The bartering, though time consuming, was god sent to Nia. With this, she could finish off all her quests from Aurrum without visiting any more maps.
Truly, the craze for red and blue pots in the beginning is completely extreme.
Nia could have contacted any of the guilds in her village [To the nitpickers, Nia knows there are people from guilds though guilds have not been formally established.] She would have been paid in cash, which was her goal from the beginning. The guilds would nurture multiple lifestyle members, yet they would continue to hoard on the resources. Money would become just a number but the bunch of data becomes a real deal.
Nia did not, for a reason. Her adviser ordered her not to. Nia may not understand guild mentality, Maaya truly did. She grew up amidst doing business deals and guilds were nothing but deals. What could be hoarded, what should be sold out...the intricacies were just like in real life company. She knew she could handle real companies but she did not have confidence in handling reel one,oops, the ones in the games. When she did not have confidence to meddle with those companies,aka guilds, she did not want Nia to get messed up with them too.
The guild may act as up right company and recruit you directly with handsome salary or they might use shell companies,i.e, smaller guilds, acting as thugs to harass a player. Nia would not join a guild even if offered a great salary, forget a good one or a modest one. That meant , she would be harassed . The harassment would not last long, only till she is no longer usable by the guilds themselves or the opposing guilds.
One extra potion may become deciding factor when fighting a field boss or clearing a dungeon. So if they can't use it, they would make sure the opposing people would not be able to use it.
[slap, slap. Enough rambling about the guilds' abuse of power. Get on with the story - The author's inner voice]
Nia started the night just like the previous one. She rechecked if the console was fully charged and entered the VR world. In Picinic spot as she had name the entry point, she had series of notifications- all detailing the bartering done in off game period and which barters were stopped as she had logged into the game.
In the game, it was brand new morning. She decided to go to Grandma Esla. She had opportunity to learn cooking- a new subclass. [Read previous chapters for details]
Grandma Esla's place was bustling with many ladies working. Grandma has asked the ladies the come to her her to do the cooking in her place as she had plenty of water. The ladies took turns to cook for the patrol, after all they did not get any money to do the work. If they could not get even some fresh, nice, free food, why would they do the work ? Would they perform happily, day after the day?
So Nia started helping here and there , getting extra XP and affinity points and learned Cooking. Finally, the wok image was no longer greyed out in her status bar. She even got few lifestyle points in the skill, though next upgrade was long distance away. 1000 lifestyle points was indeed a distant dream for her now.
Good thing was while she was chatting with the ladies, they kept on mentioning this and that, and she somehow got around 10 recipes. Bad news was she needed a fully working kitchen for her to prepare it.
Also, she did not know, if the cooking happened the same way as alchemy or she literally had to do some work before the food was prepared.
[A clarification of why such doubt came to Nia. Only players like Nia could use the cheat engine like recipe book and link them together and produce potions. Others, to be more exact, NPCs have to follow all the steps literally to create a potion. If Nia had to make potions without a recipe, or to create a new recipe, she too has to toil and do all the work. Basically, in alchemy- no recipe equals no automation. So, Nia is wondering as she has recipes, if she goes into kitchen with all the raw materials, would she get cooked /prepared food with a single click or is more required. ]
Without any prompts, Nia even went to well to fill up the water in the kitchen. Another round of increased affinity guaranteed.
Along with patrolmen, she too enjoyed freshly made, hot breakfast.
Ding. For next four hours, stats would be +2 intelligence,+5 strength,+1 agility.[ Don't you think, this works well for people going on patrol?]
She really wanted to go into monster maps, but before that, she had few pit stops to make.
She finally decided her class, after long discussion with her adviser. Maaya had reams of data regarding the classes. Which ones had good potential? Which ones requires able players? Which one was good for partying? Which ones were good for solo players? She had all details. She told them in summary to Nia previous evening while they were strolling inside the campus.
But finally decision would be Nia's. After all, she is the one playing the character. If she had to bow down to command and do as some one else says, it would be same as in real life. What fun is there in that?