After a good night's sleep, Ikky felt full of energy. In the morning he followed his standard routine, a short exercise, a shower, and an unexpected trip to the Testing Center to activate his exchange for real money on his account. This kind of morning work-up worked much better than a coffee.
'Now it was time to make some money,' Ikky thought as he lay in the bed.
"Start ON!"
When he woke up, a glance from the window was all it took to know that the day had already begun.
'Let's see the exchange rate,' as Ikky opened the system interface two new messages appeared in front of him.
[#Normel has sent you an invitation for a Friend request.]
[#Lyra has sent you a Private Message.]
Ikky accepted Norm's invitation and opened Lyra's message.
When he saw Lyra's message, he didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
*Contact me when you can.* he sighed as he saw the simple sentence. Since Lyra was currently offline, he pushed it to the back of his mind
First, it was time to check how to get money out of the game, so Ikky proceeded to the exchange ratio interface. To his surprise, the suggested ratio was 1 silver for $1 and vice versa, which was already good enough.
However, due to the shortage of in-game currency, the last trades were made at a ratio of 1:5 to 1:11, which was a breathtaking difference.
'Which means I can get between $500-1000 for one gold??!' it was a crazy number for Ikky.
But that was only because he didn't know how hard it was to earn 1 gold for a casual player, of course, how could he know? He was lucky enough to get a few hidden quests in a row.
For example, killing the bandit leader got 20 silver, but could a causal player solo him? Certainly not! Normally it would take a party of 3 people and they would barely be able to kill him. After all, he was of an elite rank, which is not something to be underestimated.
And the gold in the treasure chest? It was the result of their attack and failure. Ikky didn't know, but if the bandit hadn't moved, due to the attack they landed and failed, then he definitely wouldn't have found the treasure chest because it wasn't in the Leaders tent before.
His actions changed the original quest as it was designed to provide different results depending on the chosen option. If he decided to sneak into the camp and free Charles's family, then he wouldn't get the key that the bandit leader dropped, and even if he somehow got the key, it wasn't certain that he would find the treasure chest.
Ikky got very excited after seeing the exchange ratio. He looked to his inventory to find that he currently had 2 gold 44 silver 35 copper. Which was roughly equal to 1800$ if he used a 1:7 ratio.
Eager to see how much he could make, he began looking through his inventory for the things he had dropped, his plan was simple, sell anything that wouldn't be useful to him.
-Rank: Common / Defense: 8 / HP: 12
-Headband made of red cloth, giving small protection, but attracting guard attention, you might get jailed for no reason.
-Requirement: Level 10(11) / Agility: 15(16) / Strength: 13(14) / Stamina: 17(18)
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"..."
'Why did such a pointless item even drop, jailed for wearing an item? Sell.' Ikky immediately decided what to do with the item.
-Rank: Very rare / Defense: 16 / HP: 18 / Strength: +3 / Stamina: +3 / Stun recovery 20% faster / Agility -2
-Helm made of metal, very useful protection, however, limits person vision and mobility.
-Requirement: Level 11(12) / Agility: 6(6) / Strength: 20(22) / Stamina: 20(24)
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'That seems more useful! Maybe I should give it to Josh, but before I even ask him I need to know his stats, the requirements are quite high.'
-Rank: Very rare / Defense: 6 / HP: 10 / Strength: +1 / Agility: +1 / Attack: +5 to base attack
- Leather gloves, the user's attack power is increased due to their perfect weapon grip.
-Requirement: Level 11(12) / Agility: 16(17) / Strength: 16(17) / Stamina: 15(16)
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'Nice! But what is it? Why is the level requirement being lowered as well?' Ikky wondered and checked the first hidden achievement he had ever received.
[-requirement for items is lowered by 10%.]
'It seems to affect the level requirement as well,' he didn't think for a second and immediately equipped them.
[Leather gloves equipped.]
