MTLNOVEL Chapter 4: My first quests aren't fancy, but gaining skills is worth it.
(Inside of Axel. Hanks POV)
Arriving back in axel, I immediately make my way to the guild to register as an adventurer. On my way I couldn't help but marvel at everything, the feeling and realization of this being my new reality is so surreal, but so awe inspiring. Everywhere I look I could see people wearing armor, robes, carrying swords and staffs. I suddenly felt out of place, because while I am strong, I don't exactly look it. I'm wearing a simple black turtleneck with jeans and a pair of sneakers, not exactly fantasy like, plus my right sleeve is ripped from that wolf's bite.
Thinking about all this makes me want to earn money quickly so I can get me some armor, maybe go big berserker knight who uses their fists instead of a sword? That could be fun! As I'm going on with an inner monologue, I arrive at the guild building and enter inside, and immediately notice the other adventurers and waitresses serving them.
I look at a long line leading to Luna, one of the side characters of the show, though her role was vital in the actual anime do too always being the ones to deal with Kazuma and his party. Speaking of which, I don't see them here, have they not arrived yet? Ignoring all these thoughts I notice the line was now shorter. Is she that quick, or was I spaced out for longer then I thought? Taking a quick look around I notice no one looking at me weirdly, or atleast for something like standing in place like an idiot, though a few did look at my clothes oddly for a second or two.
Walking forward just as the last person leaves the line, I see Lune infront of me looking at my clothes weirdly before masking it. Once she regains her barings she begins to speak "Hello, and welcome to the guild! What can I do for you?" I shortly reply, not being much of a people person "I want to register." She smiles and says "That'll be 1,000 eris!" I take the money from my system and reached into my pocket before pulling a pouch out, and giving it to her. She then takes out the device from when Kazuma and Aqua were registered.
She hands me a card "Please put in your name and age!" I take the card and look at my status panel before filling it out, filling the name section with 'Hank' and age with '17'. After finishing with the card, I hand it back and watch as she puts it under the device. "Please place your hand on the crystal." After a moment I do so, as it begins to glow and a laser starts writing quickly on the card. I watch with amazement as the card is quickly filled in with my stats.
Shortly after, it finishes and Luna takes the card and looks it over for a few moments. "Very good, Your stats are amazing for a beginner! You can choose any basic class!" I think about it for a moment, as I cannot remember all the classes there were, but this is basically an RPG world so I should just follow my knowledge on those. "Is there a berserker class?" I ask her and receive a nod as confirmation "Yes there is! Would you like me to register you as a berserker class?" I simply nod, and watch as she does something with the card before handing it to me. "Here you go, this is your adventurer card! Don't lose it!" I nod and turn around to look at the board.
Arriving at the board and looking it over, I see many quests ranging from helping with weeds, to killing high level monsters. 'If I go and do these basic missions, will I get skills for them? System?' I ponder if taking such low level and low paying quests would really be worth doing, I ask the system and get a reply shortly after [Yes, you will. If you do anything for long enough, you shall gain a skill for it.] After hearing the confirmation, I look over the basic quests and see some for gardening, transporting, mainly for the elderly, some pest extermination and such.
Making up my mind, I grab a transport, garden help, and pest extermination quests, one of each. Not only will I gain new skills, not only will I get XP from the pests, but I also gain favor with the townsfolk, a good deal if you ask me. Taking these quests, I walk over to Luna and have her assign them to me before leaving, and after being assigned these missions, I head out of the guild hall and walk across Axel, using a map to guide me.
--(Time-skip)--
--Current Status--
Name: Hank.
Age: 17.
Level: 3.
Race: Human.
Hp: 270.
Mp: 120.
STR: 27.
END: 27.
DEX: 22.
INT: 12.
WIS: 12.
LUK: 32.
Total wealth: 4,000.
--Current Status--
--(End time-skip)--
Arriving at the first quest which is the transport as it will take the least time, I knock on a house as the door opens to reveal an elderly woman. "Hello ma'am, I'm here to transport a package?" After saying this the elderly woman smiles and nods "Yes dear, I have a package for my son. He's on the other side of axel, that wouldn't be too much trouble, would it?" I go in thought for a moment 'Other side of Axel? My other quests are on that side, nice!' I smile at the elderly woman "No problem, I'd be happy to help!" She smiles brighter and takes a pouch of money out and hand it to me "Here is the payment, and here is the package. thank you once again deary!" She hands me the small package, and I take my leave to deliver the package.
I walk along the road with the package under my arm as I take look at the pouch of money and discreetly place it into the system, getting a notification of earning 2,000 eris, which was pretty generous for just delivering a package. As I walk along the streets making my way to her son, I continue to observe my surroundings, familiarizing myself with the town. I watch as others go about their days, men and women shopping, children happily playing, guards patrolling, everyone seemed happy and content.
'If only my past world was as nice. It would have been nice, not needing to worry daily about this or that.' I lament about my past world, earth. It was a nice place, sometimes, but most of the time you would see one bad thing or another going on. If only they were as united as these people seemed, though having seen the anime, I already know not everything is sunshine and rainbows. This world has it's fair share of corrupt politics, nobles, those in high power. Honestly, besides these people, the demon king doesn't seem as bad. Even the generals seemed like they could be reasoned with.
I quickly stop those thoughts from spiraling as it would lead me nowhere anytime soon. Instead I focused on my current quest, then I'll focus on the other two, and hope to get more skills and level up. I'll get stronger slowly, but surely, I will get stronger.
--(Time skip)--
I arrive at the house and quickly hand over the package to a bulky bearded man, getting paid by him aswell, which was a surprise. I earned an extra 2,000 eris from him and went on my way, headed towards my other quests, a gardening and pest extermination, planning on doing the latter first as it will be quicker.
