[SP: F1] Alchemical Apprenticeship <<Earning a Living>>

[Garret 0]

"Hmm...If I were an alchemist's shop, where would I be...?" Garret muttered to himself as he walked around the market square in the Town of Beginnings, trying to locate a shop where he could check out potion prices, to help avoid being easy monster prey out in the fields. Looking around at the stalls and various interesting items and foods being sold, he couldn't locate the alchemist's stall. Then, after another few sweeps of the plaza, and many more confused mutterings, Garret spotted it- "Toil and Trouble Alchemy".

"There we go! Ugh, if I'd been paying more attention I'd have found this shop an hour ago." Garret muttered to himself, crossing the plaza without any major crashes into other players or goods-laden NPCs. He strode to the door and pushed it open to hear a cheery woman's voice say, "Welcome to Toil and Trouble!"

[Garret 0]

Garret wasn't sure what he'd expected the shop to look like on the inside...maybe dark and gloomy, with a Victorian laboratory kind of feel, or like a witch's lair. This place felt like anything but. It was a cheery, warm little wood-floored shop that felt more like you were walking into a kitchen. There was a pretty red-haired NPC woman manning the counter, wearing a stain-covered apron and smiling to Garret.

Collecting himself, he strode up to the shopkeeper, and asked, "Hello, I was looking to find out what the going rate is for low-potency potions? I'm going to need to go into the field soon and I want to be prepared." "Well," replied the lady, "the best way to be prepared is to prepare yourself! If you go gather some supplies up for me, I can teach you how to be an Alchemist, and you'll be able to stock your own flasks!"

A small notification window appeared in front of Garret's face, between him and the shopkeeper's outstretched hand. It read, "Quest- Accept?" and had two buttons beneath that reading, "Yes" and "No".

"It's not what I was expecting, but I'll certainly take it." Garret chuckled to himself, pressing the "Yes" button.

"Excellent!" exclaimed the woman, "you're my new Apprentice!"

[Garret 0]

"My name is Arista." the NPC went on, "Now that we're Master and Apprentice, we should probably get to know each other. And you are?"

Garret marveled for a moment at the complexity in AI characters nowadays. "Oh, I'm Garret." he replied.

"Well Garret," Arista continued, "we have our work cut out for us. I need you to go collect a few ingredients for us to start with so that I can teach you the basics. Then you can operate independently and make your own brews!"

A notification window popped up, displaying the plants Arista wanted collected, and how to pick them. It didn't seem all that complicated, and Garret was PRETTY sure he could manage picking some flowers.

"Alright, I'll be back when I've collected the necessary ingredients, Arista. See you then!" Garret said, turning and marching out of the shop, excited to go get to work.

[Garret 0]

For a moment, Garret wondered aloud, "Maybe the NPCs in this game aren't so fake as I thought...Arista acts and talks like a real person...or maybe it's just personality patterning...I dunno." Garret rolled the thoughts around in his head while he hiked out to the edge of the forest, where the herbs grew. He was careful to avoid the fields where mobs were rumored to spawn aggessively, which meant he took a little longer to get there in the end, but it'd be much safer that way. 

"I wish I wasn't so weak...if this were the real world I could take level one monsters one-versus-one easy! Now I have to wait til I get my stats up gathering plants to be combat effective...and not die." At least the plants here couldn't make him break out in allregic reactions like in the real world. And it was pretty to be out in the sunny part of the woods, gathering flowers.

Finally reaching his destination, he looked around for the plants by memory, but couldn't see any. "What did those look like again...?" He consulted his journal for the pictures of the herbs, and then set about trying to find some.

[Garret 0]

ID: 54380

LD: 6 (Fail to find)

"This is proving to be tougher than I expected...I guess that's why there's a quest for it and not everyone can immediately know Alchemy." Garret thought to himself as he trudged around the forest, snacking on his bread he'd entered game with and drinking from one of his waterskins. "Maybe they're hidden in plain sight...kinda like how a lot of weeds grow in the middle of other things." Garret remarked. He started stalking around the brush, careful to not disturb any nests that might be hiding in the bushes. The last thing he needed was to fight a monster right now, all alone out in the woods with nobody to help him. Being careful, he kept up his work, searching through the brush.

[Garret 0]

ID: 54386

LD: 2 (Fail to find)

"OR maybe that idea wasn't the gem I thought it was. I wonder if the journal says anything about WHERE they grow, or what they grow NEAR, or whether they smell like a particular thing..." He looked in his menu and dug up his journal, reading the entry over again.

"Xantham flowers smell a bit like strawberries, this root here grows down by streams, and the last entry barely gives any info...great." Garret listed off the entries grumpily. Stomping around in the woods long enough, anyone was bound to find something, so Garret continued his same tactic of walking around until he could see something that looked like the herbs, get up close, see that it wasn't the herb, and be disappointed. And on...and on...and on...

