Black Dragon City
Outside the temple, Adam decided to level up his cooking skill.
He took out logs, lots of logs.
He arranged the logs an formed a twenty meters line with them.
Next he took out a fire stone, it was a quite expensive commodity, and used to start a fire.
After that, he placed all the grills on top. The fire was burning even higher than the grill.
After that he just took out meat and threw it at the lined up grills.
If any chef player or npc were to this, they would definetly try to choke him to death.
The meat didn't burnt, but instead it just stood there perfectly cooked while the fire seemed to devour it.
Altough grilled meat was a basic recipe, cooking like this was no different from a sin.
A player had to at least watch out for the flame not to touch the meat and keep an eye on it until it was done, leaving it more time would burn it and the result would be a failure.
But Adam just did all the opossite, he started the fire as he felt like and threw the meat on the grills as if he was throwing stones.
He didn't bother checking as he started yet another piles of fire.
He arranged two 'Y' shaped iron bars at each side of the fire, then an horizontal one with a couldron in the middle between each 'Y' shaped bar.
After starting a few fires, he took out the meat from the grills.
System: Successfully cooked Grilled Meat.
System: Cooking proficiency +2 Exp +350
Satisfied, he once again repeated the process but this time he added a bit of salt.
He turned to the couldrons which were now sorchingly hot and threw water at them. Next he took out a table and with a cooking knife he started cutting some veggetables.
Onions, potatos... he just peeled the skin and after two cuts on each, he threw the big chunks on each cauldron, accompanied with pork meat and some spices. Spices and vegetables were the most expensive in the market, compared to meat that any player could farm, vegetables weren't easy to find in the wild.
Adam's cooking speed was quite fast but his skills were too horrible to look at.
Even so, after a while, the cauldrons released a good smell.
After the process finished, Adam frowned. The soup didn't look as good as it did on his mind before.
Anyway, he obtained proficiency and exp.
Next he looked at the meat on the grill.
I was like before, after it was cooked perfectly, it didn't react to the fire anymore.
He started harvesting it until a suddrn thought stopped him.
He looked on his inventory for some ingredients and took put a bottle with honey.
It wasn't on the recipe but it shouldn't be a bad thing right?
He poured honey on two pieces of meat and waited.
The information changed and the meat inmediatly started to burn, in a few seconds it was completely black.
Adam looked at it dumfounded.
System: Cooking Failed
System: Cooking Failed
'System why did it fail like that?' He consulted.
<Host tried a new recipe, success rate was unknown. Host skills are below average, thus resulting in a failure. Host is suggested to look for real life cooking skills> His system replied on his head.
Adam nodded in understanding, he would surely had to improve.
He keep cooking on this fashion, but after the first succesfully cooking attempt, he only received a single proficiency point.
The good thing was that he could put a lot of meat on the grills so he raised his proficiency quickly.
After a long time of cooking, he reached level 10.
No having anything better to do, he returned to the town.
-
Back at town, Adam contacted with Agil.
"How is it going?" He asked
"They are selling very well and quickly, Spada" Agil answered. He had been asked to sell all the equipment and skills that Adam didn't need.
"Good, I need you to buy a large amount of seeds, choose ones that are profitable" Adam said. At the moment, Agil was no different than his personal merchant.
"Alright, I know the ones you need" Agil replied, not knowing why he needed seeds as no player owned a private land. Even with private land, he doubted that someone would plant seeds there.
Adam knew that he now could use the teleport to the city, with nothing much to do in the town, he decided to go.
-
Black Dragon Empire Region System Announcement: Congratulations to Spada for becoming the first player in Black Dragon Empire to arrive at a city! Rewarding 20 Reputation Points in Black Dragon City and the title of Honorary Citizen of Black Dragon City.
"Wtf..."
"How? Who is this guy"
All players in the empire were taken by surprise, the highest level player known to them was at level 8, everyone acknowledged him as the top player in the empire.
But now it turns out that some unkown player actually reached level 10 before all others.
Most guilds went insane trying to contact that person inmediatly.
Annoyed by the tsunami of messages, Adam turned off the notification and started exploring the city.
'System, can you give me anything like a guide?' Adam asked.
--Processing...According to the information in the forums, I've predicted some information.
Host should ask some npc store, buying for items for a price favourable to the npc would increase the likelihood to obtain answers about the city from them. Host is suggested to either create a guild, join one or join an npc-created power-- The system started suggesting more things. It's function were being modified to suit the needs of a human in society, instead of his previous ones as a beign of energy that had trascended the physical body.
The system explained a few things... basically Adam understood that establishing his own large power was time and resources consuming, altough it had some adventages on it's own, they were not worth it.
