Master of None

by Shane Walker

  “I never said I would become your student...” I said, narrowing my eyes at him. I still wasn’t completely sold.

  “Oh but you’re going to want to, lad. I can teach you how to get all manner of Jobs and train you in quite a few Skills that are very difficult to pick up alone.” he replied. He was absolutely oozing confidence in my choice now and I wasn’t completely sure that it wasn’t a skill being used on me.

  “What do you want in return? I know it isn’t just for the love of teaching.” I asked, becoming increasingly suspicious of his motives.

  “Well there’s a couple of things, lad, and I’m glad you asked.”

  Of course there’s more than one.

  “First, I need you to learn specific skills from me so you can get the Thief Job. After that, you need to get it to level five. Once that’s done, you’re going to approach the Thieves Guild in the city as my liaison.” he explained like it was the most normal thing in the world.

  “Wait, why can’t I go with my base Rogue Class?” I ask. It didn’t make sense to me that I had to pick it up the Thief Job if I have this already.

  “A Rogue isn’t the same as a Thief, lad. Rogues are just rule breakers and troublemakers who try to think or talk through problems. A Thief takes shit that isn’t his. Make sense?”

  Blunt, but he got his point across.

  Quest Received: A Rogue in Thief’s Clothing

  Recommended Level: 5th Level Thief

  Objective: Gain the Thief Class (Stealth 10 (Complete), Lockpick 10, Pickpocket 5, One Thief Weapon at 10), then contact the Thieves Guild

  Reward: New contacts with the Guild, additional training from Rowan

  “OK, what’s the other thing you want?” I ask Rowan after accepting the quest. It looked pretty fun, honestly.

  “Oh, right. That. Well, lad, I need you to work the shop for me for the next week. I need a fucking vacation.” he answered in a very non-chalant manner.

  “WHAT?” came my incredibly verbose reply.

  19-Contractors

  “Oh don’t act like yer too good to run a shop for a week. I’ll even let you cut it down to eight hours a day instead of my normal sixteen.” My heart sank into my stomach. Eight hours a day in a fucking shop? I came here to make money for myself, not a fucking NPC.

  Suddenly, I realized I haven’t even looked at the inside of the store since I came in. There was a little something for everyone. He really did sell everything. I saw Alchemy reagents next to swords and armor. On the other side of the armor was a section split between Cooking supplies and what seemed to be labeled as Enchanting equipment. I have to admit it was a pretty awesome store and the perfect sort of shop for a Master of None like Rowan.

  Maybe working here wouldn’t be so bad after all. I mused after seeing the selection he had. Still, he’s already making a shit ton of money off of me.

  “So I just sell shit for you and make you some extra cash for no work while you’re already making money hand over fist off my mine?” I say with a barely concealed temper. I was starting to like the guy before, but this was just taking advantage of me.

  “I told ya not to be so indignant, lad. You didn’t even let me finish the sales pitch! Sheesh, some fucking customer you are!” He was clearly faking being insulted, which did lighten the mood a tad. He continued with his pitch.

  “If you agree, I’ll get your skills up to snuff for what you need to pick up the Merchant Job. It’ll get you Experience from selling for a profit or buying something for significantly less than its value. I’ll also let you keep fifty percent of any gold you make off sales while I’m gone. As far as things people are selling, you’ve got the option to pay out of yer own pocket and keep whatever it is for yerself or buy it out of the store’s funds. Keep in mind that you’ll be owin’ me if you make some stupid purchases.”

  When he put it like this, it didn’t seem like too bad of a deal. “I think I can swing that, but I need to talk to my friends first. We’re supposed to be getting a place to stay long term in the city. We needed somewhere for crafting and living space. I need to see what they found.”

  A toothy smile spreads across his face. “They’ll likely not find anything fitting yer needs if yer looking for all that in one. I know a place though. Just so happens there’s an incredibly handsome and intelligent shopkeeper that has a couple of extra properties in the city and one of them happens to be a warehouse style building in the business district that can be fully customized to meet your needs. It’s got room to grow and living quarters attached! Not only that the lot it’s on is even bigger so it can be expanded.

  “Now, if a fella were to be looking for something like that, said shopkeeper could part with it for, say, 100000 gold. Now, before you get your knickers bunched up so tight ya have to be cut out of them for the sake of your future offspring, we can make a payment arrangement. I can take 10000 out of what you sell me each week for ten weeks. I’ll promise you right now, lad, that’s a better deal than anyone else will give ya. Normally it’d go for at least twice that, but I want to incentivize your continued business partnership.”

  Before telling him anything for certain, I wanted to message Nik and Destreza. Nik responded almost immediately, saying that there was nothing for sale that cost less than 200000 gold and none of it had both of the features we wanted. Destreza got bored and went off to practice so Nik was looking around in the main Merchant District for suppliers for materials he needed. He said he estimated he could work through about 1000 gold worth of supplies a week for our little project.

