"Grr... Argh!"
"Humph!"
Bringing his spear in a downright swing, Drifter split open the head of a << Ruin Kobold >>. In the same movement, he crouched and amputated the leg of another. The mob fell, snarling and still trying to bite him, but Drifter was unaffected. He twirled his spear in a display he would never have thought possible four days ago, and stabbed the mob in the chest. It dissipated in polygons, and Drifter examined his rewards.
This was the thirteenth kobold patrol he had eliminated today, and that had already earned him two entire levels. He had also made a fair bit of money. Not enough to offset what he paid Argo, but that intel had already paid itself many times over.
Suddenly, Drifter stopped his aimless skimming of the notifications. After giving it a good read to confirm he wasn't seeing things, a big smile parted his face. Two clicks later, Drifter was holding a << Kobold Spear >> in his hands.
The weapon wasn't pretty. Quite ugly, in fact. It was rusty all over, and there seemed to be stains of dry blood covering it. But it was much stronger than his << Old Soldier's Spear >>. Heavier too. Drifter actually liked that. His stats' distribution was an even split between strength and dexterity. He would be able to employ them but better with a heavier weapon.
He gave the << Kobold Spear >> a few test swings, and grinned. He was almost sure this was a weapon that could last him a few floors, as long as he got the proper enhancements for it.
Now that he had his new weapon, getting better armor was next on the list. Not for himself, but for Yuna. This was something both he and Nautilus agreed on, and refused to budge, much to the songstress's annoyance. If Yuna was going to play a supporting role, they would at least make sure she was properly equipped to survive.
Rummaging through his inventory, Drifter frowned. Armor was a problem. The << Ruin Kobolds >> didn't drop any - presumably because they didn't wear any - and his party was already equipped with the best you could buy from the NPCs outside. There might be some quests like the ones which rewarded the << Old Soldier's Spear >> and the << Anneal Blade >>, but those would take time to complete, and even then, would give only one piece of armor, which wasn't nearly enough for three people.
Looking at all the crafting materials in his bag - boar hides and tusks, wolf pelts, kobold bones, and more - Drifter thought that it might be time to search for a player craftsman.
He looked at the time. It was already 5:30 PM. Outside, the sun would have already started to set over Aincrad. Time to go back.
...
[ Drifter: Where are you guys? ]
[ Nautilus: Almost back. ]
[ Drifter: I'll be waiting in the plaza. Meet me there. ]
After receiving a positive reply, Drifter looked over the shoulder of the player in front of him. More than twenty people to go still.
As Drifter unfortunately discovered, there were only a couple of NPC blacksmiths in Tolbana. That meant every single player in the city - and that amounted to a few hundred - needed to wait in line to repair their equipment. Quick as it was, Drifter was getting tired. He had spent the entire day fighting, and this was the last thing he needed.
To distract himself from his boredom, Drifter let his eyes wander. Tolbana was more crowded than yesterday. That made sense. Sooner or later, the ten thousand players - or nine thousand and four hundred now, he grimly thought - would need to leave the Town of Beginnings and explore, unless they wanted to hide there forever, barely scrapping by every day by doing fetch quests. He supposed some would choose to do that, but not many. You could only take so much before going crazy.
Suddenly, his random gazing stopped as he found something interesting. Sitting cross-legged under a tree was a player. A girl, which was the minority in SAO. But what caught his attention wasn't her gender, but rather the anvil and tools in front of her. Squeezing his memory, Drifter remembered seeing her in the same spot yesterday. Her impromptu stall was devoid of people.
Without thinking too much, Drifter left the line and walked over. The brown-haired girl with a bob cut probably hadn't had a client in a while, because it took her a few seconds to notice him. She even looked around, as if to make sure he wasn't lost.
"Can I help you?"
"I was hoping you could. You are a blacksmith, are you not?"
The girl's eyes shot wide open, only now realizing Drifter had come to her because of what was very clearly her profession, and not because he wanted to flirt or berate her.
"Y-Yes! I am! What do you need?!"
She scrambled to get up, and, despite already starting to regret his choice, Drifter couldn't help but chuckle. She reminded him of himself in his first job interview.
