Chapter 017 – The First Medicine
The first medicine.
I walked into the town of Vale.
It’s getting late in the evening, and the city seems to be getting quieter.
There are a lot of stalls closing down for the day.
Before long, I arrive at the Vale Pavilion.
The Lv28 Hotel man is inside.
“Welcome back.”
This isn’t the atmosphere of a high-quality inn.
“The key?”
“Here you go.”
He passes me the 311 key.
“Is dinner ready?”
“Ah, there is a menu you can choose from when you enter the dining room.”
“I’d like some hot water after dinner.”
“That will be 20 nars.”
Oh?
The 30% discount?
I’m reluctant, but I lower the rucksack and get 20 copper coins out.
“By the way, would this become firewood?”
I change my settings from 30% discount to 30% bonus sale price, and take a branch from my rucksack to show to the man.
“Is that a branch?”
“Yes.”
“The heat from it is too strong for household use. The master blacksmith uses them. He’s troublesome to deal with directly so I’d sell it to the guild.”
So I can only sell it to the guild.
“The first floor of the Labyrinth here seems to have lots of Needle Wood.”
“Yes.”
“The second floor has green caterpillars, and the third floor has kobolds. It’s a rough place.”
I’ve only seen Needle Woods in the Labyrinth.
The demons on other floors will be different.
He said the Labyrinth here, so other Labyrinths must have different demons as well.
From his tone of voice, it doesn’t seem like these are easy demons.
“So that’s how it is.”
“Those are the first floors. You must be quite strong to go to such a place.”
The first floors probably aren’t worth much.
I’m confident I can get to some deeper floors.
Will they be difficult?
Hmmm.
I’ll lead the conversation.
“I’ll try to go as far as possible. Where is the adventurers guild in this town?”
“Four buildings to the left.”
The man points.
Was there a building like that over there?
“Should I go now?”
“They will still buy stuff if you go immediately.”
“Thank you, please look after this.”
I pass the room key back, and leave the Vale Pavilion.
I head four doors to the left.
I enter the building of the adventurers guild.
The inside is larger than the explorer guild. It’s like a slightly big post office.
There are 5-6 people around.
The setup with a counter inside is the same as the explorer guild.
“I’d like to make a sale.”
I stand in front of the counter.
This will be my first experience of selling in a guild.
There is a Villager behind the counter, of an age that it would be slightly strange to call her Onee-san.
I would call her face average.
But I’m comparing to Rozanne.
“Place your items here.”
The woman holds out a large tray.
“Ok.”
I pull the items out of my rucksack.
There are a total of 33 branches, and three leaves.
“You aren’t part of the adventurer’s guild?”
The woman checks.
“No, I’m not.”
“The leaf is a raw material for antidotes. If you join the adventurers guild you will be allowed to buy antidotes at half price after selling leaves here, this helps since the antidote is necessary for adventurers.”
Huh?
If there is antidote, there must be poison. The antidote would not be necessary if there wasn’t any poison.
The antidote is a necessity of any adventurer who is in danger of being poisoned.
Was it a bad idea to enter the Labyrinth without having any?
“Can I buy some antidote?”
“If you don’t join the guild, there is a set price for it.”
“How much?”
“100 nars.”
“I see.”
It’s high, but not too high.
“You can remove the poison by eating the leaf too, we sell them for 80 nars.”
Won’t you be making a loss?
The Onee-san of the adventurers guild is very kind to teach me this.
“I see, then I won’t sell the leaves.”
“Ok, just a moment then.”
As I put away the leaves, the woman disappears into the interior of the guild with the tray of branches.
I’m bored, so I look around the guild.
The left wall becomes black suddenly.
People come out of the black wall.
Is that dungeon walk?
Can you use it outside of the Labyrinth?
Two adventurers have come out. There is no explorer.
“The town of Tahera, send us that way!”
An adventurer who came out says.
Nobody reacts to what is said, a black wall appears and they disappear into that.
It’s not dungeon walk, maybe it’s something like field walk?
Or is it a different skill?
That reminds me, six people came out of a black wall just before I arrived at the Labyrinth.
The explorer must have the dungeon walk skill, and the adventurer might have field walk.
If you can travel through the Labyrinth with dungeon walk, field walk must send you to other towns.
Maybe those two people went to the town of Tahera.
Why did they come here?
As I think about it, a black wall appears again and people come out.
Six people this time. One is an adventurer from moments ago.
The six people leave the guild.
Well.
What have they been doing?
“Sorry to have kept you waiting. Here you go.”
I turn my head to see the woman has returned with a plate.
There are six silver coins on it, and after counting for a minute it seems there are 43 copper coins, so 643 nars?
I guess it isn’t bad for a branch, but it’s not high.
At this rate, a gold coin each day is just a dream within a dream.
Maybe it will be different if I stay longer, or go to a deeper floor.
I switch my 30% bonus sale price to 30% discount.
