Chapter 9 Instead of Becoming an Adventurer I Chose to Fish

I continued to grind Keeper and Scribe levels, but one thing became clear, it was going to take a while if I didn’t get the Inventory skill soon. Because it took me almost to the end of this grind day, which was again 14 hours long, to once again level up, getting both professions to level 11.

Once again, I walked towards the small system obelisk. This time the options were different.

Ink Making I

Penmanship

Novice Papermaking

It was unfortunate to see it being confirmed, but the skill choices didn’t necessarily improve with each level; instead, you got pretty random choices.

Food Preservation I

Chest Making I

Novice Paper Preservation

Novice Paper Preservation was my first proper skill offer. Nevertheless, I pulled away from the obelisk. Instead of spending the next 30 minutes or so working to get that 14 hours in, I started my exercise a bit earlier.

Up to this point, I had been keeping to the beginner compound, which was at the very north of the town. The lake was even further north. There were multiple gateways out of the town, with the one that I had been using named the Northwestern Gatehouse.

This time I didn’t run around the lake, kind of wishing that I could just fish without having to worry about losing the chance to get some truly valuable skills. I instead continued to run further east along a pathway that headed towards the Northeastern Gatehouse.

The reason why I was coming here was quite simple. The outside area didn’t have farmland. Instead, it was hard-packed earth where a few simple roped off arenas had been placed that had sand floors.

There must have been at least 100 or more people here, paired up, in bigger groups, some even singularly training with different weapons. There were even straw dummies that you could practice against.

This was the place where a lot of students spent their time. There were plenty of combat instructors around, with a few proper lecturers teaching the ones who had just come to the beginner town.

Log benches were everywhere so you could rest, and there was a large tent as well with the medical symbol. That was supposed to be the place where you could get patched up if you got hurt.

I sat down on one of the log benches and started to observe. No one seemed to be doing any exercises to strengthen one’s body, but many were swinging their weapons again and again.

Would that actually help you get better? Some seemed really energetic about all of this. It didn’t take me long to figure out that most of these people were from Earth. It took a bit more listening to a couple of random conversations and just watching how everyone acted to figure out what was going on.

It seems that my fellow refugees were pushing themselves a bit too hard, trying to get stronger so they could fight monsters. From what I understood, the things that happened to me were nothing compared to what happened to most others.

They must feel quite weak, seeing this system as a way to get stronger and fix their feelings of weakness. One thing was clear, I was going to need to learn how to fight so that not any random monster or person could end me.

The question was, what weapon would suit me? Most seemed to have gone with swords, but there were plenty of spears and other weapons. If I sat here long enough, I expected that I would see every medieval weapon I could think of and more.

Some seemed to have other weapons as well. As it has been stated, specializing was really good, but you couldn’t discount that sometimes you needed a different type of weapon than your usual one.

If you had a long spear, it could be quite bad if you had to fight inside a house, so switching to short sword would be something that might save your life.

It was pretty clear that monsters weren’t the only danger. While it wasn’t stated outright, there was still plenty of knowledge available to suggest that people were still people, which meant that even in a united world, there were still rebellions and war.

Pretty sure in the library they think that I’m not one of the refugees, because if you paid attention, you could see that refugees got materials from one pile and everyone else from another.

I’m certain that they aren’t doing it in bad faith; they just don’t want to put even more worry and pressure on the shoulders of people who have survived a tragedy. Because of this, I have seen plenty of updated information about countries’ names being crossed out, with other nations from that world suddenly gaining a lot of population.

While everyone, spearheaded by the Adventurer Guild, had a common goal of fighting the monsters and saving worlds, it was clear that politics ruled everything else.

After eating and reading two more workshop booklets, it was time for bed. Soon I was awake again, having slept enough that I felt rested. It was time to head back to the library.

It was nice that I was getting a bit of a better understanding thanks to everything that I was copying about the overall situation in the rest of the universe.

Sometimes I took breaks and even went to the training yard to watch everyone train. Once in a while, I even had to look up more information about something that I learned while copying.

Just a few minutes ago, I finished putting down into my notes the current estimated distribution of worlds based on what rank they were.

1. Half-step worlds — these are worlds that are not yet F rank. Very few exist, only 200 or so. Thay are places where refugees are taken, every single one of them is controlled by the Adventurer Guild.

2. F-ranked worlds — approximately 1,000 to 2,000. This is where every beginner town is located and are important worlds, because every child who makes it to adulthood goes into one of these to level up.

