Chapter 49: A New Discovery and a Bold Move
Ryan stayed logged into the game, idly browsing the forums of the other factions to check their progress. To his quiet satisfaction, not a single race had managed to clear their first official dungeon. Naturally, this only emboldened the human players, who flooded the boards with smug taunts. In response, players from every other faction seemed to unite—if only in their shared disdain for humanity.
"This is going to be a problem," Ryan muttered, scratching his head with a grimace. "The Dark Horde factions, fine, whatever. But why are the Night Elves and Dwarves piling on, too? If we ever need cross-faction cooperation for joint quests, we’re just setting ourselves up for isolation."
He scrolled through a few more threads, then figured enough time had passed. Time to get back to work.
Roughly thirty minutes later, he’d finished crafting 1,000 Crude Sharpening Stones—enough to finally push his Blacksmithing skill to 20 points. The process had left him with over a hundred stacks of crude stones. If his inventory hadn’t been so large, there was no way he could’ve carried that much.
He kept just two stacks—forty stones total—and dumped the rest on a nearby NPC vendor. The payout was less than 20 silver.
Crude Sharpening Stones were basically junk—byproducts of leveling up the profession. One player could churn out enough to supply dozens, so they were always in oversupply. On top of that, few players in human territories even bothered with crafting at this stage. Ryan’s higher-than-average buying prices had temporarily inflated material costs, making things worse. Technically, he could sell them to other players, but he didn’t have time for that.
The Trade Dummies could only buy, not sell, and he wasn’t about to stand in Goldmine Town hawking low-tier items just to make a few gold.
Just as he was about to pick up a new profession skill, a message popped up from Evelyn.
"Thanks."
One simple word. But it was the first time Ryan had ever seen her express anything like that. It caught him off guard—and reminded him just how vicious the forum trolls had been. Too far. They’d gone too far.
And Ryan wasn’t the only one who felt that way.