The next morning went smoothly.
It was only a short walk from my room to the auction house, and I had more than enough spare change for sweet bread and tea. I was not a big fan of tea, but at this point I would have done just about anything to stop drinking lemonade.
That alone was enough to remind me to level Cooking again, and to learn some better recipes while I was at it.
Unfortunately, it looked like I had missed the good prices Hunter was talking about. Even some of the cheaper recipes were going for tens of silver. In the end I only picked out three, and between that and listing all the high-quality hide in my inventory, my reserve of money dropped all the way to zero.
If everything sold at the current prices, though, it would make me a very nice profit. Around eighty silver.
I hated to say there was any upside to the recent deaths, but people were definitely being more careful now, which meant progression had slowed down. As a result, materials from Dusk Falls were consistently worth at least a silver each, and materials from the next zone, the Crooked Hills, were nearing five silver apiece.
The three recipes I bought were all chosen for one reason.
Power, or money.
[Beginner Bag]
[Prerequisite: Tailoring 75]
[Expands the carrying capacity of your inventory by 6]
[10x High Quality Cloth]
[Cape of Minor Protection]
[Prerequisite: Tailoring 50]
[Able to take a beating, Projects the slightest defensive barrier]
[8x High Quality Cloth, 10x Cloth, 1 Trivial Rune of Defence]
Lastly, and the most expensive of the bunch
[Beginner Mage Robe]
[Prerequisite: Tailoring 100]
[+5 Intelligence, +1 Willpower, Projects a small defensive barrier]
[16x High Quality Cloth, 1 Beginner Rune of Defence, 1 Beginner Rune of Intelligence]
The cape and the bags were meant to be the main money-makers.
Capes were especially good because they would not interfere with any other gear, and the one I picked seemed like exactly the kind of thing almost everyone would want. It would take time, but getting the materials was not actually going to be that hard.
Beginner cloth and runes could be found in Dusk Falls, mostly in chests scattered around the region, and thanks to my locating spell I had already marked every chest I knew about on a map. If I worked efficiently, I could clear the whole region in a day.
Normal cloth and trivial runes were the same story, except those came from The Meadow.
The full scope of the continent still had not been revealed to us. The cartographer's shop only displayed maps for zones you had personally entered, so I could only assume there was a whole chain of higher-tier prefixes attached to things like runes and cloth in areas beyond the ones we already knew.
I spent the rest of the day heading back out to Dusk Falls and running from chest to chest.
I also stopped by where I had left Hunter, but he was already gone.
While moving through the zone, I kept working out more of how leyline casting actually functioned in practice. It was extremely effective with Magic Missiles. By casting through a leyline, I could almost guarantee a hit on a creature's weak points.
One of the biggest intricacies with leylines was efficiency.
The more mana I spent to create the line itself, the less it would cost to cast through it afterward. For something like Magic Missile, though, even a fifty percent reduction was not that dramatic, so I usually stuck to thin, cheap ten-mana lines.
Fireball was different.
For a spell like that, spending twenty mana or more on the leyline could still be worth it, especially if I planned to cast through the same line multiple times.
The other issue was maintenance.
Holding a leyline took concentration, but not in a flat way. It was tied more to the spell I wanted to cast through it than to the size of the line itself. As long as I maintained concentration, I could keep using the same leyline as many times as I wanted, paying only a small but constant upkeep cost.
What was really interesting was that I knew exactly how to form the equation to calculate the most efficient amount of mana to spend.
Back on Earth, that was the kind of math I had only been decent at.
Now, with my Intelligence this high, I could build the equation and solve it in less than a second.
My brain was getting fast enough to rival early calculators, and now that I had my new class, I would finally be able to start putting some points into Willpower.
Once I did, I was hoping this ridiculous computational ability might actually become useful in a real fight, because right now I still struggled to form anything beyond the spells I used most often.
At the highest levels, I had no doubt mages could probably build spells mid-combat without much trouble at all.
And at that point, I doubted many other classes would be able to stand against them.
After thirteen hours, I had gathered every chest on the map that was actually worth going to.
There were still some scattered farther out, near the mountains or hidden in streams, but skipping those had been the right call. Even so, the haul was excellent.
[
[Stats][Magic][Inventory][Skills][Help]
Inventory: 20/20
Copper 24x
Silver 1x
High Quality Mapping Parchment 6x
High Quality Pen 1x
Compass 1x
Stew 41x
20x High Quality Cloth
20x High Quality Cloth
20x High Quality Cloth
17x High Quality Cloth
2x Beginner Runes of Protection
4x Beginner Runes of Strength
1x Beginner Runes of Agility
1x Beginner Runes of Intelligence
High Quality Wolf Hide 20x
High Quality Wolf Hide 20x
High Quality Wolf Hide 20x
Night Root 20x
Night Root 20x
Thornberry 20x
]
The hide alone should bring in a little under sixty silver, and the herbs were a nice bonus too.
Most of the herbs I had gathered so far were sitting in the chest back at the inn, mostly because I still planned to get into potion-making eventually.
When I got back to the auction house, I picked up a nice pile of forty-seven silver and a few copper from earlier sales. It was enough to buy the beginner runes I needed for the cloak at a few silver each, and the regular cloth at only a few copper.
The robe was a level 140 craft, the bag was level 100, and the cloak was only level 75.
Unlike normal XP, though, crafting XP could not fully roll over. It capped out at three levels' worth of progress at most.
Even so, that did not stop me from jumping from Tailoring 50 to 72 in only nine crafts.
It was a great investment, mostly because the cloaks were going to sell well. But because skill progression worked by pushing you toward recipes above your current level, I eventually had to switch away from the cloak and back to one of the default recipes everyone got when they learned Tailoring.
It was just a nice outfit, something plain but well-made, and it could be styled better if you had dye. I had no interest in that part.
I only made them for the skill ups, then I threw everything on the auction house alongside the cloaks.
Well, all but one of each that I kept for myself.
The barrier the cloak created was like a thin film spread over my entire body. It did not exactly inspire confidence, but it was still better than nothing.
It reminded me of a spell idea I had considered a long time ago, Mage Armor.
The principle was almost the same, wrapping the body in mana for protection, but the upkeep would have been absurd if I wanted it to actually matter. Maybe it would be worth using against an elite or a boss, but not for ordinary questing.
For questing, I knew what spell I wanted to make next.
It was a two-stage spell.
The first part would work a bit like Magic Missile, just a compact bolt of mana, except this time it would stab into a target and stay there.
The second part would attach a chain to that initial shot.
Used normally, it would be a solid way to stop something from running. But with leyline casting, I could make the chain originate from almost anywhere along the line, which would make its ability to restrain something much stronger.
Like most useful spells, it would cost a fair amount of mana.
But I did not need to maintain it for long.
All I wanted was that one moment when a creature lunged at me and got yanked backward instead.
That alone would give me more than enough time to send a well-placed Magic Missile straight into it.