-Rank: Rare / Attack: 2.1 / Attack speed 1.1 / Strength: +5 / Agility: +2
-Due to the sharpness of the blade, there is a small chance to ignore 50% enemy defense.
-Requirement: Level 9(10) / Agility: 6(14) / Strength: 20(22) / Stamina: 13(14)
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-Rank: Epic / HP: 15 / All stat: +5 / Mana: +15 / Magic attack: +10
-Sapphire gem ring, the gem is full of mana. The ring is engraved with a rune that grants it special abilities.
-Special Ability: The cooldown speed of your skill is increased by 25% if the user is at maximum mana, and by 5% if the user is regenerating their mana pool.
-Requirement: Level 13(14) / Intellect: 32(35) / Spirit: 23(25)
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Ikky had to close and reopen his eyes in disbelief when he saw the item rank.
'It's an epic item! The requirements are insanely high, but I should be able to meet the requirements. Too bad I'm one level short for it..." He shook his head with a little disappointment, but he couldn't wait to equip it in near future.
The 25% cooldown recovery was very good for his second hidden Achievement passive. It would cut the 15-day cooldown down to just 11 days.
Ikky checked out all of the dropped items, now it was time to look at the skill books.
He placed all four books on the bed in front of him and looked at them with pride. Some players struggled to find even a single skill book, and he got not one, not two, but four of them right in front of his eyes!
-Requirement: Leader of the party, or Leader of Guild.
-Passive skill, increasing user Charisma by 5 points.
-People under your command will have their stamina increased by 3 if your morale is high or decreased by 2 if your morale is desperate.
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'That's actually interesting, but it's also a double-edged sword for weak-willed people, well, it's not like someone weak can become a leader. This should make a lot of money because it's a guild-wide buff.' Ikky thought he hit the jackpot with this passive.
-Requirement: Level 10 / Stamina: 36(40)
-Passive skill, activated when receives damage under 40% of his maximum HP.
-Immediately healing all wounds received, also increases the regeneration speed of your wounds by a hundredfold.
-During Berserker rage your strength is increased threefold, but your stamina is also drained extremely fast. The more damage you receive the faster you consume your stamina.
Cooldown: 1 day
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"So this is what happened when I was fighting the bandit leader...I was really lucky that his stamina got consumed so fast," Ikky breathed a sigh of relief when he remembered the fight.
-Requirement: Level 8 / Intellect: 18(20)
-Deals 180% of your damage and creates a fireball that can be fired up to 30 meters ahead.
-Upon hitting the target, the ball explodes in a 3-meter radius, damaging everything within its radius.
- Cooldown: 25 second
-Mp: 20
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-???
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"..."
"I really should report this skill book…," Ikky sighed, "but let's ask Charles first, he might know something."
Speaking of Charles, he should probably go and pick up his free skill, but before that, it was time to visit the auction house and put some items up for sale!
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Ikky arrived at the Auction's house, it was quite empty as the players probably didn't have enough silver/gold to buy anything.
He sat down on one of the chairs and an AH window appeared in front of him.
He briefly searched the registered items.
[
[
Ikky couldn't help but shake his head and sigh at people's stupidity.
[
He continued to search through items to estimate the price of rare items, but to his surprise, he found no rare items on sale. The best he could find were ordinary items. And about skill books? None have been registered yet.
'Charles told us that he was forced to sell skill books ten times cheaper, and most books were priced for around 30 or 50 silver' Ikky pondered for a few minutes.
[Would you like to register item
[Would you like to register item
[Would you like to register item
Ikky registered two skills and one item, as for the rest of the items, he planned to hand over the One-hand sword and Berserker Rage to Josh.
He deserved at least so much for helping him clear the quest with the Charles family, if it wasn't for Josh, the bandits would be lost after their first failure.
'This weapon and skill will help him level up faster.' Ikky nodded for himself.
As he was leaving the auction house, he headed to the Charles shop, unaware of the chaos that would soon be born in the auction house.
***