  Our plan for his craft was simple: corner the market on flash bombs as quickly as possible. We didn’t see many players during our time in Gnometheran and the ones we did see were working towards being pure casters like Illusionists. That meant it was possible that Nik was the only Artificer in the game, at least for now. And we all know nothing says profit quite like a monopoly! With 1000 gold a week, Nik could get the supplies to make 100 flash bombs and still have time to work on other things. After seeing how much money the mine was going to make after the upgrades, I promised him 5000 gold a week in supply money. Considering what the little guy could come up with I felt it was a small price to pay.

  I thought about the housing situation for a moment before finally agreeing. It was nice that I didn’t have to come up with any money upfront, but holy fucking shit property was expensive in-game. I was basically dropping a total of ten grand of real currency on an in-game factory. I had to remind myself several times that it was an investment. That and it would cost something like four times as much to get what we need through normal means.

  Speaking of the flash bombs, I should see if Rowan will wants to sell them here. “Hey Rowan, is it alright if we sell our crafted goods here since we can’t set up our own store yet?” I ask. I decided to leave it open ended to cover the other goods we’ll be selling.

  “Well, because ya still aren’t licensed, you’d have to sell it to me and then it would be sold as part of the store’s selection of goods. That being said, it all depends on what ya got. I can take basic stuff off your hands and if somehow you can come up with something uncommon but useful I can probably make us a pretty penny.”

  “What about Gnomish Flashbombs?” I ask, holding up the “sample” Nik gave me. “These are a real ass-saver when an adventure or dungeon goes sideways.”

  Rowan takes if from my hand and examines it. “A thirty second blind in a large area as long as they’re looking that way? That’s almost too good.” He stares at it for quite awhile before he speaks again. “Alright, I bet I can move these for 100 gold per. I’ll buy them for fifty each. When they sell, I get the fifty I paid you and then we split the rest right down the middle. Deal?”

  I crunch those numbers as quickly as I can and realize it’s a fifty percent increase in what we thought we’d get from selling them. Working with this shop was definitely the way to go. At this rate I’d have the VR rig paid off in no time. I decide to set up some automated withdrawals fr
om my gold so that I’m pulling 20000 gold a week out. It leaves me with around 20,000 gold a week to save or invest. Not only that, I suddenly didn’t have to stress about bills anymore! This was definitely a first for me.

  “You got yourself a deal. Now, how about showing me to our new place?” I’m getting anxious to see it and plan. Rowan however is in no rush.

  “No, lad. First I want to get you your Merchant Job. You’re going to need it if you’re taking care of my shop for a week. It shouldn’t take long, maybe a couple of hours.”

  “According to normal people, Rowan, a couple of hours is taking long.” I said dryly.

  We started with Appraising items. He showed me how to look for the hard to spot signs of wear and tear as well as repeated repair on weapons and armor-both of these things caused drastic reductions in value. After just a few items, I got the notification for the skill finally being earned.

  New Skill!

  Appraisal

  Level 1

  Increases your ability to determine quality, condition, and value of an item.

  I also learned how to tell immediately if something was magical. He said if it was magical, I’d need help figuring out how magical it was. That was when he pulled out a scroll and taught me the first spell I’d ever learned.

  New Spell!

  Identify Level 1

  Divination

  Cost: 25 Mana

  Identify allows the caster to determine the properties of unknown items, such as items purchased directly from other players. This spell can determine magical functions, quality, durability, and current legal owner. Increasing the level of this spell increases the information gained through a single casting.

  New Magic School!

  You have gained access to Divination

  This school of magic is dedicated mind, body, and soul to perfecting the art of information gathering. Whether listening to distant conversation or monitoring locations halfway across the globe, the School of Divination does not believe in secrets.

  I double checked my character sheet after gaining these and sure enough, I had far less room to grow with magic. I supposed I definitely wouldn’t be turning into some sort of spellblade with this character. I just didn’t have the room for a lot of spells and the more spells I learned the less room for growth each spell would have. No, I didn’t need lots of magic to do what I wanted to do in this game. Identify and Divination were a perfect match for me, though. Knowledge is power, power is money, blah blah blah.

  After that, we practiced everything. I cast Identify on random items Rowan gave me until my MP was zero (four measly times in case you weren’t doing the math) and then got quizzed on the value of items and how individual properties affected that until my mana was recharged. After several cycles of this, I finally got the notifications I needed.

  Your Appraisal has increased to level 10!

  Your Identify has increased to level 10!

  Your Divination has increased to level 10!

  This was a lot easier with my armor. I received more double level-ups than I expected, which sped the process along quite nicely. After hitting these skill levels, I got the notification for the real reason we did all this.

  New Job!

