After a few minutes of waiting Zach left the training area.
"Why'd you leave coward?" He said smugly
"Okay mister only use basic magic on me" I said, sorta mocking him
"Yah whatever, im better now and thats whats important"
"I agree, but here's where we part for today at least" I say, taking a step back "I got some profession stuff to do, so I recommend you go back to studying or something in the meantime"
"No way! I'm going to keep training and smash some people in the training grounds"
"Alrighty man, whatever you say" I start backing up out of the building, sending him a friend request he quickly accepts.
My next stop was the auction house, a place I liked to check up on at least once a day when I could.
"Hi, can you check my items please?" I said to the lady working the front desk, handing her my auction card.
It cost 20 silver a week, but let me place buy and sell orders along with lowering the cut they take when I make a sale.
"Yes, it seems you currently have no more listings, and here's your sales," she said, handing me back a bag of coins that amounted to a gold and a half.
"And can I look at the current listings?" I asked, still getting used to talking to the lady like she was a real person.
"Yes, here you are," she said, making a window pop up in my system.
I was looking for one item in particular, the gem that was dropped by the ratman bandit king.
I planned on making a staff from it, so when I found it for seventy-five silver I quickly scooped it up.
Along with that I looked for a wood item, and there were only a few choices, so I picked the most expensive one, whisperwood.
It came from the trees in Dusk Falls so it was probably good enough for my first staff.
Once I collected everything I bought, I headed to the enchanting shop to make the staff.
With most professions you had two choices on how to make the items.
The first was to have the system give you a loading bar and an area you needed to stay in, and once the loading bar was done your item would be complete as long as you stayed in the area.
The second was to physically do the work, and put the effort in.
If you did things this way you could escape some skill requirements to make things far before when you theoretically should.
As an extra bonus you wouldn't be limited by the 3 level per craft rule when crafting this way.
It was probably like this so a master blacksmith on Earth didn't have to grind through a bunch of stuff he already knew.
For the most part I had only ever done the first kind, but since enchanting was so difficult to get materials for I decided to try making my staff on my own.
When I took all my professions it gave me a brief intro through the system, so I knew what I needed to do in a broad sense.
So once I was in the enchanting shop I went up to a perfectly round metal bowl and dumped out all the refined mana I had stored up.
"Finally making something?" the shopkeeper asked. "Thought you just had me teach you for nothing."
"Hm, nah. Making a staff today."
"That's a good first item to make, though I think you should start with simple enchantments."
"We'll see," I said, focusing on thoroughly coating the white gem I bought in the refined mana.
The next step was to take control of the rest of the refined mana and form it into the spell circle I wanted to enchant my item with.
For my first staff this spell would be Magic Missile of course.
It took a few seconds of thought, but I started the process pretty easily.
After consuming about twenty of my total seventy-three refined mana, the spell circle started taking hold, so I started to coat the stick part of the staff as well.
Doing this I planned on having the stick project a leyline right in front of it, making it so anywhere in the path of my staff would have a decent leyline.
After consuming sixty refined mana, forty for the gem and twenty for the wood, they seemed to follow my will and connect together on their own.
Throughout the whole process I was struggling to maintain the concentration to keep it all stable, but it wasn't worse than my spar earlier.
[Projecting Staff of Magic Missile]
[Consumes 2 Mana per Missile]
[Requires 80 Intelligence]
[Enchanting: 146]
"So, a level one hundred and fifty item... That's pretty good," I said to myself, holding the staff and waving it around, pointing it at the shopkeeper.
The shopkeeper didn't react at all to me doing so, just standing there.
"What do you have there?" he asked shortly after.
I thought for a second before just walking out of the store. Talking with NPCs was weird to me, and honestly I should do it less.
I thought about it a bit as I walked out of the city and to the Crooked Hills.
It was a place I wanted to go just to gauge my strength, but also because I was currently level twenty-seven and I was eager to see what class options would come from getting to level 10 in Leyline Strategist.
The enemies in the Crooked Hills should span from levels thirty to forty, so getting levels would be quick enough I figured, though once I got there my view changed a bit.
[Level 36 Hyena Pack Leader (Elite)]
[Level 33 Hyena]
The first group I came across would result in a one on seven including an elite, so obviously I tried to sneak past only to be met with more.
[Level 34 Kobold Hunter (Elite)]
[Level 28 Kobold Wolf Pet]
[Level 32 Kobold Hunter (Elite)]
[Level 28 Kobold Wolf Pet]
[Whisper to Hunter] "Are elites really common past the first 2 areas?"
[Whisper from Hunter] "Yeah, that or you're getting a massive pack of shit"
[Whisper to Hunter] "K, thanks"
Honestly it was my bad for never asking, but looking around I certainly had to pick my fight.
After searching for a bit though I went back to the kobold hunters.
Kobolds were somewhat less ugly than gnolls, looking something like a horned lizard. Their stature was also more human.
It made me want to see if they were friendly, but I was certainly not strong enough to give up the advantage of the first strike.
It took me a while to decide how I wanted to engage the fight, but I settled on a simple strategy.
I felt confident blocking arrows, but not surviving an onslaught in melee.
The first thing I did was summon three fireballs above my head.
It was a brutal opening strike, a costly one as well, but the idea was to kill the wolves before they even got to act, then work on the hunters.
I watched as the flames got a little smaller as they flew, but just as they were going to hit, one of the hunters jumped out of the way, dodging and rolling to the side as he fired an arrow at me.
It was a speed that thoroughly surprised me, but it was still tolerable.
I only made one mana shield, putting it in front of the arrow to block, then made another.
By the time the arrow hit the floor the second hunter was already running to the treeline for cover, but I didn't plan on letting him get that protection.
Using my staff I sent a barrage of over thirty Magic Missiles at him, and although his ability to dodge was impeccable, the Magic Missiles weren't the real attack.
While sending the barrage I made a leyline and cast a fireball on the other side of the kobold, hitting it square in the face, and another arrow slammed into my shield.
By the time I turned my attention to the second hunter he was nowhere to be seen.
I knew that certain lines of hunter get access to stealth skills so my guard was raised for that, sadly my options to deal with it were all extremely mana intensive.
"God I wish Sheral was here," I whispered under my breath, blocking phantom arrows flying at me from the trees.
After a minute of blocking bolt after bolt I finally saw the second hunter as it jumped at me with an axe raised over its head, planning to cleave me in two.
The axe hit my shield with enough force to shatter it, but it gave me a chance to jump away from the strike.
Not planning to let go of its advantage, the hunter kept up the charge, rushing at me and swinging far faster than I could move, but not faster than I could think.
As the axe swung at me I formed more shields to block the strikes, targeting its hands with Magic Missiles.
After a brief moment I got some room to breathe and anchored the hunter to the ground with two Missile Bindings in its shoulder.
It was a valiant fight, but I was more than over it.
Using a firewall in a circle around it I watched as it quickly burned to death.
[Level 34 Kobold Hunter (Elite)]
[Level up]
[Level up]
[Level 32 Kobold Hunter (Elite)]