Kiel arrived with Shoren at the treasury, the first thing Shoren did was beg him to see the Medium Mana Core.
Kiel happily obliged.
Shoren received the item and caressed it like one would a sexy lover.
The sight gave Kiel goosebumps.
Imagine a fat balding man, with short penguin like hands and sweaty head showing an expression of ecstasy rubbing a dark green coloured Medium Mana Core. Then rubbing the mana core to his oily face with an expression of physical pleasure...
SO GROSS.
Kiel did not even want to touch the mana core again.
Enduring his disgust, well thinking back, he had dived into a pool of dung. This was nothing.
He put his arms around the fat chump:
"Beautiful thing isn't it?"
"Yes, yes, very beautiful"
Shoren was still in his ecstasy.
"And priceless"
Kiel added.
"Yesh, my precious"
Shoren was getting incoherent.
"How much do you think it would be worth if it was auctioned outside?"
Kiel baited
"20 thousand, no 30 thousand at least"
Shoren answered in a trance.
"30 thousand only? That's robbery!" Kiel the robber shouted in indignance.
"Maybe I should try and auction it elsewhere."
Reaching for the Medium Mana Core, Kiel reeled in the line.
Shoren hugged the Medium Mana Core in terror and shrieked
"NO!! I"ll do 40 thousand, no one will be able to pay more for it."
"You know, I'll do you this favor, but make sure to give me good prices on those items inside, deal?"
Kiel answered with a sincere expression
"Yes, ok, anything you say."
Shoren answered.
"Deal"
Kiel sealed the deal and both sides were now very satisfied with themselves thinking they had gotten the deal of their life.
Shoren picked up a catalog of the list of treasures inside the treasury.
Kiel simply sat on Shoren's work table and started to browse.
First, consumable items that permanently increase stat.
Going through the meager list, there were only 4 items of this category.
Although there were about a dozen of them each, it's a pity that these items only worked once.
"Banana of Agility: permanently increase 2 Agility."
"Pineapple of Strength: permanently increase 2 Strength."
"Melons of Stamina: permanently increase 2 Stamina."
"Apple of Intellect: permanently increase 2 intellect."
There are no other items in this category…Kiel sighed, what a poor city.
Each cost a whole 2,500 gold coins.
10,000 gold coins here, 30,000 gold coins to go.
Equipments, since he couldn't not carry too many things out, he decided on a standard leather armor set (no stat, just basic protection) about 500 gold coins and was torn between two equally important items:
Of everything he saw he couldn't make up his mind between two items:
Ring of Health(C) : A ring that give one health regeneration per 4 hours
5,000 gold coins for this
and/or
Necklace of Meditation(C) :a necklace that give one mana regeneration per hour
5,000 gold for this.
One might be a lifesaver but the other one would allow him to use more utility from his skills.
Keeping that at the back of his mind he looked through the available skill pages
There were tens of them. As much as he would like to learn all of them he knew it was impossible.
On every level, all climbers can only learn one additional skill.
This limit excludes skills gained from stats bonus or class skills or learned from other sources.
He did not know if you could bring these skill pages out with the inventory ring but he decided he would just give it a go anyway.
Additional skills can come in either a skill orb or skill pages.
Since Kiel was level eleven and had learned one skill, he now had slots for another ten.
Kiel decided he would get as many as he could, learn as many as he could, and keep the spares in his rings.
With the gold he had left, he could afford 6 skills as their price ranged from a minimum of 2 thousand to 5 thousand gold coins.
The rest that were worth more than 10 thousand? Well those are freebies hehehe.
His choices were:
Skill Page - Meditation(E) @ 3,000 gold coins
Skill Page - Iron Stomach(E) @ 3,000 gold coins
Skill Page - Superior Balance(D) @ 4,000 gold coins
Skill Page - Basic Swordsmanship(C) @ 4,000 gold coins
Skill Page - Basic Footwork(E) @ 5,000 gold coins
Skill Page - Sixth sense(C) @ 5,000 gold coins
Skill Page - Intermediate Swordsmanship(B) @ 6,000 gold coins.
Skill Page - Steel Skin(E) @ 8,000 gold coins
Skill Page - Basic Martial Art(E) @ 9,000 gold coins
Skill Page - Life Drain(B) @ 10,000 gold coins
Skill Page - Ambidextrous(D) @ 10,000 gold coins
Skill Page - Underwater Breathing(D) @ 13,000 gold coins
Skill Page - Superior Mana sense(A) @ 15,000 gold coins
Skill Page - Basic Heal(D) @ 18,000 gold coins
Skill Page - Spell Casting(B) @ 25,000 gold coins
Skill Page - Basic Rune Carving(C) @ 35,000 gold coins
A grand total of 24,000gold coins for 6 of the cheapest skill pages. Would have been 173,000 if not for the 10 free Skill Pages.
These Skill Pages are prohibitively expensive. A normal Guards annual salary is not even 100g. They won't be able to afford it even if they saved their whole life.
Kiel made a curious observation, it turns out the skill page price was not determined by rank but rather popularity and scarcity. He got a big bargain here.
Now he had six thousand gold coins left, he spent five hundred on the armor set. Since he will be learning "Basic Heal" Kiel settled on the "Necklace of Meditation(C)".
Naturally candidates will only regenerate one health or one mana per hour for every 10 health or mana they have.
With this formula everyone will be fully recovered after approximately 10 hours.
Notwithstanding poison status or bleeding status or mana bleed or lost limbs or lost chunks of meat.
With all the purchases, Kiel was left with five hundred gold coins he decided to keep for now.
Kiel swept everything into his ring and asked Shoren about where he could obtain a class.
Shoren had stopped fawning at Kiel and was in a daze when Kiel asked this.
He absentmindedly replied that Kiel could go to the Swordsman Dojo to change his class.
When Kiel asked about the hidden class available, he was met with blank stares.
Shoren was pale. 149,000 gold coins worth of Skill Pages, Damien would vomit blood.
Ignoring the fat fool, Kiel stopped by the kitchen to stock up on wine, water and free food. 1 cubic each would be enough to last him till the end of this stage.
After that, Kiel went on his way out of the City hall, he knew he had to get away fast before he was asked to return everything.
One usually need to learn a basic skill page before learning a more advanced one, and to make life more difficult for the climbers the Tower made it so that one can only learn a Skill Page or Skill Orb once a week and only 1 time per level obtained (upgrades doesn't count to skill limit but time penalty still applies).
Kiel tore the "Basic swordsmanship(C)" skill page.
"Learned:
Basic Swordsmanship(C): Basic Level Swordsmanship"
Cussing, Kiel hated the lazy description the System gave.
He then proceeded to eat all the fruits while heading out to find the Swordsman Dojo.
+2 to all stats and new skills, in his head he called up his status window to admire his latest improvements.
######
Name: Kiel Sinclair
Age: 16
Level: 11
Class: -
Health: 46/46
Mana: 51/51
Stamina: 25
Intellect: 24
Strength: 26
Agility: 26
Equipment: Standard Miao Dao(E), Necklace of Meditation(C), Leather Armour Set(NA).
Skills: Extreme Regeneration(S), Basic Swordsmanship(C), Fleet Footed(2), Wisdom(3), Health Recovery(2), Power Boost(2).
Experience: 0/1400
Free Stat: 4
Assessment: Not so Fragile
######