HC:Pacifist | Ch. 126 - A Minus

It had only been a few hours since Juliette had taught Roth how to knit, and the knowledge was still fresh in his mind. He started by making the very same item that he'd created with her help. The [Woolen Cloth] only required one [Sheep Wool Yarn], and from what he gathered in the forums, it was an item that was easily sold as the bonuses were attractive enough to players wanting to increase their performance in dungeons.

Especially when trying out for guilds, every little bit of help could make the difference in impressing a recruiter. Warriors aiming for a spot in top guilds would often buy a stack of cheap [Woolen Cloth] and use it on every piece of armor, giving them an extra 10% damage resistance. Every little help could go a long way in showing that they could take some damage.

As he selected the recipe in the ledger, lines formed in his vision, showing him the series of movements he had to perform to craft the item. He hadn’t had this help when he’d learned from Juliette. From what he’d read in the guides of the Pegasus library, it wasn’t good to rely too much on these. The general advice was to use them the first few times to learn the recipe and then turn it off. He explored the options to find where the option to turn off the system's assistance was. For now, he left it on.

He started by casting ten stitches on one of the needles. Then he got the empty needle and guided the thread under and over the cast-on knots, forming knitting stitches. As he knitted row after row, he started picking up speed, and before long, he had a square of woolen cloth in his hand. He cast off, just as Juliette had taught him, pulled the line and cut it, thus completing the crafting process.

Congratulations! You've successfully crafted [Woolen Cloth].

Crafting grade: C.

Woolen Cloth (Consumable)

Item description: The cloth can wipe armor and give it extra shine for a while.

Item effects: +1% Damage resistance to a piece of armor for 30 minutes.

+50 ecotailor XP.

Roth frowned at the grade. The first time he crafted, he had also gotten a C. He wondered where he’d gone wrong. He looked over the cloth he’d made and noticed that he had failed to make stitches along two separate rows of the cloth. The cast-off hadn’t gone as well as it should either. One of the edges of the cloth looked slightly wonky. Roth thought of pancake day in his home with his brothers. His parents had always made pancakes on Sunday mornings. The first pancake never came off right. He shrugged and committed to getting a better result on the next try. He was just starting to warm up.

If crafting grades worked the same as quest completion rates, the better he did, the more XP he would make. He was also excited to see if the specs of the items he crafted would improve. To continue his warm-up, Roth kept making cloths. The first few got him a C grade. He was always skipping one of the stitches. He decided to turn off the system’s assistance and even got a D grade, which was barely serviceable. But now that his attention was more on what his hands were doing and not on the lines the system drew for him, he found himself missing fewer stitches and creating a more uniform piece of work. On his 7th try, he finally managed to get a B! As he suspected, getting a better grade granted more XP and made the item slightly better.

Congratulations! You've successfully crafted [Woolen Cloth].

Crafting Grade: B.

+75 ecotailor XP.

Woolen Cloth (Consumable)

Item description: The cloth can wipe armor and give it extra shine for a while.

Item effects: +1.5% Damage Resistance to a piece of armor for 30 minutes.

Depending on the grade, the characteristics of the item changed somewhat. From a bonus of 1% damage resistance, this cloth provided 1.5%! It was a significant improvement. As he kept going, B’s started coming out more consistently. The most challenging part for Roth was the cast-on and the cast-off process. He couldn’t help getting the edges of the cloths slightly off. He tried to slow down and take his time, especially in the very last stretch of the crafting process. Finally, on his 18th try, he managed to get an A! It was an A-, but it was still an A.

Congratulations! You've successfully crafted [Woolen Cloth].

Crafting Grade: A-.

+90 ecotailor XP.

Woolen Cloth (Consumable)

Item description: The cloth can wipe armor and give it extra shine for a while.

Item effects: +1.75% Damage Resistance to a piece of armor for 30 minutes.

Compared to a C grade, the item effects almost doubled. No wonder guilds spent fortunes nurturing high-achieving craftsmen. The difference in value they could produce was massive.

As time progressed, Roth started getting fewer Cs and more consistent Bs and As. In addition to a finer quality, he was becoming faster, too. The first cloth he’d made had taken him almost 10 minutes to knit. Now, he was taking four minutes per cloth.

He looked at his notes, searching for the titles related to crafting that had caught his eye back when he was helping H. Although he couldn’t go for the [Jack of All Trades] at the moment, there were other titles he could unlock if he was persistent enough.

He picked another ball of yarn and kept making woolen cloths. Roth resisted the urge to move on to more complex recipes. This simple recipe was perfect for him to work on the basics. Besides, he was sure he could do even better and faster. It was the most basic of recipes, but he was sure that it would work for what he wanted to do.

*

The Jewelers Street was dazzling. From what Roth had told him about the corvids, they would go nuts if they could see how brightly everything shone. Gemstones were sparkling like stars in the night. Stonecutters picked up lumps of dull rock and cut them beautifully with knives so hard and sharp that they made the hard minerals look like butter. As they faceted the stone, they became incredibly brilliant.

Chimneys releasing black smoke signaled the shops where jewelers were melting precious metals and casting them into a bracelet, a pair of earrings, or a ring. Beautiful NPC ladies walked up and down the street sporting their newly acquired accessories or drooling over their friends’ most recent acquisitions.