It’s troublesome.
“Aside from antidote, is there medicine sold here?”
“Disinfectant, fatigue recovery, various salves, anti-paralysis, anti-hardening, and a cure-all.”
At a guess, the salves recover HP, and the fatigue recovery recovers MP.
“How much for the anti-hardening and the anti-paralysis medicines?”
“They are 100 nars each.”
Is the price the same as the antidote medicine?
“Ok, I’ll take two anti-hardening, and two anti-paralysis.”
For the moment I’ll just buy two of each.
I don’t know how much I’ll need them, I probably won’t need large quantities.
“Certainly.”
The woman leaves for a minute, and returns quickly.
She places two white pill’s, and two yellow pill’s on the counter.
Anti-hardening.
Anti-paralysis.
“Hmm.”
“The white one is the anti-hardening, the yellow one is the anti-paralysis.”
They are split into colors?
I won’t make a mistake anyway because of my judgement skill.
I put the four silver coins on the counter.
So anti-paralysis should cure paralysis as the name implies.
What about anti-hardening.
For when the body hardens? Does petrification magic exist?
I left one of the silver coins closer to myself, but the woman took it as she counted the coins.
Sadly it seems my 30% discount does not work for this.
I put the pills and leaves away in my rucksack. [TN: might have put them in one of the little drawstring bags.]
“What are the requirements for joining the adventurers guild?”
“It’s rather simple. Be an explorer over Lv 50 that is not in another guild. If you would like to join I can bring you to someone who can set it up.”
“No, not at the moment.”
I quickly turned down the offer as I placed my rucksack over my shoulder, and left the adventurers guild.
So adventurer is a higher level job for explorers? It requires explorer Lv 50?
Or maybe there is a condition that is unlocked when you join the guild.
I heard that the relationship between the Explorer & Adventurers guild was bad.
That seems likely.
From the Explorers guild’s view, the adventurers will be skipping them.
You could say that explorer’s are eggs that will grow into adventurers, or from the other angle explorers are crap that didn’t turn into adventurers.
I should be cautious if I consider entering a guild somewhere.
I return to the inn, and grab my key.
The dining room is right beside the foyer, and I go inside.
There are four meals on a table at the entrance to the dining room.
“You can choose your meal from these.”
Aside from the Lv28 Hotel man, there is also a Hotel woman there gesturing towards the food.
Is she in charge of the dining room?
Seems like it.
There’s no menu, do we just choose like this?
A lot of people probably can’t read the menu.
The table only has one character written near each dish.
The same character is written on the key I have.
My key probably has 311 written on it for my room number, so the character next to the upper right dish is probably 1.
“This one.”
“Certainly, would you also like something to drink?
Urk…
I expected this sooner or later, but was still surprised.
It still feels a bit strange.
“What drinks are there?”
“Beer, Wine, or Herbal tea. If you would like slime liquor then there is an extra charge.”
“Just herbal tea please.”
“Sure. Please sit and wait at any available seat.”
In Japan I had drank a little sake, but here I don’t know how much is safe to drink.
I have 33 gold coins in my rucksack to worry about too.
I sit down at a seat, and the food arrives straight away.
There’s some soup in a cup, bread, a stew with vegetables, and some roast meat.
It’s quite a large amount, but it needs to count as two meals for the day.
The bread is soft, and the soup and stew are both quite delicious.
The meat looks like beef and is passable. Some pepper goes nicely with it.
Wouldn’t the pepper be expensive, or do I have the wrong impression?
A meal like this would sell well even in Japan.
It’s quite a good meal.
The cost was slightly high, but including it feels like a good choice.
After finishing my meal, I returned to my room.
The sun has mostly gone down.
The room is red because of the last of the days light coming through the window.
Soon after I enter there is a knock at the door.
“Hello?”
“Excuse me, I’ve brought you hot water.”
A man I hadn’t seen yet brings in a tub of hot water.
He places the tub on the floor, hangs a towel on it’s edge and then leaves.
It seems I don’t need to tip him.
I remove my cloths, and wipe my body.
This world does not seem to have baths.
If it does, it’s probably a luxury just for the rich people.
Even this hot water, 20 nars doesn’t seem cheap.
It’s pleasant to have though since I’ve been sweating.
After washing my body, I wash my underwear.
It’s the only underwear I have.
I don’t know what underwear is like in this world, hopefully I can buy a spare pair.
Whoops.
If there is soap and detergent I should get that too.
Maybe there isn’t any since it didn’t come with the hot water.
Is there a toothbrush and toothpaste?
I don’t know if these exist.
I want to buy some socks too.
I can’t buy anything for five days I think?
That’s inconvenient.
I want a convenience store.
Aside from a shopping list, I should think about the item box.
I made it appear.
First, I put the scimitar in there. There seems to be more space now.
I try to put the rucksack in there, but it doesn’t work.