"Relax. I need to repair some equipment."
Drifter handed the girl his << Old Soldier's Spear >>. He didn't quite understand how blacksmithing worked in the game, so he didn't want to risk what was now his main weapon. However, he figured it would do no harm to let the blacksmith try and repair his first spear. Worst case scenario, he would lose it, but it would have no impact on his fighting capabilities. If, on the other hand, she succeeded, then he could keep it as a backup weapon in case he found himself in a difficult situation.
Turns out, as he would discover later, he had nothing to worry about. Durability restoring could fail in the hands of a player blacksmith, but it wouldn't destroy or damage the equipment that was being repaired. The difference between NPCs and players was that an NPC blacksmith would restore the weapon's durability to full one hundred percent of the time. A player, on the other hand, could not only fail or succeed, but also anywhere in between.
The scene in front of him was the perfect example. The girl handed the << Old Soldier's Spear >> back to Drifter with a sheepish and slightly embarrassed smile.
"There you go. Sorry I couldn't get it back to tip-top condition. My << Weapon Repairing >> skill is still very low. Hadn't had many chances to use it."
From the way the blacksmith was looking down while talking, Drifter got the distinct feeling that, while he might be her first customer in a while, there had been others before, and they hadn't been happy with only getting half of their weapon's durability back.
To be honest, Drifter also wasn't all that pleased. But he was unable to bring himself to berate the girl, when it was very clear that she had tried her best. After all, the success rate was out of her control.
"There you go."
"Heh?!"
He transferred half of what he would have paid at the NPC repairman to a very stunned blacksmith. When she looked at him with a question in her eyes, any resentment he had left vanished, and he chuckled.
"This is my backup weapon, so I don't mind if it's durability is a little low. I might never use it after all. But I hope you don't mind that I get my armor repaired with the NPC. The kobolds hit pretty damn hard, and I need it to be as sturdy as it can get."
"Ah, not at all! Thanks for trusting me with your weapon!"
"No probs. That's how the job market works, ain't it? You need experience, but nobody is willing to hire someone without experience. Your skill's the same. You need to repair more weapons for it to go up, but no one trusts you because it ain't high enough. Well, let me be the person that is willing to hire a green hand. Or, in your case, a low-level blacksmith."
"Oh! T-Thank you!"
Drifter grinned. He could have let it at that, but they said honesty was the best policy, no? And making more friends couldn't be bad.
"Don't. I will be blunt with you, I have a motive other than goodwill. A not-so-pure one."
The girl frowned and took a step back, hand reaching for the warhammer in her waist, even if the city was a safe zone. Drifter quickly raised his hands to appease her.
"Wait, don't get me wrong! I just want to establish connections! See, I noticed that we can't get anything better than this from the NPCs and mobs."
Drifter knocked on his breastplate with a closed fist to emphasize his point. The blacksmith followed his gesture, and nodded in silent agreement. She still hadn't let her guard down.
"Well, I deduced that the only way to get better equipment is to have a player make it for you. And you are the first blacksmith that I met, so..."
Only then did the girl relax completely. She retraced the step she had taken back, and her eyes sparkled with the enthusiasm of someone who was talking about what they loved.
"You are right! I discovered that too! The equipment the townsfolk sell is too low-quality. Though... I say that, but I haven't managed to create anything better yet."
Her voice, full of vigor at the beginning, dropped towards the end. But Drifter shook his head.
"I imagined so, otherwise there would be players swarming you to buy your stuff. Which is why I said I want to build connections. Even if you can't make anything good now, it doesn't mean it will be the same later, right? Look, I have some materials I got today. Even some ore from a quest I did. I will give them to you, and you try and forge armor. Even if you don't make anything worthwhile at the start, you can hand them to me, and I can sell them to the NPCs to make back some cash. Consider it payment for the mats. It's a win-win. You raise the mastery of your skills, and I get first pick when you end up forging armor that's better than that crap they sell around here."