  Merchant (Non-Combat)

  Requirement: Haggle 10, Appraisal 10, Identify 10

  Bonuses: +4 INT/+2 Willpower per level, +1 bonus to effective Haggle and Appraisal levels per level

  Once I’d picked up the Job, Rowan took me towards the new place. I messaged Nik and Destreza and told them where to meet us. We managed to all arrive around the same time.

  “This is the new place, boss? It’s fucking huge!” Destreza said staring up at it. She was right, too. It looked almost like a massive factory from the Industrial Revolution, save the missing smokestacks.

  “Yep, she’s our new base of operations.” I said with a smile. I was pretty proud of it already.

  “Well, technically not yours yet. We have to finalize it.” came Rowan’s response. As he said it I got a notification.

  Rowan Vonn has offered to sell you his property in Corbinhold!

  Property: Warehouse and Apartments

  Location: Corbinhold Industrial District

  Price: 100000G (10000G/week per previous agreement)

  WARNING: As this property is in the Industrial District, it must be owned by a company or corporation per Corbinhold laws.

  Would you like to incorporate at this time? A one-time fee of 1000G will be deducted from your personal holdings to create this company as a legally recognized entity within the Human Realms.

  Y/N

  Rowan was right. Bureaucracy will kill us all. I select yes with a groan and continue reading.

  Congratulations! You have formed a corporation! Please name your corporation:

  Fuck, I guess the company does need a name, doesn’t it? Well, there’s only one thing for it, then.

  Congratulations! You are now the CEO of All Trades, Inc.

  20-Customer Engagement

  Achievement Earned!

  HMFIC: Own your own company!

  Reward: +1 Level, +5 Leadership if under 20, +5 Management if under 20 (World First Bonus: No taxes!)

  Your Leadership has increased to 15!

  You may now lead three combined parties.

  Well, the level and skill points were nice, but my Management was already at 20, so there was no boost there. C’est la vie. Also, holy shit I’d dodged a bullet by being world first! No taxes? I couldn’t imagine how bad those could get.

  Before applying the free level, the five points into Leadership capped me on skill points, so I pretty much had to spend my five bonus points on Intellect. That gave me a twenty point cushion to learn the skills for Thief. I really didn’t want to stack so much Intellect all the time, but the sheer number of skills I had now was eating it up even with Master of None.

  I needed to talk to Rowan about it sometime, but Alfred seemed to have other ideas for now. “Sir, if I may have a word.” I’d forgotten how proper he was. It seemed like it had been forever since we’d spoken. Thankfully it was how he was designed. He only appeared for conversation when asked or when necessary.

  Sure, what’s up? Is something wrong?

  “Not quite, sir. I just wanted to discuss some new features you now have access to that are both menu driven and controlled through my functions. Namely, you now have a Corporation menu and an Assets menu. The Assets menu will now control both the Mine and your new Property.

  “The new Property is not yet producing anything, so you are not generating Management Points currently. However, you do start out with a significant amount to begin upgrading the facility for whatever functions you need. As it is classified as a General Business Property and is within a major city, you have several options for upgrades.”

  Can you show me?

  I almost immediately regretted asking.

  All Management Point prices shown are per unit/instance of the facility being purchased

  Guest Lodging-200 MP

  Bar-100 MP

  Product Shelf-50 MP

  Storage(Dry)-150 MP

  Storage(Humidified)-150 MP

  Storage(Cold)-200 MP

  Additional Room(Interior)-100 MP

  Additional Room(Exterior)-250 MP

  The list went on and on like this for quite awhile to the point it was almost unreadable. There was an incredible amount of absolutely mundane options like this, but it wasn’t what I needed yet.

  Can you filter this to just crafting related items? Specifically, workstations, forges, that sort of thing, but only what Nik and I could use right now.

  Forge-400 MP

  Glasswork Add-On for Forge-100 MP

  Tannery-200 MP

  Alchemy Lab-300 MP

  Greenhouse-200 MP

  Sewing Station-150 MP

  Leather Add-On for Sewing Station-100 MP

  Workstation Tier III (Required for Gnomish Artifice)-500 MP

  That’s more li
ke it. How many points do I have?

  “Due to the sheer size of the building, you start with 2,000 points, sir.”

  Great! Then let’s get Dry and Humid Storage, and then everything on the second list except The Sewing Station and Leatherworking Add-On. I can live without those for now. How long till this is ready?

  “It should be ready within a few hours, sir However, it is approaching your recommended logoff time.”

  It is getting late, huh? That’s perfect, then. Go ahead and start.

  I told the other two what’s going on and we all decided to call it a night. Destreza asked for a training and sparring area as soon as we are able to afford it. Apparently there are special ones not entirely unlike what El had in Gnometheran that allow sparring without risk of death and some can even provide increased SP regeneration to reduce downtime during training.

  I told her we would add it to the to-do list and bid everyone goodnight. When I logged out and finally got to sleep, my dreams were filled with images of me swimming in gold coins.