CH 52

Chapter 52 – As expected of our clan master

I kept on making iron equipment, got it evaluated at the guild, replenished the store’s stock with it, updated the blog, then logged out for lunch.

By the time I log-in, the shop’s break will probably already be over, so things will be quite hectic… Well, I didn’t have much time to make items today, so the amount that I put on sale was limited. It probably won’t take that long to run out of stock.

******

After I finished my usual things and logged in, the shop had indeed already finished its break. Just as scheduled.

The store was quite crowded with people looking for new iron equipment, but… Well, I still have some time until I need to replenish the stock again, so it’s free time now!

But before anything else, let me check my skills.

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Main

Improved Crafting lv 39/Improved Blacksmithing lv 64/Improved Merchant lv 34/Improved Tool Making lv 18/Improved Magic Circle Creation lv 54

Discover lv 100/Concentrate lv 100/Improved Magic Power Enhancement lv 76/Improved Magic Power Manipulation lv 76/Improved Magic Power Recovery lv 76

Summoning lv 100

Sub

Improved Sewing lv 28/Weaving lv 97/Leatherworking lv 100/Woodworking lv 100/Improved Alchemy lv 18

Language lv 100/Magic Language lv 95

Collecting lv5/Mining lv5/Detection lv1/Stealth lv1

Skill Points: 11

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Compared to the time before my training at the Kederick Workshop, I was able to evolve Tool Making and Alchemy.

Leatherworking and Woodworking were also very important, but Tool Making automatically became the highest priority as soon as I got a recipe for better tools, so I evolved it first.

I was unsure if evolving Alchemy was the best of ideas, but I ended up going for it because I use it to make Magic Paper.

But well, as usual, I’m lacking Skill Points, so quite a few skills are now stuck at lv 100… It’s unavoidable since there is a limit to how many skills I can level while also crafting, but this is still troublesome.

Therefore, I was thinking on participating on a joint collection. I had been wanting to go to one for a while now, and recently, I received a wonderful opportunity that I couldn’t pass on… It was the first joint collection operation of Works!

Participation wasn’t compulsory, but everyone on the clan ended up wanting to participate, so we’ll all be together this time.

However, as we are all focused on crafting, none of us is particularly good at fighting, so we’ll be hiring some escorts to help us out. The escorting expenses will be divided equally among the clan members, so it’s not gonna be too expensive for any of us.

As for our escorts, they’ll be the members of Mist Knights and Kikoridottokuru… As in, Mika’s and Hime’s clans! Two very strong forces will be helping us out!

And of course, Hime and Mika will also be participating on it.

Mist Knights is a battle-focused clan filled with top players, with Mika being their clan leader.

Kikoridottokuru is a clan specialized in cutting down Demon Trees.

Cutting down Demon Trees naturally attracts enemies, so having escorts nearby when doing woodcutting work is always welcome.

Due to that, those two clans are both very used to working with escort jobs, so it’s quite nice to have them by our side… Especially because I already know Mika and Hime, and it just feels a lot more comfortable to team up with people I already know.

Sadly, Rush, who is also on Mist Knights, won’t be able to participate, due to time constraints… Truly a shame.

Nonetheless, it’s my first time participating on a joint collection, so I’m excited for it! And as the other members of Works seem to have participated on those before, I was able to ask them beforehand about what were the essential skills that I needed to have.

The result of that talk, was that I got the Collecting, Mining, Detection and Stealth skills.

I didn’t get any combat-related skills as we’ll have escorts, but I’m still bringing some equipment to protect myself, as one shouldn’t be completely helpless in case the escorts fail to protect us from all incoming enemies.

That said, this tends to only happen if the people doing the collecting choose a bad place for it. And as Lolita was the one who chose the place we’ll be doing the joint collection, we’ll most likely have no problems on this end… As expected of our reliable Clan Master!

The joint collection tour will happen tomorrow in “in-game-time”… I have never been out of town before, so I’m excited about this excursion. I even leveled Collecting and Mining a small bit just to prepare for that!

Though I was careful with it, as Collecting can be quite dangerous in Frontiers. While it can be very useful for collecting items throughout the field, you can also end up attracting a large number of enemies by using the Collecting skill. You can die in the blink of an eye if you’re careless!

