Master of None

by Shane Walker

  I messaged all of them as a group, explaining that it would be a few days at least before I could hire them. Additionally, they would be paid according to their production and would be expected to produce for as close to eight hours a day as they could manage. However, I also included some rough figures explaining how they could essentially live off of the money we made together. That’s assuming, of course, they’re willing to play for a full shift worth of crafting.

  Unfortunately for my sanity, beyond additional messages in the new group chat (that usually devolved into some cruel sounding but good natured ribbing between the McSean brothers) the rest of the week was painfully dull. I did manage to increase my production rate on potions, though. The second night of brewing, I made 200, the third I made 300, and the fourth and fifth I managed 400 each night.

  Between the shop and potions, I’d managed to make 22,000 gold over the final four days of the week of shop-sitting. Additionally, Merchant hit level 16, Alchemist hit 11, and Rogue gained four levels, putting me at 22. This was some astronomical level gaining.

  Points for Jobs went straight to Willpower as previously. Rogue was once again invested entirely into Agility. Thanks to my items, I had so much room for skill growth I didn’t know what to do with myself. That meant I could skip Intellect on level-ups for now, at least.

  In addition, Haggle went up four, Appraisal went up ten, and Alchemy and Herbalism went up seven points each. I had even managed to pick up an achievement at some point in there.

  Achievement Earned:

  Coffee is for Closers: Sell 100,000 gold worth of goods

  Reward: +5 Haggle, +1 Class Level, +1 Merchant Level (World First Bonus: Double Reward!)

  If nothing else, that achievement showed me I was on the right track here. No one else had made that sort of money in-game yet, at least from selling. Even if I only got a portion of those profits from the stuff I sold on behalf of Rowan, I doubted someone found that much gold just lying around in dungeons so far.

  When I noticed the achievement and bonus, I’d just closed up shop the last day of Rowan’s vacation. The latest shipment from Gnometheran would be coming in soon, so I decided to head home for the day to meet it. I still had some time before the wagons would show, so I dumped my Rogue attribute points into Agility, then my Merchant points into Willpower.

  I was pleased with the overall gains from the last week, but I knew I was only getting started. The mine was about to kick up into a new gear and I would have some employees soon. It was about to be a really good week.

  22-Diversification

  When the cart finally arrived, the cart driver had a note from Mayor Poppil reminding me that I had Management Points to spend now that the first week was done. Apparently I’d had my head so far up my ass doing the whole Merchant and craft thing that I completely missed the messages from him reminding me that I’d have Management Points when the week officially ended.

  I decided to rectify the situation immediately. The floors could only be expanded once, so I went ahead and got it out of the way on the Iron floor. Unfortunately, it was only about a 50% increase in output.

  I also added four more rail expansions to get the multiplier from two to three.

  Holy shit! I looked at the figures for how much I would make with all of the upgrades. This is over a hundred thousand gold a week! I need to find a way to invest!

  I recalculated the Iron I’d be keeping and what I’d be selling to Rowan. Since he was willing to buy everything I’d sell him, I put him at 15,500 ingots a week while keeping 10,000 for myself. I would have to watch the consumption of ingots with the new Smithies and see if it would be enough or too much.

  Speaking of Rowan, he was looking over the sales records of the previous week and looked ready to shit enough bricks to build himself a nice retirement home. “Holy shit, lad! How the hell did you make this much? Several of these days you sold over 3,000 gold in good!”

  I calmly explained how I’d been crafting at night, selling my goods the next day, and setting aside his cut based on the percentages we’d agreed upon with the flash bombs. The flash bombs, I reminded him, we still hadn’t started selling.

  “And on top of all that,” I continued, “I now have crafters working for the company that will be regularly producing these wares and more. If you’re interested, we can set up contracts covering rates and deliverables for what you’d like to sell out of the store. If that’s the case, I’d like to get pre-payment so I can go ahead and start paying my new hires with that instead of mine and the company’s coffers.”

  Rowan looked completely taken aback. “Holy shit, lad. When did you turn into such a professional businessman?”

  I didn’t really understand what he meant until I mentally played back everything I’d just said. That was certainly a change in pace for me. “Maybe being here in your shop was good for me? That and putting myself into a leadership position. It seems like it’s all helped.”

  “I’d certainly say it has.” he replied with a grin that showed a small hint of pride. “I hope you remember to take care of those folks you got working under you!

  “Now, about the contracts. As far as armor and weapons, I want fifty suits of steel full plate instead of the iron suits you sold before, fifty steel breastplates, 100 steel longswords, 100 steel shortswordsand 100 kite shields each week. Is that doable for your crew?”

  It was too big of an order for just the brothers, so I would eventually need to hire another smith. “If I pitch in, we can handle it. How much is that worth?”

