Atlas Rising a LitRPG gaming adventure Blake Severson (free books to read .txt) 📖

“I appreciate the help. I’ll have to give that a shot. That also reminds me. Is there a bank or anything here that can secure my belongings or coins? That way if I die, I don’t lose everything.”

“There is a bank. We rarely look at it as anything other than a way to control the markets, but it should be able to serve the purpose you describe. I don’t think they’ll let you store items, but I imagine they’d store money,” Master Proth said.

“Can you point me in its direction?”

“Sure. Head toward downtown and it’s the large stone building with the columns in front. There’s a symbol of scales on the sign.”

“Was a pleasure, as always. I’ll come find you when I get to level ten for that quest.”

“See you then,” he said with a wave before sitting back down and opening his book.

Atlas walked outside and headed for the leatherworking shop. Master Trailia greeted him as he arrived with her normal sour scowl before he opened up a trade menu to see what she had. There was one ability available at level ten. It was a reinforced version of the backpack. It was slightly larger but far more durable than the first. The cost was cheap as well. It only added one hide and two sinew to make the better version. He paid the 30 copper for the pattern.

It stunned him when he switched to the buy page. She had 118 raw hides in stock. Unable to comprehend why, he had to ask.

“Why do you have such a sizeable amount of hides? Are people advancing too far past the low level stuff?”

“Oh that? Nope. Everyone wasted all the money they had on the hunt and when they lost they came straight here to sell all the hides they couldn’t use. The ones who weren’t in the hunt didn’t have the money to buy them. So now I’m left with a ton of hides that are almost worthless. It would take me half a year to process that much leather by myself.”

An idea hit him, “What is it you need the most here in the city? I know you are limited by how fast you can produce items, but I can make stuff much quicker. I could make everything you need, I’ll even agree to do it for nothing more than the salt needed to cure them and a 20% take on the profits after you sell it. I’ll also have all the inventory ready for you in a couple of hours.”

Her eyes lit up with greed at that point as she wrung her hands, “How about 10% of proceeds, same deal?”

“Come now. You know 20% is a steal. I can make you reinforced items almost instantly. I know you charge a premium for that.”

“Fine,” she grumbled, “20%. But I want all the work done here in the shop if I’m going to hand over that much merchandise.”

“Planned on it anyway. Same room as before?”

She nodded, and they walked to the room. Instead of bothering trying to load him up with the items, she merely dumped the massive pile of hides on the counter in the workroom. She then dropped a large bag of salt nearby to cure them.

“Cure them all and make me four reinforced bags, belts, and jerkins. I also want five reinforced pants,” the leatherworker listed off.

“I’ll get right on it.”

She left the room, and he turned to look at the mountain in front of him. He methodically selected each of the abilities. The skins he cleaned and tanned while stacking them in the corner. Although it was a quick process, it still took a long time to complete one hundred and eighteen of the things. He truly wished for a Craft All button with the ability to go AFK.

The process for creating the pieces wasn’t much better. His senses were almost numb with the seemingly endless job of his body going on autopilot to do these tasks at such a high speed. His true motivation for this had nothing to do with the money. It was a pleasant bonus, but his purpose was a little more in depth than that.

First off was the experience. The amount of experience gained from this would be remarkable by the time he finished. It’d give him a head start in the market when he reached the next city. The second motivation was a little deeper. In his starting city, it became apparent that the city guards needed the armor they made. The more stuff he made, the quicker he saw the guards get outfitted. These types of interactions had to add up to something. The feature wouldn’t have such a living and breathing interaction with their surroundings if it might not come in handy. Atlas banked on the hope that helping the cities as he went would pay off in the end.

You gained 5,880 total experience in Leatherworking.

Success! You’ve reached levels 11, 12, and 13 in Leatherworking.

The workspace was a complete mess by the time he finished. An immense pile of hair littered the corner and spilled under the workbench. Scraps of leather littered the floor and table. He picked up each piece of equipment and dusted them off before tossing them out the door and into the large open space. After sorting them all, he turned to picking up the trash. The scraps piled up in the bucket, causing it to overflow. The stack almost toppled over, but he got it balanced and tried to avoid it from there.

It forced him to go out into the larger space to find more buckets to stuff the hair in. Finally cleaned up, he walked to the front to find the leatherworker. A customer just stepped out of the door when he walked up front.

“All done. Everything is stacked in the main room back there. I put all the scrap leather in the bucket from before and found other buckets to stash the hair. Anywhere specific you want it?”

“No, no.