The Hunter's Guide to Monsters

Seven high quality slices to Krow, five to the butcher shop wright.

The craftmaster nodded. She turned away. "Balgurai! Sell him your wright skills. One drax each."

Whoa. Cheap. 

Sure enough, the draculkar protested. "Adalace!"

"You disturb my evening, you pay the price!"

"Come now, it was only a little bit of fun!"

Well, Krow was grateful for her support, even if it was to punish someone else.. Even though Krow had the feeling she didn't like him.

Then again, she was a craftmaster. 

He'd entered Redlands as part of the war expansion. The guns he carried made that fact obvious.

Even though with the war expansion, the craftmasters had been given the chance to choose added classes for themselves, statistics from the future indicated that less than 60% took the option of a battleclass and of those, less than 35% used their battleclasses actively.

There was a divide between craftmasters and warmasters until the craft update forced them to work together.

"Masters Balgurai and Adalace were taught by the same master," Olanda Arellas saw him looking at the two masters with some interest. "Their relationship is of great comradery."

Krow shook his head, smiled at the wright.

His curiosity was because he was fairly certain Balgurai was a non-player.

Redlands was an immersive game. He should've realized that the craftmasters had complex relationships with the non-player AIs at this time.

He wondered how that affected the gameplay of the warmasters.

In crafter cities and towns, their quests must have been interesting.

"Do you sell knives?"

"We do," she lifted a brow at him. "I have to ask, how are you that good with a knife?"

"A lifetime of practice," he told her frankly.

"I...see." She shook her head. "Come. The knives are in the sidehall. You can find Craftmaster Balgurai later."

The knives she showed him were similar to the Uncommon sets he got in Nyurajke. He just had to replace the damaged ones in the sets he already had.

Seeing his pickiness, Olanda smirked. "If you're looking for knives like Craftmaster Adalace's, you're out of luck. Those are all sold out."

Krow laughed. "I think I'll need to save a country or something equally drastic before I could acquire something like those for myself."

Her smirk widened.

Balgurai came looking for Krow about a half-hour later, as he was discussing with Olanda and a few apprentices which parts of various monsters to feed which kind of person.

Apparently, to butchers, the kind of meat a person bought said something about them.

"You, hunter." He called for Krow's attention. "This way."

"It's Krow, in fact."

"Yes, yes. Let's get this finished, shall we?"

Krow took leave of his conversation partners with a shrug, followed Balgurai to Adalace's office.

Adalace fiddled with a Skill Crystalizer in the corner. She glanced up as they entered. "I don't have to tell you that Skill Shards only have an 80% success rate for absorption, right?"

"When using with a realism percentage under 90%, craftmaster," he refuted. "Otherwise, 95% success is common."

She straightened, surprised. "You have mastery of knife-handling at over 90% realism? What do you do?"

As expected of a craftmaster. She immediately knew his skill was fully mastered.

He shrugged. "I worked in a corporate office until I was laid off."

"After which you took up knife juggling?" Adalace asked incredulously. Balgurai moved to replace her on the machine.

As a player, she well knew how much real-life skill affected skill advancement in Redlands. At his level, it was impossible to have a mastered skill unless he was a realworld pro.

"I'm actually pretty clumsy when juggling." His very brief college career as a stage-play clown would attest to that. He'd been relegated to backstage for the rest of the project.

"Became a chef, then?"

"You wouldn't want to eat my cooking."

"A carver of some kind?"

"I do have some artistic ability."

"…surgeon?"

"I look that much like a genius?"

"True. Impossible."

Krow looked at her speechlessly. Oy, could you be a little less blunt?

"It's done." Balgurai stepped away from the Skill Crystalizer. There were six Skill Shards in his hands.

Adalace lifted a brow. "The last time, you had only four wright skills."

"You're not the only one who likes to learn new skills, you know," her friend muttered.

"Mm." She checked the Skill Shards. "Quality Cut, Meatseller, Bonesplitter, Charcutier, Haggle and Greater Appraisal."

Krow tried not to react.

One drax was in fact the price for Apprentice skills.

Wright skills usually sold from three to twenty drax, depending on the subclass and skill rarity.

Common wright skills sold for three drax.

Ordinary master butchers generally only sold two wright-rank skills, as the skill needed to be fully mastered before it could be crystalized.

The draculkar had four butcher wright-rank skills. The last two weren't butcher skills but trade skills.

He normally needed a trade subclass to be able to use those skills. But he rolled a merchant clan in registration, so he could absorb Haggle.

Greater Appraisal needed no subclass or main class requirement.

Greater Appraisal, in particular, caught his attention because it was rare for anyone to have it. Most appraisal skills were specific to a class, like gem appraisal for jewellers and ore appraisal for miners and smelters.

Greater Appraisal meant he didn't have to buy any other appraisal skill after this. It normally sold at top price, eighteen to twenty-five drax.

For one measly drax, it was really a steal.

He understood why Balgurai was aggrieved.

Balgurai poured the shards onto the table. He smiled at Krow. "My hunter friend, our wager is done. Six drax, if you would."

"The name is Krow, truly." Krow dropped a pouch of coin into the draculkar's outstretched hand. "It was an honor, to see the skills of a craftmaster's workshop."

He swept the shards into his Inventory, touched his fingers to his forehead, and left.

He went immediately to the counter. "The meat and organs I brought, have they been weighed?"

The apprentice stared at him for a moment, then nodded. "Y-yes. Everything, including the delicacies and the thunder-badgermole carcasses, comes to two hundred and seventy-six drax, sixteen serpens. Is this acceptable?"

Krow smirked. "I'll take it."

Skill-buying was only this easy in Redlands.

In Zushkenar, the only Skill Crystalizers existed in the Shrines of Knowledge. The cost had risen as well, so much that many could not pay it.

He'd seen one Shrine on a pillar earlier, which was what gave him the idea of buying his wright-rank butcher skills.

Krow exhaled, a little vexed at himself. 

If he'd remembered this earlier, he could have bought basic and apprentice skills for all his subclasses in Nyurajke.

The night was lively as he left the butcher shop. 

He walked toward the area the gatekeeper said was called scholar's street, dodging drunks, several groups of bards plying their skills on the paths, beggars, burghers, gamblers, and bagmen.

He surmounted a flight of stairs, paused by a balustrade.

Great stars twinkled in the skies, the attention-demanding moon for the moment hidden in a bank of cloud.

It was not a sight possible in Greatcentral City, where light pollution kept the inhabitants from seeing all but the brightest stars.

The diamant-studded sky above and the firely-like lamps in the valley below; it seemed like Rakaens floated on a lake of stars.

He continued on the viaduct to the Third tower.

What would Cerkanst have been like, as a town?

He'd never had the occasion to travel to it, his last life.

Grand like Nyurajke? Rural, like the draculkar lowland towns? Or like this, a trade town with visible history on every wall?

A mix of Earth and Redlands combined?

Krow sighed.

What was the use of conjecturing?

Maybe it was a good thing he never saw it.

Think instead, what sort of town would he want to build in the future?

*

Chapter End

*

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