On the other hand, joining an already established power wouldn't consume much time and resources, but he would also not have control of the resources, it would be very difficult increase in the hierachy and he would never be the true owned of it, furthermore, he would be severely restricted by contracts.
The logical answer was to play solo, meaning that he should join an npc established power. At most he would recruit independant players for certain tasks that required manpower. He was confident in the benefits he could offer them after all.
As the empire players were in heated discussion and rushing to level up, he quickly found the worst looking shop in the city's outer area, the one that seemed to sell the cheapest items.
Entering the one story wooden building, he noticed quite a few materials, they were all just basic things like feathers, common ores, herbs and some decorative items.
The npc running the store was a skinny old man with a shabby appearance, that looking at him entering, nodded as if waiting for him to say what he needed.
"Hello owner, I came to buy some of your Hard Stones, do you have any other interesting item for an adventurer like me?" Adam said with the best smile he could put on his face, which wasn't a good one but it did the work as the old man smiled back.
"Sure, I've 20 stacks of Hard Stones at a silver each" The old man replied.
Hard Stones were like hot potatos, all guilds wanted them to craft whetstones to repair weapons without needing to return to the town's blacksmith.
Adam cursed inwardly at the price but did his best to mantain the smile.
"Owner, your price is too cheap, I'll pay you a gold coin for all of them" He said.
"Really? It is very rare to see such a generous young man" The owner replied with a smile as he took out the items.
"This city is very impressive, I wonder when an adventurer should start to make a name for himself here" Adam said without looking at the old man.
The owner, understanding his intentions replied.
"One can start by completing basic missions at the Adventurer's Association near the city center, if you hurry you may obtain advanced missions before other adventurers. There are other organizations like the War God Temple too. Some adventurers would probably choose to visit the lifestyle associations.
"
The old man started singing like a canarie as Adam buyed a few more items. On a desk, he noticed an old scroll that seemed it would be destroyed the moment that someone touched it.
"Owner, what is this paper here" Adam said.
"That tattered thing? I don't know. It's been here for almost fifty years, no customer was able to read it as it is written on an old language, or maybe they are just randim drawings. I am surprised that it still remains completed by now" The old man replied.
Adam couldn't obtain any information about it other than the 40 silver coins price from the player interface, but his system showed him something.
Elven Treasure Map (Epic Rank)
A map that leads to the treasure of the elven race.
'According to this world literature and historic events, this map is probably a hidden treasure that one can obtain by luck and not by searching for it' Adam smiled happily as he felt that his luck was not bad, it turned out it was a good choice to come at the worst looking shop first.
"I'll take it" Adam said, paid and took the item as if afraid that the old man would go back on his word.
"Really?, good!" The man seemed even more happy after selling that thing that have been there for decades.
Adam laughed inwardly and after a few words he left to the city center.
After he left, the old man expression returned to normal and looked at his departing figure with interest.
-
Adventurer's Association, after a long walk, he arrived at the building.
He went to the mission board and was stunned by the amount of available quests.
Some gave better rewards than the others but were more difficult. Completing a quest with other players reduced the final reward, but some weren't meant to be completed alone.
He saw many basic quests that actually required to bring common to rare herbs and became elated. He asked Agil to buy most of the herbs's seeds already, while players had to gather them in the wild, all he had to do was wait to complete the quests.
The unfortunate thing was that most quest had a limit of materials.
For example a quest asked a player to bring 10 Serpent Grass to complete. A player could pick the quest repeatedly until giving 500 Serpent Grass.
The quests also refreshed randomly. He choose to wait for Agil to arrive while exploring the city.
Agil wouldn't take long, with all the items he obtained from Adam, he received high amount of experience with the sales. His leveling speed was actually quite fraudulent.
He walked through the city for an entire day.
He visited the other npc organizations like the War God Temple which didn't caught his attention and the Head Hunters which gave out quest to hunt npcs that turned against the empire.
He also visited the lifestyle organizations, alchemy didn't really interested him but it was certainly a useful profession, forging and engineering looked great.
Enchanting also seemed interest, an enchanter could craft Runestones. A runestone was a consumable item that increased an piece of equipment's attribute for many hours.
Altough only one item could be enchanted at a time, Adam could see the benefits of it.
The production of the runestones was fast and relatively cheap, turning it in a profitable profession.
The system also guessed that as the profession was more advanced, there would be designs for runestones that gave special bonuses and maybe even temporary skills to an item.
At some point he logged out to rest and returned a few hours later.
After he returned, almost a hundred players had arrived at Black Dragon City practically at the same time, Agil had also arrived.