Jake left New Bastion after getting a few quests from the mission hall. He is still E-rank and can only take two D-rank quests at most and that's what he did.
Any materials that he would obtain while clearing the quests, would net him the coins that are useful here in Yaros. There would be no losses, except that gaining the merits is a tad bit slow.
An E-rank quest would only give him a single merit point, while a D-rank would give him 10 merit points.
Though the points have increased ten times, that doesn't mean anything worthwhile can be done with that small amount. He would need a thousand merit points in his account before he could get permission to enter the Inner City.
The inner city is where everything takes place.
Though there is an outer city, it can be considered as slums of the city. Everyone here is poor and if one wants to get their hands on items that are of any good use, they can only be obtained in Inner City or the Core.
Getting into the core is a nightmare and takes a lot of time and Jake has no interest. Reaching the Inner City is more than enough for him.
The reason why he wanted to enter the Inner city was the auction house there. Unlike shops, in the auction house there would items sold that can be considered as rare.
Even though he has a blessing to get skills, attributes, loot etc..., rare items are named as such because they are rare. Even with such a blessing, he was not sure that he would get such items.
If he gets those items then all is well. He wouldn't need to be depended on others and also there would be no records of his improvements.
Every hunter should have a few trump cards to survive this harsh world. These trump cards needed to be secret in order for them to work better. If he buys items in shops or auction houses, there would be records.
Though he has an avatar here and no one could connect it to him on Tarro, it was not a guarantee. To this day, there was no way to do that but that was only on the outside.
There are many things happening in secret and powerful organizations may have items or skills that connect one to their real body on Tarro. No one knows and it's better to be safe than sorry.
So he hopes that he can get these rare items in the loot from the hunt. This would keep his strength a secret.
He is after all not afraid of some hypothetical enemy but a real enemy.
Jake has to avenge his parents and before that, he didn't want his strength to be exposed to the world. Of course, that would be totally impossible.
Even though there are no items that can link you to your avatar in Yaros (at least publicly), there are items that can check your level in Yaros, even when you are in Tarro.
Moreover, it was said that from Rank-3, one would easily feel the energy around them and that means they can feel the strength of others around them.
Though they can't pinpoint the exact strength, they can say whether they are powerful or not. If it was a level that they experienced before they can make an easy estimate.
This is something that Jake knows well, but others can only feel his rank and level but they wouldn't truly know what his actual strength is. If they get their hands on records of buying and selling of items, then they can easily estimate the strength almost perfectly.
Normally it would be too difficult to track every record of items bought or sold. Unless it was a bulk sell or an item of immense value, no shopkeeper would remember the seller. It was the same thing when one was buying items from them but an auction house is different.
Everything they auctioned would be something of immense value and everyone who bought or sold an item would be remembered.
So, to keep his strength and power a secret, Jake hopes that his blessing will give him those rare items, and keep him out of the light, at least he has the strength when his words wouldn't treated as air.
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Jake took two quests. One is to hunt Vale Rats and the other is to hunt Vale Apes.
As usual, he took quests that were available in the same area. This is to make things convenient for him so he can complete the quests as quickly as possible.
There is another reason why he took these quests.
These two monsters live in the region called Adrian's Vale. This region can be said to be the furthest from the New Bastion before the real world of Yaros begins.
The region bordering Adrian's Vale is not under the authority of New Bastion and anything that happens there has to do nothing with the city.
This means that New Bastion provides no protection for newbies beyond Adrian's Vale.
Crossing the vale, there would be many dangers and New Bastion security wouldn't respond to any disturbances.
Jake knew that he was not yet strong enough to take that chance but he knew that he had to take that chance sooner than later. So, it's best to level up as fast as he can and to do that he has to hunt monsters that are way beyond his level.
The monsters in the Vale are above level 15. With his improved attributes, Jake was sure that he could take them down. Moreover, by the time he reaches the vale, he will have to fight some monsters along the path. They would add a few more attributes before he could face those monsters.
The chances of him winning against Vale monsters would be improved by a notch before he reaches the Vale. So there was no need for him to stress about that.
His goal is to reach Rank-2 or at least reach the level near that rank before the academy starts. To do that, he can't play safely. Though there are penalties, he can't just die here and so there was no reason to play safe.
Moreover, taking a few levels above him wouldn't be so dangerous.