After his run in with the small group of wolves, Carter backed off to recover and found a sturdy branch to rest on. The safest way to level a profession to 10 is inside the cities. Peasants can gain experience by farming, learning a trade, or training. If their skill at a trade becomes high enough they can upgrade into a Commoner. Scholars earn experience by training, reading, writing, and teaching. This is a safe, steady way to gain experience since you don't gain any combat abilities until you get a class.
It also takes FOREVER. The average scholar makes 10 experience per person taught per hour. If you're famous and have thousands of people attend your lectures you become incredibly powerful very quickly. However, scholars gain experience by tutoring children in a 1 on 1 setting. Usually paid for by wealthy parents, they earn less than 50 experience a day. To put that into perspective, killing a level 1 rabbit earns Carter 4 experience and takes a couple seconds.
This is one of the main reasons that ranged weaponry became both popular and incredibly expensive in the early days of the game. Most people found that the best way to level up was to hunt wolves during the day with ranged weaponry. Carter refused to go back to the city and spend money on armor and weapons, but was willing to admit that without armor he couldn't take on multiple wolves at once. That being the case, Carter fell back on plan B.
For a week, he hunted bunnies all night, slept from early morning to noon, then hunted for boars until the sun set. Boars where considered to be more difficult to kill than wolves because their hide was difficult to cut, they had enough strength to knock a fully armored man 20 feet into the air, and they had tusks that could disembowel anyone.
Yet to Carter, they were easy prey. He ran into the first boar the day after 2 wolves nearly killed him. It was chowing down on some snake eggs that it'd dug out of a hollow in a tree. Approaching it carefully, Carter examined the surroundings and only attacked after making sure that the coast was clear. He snuck up on the boar as it ate, slamming the heel of his left foot into the side of the boars right rear knee. It buckled, the boar screaming in pain as something cracked. It slowly stood back up and while it was hobbling a bit still moved at a considerable speed.
Dodging away from the tusk, Carter ran in circles forcing the boar to put weight on it's injured knee until it lost its temper and jumped back. Taking aim, the boars eyes turned red as it lowered it's head and charged forwards at an insane speed. Knowing this was coming as soon as the boar's eyes turned red, Carter moved to stand with a tree at his back. Diving to the side at the last moment, he started laughing as the boar slammed into the tree so hard it cracked. The boar sat back on it's haunches shaking it's head trying to get it's senses back when the tree fell over on top of it, smashing it into the ground. The hardest part of that first fight had been rolling the tree off the boar so he could skin it and save it's meat.
Anyway, Carter was leaving the forest a week after he entered it with a smile on his face and a grudge in his heart. He hated that he hadn't been able to hunt the wolves down, but promised that after gaining his classes he'd come back and terrorize the population in revenge.
-> Name: Carter
-> Race: Human
-> Fame: 0
-> Infamy: 0
-> Base Profession: Scholar Level 6 (2,204/3,200)
-> Alignment: Neutral
-> Titles: Chosen (Reincarnation Passive) (Hidden)
-> HP 100/100 (Constitution x 10)
-> MP 210/210 (Intelligence x 10 + Willpower/2 x 10)
-> Attributes
-> Strength (10)
-> Agility (10)
-> Constitution (10)
-> Intelligence (16)
-> Willpower (10)
-> Charisma (10)
-> Free Attribute Points (6)
-> Affinities(Locked)
-> Skills: Reading level 3 (54%); Writing level 2 (38%); Hand to Hand level 10 (22%); Skinning level 8 (43%)
-> Soul Skills: Reincarnation(Passive) (Hidden); Hand to Hand Savant (Passive)
After reaching level 6, only the level 3 rabbits gave him experience and the amount had dropped from 10 to 4 per kill meaning that almost all of the experience gain had come from killing boars. Otherwise, Carter would've reached level 7 by now.
As he walked through the fields around noon the farmers working the field all stopped and stared at him in amazement. His originally spotless clothes had been torn and battered. Covered in a dried mess of blood and dirt with his hair sticking up in every direction, Carter scratched his head and pulled out a twig that'd been stuck in his hair out. Shrugging, he used it to scratch the part of his back that'd been injured by the wolf that first night. Out of combat, non crippling injuries healed pretty quickly but that one had been so large that it still itched.
