Chapter 16: A Rather Peculiar Person

After confirming that Goblin Hatchet was a no-go, I decided to kill the rest of the remaining time by sleeping in real life.

I was originally going to level up until the time was up, but without a proper weapon to dispose of the monsters with, those plans could very well go down the drain.

「Oi, mister, is my weapon ready yet?」

「Oh, you’ve come at a perfect time, boy! It’s about ready!」

While saying that, the clerk opened up a window and the weapons were passed down onto my inventory directly, without having to give them by hand.

· Swamp Dagger

A slightly glowing dagger.

Made out of high quality ore found in the marshlands, it is bound to be any warrior’s longtime friend.

The glow of the weapon is solely dependent on the person that wields it.

Each successful critical strike reduces the amount of weapons durability that is lost by half.

「Now, this is a really good weapon, for sure……」

For me, there is no better weapon that I could use in long term thinking.

The sawblades were really powerful and had some pretty neat additional effects, but the way in which these daggers were designed worked perfectly with my playstyle, focusing on critical damage and maneuverability rather than raw power.

「Ah, that’s right, there’s something I wanted to ask……」

「Hmm? Sure, ask away, but be quick about it. I want to go to bed soon……」

「Is there a way to restore weapon’s lost durability?」

「Ah, now that you mention it, there are a lot of people who keep on asking me that question. Do newbies really like to take care of their weapons that much? So how about acting like a professional and leave that task to a blacksmith? One that can both repair and ascend weapons? I’m quite skilled in both of those things, so if you leave it to me, your weapons are going to be in really good care!」

「Hm? Weapon ascension?」

「What, you don’t know about that feature? Look, boyo, I’m a blacksmith…… I can craft and repair weapons, but I can also use magic to transmute them or to ascend them. Well, we blacksmiths use the word “ascend”, but it is just your plain good old strengthening……」

Seeing how this old man got fired up over his own craft, it was hard to believe that he was a genuine grown-up and not some young lad full of passion and willingness to work and learn.

Having a glance at the WIKI for the game, there was a butt-load of secret information, statistics and parameters that each item could have to it. Looking at some of the charts there, normal weapon strengthening was able to make your items far stronger than they originally were, but ascending them would also add some additional effects to them, some of which were especially powerful and couldn’t be obtained through any normal means. It was a lot of information for a newbie to process, it was certainly good to know.

In other words, aside from the normal weapon growth, there was a huge number of parameters and ways in which you could make it even stronger. For me, that was more than enough.

「Thank you very much, I’ll be sure to come back once I have the necessary money and materials.」

「Sure thing. Best of luck out there!」

I say goodbye to the shop clerk and leave, going back to the swamp, there, I decided to test out the new weapons until my inventory gets completely filled.

「Seriously though, why won’t you just die already……!?」

「Gekyakakaka!!!」

「Gugigie!!」

「Gaga!!!」

Calling their friends to help them in battle was something only monsters are capable off!!!

I kind of underestimated just how good the graphics are in this game and ended up going through the swamp in complete darkness, until I eventually stumbled upon a pack of goblins wearing red hats that started to call their allies for help once they realized that they were going to be slaughtered.

In this game, monsters appearing in the exploration zones changed depending on the time of day. For example, the red hat goblins weren’t carrying around blunt hatchets, but rather iron short swords and finely polished stone hammers.

At first there were only two or three of them. They were just goblins, so their thought processes were somewhat slow, but sometimes you could almost feel that that aura of murderous intent coming off of them. They were unique monsters and right next to their name tags there was this red exclamation mark, signalizing that their levels were higher than normal monsters around them.

I thought it was a good thing that there was a system like that here. Thanks to that, the players of various levels of skill and Full Dive technology knowledge could enjoy themselves here, without having to worry about anything. Without that, the game could really be biased towards a certain group of players while completely omitting the rest of them.

It was also amazing that they managed to implement such a system without creating some sort of bugs in the process, either combat or exploration-related.

My new weapons were doing a decent job at hacking away at the goblins, and once their overall HP was below the halfway point, only one third of the daggers durability gauge was emptied.

As a result, I was currently being surrounded by five or even six red hat goblins……

(Now then, just how should we approach this……?)

There wasn’t a respawn point anywhere nearby, but there was also no limits to how many times the player could die in a certain amount of time.

However, even after losing all of their HP and dropping dead, the player’s body wouldn’t just disappear immediately, instead just hanging there for a couple minutes.

What’s more, it was by all means possible for some third party people to open up the deceased player’s inventory before they erupted into polygons, stealing away that player’s items. That was the number one cause for PK in this game. And until I managed to score myself a reliable partner that would guard my corpse upon death or cast revive at me, I wouldn’t want anyone to go rummaging around my equipment and inventory.

In that case, the best possible solution would be to simply escape…… But truth be told I don’t want to do that. It’s just a game, anyways.

「Really now…… Whatever shall I do……?」

At that time, the red hat goblins saw something to the side, raised a myriad of screams and started to run away for some reason. Was that perhaps a friendly player that decided to help me out?

「Gururururu……!!!」

That delusion was quickly dispelled by the predators roar somewhere behind my back.

「You encounter a unique monster: “Night Prowler Lukaan”.」

Oh fuck. So it was something like that. Well, guess I’m dead, huh?

Blacksmiths can have access to magic and skills tied to production and enhancement of magic weapons and armor. Any NPC can learn that magic should it choose to become a blacksmith. But they can enhance not only armor, but simple clothes as well. But in this game blacksmiths mostly deal in weapons.

Also, many players aim to become a blacksmith since that means they would be able to craft their own weapons and armor, as well as sell their products to other players as well. The seasons with an increased amount of new players is an opportunity for player blacksmiths to test their own skills and make some money while they are at it.