Maybe it’s the size? I try the drawstring bag but that doesn’t work either.
The rucksack and the drawstring bag are not items, so maybe it’s useless?
I pull the leaves out of my bag, and then put them in next to the scimitar.
All two went in fine. [TN: Thought he had three? I’ve probably stuffed something :P]
The anti-hardening, and anti-paralysis medicines did not go in.
After moving the two leaves to the right, the two anti-hardening pills fit into a left space.
The anti-paralysis didn’t go in, but they did go in further left.
Looking further left in the space, the scimitar appears.
I take out the leaves & pills.
Won’t the coins go in there?
Silver Coin.
Oh, I can use judgement on it.
It didn’t even occur to me to use judgement on a coin.
With this, the fear of getting counterfeit money is gone.
But using judgement on a coin one by one is also troublesome.
I can put four silver coins into it.
In the next space I can fit four silver coins as well.
The copper coins don’t go in.
I’m not trying to mix coins, judgement doesn’t work on them either.
Copper coins don’t appear to be an item.
I pull out some gold coins.
Judgement works on them, and I can put up to four in.
It seems I can’t mix the gold and silver coins together.
So I have 4 gold coins, then 4 silver coins, then 4 silver coins.
After removing the scimitar, 4 gold coins fit in there also.
So there are four slots, and each spot can stack up to four items.
Probably because I’m explorer Lv4.
It was full with just the scimitar in it at Lv1.
I take all the coins out, and put the leaves & medicines back into the box.
The item box is probably better to hold them in case of an emergency.
I need to think about things like this.
You might consider incantation omission to be an important skill.
It requires three points.
If my first job is level four, even if I don’t cut back on points elsewhere I still have enough for incantation omission.
Currently Explorer is Lv4.
Should I swap it with Villager Lv6?
Is there a benefit if I remove Villager as my first job, and replace it with Explorer?
When I consider the item box, and dungeon walk, it is not possible to remove Explorer.
The advantage of Villager is that the level is already high.
If I raise it to Lv8, I can spend points on forcing an extra job, as well as incantation omission.
The bonus points required for the second job is just one, and the third job is two. The bonus points required for the fourth job doubles again to four.
At level 6 I have enough point to get the fourth job if I just settle for incantation shortening.
There’s the possibility that Villagers level will increase faster than Explorer.
If I get to 16 spare bonus points, I can get 10x extra experience, or 10x decrease required experience to level.
Putting the job with the fastest growth as the first job will become an excellent advantage in the long run.
However, 16 bonus points is a long way off.
Also, with a fourth job my experience gain may be split into quarters so I’m not sure how beneficial force job really is.
I will make the first job Explorer.
I open my job settings.
Soldier Lv1
Effect: Small physical strength rise, Small HP rise, Skill – Rush.
Swordsman Lv1
Effect: Small physical strength rise, Small HP rise, Skill – Slash.
Merchant Lv1
Effect: Small int rise, Small spirit rise, Skill – Calc
Herbalist Lv1
Effect: Small int rise, Skill – Crude drug creation.
All of a sudden I have four more jobs.
Why did I get so many?
Perhaps after hitting Villager Lv5 I met the conditions for some jobs.
Soldier, Swordsman & Merchant probably came from this.
A Herbalist is someone who gathers medicinal herbs.
I didn’t get any medicinal herbs, but I did pick up the leaves.
Well.
This might mean I’ll get more jobs at Villager Lv10 & Lv20.
Should I leave Villager where it is?
Though, if there is a job that requires Villager Lv99 then that’s a long way off.
Well, I’ll worry about that later.
I put Explorer in as the first job.
Second is Hero Lv3, and the third one becomes Merchant.
I should test the new skills too.
Soldier’s rush, and Swordsman’s slash. From the name of the skills it sounds like something to use in combat.
What about the Merchant’s skill?
I try to use Calc, but nothing happens, nothing changes.
It seems I can’t do anything with it.
I wanted to calculate 224 x 365.
As I think about it, the number 81760 pops into my head.
Is that the answer to 224×365?
Is calc a passive skill?
At 224 nars for 365 days a year for 60 years…
4905600.
If I had 500 gold coins I could stay here until I die.
Is that right?
100×100 is 10,000. Oh, that’s correct.
1 million x 1 million is 1 trillion.
….um, I don’t know if that one’s correct.
I remove Merchant, and put in Herbalist.
I want to use the Crude drug creation skill.
I’ll use it on a leaf.
It’s starting to become dark as I pull a leaf from the item box.
I use the Crude drug creation skill….
Ten antidotes appear.
TN: I had a rough time with anti-hardening in this chapter. The machine translators gave me “Fragile”, “Softness”, “Judo-ization” and “I am wimpy, I am a circle” to work with…. WTF. I was going to use anti-petrification, but then he mentioned petrification a bit later, so while the pill was made to deal with it, that wasn’t meant to be the name of the pill.