Golden Experience

The city was walled, so guards were stationed at the gates. They were there to keep criminals out, of course, but the wall’s primary purpose was to defend against monsters, so entrance procedures weren’t very strict. For Wayne, or really for any players who didn’t have any form of identification, they could enter as long as they didn’t have any contraband in their possession. Players all had inventories, though, so they could get past that sole restriction with ease anyway.

After asking the guards where to find a good inn, he began to make his way to that part of town. Now that he was inside the city, there shouldn’t be any danger to his person, but he wanted to promptly update his respawn point. You generally respawned at the last place you logged in, so he was planning to log out quick at the inn.

The inn recommended by the guard was pretty rundown, but unlike NPCs, he wouldn’t actually be sleeping there, and his belongings were stored in his inventory so they couldn’t be stolen. Inns were also designated as safe zones, where thievery and other kinds of hostile actions couldn’t be initiated. Finally, he didn’t want to waste any money on his first inn anyway.

After checking in, he found his room furnished with a wooden bed, straw mattress, threadbare blankets, and nothing else; the very picture of a cheap hotel room. From the perspective of the guard, Wayne was wearing a cheap shirt and pants, and he had a dull short sword; he was the perfect example of a newly minted warrior. Since the guard assumed that he probably didn’t have any money, it was with all the best intentions that he recommended this inn. And that assumption wasn’t wrong at all. Since Wayne did want to save money if at all possible, he really was thankful.

Log out for a second, then immediately log back in. He had three days off starting tomorrow, so there was no need to worry about real life. This next-gen VR apparatus was completely wireless, so he wouldn’t even have to disconnect to eat or use the bathroom. That said, after spending three whole days playing, he’d have to remember to do some light stretching and exercise before going in to work.

As soon as he logged back in, Wayne immediately went to the sellsword guild to look for a quest. After getting directions from the innkeeper, he went down the main street to get there. He might be in the city, but he could still get into trouble if he ended up in the alleys or other less-frequented areas. In order to emerge unscathed from those kinds of encounters, he’d need to be a bit stronger first.

Knowing the way there, he wasn’t in danger of getting lost. This being a city built at the border inside a wall, it required rather detailed blueprints, and its construction followed them to the letter. If he did get lost, he could just find his way back to the main street to regain his bearings.

Since it was the middle of the day, the sellsword guild didn’t have many sellswords at the moment. For normal businesses with daytime hours, most people would be working now. He headed to the counter to let them know he’d be working out of this town for the foreseeable future. There wasn’t any kind of registration. Sellswords were mostly outlaws, in the first place. They were prone to dying or deserting at the drop of a hat, so there was little value in overseeing their activities. Furthermore, rewards were all or nothing. If you didn’t return successful, even if you worked yourself to death in the process, you wouldn’t get paid. Ignoring the fact that players couldn’t die.

Next, Wayne asked about selling the wild rabbits he had killed on the road. The bodies could be sold as they were as materials, minus the fees for processing and commission. Normally, dead bodies would slowly degrade, so carrying them back like that would mean their price would drop like a rock. However, Wayne had stored them in his inventory, so they were still fresh. He pulled out five wild rabbit corpses and placed them on the counter.

The receptionist looked mildly surprised. NPCs rarely were born with a skill that they called a “safe.” It was essentially the same as the inventory that Wayne used. That meant that NPCs all recognized players as people with this skill.

—Though actually, it’s not so much a rare phenomenon as it’s just the number of players who can use inventory dwarf the number of NPCs who can.

If the day came that he heard “I’ve been seeing a lot of folks like you recently,” he was 100% sure that all those people would be other players.

After getting paid for the wild rabbits, he immediately went to find the quest board and browse the requests. The sellsword guild posted all the requests it received there. However, requests that were taken off the board by mercenaries were voided. They just had to confirm the request, report its completion to the receptionist, and that was when the request would be taken down. Lucrative requests resulted in lots of competition, but there was no way to know if someone else was out there working on any given request. That’s why it was important to check the board before anyone else, and to complete requests before anyone else did. It wasn’t rare for someone to spend a day working, then come back to find that someone else had already completed a request they had tried to do. Unless it was a wholly unique job, it was best to find another, similar request that you could switch to if necessary.

This being how requests worked, the clients also had to carefully consider how to designate the rewards. If the reward was high, it would naturally get completed quickly, but splitting the reward into multiple requests could also result in immediate results. However, if the ensuing reward ended up too low, then the commission fee could scare people away from taking it. It was hard to find the right balance. There was even a demand for specialized reward brokers.

Wayne wanted to find low-reward requests. Ones that had been posted some time ago. Those kinds of requests were unlikely to be undertaken by others. Apparently, requests that necessitated going near the forest were not very popular. How convenient.

After leaving the sellsword guild, Wayne immediately set off for the forest. The guards warned him on the way out that the edge of monster territory was somewhere in the forest. Making up a random excuse to leave the city anyway, Wayne entered the forest.

Even if monster territory began in the forest, it should just be a regular forest up until that point. The forest was dense and overgrown with trees, to the point that it was dim and gloomy in the middle of the day. He could only see his own footprints in the dirt, so he questioned whether the locals ever came here. While he wasn’t exactly used to walking in forests, he did have some experience, so he was somehow able to work on his quests.

…Making it through the forest was a lot more trouble than Wayne had been imagining. He didn’t think he would be able to get by with the equipment he had now. He needed a hatchet to clear the brush and vines, and he needed clothes that covered up more skin. His starting equipment would quickly fall apart at this rate.

Having concluded that delving any deeper would be equivalent to suicide, Wayne decided to head back to the city for now. He couldn’t finish any quests, but it should be fine to put them on hold for now. Until he saved up more money, he would return to that prairie to hunt more rabbits, and if possible, look for quests that could be done there as well.

In the end, Wayne went back to the starting prairie and hunted another ten or so wild rabbits that day.