As for SergeantSarg, he felt as if he was back in his father’s shop. He was doing a popular quest for jewelers. It required doing a three-day internship in an old man’s workshop. Low-level jewelers started off their journey into crafting by making small trinkets. They often worked with beads, running them through threads to create a string of stones or other ornaments.

Right now, they were working with thin coils of metal wire. They would then twist them with pairs of pliers or other similar tools and fashion them into beautiful artistic shapes. They had been learning how to make ear wires made of copper, and SergeantSarg found it ridiculously easy. He had helped his father with much harder stuff back in the day. Of course, not everyone found it as easy as he did.

“Careful with those pliers! You’re going to break the wire!” The old man who ran this shop and was teaching the trade spotted any tiny mistake that he or the others made. When the grumpy man left, he approached the kid who had twisted the pliers too hard and almost broke the tin in the earring. “Here. You don’t want to put so much pressure. Try to put a small amount of strength at the time. It’s often many tiny pushes that do the trick, not a very strong one.”

“Thanks!”

“No problem.” Seeing the grateful look on the kid’s face, he stretched his hand. “My friends call me Sarg.”

“Kilo. Cool race, by the way.”

“It gives good bonuses to crafting.”

“Yeah. That’s what I heard. I hope to change into it once I join a guild. I can’t afford to buy a guide, though.” Many newbies had told him the same. 

“Here. I’ll send you the guide I used.”

“I can’t afford it.”

“Forget about it. Here.” The sergeant sent a message to the player, and his eyes widened in awe as he went through the information.

“Wow. Sir! Thank you so much. You’re far too kind.”

“So… Why do you want to be a jeweler?”

The sergeant chuckled as he saw the kid's effort to pull his eyes off the invisible window and give him some attention. His attention was torn between finding out how to become a thumber and being grateful.

“I heard that you can make good money in jewelry. Guilds are always on the lookout for talented jewelers they can hire. I thought it would be a good way to make some money on the side as I study. How about you? You seem to have a knack for this. Have you played jeweler in many other games?”

“Real life actually. My father used to have a jewelry shop back in the day.”

“Sweet. Anyway. I’m thankful to you. How can I repay you?”

“Why don’t you add me as a friend? I’m trying to get a little group of jewelers together?”

“You trying to start a guild?”

“No. Nothing of the sort. It’s more like a group of friends. I don’t want to be tied up by a guild and just want to create a group of craftsmen where we can share hints and discoveries and stuff. That’s why I shared with you what I know about races. I believe everyone should know about this. Don’t you?”

The young man raised his brow, showing some interest. “You’re not connected to any guilds?”

“Nah. Guilds are too strict on rules and only share a tiny percentage of the profit with us craftsmen. I’m a free spirit. I’m just trying to enjoy the game on my terms while I do what I want.”

“No strings attached?”

“Promise.”

“Cool. You can add me to your group. I have a couple of friends from university who might want to join too if that’s OK.”

“Sure.”

“Uh…”

“Want me to show you how it’s done?”

“Yeah. That would mean a lot, Sarg. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

*

After five hours and a half of knitting, Roth's hands were a blur as he quickly transferred needles between hands and kept making short, confident stitches. He was getting more and more As now and had once lucked out and gotten an S-.

Congratulations! You've successfully crafted [Woolen Cloth+].

Crafting Grade: S-.

+50 ecotailor XP.

You've shown incredibly swift movements and become more agile as a result. +1 dexterity.

Woolen Cloth+ (Consumable)

Item description: The cloth can wipe armor and give it extra shine for a long while.

Item effects: +2.5% damage resistance to a piece of armor for 45 minutes.

The difference between an S grade [Woolen Cloth] and a C grade was like night and day. He could sell something made with the same recipe and the same materials for triple the amount! He still wasn’t sure what kind of money Soros would be able to get him for this pile of cloths he was making, but he was sure that he would make a profit compared to what he had paid for the raw materials from Juliette.

Once he crafted his first S-grade item, he unlocked one dexterity point. The fact that he could occasionally gain stats from crafting helped him deal with feeling cooped up in the lab. He wasn't still. He was moving forward. The notification he had gotten a little earlier helped him feel like he was still progressing.

Congratulations! Peace endures among the ratans, snakes, and Mario.

+24,510 XP.

As his stats improved, the amount of XP also kept steadily increasing. He was making 2000 more XP than the last time he got this notification. Thinking of the ratans and snakes coexisting peacefully brought a smile to Roth’s lips.

Additionally, as he kept crafting cloths, he eventually leveled up his profession again.

Congratulations! You're now a level 4 ecotailor.

You can now use [Lanolin Extractor].

Thadeus had shown the machine to him when he was washing the wool, but he hadn’t learned how to operate it. After becoming a tailor, he hadn't seen this item for sale at the Crafted Hemp, but he guessed that it had been unlocked now. He couldn’t wait to get his hands on it. It was one more potential source of revenue and a good way of increasing his profit margin. From what Thadeus had told him, lanolin had several applications, and he was sure chemists would buy it. Lanolin also worked as a cosmetic as it worked as an excellent moisturizer. Perhaps the Fox Baroness in the woods would be interested in purchasing it.

He was currently working on his 100th woolen cloth. As his hands quickly went through the last cloth, he got the notification that he had eagerly awaited.

You've unlocked a new title: [Sweatshop Worker].

Ch. 125 - Plumber Helmet

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