abcnovels
Chapter 9
Chapter 9
On the day I celebrated my 12th Birthday, I became an F-rank Adventurer.
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Name: Allen.
Rank: F
Age: 12
Blessings:
Skills:?Concealment??Appraisal??Alchemy?.
Place of residence: Lurden
Cash on hand: 2,901,534
Level: 1
Strength: E
Magic Power: F
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Now that I was 12 years old, my level and status were finally displayed on my guild card. I was wondering why I couldn't see them before, but I heard it was specifically made so that the G-ranked children couldn't see them.
In addition, the simple status screen was an intentional design of the game. It might have been intended to be that way in order to streamline this section of the game, but ironically it made it harder to play since you couldn't accurately tell your own strengths.
"So you're finally F-ranked, kid? We're going to be short on hands to clean the sewers."
"Oh! Congratulations, Allen!"
"You did it, kid!"
Since teacher said it out loud, the adventurers around me started congratulating me too. In the past four years, I've become quite close with the people of the guild.
"Oh, so you're finally F-rank, aren't you? Congratulations."
"Thanks, Monica."
Monica, a waitress at the tavern attached to the guild, congratulated me from the side. She hugged me tightly as usual. Monica was a pretty woman with large breasts, but she's always been a bit too touchy for my tastes. She was hugging me and squeezing my face against her chest, which was both painful and delightful.
Well, I was also a man, so it wasn't that bad.
"Ha-ha. You'll always be Monica's favorite little brother."
And then Teacher and our seniors would laugh off the side. This is how it usually was
I managed to escape Monica's hug attack, and said back.
"Teacher and everyone! Please stop calling me a kid! I'm already 12 years old, you know."
"Haha! Anyone who can't even beat me with my injury is still just a kid."
The surrounding adventurers seemed to agree as they laughed.
"Ah, damn it…"
Yeah. To this day, I still haven't beaten Teacher.
"But not many people can do that without the blessing of a swordsman or knight."
The master would comfort me by saying that, but the difference between having blessings and not having blessings was still quite large.
Blessings were like a blessing given by God, which allows you to accelerate your mastery of certain skills or use special abilities.
In the game, the heroine, Amy, had the blessing of?Healing Magic?, learned more and more recovery magic, and the crown prince, who had the two blessings of ?Flame Magic? and ?Hero?, showed the strength of a hero, using both magic and swordsmanship to manipulate flames, as well as the ability to inspire his friends and buff them in a difficult situation.
Teacher had received the blessing of the?Swordsman?, so his level of skill is quite high when it comes to swords.
And then, on the other hand, was me without any blessings.
It wasn't like I was cursed by the gods or anything, almost all the commoners didn't have any blessings.
And so, I need to do something about this handicap before I entered High School. To do that, there were a few places we could go.
But definitely the most important one among them is the Valley of the Flying Dragon. There is an item called the 'Book of the Wind God' there, and by using it, you could acquire the?Wind Magic?blessing afterwards.
This was the only item in the game that gave you a blessing, so this was a must-have.
If I couldn't get it, there was a possibility that I couldn't enter the Academy because I'd fail in the magical aptitude test. For that reason, I need to raise my adventurer rank to E as fast as I can and move to another city.
I've got a lot of points in my four years of doing chores, so I'll be able to move up to E rank as soon as I complete an F-rank request, collecting permanent medicinal plants and defeating horned rabbits.
"So now, I'm going to go collect medicinal herbs and hunt horned rabbits."
"Oh, go ahead. It's your first time out of town, right? Take care of yourself."
"Okay! I'll be going!"
Teacher sent me off like that, but of course, he didn't know it wasn't my first time.
Definitely no one would believe me if I had told them that the first time I went outside was when I was 8-years-old and sneaked out of town to steal the?Scroll of Appraisal?from the goblin's dungeon.
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Well, I've come out of the town and into the forest, but still, there aren't any medicinal plants growing nearby. It seemed like all the herbs had already been harvested. So I decided to go to the north-eastern ruins where the goblins used to live. If I go in that direction, the horned rabbits will probably be there too.
So I used my ?Covert? skill as usual to erase my presence and walked through the forest.
Every once in a while I would see a horned rabbit, but the most important part, the medicinal herbs, were nowhere to be found. I could hunt them down, but the blood from hunting horned rabbits could attract unwanted attention so if possible, I'd like to collect the herbs first.
I walked further into the forest, and then I reached the front of the ruins.
The goblins that were using this as a base had long since been defeated by the adventurers, so there was none of them here.
As I recall, in the game, this was supposed to be the home of the blue slime and there was a rare medicinal herb growing in the back. The goblins being here was unexpected, but the world should still more or less follow the game's setting.
'Okay, let's go.'
I walk through the ruins. It was still bright enough inside thanks to the glowing moss, so thankfully there was no need for a torch.
When I reached the end of the familiar corridor, I checked out the room to the left again. This was where the goblins kept their treasure, but now there wasn't anything here.
Of course, not even the?Scroll of Appraisal?in the game was here since, well, I took it, you know?
I check the opposite corner of this room and I found a silver coin, or 10,000 cents.
In the game, the amount of money dropped varies depending on the game mode: 100,000 cents in easy mode, 10,000 cents in normal mode, and nothing in hard mode.
In other words, the world seems to be around the normal mode difficulty. I picked up the silver coin and headed straight for the depths of the ruins.
And so I went to the second level. There was finally the occasional blue slime, but I didn't take them on. I couldn't just slash them with a sword since I needed to crush their nucleus or else they regenerated, so we were a pretty bad match.
And so, I relied on the?Concealment?skill to advance to the end of the second floor where I found the medicinal herb I was looking for.
This ruins were already explored and there were no treasure chests or anything else. That's why there's no need to go to the deepest parts, and since the goblin's hoard wasn't here anymore, there's nothing of value except for the herbs. By the way, the blue slimes living here weren't rare at all, since you could easily find them in dark and damp places.
So, after collecting all the medicinal herbs I left the ruins, I started walking back to the town.
On the way, I saw a lone horned rabbit eating grass, so I sneaked up on it with my?Concealment?skill and killed it with a single thrust with the sword I brought.
As expected it was really easy doing it like that. I don't want to, but I feel like I could be a really good assassin.
You could sell the horned rabbits' horns, meat and fur, so I quickly bled them out and dismantled their parts. I had helped do this at the guild during the time I was a G-rank so I can more or less dismantle the animals living around here.
I only collected the magic stones and asked the guild to take back the rest of the materials. There were many uses for the magical stones in the future, so having more definitely wasn't a bad thing.
After assassinating two more horned rabbits on my way back to town, I returned to the guild and delivered the materials I had collected.
"Good job, kid! You did good. With this you're one of the fastest ever to rise up to E-rank.
"Thank you!"
And so this was how I rose to E-rank, the same day I became F-ranked.