Either way, I also made sure to prepare appropriate equipment for the joint collection tour, such as 6* iron-based Improved Beginner Collecting Tools and Improved Beginner Mining Tools.

Unfortunately, I did not have recipes for intermediate tools, but this will do for the time being.

******

Now that I finished checking everything and am sure that I am ready for tomorrow, I guess I should start making products to replenish the store’s stock? Let’s start with making some Iron Ingots, as carefully as usual.

I might also need to purchase increments for the capacity of me personal warehouse and of the store’s warehouse when I renew their contract. I do have quite a bit of surplus capacity available right now, but with new regions becoming available, more materials will start entering the market, so it might end up reaching the cap of my capacity. It won’t hurt to get some increments in advance when taking this into account.

After all, Hime and the rest of the members of Kikoridottokuru already succeeded in opening up a new farmland area. After they finished opening up the highway, they immediately went to the next region and already finished cleaning up the Demon Trees there.

Like this, the Mizuri Village became available for everyone. It was quite the impressive accomplishment, as you can’t unlock the area without cleaning up all the Demon Trees there. Even if you can already see quite a bit of free space, until the Demon Trees are properly taken care of, it remains as a woodcutting area and nothing more.

And well, we also can’t know what an area will become until it is properly cleaned up, so it was a nice surprise to see that the new region was suitable for agriculture.

Right now, the area around Mizuri Village is divided into the base area and the battle area. The battle area is where enemies spawn, while the base area is where the Demon Trees used to be at and where the Mizuri Village is properly located now. It is also the place where everyone can do farming and get bonuses for agricultural activities.

The battle area is quite pleasing for combat-focused Pioneers, as there are new and never seen before enemies, so they can collect new materials from it.

The base area on the other hand is the first region that pioneers have gotten somewhat easy access to land where they can do agriculture on, so some people got quite excited about it and bought plots of land already.

Though of course, maintenance of the area is necessary, or the Demon Trees will take it over again, but as the Zabrina Kingdom has been fighting against the invading Demon Trees for quite a while now, that probably won’t be a big issue.

The NPCs were also celebrating a lot when we received the Goddess’ Announcement that told everyone that the Mizuri Village area was now available.

Also, various rewards were given by the country to thank the people that helped the development of the Mizuri Village area. Most of it went to the members of Kikoridottokoru, of course, as they cut a very large amount of Demon Trees.

They even got a part of the base area of Mizuri Village for themselves, so they can use it both as a farmland, but also as a clan base. It was a pretty neat reward.

And like this, the development of the Mizuri Village started… I’m not particularly interested on agriculture, so I saw no reason to go there myself, but the players interested in agriculture were glad to finally have the opportunity to invest on it.

Though I also want to at least visit it once, I mean… It’s the area that Hime unlocked! Of course I want to see it!

******

I ended up spending a lot of time making Iron Ingots… A bit too much in fact. They’ll probably last me a few days.

On the plus side though, their performance was great. I was already able to regularly make 6* Iron Ingots by using my intermediate equipment and tools.

Sadly, even with lv 64 Improved Blacksmithing, items with Options don’t come all the time. I have to keep on trying, and hoping that the next item comes not only with an Option, but also with the Option I want, since the Option obtained is random.

That said, I started getting Iron items with Options at lv 50 of Improved Blacksmithing, and I’m at lv 64 now! I have definitely noticed an improvement on how often the items with Options appear!

Though well, I still need to make lots of items to get the Options I want. I usually sell the gear with the better Options to my acquaintances, then put the rest for sale on my store.

A shame that I have yet to get any item with double Options on them though. Those would sell for a lot, so I’d be able to quickly get the money to improve the rest of my production facilities to intermediate level if I was able to get double Option products out!

Well, really expensive products can’t be bought by anyone, of course, but Mika and the other top players are rich! I’d definitely be able to find a buyer for those!

Let’s keep working hard! Aim for a facility filled with intermediate equipment!

Well, it will still require a lot of money, so… For now, let’s just focus on the joint collection tour!