  He writes a few things down quickly and comes back with his figure. “100,000 a week sound good?”

  I have to think over how that is split between us, but it’s still a major chunk of money for each of us. It will even allow me to pull another 10,000 gold a week for myself. Hell, at this point, I can already start pulling money to give to my family!

  I decided to start converting another 10,000 a week, bringing the total to 30,000 gold a week for me, then I set up to withdraw 50,000 gold a week for my family, and finally 10,000 gold a week to pay off the loan on equipment. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to keep the juice from running on my loan, but it was enough to keep someone from showing up outside my apartment to break my legs.

  I finally brought my thoughts back to the moment and asked the question that popped into my head as soon as he gave me the order numbers. “Why those specific orders? That seems like a lot to sell from the shop.”

  He laughed as though it was a silly question to even ask. “This won’t be going through the shop, lad. It’s going straight to the military. See, the iron shortage caused the crown to fire most of the fellas in the kingdom with Blacksmith Jobs. No sense keeping bakers if ya ain’t got flour, right?

  “So after that, the military is in a damn squeeze trying to work through the iron as fast as you can bring it in. That’s where I come in. Or rather, that’s where we come in. Ya see, we aren’t just selling the crown the ingots, we’re selling the damn equipment, too!. So now we got supply of both skill and materials, both of which are in high demand. I’m paying you roughly what they’d sell for out of a store and I’ll be charging the military double that. We’re both gonna be rich, lad.”

  Holy shit, this is big! What else can we sell the military, I wonder? After I have that thought, I pose the question to Rowan and he says it’s too soon to say.

  “What do you mean?” I ask. I don’t understand what could change.

  “The tides have to turn before the military can afford any more of this. We’re selling enough to fit more than 100 soldiers a week in steel equipment. They only need so much because the whole soiree up north has gone absolutely tits up.

  “They have to gear the new soldiers heading out to the field. The problem is that the issue was compounding because they were replacing losses with under-equipped troops that were more likely to die. That lead to more troops going out under-equipped, and you get the idea from there.”

  “Are you sayi
ng this could affect the outcome of the war?” I ask incredulously.

  “It just might, lad. It just might.” he said with a thoughtful nod.

  “In either case,” he continued, “we’ll get filthy fucking rich in the meantime.”

  The next week continued in a similar fashion to the previous in that I was running the shop all day and working on skills all night. Rowan said he was going to be out during the day working on finalizing deals and contracts with the military to get all the gear sold, so I’d have to run the place for him.

  The change this week was that, at night I was working on my Thief skills. I’d gotten some players with the Blacksmith Job that didn’t want to be tied down and had them sign contracts to work short term for me for one month. I had three that were decently skilled and they were able to fill in the gaps to get the order done on time. Unfortunately for them, they also worked for much less than my employees. Whereas the Smithies that were official employees were making almost 20,000 gold a week, the temps made only 10,000. I hoped they’d see the light and stay on full time, but I wasn’t entirely convinced they would.

  The Thief skills I had to learn were, thankfully, somewhat familiar to me. I was working on similar concepts to things I’d done in real life in my younger days and I hoped that would help.

  First, Rowan had me learning to Pickpocket. His method was to have me pull bells off of a training dummy in the dark without making a sound. He said it was a classic training method for thieves and ninjas. I accused him of being derivative. When he asked, I refused to explain. He just wouldn’t get it.

  This little task lasted the first night and a half as my Rogue skill-learning bonus, armor ability, and real-world experiences all got me the Pickpocket skill and leveled it to ten. I doubt I’d use it much, but it was nice to have regardless.

  Pickpocket

  Level 10

  +1% Chance per Level of Successfully removing or placing an object in a person’s pocket

  Note: Synergistic with Stealth (Stealth level and Pickpocket level combine to determine chance)

  Through no small amount of dumb luck, it only took about an hour of studying locks and practicing picking them following Rowan’s instructions to pick up the five levels I needed to pick up Thief. That left just one more skill to build up and it was the one I was dreading the most.

  “Well, look who brought his ass to his own training area after almost two weeks.” Destreza said with a wicked grin on her face. “I hope you’re ready, boss.”

  “Don’t get too excited, Des. I need to build my Dagger skill up five more levels and I was hoping we could spar to do it.” I say, hoping to calm her down before she runs me through out of pure muscle memory.

  “Well, let’s get started, then! I’m on your dime. Spars are 500 gold each!” she said without a hint of humor.

  You have been defeated by Destreza!

  That was the sixth time I’d seen the message in the last half hour. So far she’d made two weeks’ wages off of me in thirty minutes. I was feeling fleeced.

  “What the hell, Des? How is it worth it to pay to lose instantly?” I asked. My patience was finally at its limit.