[Garret 0]

ID: 54387

LD: 18 (Found 1 Alchemy Material)

At first, Garret didn't dare believe his eyes... "Is that...? Yes! I found plant number three!" he shouted triumphantly, running over to the tree it was growing next to and plucking the cluster of leaves up to place in his inventory. Now there was just stream plant and strawberry smell plant...He'd find those soon enough, he now felt confident.

"If I can find the hardest one right off the bat, the others will be no problem at all!" Garret exclaimed excitedly, and began looking around with renewed purpose. Never had he thought that he'd be so excited to be picking plants at the edge of a wood. He took a break after a short bit of unsuccessful searching to sit under a shady tree and rest. He'd spent a lot of time bent over and his virtual back was realistically hurting from it.

[Garret 0]

As he sat there, he hummed a couple songs to himself, and then wondered whether Arista sang while she worked, or what she did at all. "Do NPCs have sleep schedules in this world? Do they act like they have feelings? There's so much we take for granted and just accept at face value that nobody ever really thinks about the possibility that, to some degree, maybe the cybernetic denizens of Aincrad are real..." Garret realized he'd been talking aloud to himself, and shook his head. He needed to get back to work, though while he searched, the thoughts echoed in his mind.

ID: 54390

LD: 1 (Fail to find)

[Garret 0]

"All this philosophy is distracting me from the important bit here. I need to find these herbs, complete the Quest, get the XP, and level the hell out of Aincrad!" Garret said, digging around for the herbs and not finding any. Clearly his head was too in the clouds from all this overthinking on the topic of NPCs. They're just ones and zeroes, nothing mystical to them that would give them higher thought. After all, that's not how computers work.

ID: 54392

LD: 15 (Found Alchemy Material)

"Ha, ha!" Garret laughed, picking the sweet-smelling flower with glee, "I thought I could smell strawberries. Now I only need that one other plant, and I'll be good to go. That one other plant that only grows by streams...this may take awhile."

[Garret 0]

ID: 54393

LD: 20 (Found Alchemy Material)

"Darn...been out here another hour longer than I thought I'd be...does it only grow in one area near this stream, or what?" Garret complained. He'd found the freakin' stream almost an hour ago, and since then he'd ben digging around the edges of it, going downstream, trying to find the flower he was looking for. After about a half an hour, he'd started walking back upstream, thinking it might be there, and now that he'd just started getting upstream from his starting point, he was getting discouraged again, not finding the plant he'd set out for. Until he saw it, sighed a sigh of great relief, and picked the flowers.

[Garret 0]

"Now I can finally head back to Arista. Damn...where am I?" Garret realized he'd wandered a long way away from his starting point as he'd come deeper into the woods for the herbs. It might take awhile to get back...he started trudging on back to the Town of Beginnings. He started singing one of his favorite songs to pass the time, it was styled after Norse songs, and he felt connected to the words. Words about becoming a man, fending for oneself, and really gaining true strength.

"Levels are great and all...but if you're not a strong hearted person to go along with it...other strength isn't worth anything." Garret said to himself, after he finished singing his song. Someday, he vowed, he would be willing to say that he was a man. But today he felt like a weak little boy, that could be run over by a cybernetic pig.

[Garret 0]

"You there- stop where you are!" Garret heard a voice cry out. Perhaps it was idiotic, but he did, he stopped and looked around to see a young man like himself with a two-handed sword pointed at him from a couple steps distance away, around the corner of a large tree. Garret clearly needed to pay better attention.

"I don't want any trouble, and I don't have any col, so don't go wasting your time if you're looking for a fight or a quick buck." Garret spat, stepping back and away, his hand drifting towards his sword's hilt over his shoulder. The young man bristled and readjusted his stance, taking a step forward to match Garret's step back.

"Just hand over whatever you have. You've gotta have something if you've been out here farming, so don't play dumb!" he yelled.

Edited March 31, 2016 by Garret

[Garret 0]

"I have a couple valueless herbs and a sword. If you try to fight me over the herbs, this is gonna go one of two ways- one, you win. You kill me, you take my stuff and sell it for a few col. Two- I win, and you died trying to make a few col early on in this death game. It's a lose-lose for you. Kill a person over something almost worthless, or lose your own life."

The warrior slouched a little at Garret's words, but then straightened up slightly, "Yeah, well it's not my problem if you're stupid enough to fight me. If you get yourself killed fighting a better armed opponent, that's your fault for being stupid, not mine for trying to get what I need to survive!" he bellowed, taking a couple steps forward, which Garret matched wtih quick hops back.

"You know that's obviously a basic sword, right? You're not better armed, you're posturing. You're trying to scare me into giving up because you don't wanna try to fight and kill anyone, and that makes sense. Only problem is I know what you're doing, and I'm not backing down. So, what's it gonna be? A blade in your belly, or a relaxing walk back to town?"