3. E-ranked worlds — only a few hundred exist, mostly because they are still moving upwards. (Most skip them) Managed to confirm that dungeons are being used to stop worlds from rising further.

4. D-ranked worlds — about 1,000 to 1,700 seems to be the number, although it was really hard to find any real information. Once again, it seems that most of these worlds are on the rise.

5. C-ranked worlds — the most numerous. It seemed that many worlds stop their advancement here. I’m pretty sure the number is close to 10,000, the majority of worlds.

6. B-ranked worlds — a lot less information available, probably a couple of thousand.

7. A-ranked worlds — no idea, but most likely one or two thousand.

8. S-ranked worlds — no idea. Interestingly, the first known six worlds are still there and ranked as S-ranked. The only reference mentions some dungeons there; otherwise, they are classified as death worlds even for S-ranks. Apparently multiple failed crusades to reclaim them have been attempted by various forces.

Once again, I was filling up papers. Probably should transfer all of these into a notebook, as most were in my apartment cluttering my desk. They were getting a bit hard to manage. Notebooks did cost money, how much I wasn’t sure, as I hadn’t gone to the town proper to check out all the prices.

Should probably do that sometime soon. Another level-up came not too long after that. Now I was level 12 in both professions, but still no luck. That was getting unfortunate, and now it was taking more than a day to get a level.

On the fourth day of doing this in the training area, as I was eating lunch, I saw something I hadn’t seen in a long while, two dogs and a cat walking beside a human. They looked normal, but to my surprise, they also joined in the training.

It seems that more refugees from Earth have been coming, this time some who had found their families or were able to rescue their animals. For a moment, I almost went up to one of them to ask how they were able to keep a dog, but stopped as I saw how they interacted with other people.

For some reason, they seemed dismissive of others and acted superior. The more I observed how most other humans acted from Earth, the more embarrassed I got. Not to say that everyone seemed to have devolved, but the majority seemed to have.

I had a bad feeling that our Earth was going to get a bad rep. Hopefully, that wouldn’t follow to the upper realms. The next two days I saw even more animals. Most seemed to have some battle scars. It was honestly quite sad to see.

My 13th level didn’t bring anything good. That meant I only had two more tries. Perhaps it would have been better to just give up on inventory and go with looting. While I could continue up to level 25, the grind seemed to get longer and longer. Did I wanted to give up looting for the chance to get inventory?

It was a bit past midnight when I finally hit level 14 in both my professions. Once again, I walked to the obelisk, placing my hand on it. Almost out of reflex, I opened up the scribe profession choice and closed it just as fast before I realized what I saw.

Stone Carving I

Inventory I

Novice Ink Maker

There it was, but I held myself back. Did I want to reveal to everyone that I had inventory? It probably didn’t matter; everyone would find out soon enough anyway if I started to use it.

Before taking it, I also decided to check what the keeper profession held. It still surprised me that scribe was offering me inventory instead of keeper.

Novice Greater Memory

Greater Durability I

Preservation I

Those were some great skills, and actually, the novice Greater Memory was the absolute best you could get before seeing Perfect Memory skills, and I was completely certain I wasn’t going to get that one. It seemed that I had hit both of the skills that I was going to pick.

Switching back to scribe, for the first time I let myself choose. It happened so fast when I let go of that small part of me that held my choice back, allowing every other part of me to rush toward the choice.

Power inside me grew, and I felt the connection I had to the obelisk changing, guiding that power that was growing, shaping it into a certain pattern. It seemed that there wasn’t much to change, almost like my own pattern was already close to begin with.

Like everyone else, I closed my eyes as the power crested and then crashed back toward me, changing me forever. The next moment, I had something like an extra limb, although it wasn’t exactly like that. Now I seem to have some sort of space that I could use to place stuff in and take out.

Instead of taking my hand away, I went and picked the novice Greater Memory as well. Not that the other choices were bad, but this one was on quite multiple recommendation lists as generally an excellent pick.

The same thing happened, but the pattern felt different and seemed to be in a different location. As soon as everything died down, I felt like I remembered more.

No, that wasn’t quite right, it was just easier to find those memories, and everything was a bit clearer. Already it felt amazing, and this skill was just at the novice rank. Over time, it should improve quite a lot.

A lot of heads were turned toward me. Usually no one picked two skills in a row. I cleaned up my workspace, thanked the librarian in charge of giving me assignments, and left.

It was time to figure out what type of inventory skill I got, but before that, a lot of exercising so that I could go to sleep and hopefully fix my schedule, as it was time to once again start waking with the sunrise.