  She smiled and responded “It shows you that you must get better. Also, you should look at your notifications outside the spar results.”

  I did as she suggested and noticed that my Light Armor skill had gone up nine points and Perception had gone up five! Apparently these were a result of the amount of damage I was taking wearing my Light Armor and the intense focus I was trying to apply to the fight in an attempt to follow Des’ movements.

  “You’re still following my sword.” she said as if reading my mind. “Watch my how my body moves. Shoulders, hips, feet, eyes, these things will all tell you far more about what I am about to do than the sword will. The sword is simply doing as it is told. The body is what is in charge.”

  To say Des was incredible was an understatement. She was built like God came down to Earth and sculpted a perfect killing machine by hand and then gave it the sharpest piece of metal He could find. Her arms were just long enough to give her a dangerous amount of extra reach, but not enough to make her lanky. Her legs were lean muscle that always seemed bent slightly like springs ready to release all of that stored up energy and put it behind running the person in front of her through like a kebab. Her whole body was likewise covered in lean muscle. Powerful but without the bulk to slow her down.

  All of that is to say that I didn’t view Des sexually in any way. That wasn’t just because she was my friend, bodyguard and employee. It was also because I was absolutely fucking terrified of her. I feared her in a primal way, like a gazelle seeing a lion napping under a tree and hoping it didn’t wake up. So far in-game she was the fastest thing I’d seen and I had a sneaking suspicion she wasn’t much slower in real life.

  Taking her words and that fear into consideration, it became much easier to focus on what she was doing instead of the sword. After all, the real threat wasn’t the sword, it was her.

  Of course, that was all theory. From a practical standpoint, she kicked my ass soundly four more times before I managed to make any kind of stand.

  This time I saw her forward foot plant and shoulders shift signaling the incoming attack. It was significantly easier to avoid this way.

  You dodged Destreza’s Attack!

  She followed up with a slash towards my throat. The way she twisted her wrist and shifted her feet gave it away before she could execute.

  You dodged Destreza’s Attack!

  The slash went wider than she’d anticipated since it met no resistance (my neck), so it left her vulnerable.

  You hit Destreza for 53 damage!

  A slash across the stomach took her to nearly half health. Somehow, though, she turned with the cut as it dug in. That allowed her to turn perpendicular to me so that she could step forward and avoid my follow-up.

  Destreza dodged your Attack!

  This, of course, had been her plan all along when she telegraphed the slash. The feint left me overextended as I’d lunged forward to hit an opening I had no hope of truly exploiting. That’s why I was completely defenseless as Des spun towards me and ran her rapier directly between my ribs.

  Destreza hit you for 199 damage!

  Thank fucking goodness pain was disabled for sparring. I’d probably have logged out to have a good cry if I’d actually felt that last attack.

  Destreza has won the Spar!

  That was disappointing, to say the least, but it was worth it. Just lasting that long against someone so much better than me got me three more Light Armor levels, six Dodge levels, eight Dual-Wielding levels, and a staggering twelve in Daggers. Of course, I later found out that this was because the game had given Des a sort of sub-ownership of the sparring room and she’d upgraded it accordingly to further increase learning speed. That and I had a sneaking suspicion the game itself was amazed I’d managed to last that long against her.

  I was originally a little frustrated she’d upgraded something in the HQ without my knowledge or approval, but I couldn’t be mad at her when I’d benefited so directly. Not only that, but she’d earned the right to upgrade it since she’d been the one earning the points. Besides, I got the notification I was waiting on.

  New Job!

  Thief

  Requirement: Stealth 10, Lockpick 10, Pickpocket 5, Thief Weapon 10

  Bonuses: +1 Stealth, Lockpick, & Pickpocket/Level, +4 AGI/Level, +2 END/Level

  23-Employees of the Month

  The next day I wanted to head to Rowan’s as soon as I was logged on. I was looking forward to seeing what he planned on teaching me in exchange for my help with the Thieves Guild. I just hoped it didn’t take too much time away from my work back at HQ. It still felt weird calling it HQ sometimes. Then again, it was the headquarters for my corporation after all. Hell, I even had employees! Pretty awesome, right?

  Speaking of, it was impressive to see their improvements over the previous week. While each had
their Job already when coming to work for me, they hadn’t had the opportunity, or reason for that matter, to really push themselves. That was changing now that they were working for All Trades, Inc. Everyone under me had grown surprisingly quickly. Apparently it was some hidden mechanic that increased skill and level improvement for employees and guild members until they were caught up to whoever they worked for, CEO or otherwise.

  Honestly, though, as I was walking through to leave, I realized I’d spent almost no time with any of them since they’d started working here. This included Nik, who was my first friend in the game. I decided I could at least spend a few minutes catching up with everyone before I went to Rowan’s since I wasn’t working there this week.