So I quickly make my way down a few streets until reaching a somewhat rundown house, cracks in the windows, mossy stone and not the good looking kind, the overgrown kind. I knock on the door that looks like it'd break with the slightest force added to it, and a man and woman appear shortly with the woman carrying a young child with her. "Are you an adventurer?" Asked the husband who seems very tired, so I simply nod to him in confirmation, seeing him sigh in relief "That's great, we've been dealing with a rodent infestation and we don't want them around our kid" He steps aside and lets me in, and the inside was worse then the outside.
I couldn't help my curiosity "Why is this place so worn down?" I heard him sigh and speak in a somewhat depressed tone "Well, we've been low on money as most of our time is spent with our new kid. I was recently fired for sleeping on the job, as I had to watch him that night" I frown slightly, not liking their situation "Is that why the request was so low in reward money?" I turn to him, and see him nod his head in affirmation.
I look down for a moment contemplating before coming to a decision, as I reach into my pocket and take out all the money I have being 8,000 eris and hand it to him. "Here take this, you need it badly. As for the rats, I don't have mana for spells, but I'll see what I can do!" I see his expression go from sadness, to shock, then to gratitude "Thank you so much. We'll make sure to repay this kindness!" I simply nod, not arguing with him.
I begin by moving around the house for different items, some broken parts of wood, some fallen stones, even collecting some cobwebs. As I do this, I start making different traps for these rats to deal with, hearing that ding in my head again, causing me to smile and see a panel appear.
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Through certain actions, host has acquired skill [Crafting. LVL1]
Through certain actions, host has acquired skill [Trap making. LVL1]
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Seeing this, I grin widely. 'second quest and already two new skills, quite handy ones too!' I continue to set up traps around the house, I definitely won't catch them all, but I'll atleast get a dozen or so of them. Now all I needed to do was lure them out, so I took some of the families stale bread and broke them into pieces, laying them near the traps.
While I wait for the rats to take the bait, I start to think about the system. 'Simply doing something gains me skills, first analyze, now crafting and trap making. If I try to use my mana, will I gain mana control?' After thinking about it, I sit down cross legged and breath slowly, concentrating inside me. I can't remember if mana was ever actually explained in the anime, but focusing inside me, feeling for something was my best option, so I waited and practiced.
--(An hour later)--
An hour had gone by, but nothing. No sensation, no warmth, no change. I either don't have mana, which is false cause the system says I have it, or I'm simply not doing it right, which is very likely. Besides my failed attempts at feeling my mana, those rats were setting my traps off and like I predicted over a dozen were caught, so I swiftly ended their lives. I gained a measly amount of XP, but I didn't care, I was helping this struggling family not for reward anymore.
After a few more minutes and a few more slain rats, I walked outside to see the family smiling and playing, their mood lifted slightly from before. I walked over and patted the fathers shoulder gaining his attention "Are they all gone?" I shook my head "Not all, but you have a dozen less of them." Even though I didn't get rid of them all he still smiled and nodded happy "That's alright, as long as there is less of them inside." I nod and smile slightly, before departing towards my last quest of the day, a gardening one.
If I were to say how much more time in the day there is, I'd say about 6 more before nightfall, plenty of time to help around. And as I arrive, I see a well built man with a tan working in the fields before he notices me walking over. "Whatcha need?" He spoke in a deep voice fitting his appearance well "I'm here for the request for help." I stated and got a nod from the man. He wiped his forehead of sweat and said "Well it's kind of you to help out, I need some extra help with tending the crops and wildlife. If you could, I'd like you to water the crops over there in row 3 and 4, then go and milk the cows. Do that and the 4,000 eris is yours my friend" I nod to him and begin my work, getting ready for a few long hours of hard labor.
--(4 and a half hours later)--
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Through certain actions, host has acquired the skill [Farming. LVL1]
Through certain actions, host has acquired the skill [Resilience (Passive)]
[Farming. LVL1 has increased to LVL2]
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I worked an extra half hour for him and gained a 500 eris bonus for my time, aswell as my new farming skill going up a level in that last half hour. Gaining the resilience skill was definitely a great bonus, and from the systems screen it appears to give me 20% Hp recovery aswell as allowing me to work at full function longer then I could before. Quite fitting getting that from a farming quest, but that doesn't matter. It was getting late and I needed to find a cheap place to rent so I hurriedly looked around for a suitable inn.
After a full hour of search I found a affordable inn for 2,000 eris. It wasn't exactly a great place, but gotta do what ya gotta do, right? Anyway, I quickly opened my status screen to take a look at it, along with my skills panel.
--Status--
Name: Hank.
Age: 17.
Level: 3.
Race: Human.
Hp: 280.
Mp: 130.
STR: 29.
END: 28.
DEX: 24.
INT: 13.
WIS: 14.
LUK: 32.
Total wealth: 2,500.
--Status--
--Skills--
[Innate talent (Passive)] [Resilience (Passive)] [Farming. LVL2] [Crafting. LVL1] [Trap making. LVL1]
--Skills--
Looking at my status screen, I noticed all my stats went up a bit. STR, DEX, and WIS gained 2 points. While END and INT gained 1 each. My best guess is my STR, DEX, and END increased from the farm work, while my INT and WIS increased from my trap making and crafting. I smile as my work today was not unrewarded. And while I walked away less wealthy, I gained more skills and stat points which was a more then a fair trade.
As I though about this, I slowly closed my eyes drifting off to sleep, thinking about what I'd do tomorrow. Maybe go back and work for that man again? Help that family more? Perhaps both? Or maybe try and grind levels on more difficult quests? Increase my overall power? Who knows, that'll have to wait until tomorrow. and with those final thoughts my mind went blank as a warm darkness welcomed me with open arms.