireworks and bombs. Fireworks tend to act like flash-bang in the game. Though they don't deliver any damage, they tend to confuse monsters. Bombs deliver both fire damage, confuse monsters and also have blow-back effect.

He quickly began to search the shops around the combat arena for the designs for these tools. He soon found a shop with good engineering designs and managed to exchange two small firework designs, two small dynamite design and a primitive scope design for a price of 500 combat points. After that he bought all the required supplies for making these tools.

They quickly made their way to the engineering association and booked an advanced workshop for both of them. For both fireworks and dynamites, the players needed to create the mixture to pack in a cylinder. These mixtures are made by use of alchemy. Players could alternatively buy the specific mixture from shops in cities and just pack them in cylinders to create dynamites or fireworks.

Usually many trade professions prefer to work in isolation, but engineers would have to work along with alchemists or blacksmiths. Even if they gather a lot of proficiency and become expert engineers, they need to use materials that can be created by alchemists and forgers. If they had any intention to mass produce high-level products, they need to work in conjunction with alchemists and forgers as they couldn't also gather proficiency points continuously in alchemy and forging.

Hence, the workshop would also have equipment for blacksmiths and alchemists along with the basic tools required for engineers. They could be working in the workshop along with the engineers. This is the reason that engineering workshops had double the rent compared to a forging room.

Once, they reached the advanced workshop, both Shadow and Crimson Tyrant learnt the designs. The designs were similar to the blacksmith designs which contained detailed description of how to create the tools. It also included how to make the ingredients like blasting powder using alchemy. The outer case is usually made from monster bones or iron by the forger. Engineers can be considered to be assemblers of creations of forgers and alchemists to form new products.

Both Balthazar and Rudra decided to focus on fireworks and dynamites as their use for the next day's plans was obvious. Shadow worked on production of the ingredients while Crimson Power on assembling them to form the dynamite and firework.

Small firework and small dynamite were basic level products for engineers. It would require minimum effort from the engineers to produce these items. They were able to craft these without much issue. The only thing he was disappointed about was the fact that he couldn't get high proficiency points like he got during forging.

The Kade's insignia he had allowed him to gain proficiency in forging quickly but the same was not true for engineering. He needed to do a similar quest for engineering, if he wanted to improve his proficiency as fast as forging. Though he always used forging to construct cylinders for the firework and dynamites, it wasn't considered an armament and didn't improve his proficiency at forging either. He couldn't complete any quest for engineering as he did for forging as he would require materials or do some sort of adventure which isn't safe at night.

They continued to create small fireworks and dynamites continuously for 9 hours. Either fireworks or dynamites took hardly half a minute to create. In this time, they managed to create about 500 fireworks and 500 dynamites. Though it was not enough for them to bring a lot of people clear the quest from the Blackrock Town, it was easy for getting a group of at least 50 of them to the city even without his help.

"You can continue making more if you think this isn't enough. I am logging out for dinner," said Shadow as he decided it was enough for the day. Crafting the equipment helped him get to the next level in these nine hours, but it was still a boring stuff and he had to make some plans for the excursion with Robert in two days. He also had created enough blasting powder and other materials for Rudra to continue for a decent amount of time.

"Fine, I can continue with this. The more of these we have, the better our results would be tomorrow. Just be ready to get more guys into the city tomorrow," replied Rudra as continued with creating more dynamites. Though dynamites would cause losses for the loot that would be available after death of monsters, at this stage of the game, it would be quite efficient to get to clear the quest and get more players of his guild into the city.

"I am expecting a bit of resistance from the other guild players. Already made preparations for it and even contacted Merlin for it. But still, expecting a load of players against us. I suspect we would be using the dynamite against players rather than monsters tomorrow morning. So, be there as early as possible. Having players of higher level is a definite advantage and your presence would have a kind of restraining effect due to your reputation," continued Rudra.

The success of the campaign the next day was very important in establishing the prestige of his guild. The guild was under new management and owners. Over the past few days, those involved in the gaming circles have already come to know about this and those that didn't would certainly look into them after they registered the first guild in the game.

A recent change in the management of any organization would have an effect on the efficiency of the organization. Many would try to probe during such situations, especially when the specific organization shows signs of improvement from a previously mediocre state. At such times, it was necessary for them to put on a strong front.

Previously, it was well known that the guild was owned by the Blyth family. So, nobody wanted to specifically target it as the guild wasn't worth the retaliation of such a powerful family. Now, the information was that Rudra got out of the previous owner's employ and is running the guild with completely authority. They never disclosed information of the person who currently owns it.

Even if people managed to know about Rudra's connection to the Power family, they would still try to hinder their growth in the game, especially first-rate guilds and stronger ones. Like any other business, they would try to squish their competition as soon as they feel another guild to be a strong opponent. Knowing about Balthazar owning the guild would not stop some either as they expect the family's members to have different opinions regarding the guild and thus, they wouldn't need to worry much about their retaliation.

Hence, there would definitely be some players from different guilds who would try to stop them or follow them, the next day. There might even be a few who join them to spy on then. Rudra has to be extremely careful so that the interference from them wouldn't harm the guild.

He needed to be successful in his attempt tomorrow to display his team's capabilities, else many would soon start to think they got lucky on the first day of the game and might slowly get out of the guild. That would be extremely detrimental to their plans as Rudra had intended to develop the guild into a first-rate guild as he promised his father.