Honestly, Drifter thought he was making a pretty sweet offer. After all, he wasn't asking the girl to make him equipment for free just because he once gave her some materials. He just wanted to get to choose first before she showed whatever she made to other players. But even he wasn't expecting her to jump on his proposition without so much as a second thought. But that was exactly what happened.
"I accept! I accept! Thank you so much! You have no idea how desperate I was getting."
The two of them spent the next minutes talking things through. Drifter discovered that her name was Lisbeth, or Liz for short, and sent her a friend invite which she readily accepted. Apparently, apart from << Weapon Repairing >>, Liz only had two other support skills in her repertoire, << Light Metal Armor Forging >> and << Metal Armor Repairing >>, both of which suited Drifter and his party perfectly. Be it him, Nautilus, or Yuna, none had enough stat points in vitality to use heavy armor. Yuna, in fact, was leaning more towards the soft and flexible leather armor.
Speaking of his friends, Drifter saw them arriving at the plaza, and waved. They spotted Liz, and exchanged glances between themselves before walking over. Yuna had a teasing smile on her lips.
"Say, Drifter, do you just talk to every pretty girl you see? 'Cause you are two for two."
The songstress was obviously referring to herself. Meanwhile, Liz blushed bright red at being called pretty. Drifter sighed, and flicked Yuna on the forehead, which had Nautilus holding back a snicker.
"If I remember correctly, it was you who approached me first, miss. Anyway, Liz, those are Yuna and Nautilus, my party members. Yuna, Nautilus, meet Liz, Aincrad's most skilled blacksmith. At least that's the hope."
That got both of his friends' interest. While Liz was trying to explain that she wasn't that good and Drifter was exaggerating, Yuna completely overrode her argument, and pulled the girl into a conversation, leaving the two boys standing confused.
The two players exchanged glances, and Drifter promptly started to giggle. Nautilus seemed to have gone back into his shell due to having to talk to someone other than Yuna and Drifter, but he was sure the boy would open up with time. Taking the bread that Nautilus offered him, Drifter sat down and started composing a message to Argo.
[ Drifter: Met a blacksmith today. Lisbeth. Thought you might be interested. She is not that great, but from what I've seen it is because no one was willing to let her try. I struck a deal with her, I supply the mats, and get first pick. ]
[ Argo: Oh? For someone who wasn't wantin' to leave the starting town, ya sure made a lotta friends hella quick, Dri-bou. Even formed a party, aye? ]
[ Drifter: How did you even know that? ]
[ Argo: It's my job, ain't it? I hear things. But 'bout that blacksmith ya was tellin' me. What do ya want for that? ]
Drifter chuckled. Friends they may be, the info broker wasn't about to take his intel for free. Business was business.
[ Drifter: Do you know anything about better ores or mats than what's readily available? ]
[ Argo: Hold one. I will get back to ya. ]
Using the small intermission, Drifter raised his head and saw Liz enthusiastically explaining about each of her tools to a curious Yuna, while Nautilus watched from a distance with a smile.
He saw some players hesitantly approaching, probably attracted by the fact that three people had been crowding around Liz's blacksmithing station for a while. The short-haired girl would probably squeal in excitement when she noticed.
His HUD pinged with a new message from Argo, bringing his attention back to the matter at hand.
[ Argo: 250 cor. ]
Drifter had figured that just what he told her about Liz wouldn't be enough for the info broker, and he was right. He quickly sent her the fee.
[ Argo: In the beta there was a spot at the northwest of the 1st floor, by the riverside. There're some fish monsters that used to drop mats that could be used for forgin'. A player confirmed the mobs still exist, but he was too low-level to kill one so I don't know if drops are still the same. ]
[ Drifter: Got it. Can I exchange some information about the mobs for intel about whatever it is that they drop? ]
[ Argo: Deal. But remember this is old info. Kayaba might have changed things from the beta. ]
[ Drifter: I will be careful. Thanks little rat. ]
[ Argo: Ya gonna pay for the teasing someday, Dri-bou. Smell ya. ]
Drifter chuckled as he closed the message tab, and clapped his hands to get Yuna's and Nautilus's attention.
"What do you think about a field trip?"