Selling loot as it happened was a whole skill set unto itself nobody tells you about.
We went back to the village with a boar's worth of tusks, hide and a rare hatchet I still hadn't equipped because some small, paranoid part of me thought the game would take it away if I looked too excited."There's a merchant's stall by the fountain," Dario said, like he'd lived here all his life and not a day-one player, too.How do you already know all the places?"I do watch a lot of tutorials. "Some people threw their only weapon at a beast."It was.It *worked*," he said, in the kind of tone people use when they mean the opposite.
The merchant, an NPC with the kind of constantly smiling face that only exists in games and dentist office posters, surveyed our loot with a flicker of genuine surprise.
**Ashback Tusk - rare crafting ingredient. 800 C each.
**"Boar Hide — rare. 150 C offered."**
I really did the math twice because I didn't trust it the first time. 1750 coins, plus the 340 that dropped, plus what I had. I sat on about 6000 C after selling everything but the hatchet.'That's more than the starter weapon cost, like, twice over,' I said.I told you. "Rare drops are rare for a reason. Dario took his own share - we'd split it evenly, which he'd insisted on before I could even offer. Also, you should arm that hatchet. Basically, walking around with a D rank weapon in your bag instead of in your hand is a crime.
I fitted it out.
**[Hunter's Hatchet Loaded]**
**Damage: 22-30 ** **Durability: 80/80**
Passive: +5% damage vs. Beast type enemies
Not subtle was the difference between this and my sad little 800 C tree-chopper. This was the first time since I logged in that I felt like I actually belonged in this game and wasn't just visiting."Ok." I said. "New plan.Is this plan going to involve throwing your weapon at things too?" ""The old plan is dead, you said it yourself. New plan: I'm gonna stay with you until my friends login. We grind, we split loot, we don't die to anything else with a name I can't pronounce.
Dario thought about this with the seriousness of somebody making a life decision, which, given the fact that we were both seventeen and this was apparently how seventeen year olds made friends now, it kind of was.Bargain. But I have the last word on anything that looks better than us."Deal I have the final say it not be fought immediately anyway."
[Party Invite Sent - Dario]
**[Party Invite Accepted]**
Party: kenistoocoolforu69 (Lv.4) and Dario (Lv.6)
It did something strangely satisfying to me, to see my name next to his in a little floating party window. If this game had a screenshot option, like I really wanted to take it."Wait," I said, "you're level six? Were you above me before the boar fight?Been playing since server launch this morning. You logged in, what, two hours ago?" "...Fair.
We spent the rest of the afternoon doing real quests, real ones, off the main board, not wood-cutting. 200 C. Escort merchant's wagon 3 minutes down the road. Cleared out a tiny nest of what the game called "Grass Slimes," which were exactly as threatening as they sound, meaning not at all, meaning I one-shot four of them in a row with the new hatchet and felt like an action movie protagonist doing it.
I was level seven when the in-game sun started to sink, a full day-night cycle running way faster than real time, it seems. Dario was nine levels. And somewhere in the back of my head a much quieter, much less panicked version of the thought I'd had when running from the boar, was starting to form.
Perhaps being a little better than my friends isn't the end of the world.
I didn't say that part aloud. Dario would never have let me live that one down.
*To be continued..*