While he was scratching his back, Carter pulled up his inventory and started sorting through everything that he'd gained. The first night he'd killed 213 Rabbits, every night after that he'd managed to kill between 400 and 500 depending on when he got started. That left him with 2,919 horns. At 1 silver per 10 horns that equates to 291 silver or 2 gold and 91 silver. He had managed to kill and skin 60 boars at 20 silver per 10 hides that equates to 1 gold and 20 silver. He'd also managed to salvage most of the boar meat so depending on how much the butcher wants he could be in for a huge payday.
"Experience really does make all the difference." Carter thought, remembering how difficult it'd been to earn even a single gold the first time he played the game. Thankfully, the guards didn't give him a hard time and waved him through without bothering to search him after he payed the single silver entrance fee. Apparently someone showed up once or twice a week looking like Carter did. They were usually Merchants who'd been attacked on the road by bandits or monsters and hobbled in after running for their lives for days.
Deciding to get cleaned up before selling everything, Carter walked into the "Dancing Pony." It was a middle of the road inn with dwarfen barmaids and a half-troll bouncer who glared at him as he walked in. "Hello, good sir!" A dwarf standing on a stool behind the bar using a rag to clean glasses said. "What can we do for you?"
"I need to get cleaned up before conducting some business, I don't know how much a shower would cost me?" Carter asked with a smile on his face. He'd always loved the dwarfs and if he'd had the option might've chosen to become one. They always had great ale and parties, not to mention their secret smithing techniques. If he had to reincarnate a few times he wouldn't mind spending some time as a dwarfen smith.
The dwarf eyed Carter closely before saying, "1 silver, we'll clean your clothes and have them stitched up by the time you get out of the bath."
"Deal." Carter said, handing over his last silver and following one of the barmaids to the bathroom without a second thought.
An hour later, Carter walked out of the "Dancing Pony and headed to Mission Row to turn in all his missions.
The same girl was at the counter in "Stuff" and this time she nearly had a heart attack when Carter kept pulling out horn after horn. In the end, she'd had to call her father over to handle the transaction and halfway through it he got a message.
-> Title Received: Slayer of Bunnies
-> Title Description: You are known far and wide as the boogeyman of the bunnies. They tell their children stories of your reign of terror and warn them to stay away from your aura.
-> Skill Received: Bunny Terror(Passive) Bunnies fear you, during the day they will avoid you like the plague. At night while in a rage, Bunnies seek you out trying to rid the world of their boogeyman.
-> +5 Fame
Carter sighed as he read the last part, dealing with raging bunnies was already a pain and now they'd actively seek him out. Even receiving 5 fame and 3 gold, 11 silver for completing the missions didn't cheer him up.
Heading over to the Butcher, he waited for the line to die down a bit before approaching him.
"You're back!" The butcher said with a genial smile. "How much did you get?"
"How much can you buy?" Carter asked with a chuckle. Each boar averaged about 120 lbs of meat and he'd killed 60 of them, leaving him with 7,200 lbs of meat. Thankfully, it only took up 2 places in his inventory and he didn't have to worry about the weight of anything in the inventory.
"I've got 5 gold purchasing power." The butcher said with an even smile.
Doing the math in his head, Carter smiled as he handed took out carcass after carcass. The butcher's jaw dropped as he finished weighing the meat and took out 5 gold coins.
"Well I'll be." The butcher said, shaking his head in amazement. "I honestly didn't think you'd manage to kill a single one, much less this..."
-> +5 Fame
Looking at the extra 2,200 lbs of meat in his inventory, Carter decided to hang on to it and use it when he started to learn cooking in the future. He'd been surviving off dry food for the past week and he could do it again, but he'd already decided that modern food was going to be the number 1 thing he missed from Earth.
"Hopefully the system will help me learn how to cook because back on Earth I once burnt mashed potatoes..." Carter thought to himself as he turned to run to the teleportation portals.