[Garret 0]

To Garret's surprise, the other player's eyes glistened with tears welling up. He blinked them back and roared, "Well, what are we supposed to do?! This game has set us all up to lose and we need to do whatever we can to scrape by now. If that means killing people, maybe we just have to do that now! I don't wanna kill anyone...but if there's not choice...well, what do you suggest?!" he finished, screaming at Garret and stabbing his blade into the ground, heaving in anger, and fear. 

"Look...I know you're scared. Honestly, so am I. Nobody here wants to kill anyone or scavenge for food, or fight monsters to be able to go home...but that's where we are now. I don't wanna die. I wanna go back to the real world. I wanna grow old with someone, have a family, but unless we work together now and try to hold everything up, we're not gonna make it back. So just turn around and walk back to town now. If you really need loot, go look for some herbs or go fishing or something. But don't kill anyone."

[Garret 0]

Garret's words softened him. He wasn't some computer program designed to kill. He was a human being that didn't want to be here any more than Garret. He nodded, "Thank you. I needed to hear that...Good luck on your path. I hope we both get out of here." and with that, pulled a blue crystal from his pocket and said, "Teleport- Town of Beginnings!" He disappeared in a flash of blue.

Garret reeled from his encounter with the swordsman for the rest of his walk back. He kept wondering how badly that would have gone if he'd been unable to talk that poor guy down. He wondered if he could kill someone so sad and broken, even if he really had to...

"Important part is, I kept it under control, and now I can go get this bloody quest over and done with." Garret told himself, trudging back to town with renewed vigor.

[Garret 0]

The sun had almost set when Garret walked in through the town gate. He wasn't sure Arista's shop would be open at this point...but he figured it was worth a try. He walked the labyrinthine streets until it was dark and the only lights around were the lamps on the streets and the warm glows from inside taverns. When he finally found Arista's shop again, he marked it on his map so he'd find it easily tomorrow, because the door was locked and it wouldn't be open til the next day.

"Well...guess I'm gonna have to see whether there's any inns I can get into for now."  Garret remarked, looking for the warm-glowing windows he'd been looking into just a little bit earlier.

[Garret 0]

Locating one of the taverns in the city and pushing the door open into it, Garret was hit with a smell of good food, fire from the mantle, and a lot of noise. Few people looked his way when he walked inside because there was a bar brawl going on. It was a safe zone, which meant that players couldn't take damage, but they could sure knock each other around. The players in the tavern seemed to be celebrating this by throwing everything they could at everyone they could. Garret ducked under two thrown drinks and a chair on the way to reserve a room for the night. On the way up the stairs, he ran into a young man trying way too hard to flirt with an attractive swordswoman and cringed his way past them up to his room.

"Ugh. I didn't realize how bad I needed sleep until I got in here..." Garret moaned, flopping onto the bed, unequipping his sword, and pulling the blanket up over himself so he could crash out.

[Garret 0]

Garret woke up in his plain room at the inn, stretched, yawned a lot, and continued yawning his way down the stairs to the dining room, where the innkeeper NPC had replaced all the broken chairs from the night before and made everything neat again. Someone needed to give that NPC a raise or something. He sat down to eat the meal that went with the night's stay. The food was a little saltier than it needed to be. Maybe that was intended to get new players out of the Town of Beginnings early on- mediocre living conditions would motivate some people to get off their butts and clear the game. Garret chuckled to himself at that thought, finishing his oversalted eggs and heading out the door of the now empty tavern to Toil and Trouble.

[Garret 0]

The trip to the shop was easy now that he had a map guiding him there instead of his inadequate sense of direction. As Garret walked through the door he was greeted, once more, by Arista.

"Garret!" she exclaimed upon seeing his face clearly for a moment, "So good to see you back. Did you get the herbs I asked for?"

She seemed so lifelike... "Er, yeah- here they are!" Garret said, retrieving them from his inventory and offering them to Arista via trade window. A notification popped up. "You cannot trade player-to-player with Non-Player Characters." and then Arista continued speaking, "Good work, Garret! Come into the back of the shop with me, we'll get right to work on restocking my shelves."

[Garret 0]

After a morning and an afternoon full of learning the difference between dicing something and cubing it, and slicing and chopping, and what roots did what, and what flower petals did what when mixed with what leaves, Garret felt mentally exhausted and his knuckles were raw from working at the mortar and pestle. At the same time, he felt good working with Arista. She might have been an AI, but that made her an excellent teacher, and when the lesson was finally over, she turned to face Garret, putting the last bottle of potion on the shelf behind him.

"Good work, Garret! I think you're ready for your own mortar and pestle, and the right to be called an Alchemist!" Arista proclaimed, prompting another notification window reading, "Complete Quest!" Garret booped the button saying, "Yes" and the mortar and pestle item appeared in his inventory. The rest of the quest rewards popped in as well, including the XP he'd been after.