Translator: Adam Seacord

Editor: Weasalopes

「Okay. Just so you know, I was stuck halfway through the fourth chapter. I couldn't get the drop item for a weapon I needed.」

Makoto decided to come out that she was more of a combat addict. Hiros.h.i.+ picked up on her remark, though. No way would he have let that pa.s.s.

「What were ya missin'?」

「Nemesis Blood and Holy Steel. I gathered a few Holy Steels, but just about no Nemesis Bloods.」

「Oh. I didn't know they dropped Holy Steel. I thought ya just had to dig up Holy Ore and forge 'em.」

「Hold up! You can forge them!?」

「I've made enough Holy Steel stuff to build an island.」

In response to Makoto's demanding approach (at a safe distance, of course) Hiros.h.i.+ simply answered as if this was public knowledge. The combat addicts of the game would cause a riot if they had heard him say this.

「If that's the reason you're stuck on the main quest, won't ya blame the ones who caused all the craftsmen to be antisocial before ya blame us for it?」

「Everyone hates them plenty, regardless. Jeez. If that debacle hadn't happened, level 6 potions would have been out on the market at a reasonable price…」

「Level 8s would have been out on the market, everywhere. Just in my storage, I had about 20,000 of each level 8 potion.」

「…I'm going to kill them all, someday…」

Makoto whispered, upon receiving this unnecessary bad news. As a reference, a level 6 potion went for about 50,000 Chrones a bottle. Anything lower was s.n.a.t.c.hed up in a heartbeat. Holy Steel was worse than that, at 3 million a pop. It was a ridiculous price point considering that a quest to craft a weapon or armor would require dozens of them for each piece of equipment. Despite the fact that it would only take a craftsman two (in-game) days to gather that much through mining and forging. The fiends behind this phenomenon, who continued to hara.s.s the craftsmen (mainly through MPK) and spread false rumors about them to try to get them to quit the game, until finally (somehow) obtaining a home address and stalking them in real life, had every insult coming to them.

The incident was a fairly simple one when it was all said and done. Some ill-mannered addict guilds had found some craftsmen who began to make high-level potions and equipment, attempted to take the group of craftsmen at the highest caliber among them, were rejected, and started hara.s.sing them in retaliation, in very close to illegal ways. It all began when only up to level 4 potions were out on the market, the top potion maker of the time started selling level 5 potions.

The incident caused all sorts of collateral damage (by the craftsmen who were affected and reported the incident being framed for having some kind of fault in the case), to the point where, at one point, there was an atmosphere of taboo for any Crafting in the game. Many players couldn't handle that atmosphere and the hara.s.sment and a good number of players switched out of craftsmen skills, despite almost reaching Advanced. This was the direct cause of the lack of craftsmen in the game, currently. While only one player was directly attacked, some players just fell out of the game entirely because of it. The only Crafting skills that were unaffected by this were just about Fis.h.i.+ng, Enchanting, Cooking, and the mostly unknown s.h.i.+pbuilding, Carpentry, and Farming.

The incident did as much damage as it did in part, because the hara.s.sment against the craftsmen were not quite red-handed until the stalker incident, and in part because admin took too long to garner enough evidence to take care of it. In the meantime, all admin could do was to make an announcement that the craftsmen have not used any third-party cheating tool, nor rewrite any data or program on the server.

The game gaining a poor reputation wasn't good for business, of course, so admin had tried their best to quench this fire, but being short-staffed, combined with the incredible acceleration of the situation, caused the stalker incident to occur before the admin could gather the evidence of the addict guild spreading false rumors and defamation. Certainly not fast enough to delete the accounts of all members involved. This incident is described as the one and only stain on the admin's reputation.

It is worth noting that the address obtained by the stalker was kind of divulged by the first victim, and not leaked by the admin. Admin has never let any personal information leak. For the second victim on, their addresses were leaked from bugs encrypted in forums and information from playthrough vlogs. As a result as the incident, all information of the craftsmen were kept hidden, and no one could blame them for it.

As a consequence, any player who would want to newly start crafting, would only get enough information to get them into Intermediate skills (at best), and they were on their own for the rest of the journey. A big blow to the community was that this incident occurred before anyone had shared information regarding Making Mastery (a big contributor to keeping the craftsmen population down.

「Come to think of it, I'm sure you were one of the OGs in the game. Didn't they get to you?」

「I hadn't been doin' nothin' too flashy since I was in the busiest time of studyin' for entrance exams. The most I did was take castle-buildin' or s.h.i.+p buildin' quests from NPCs and left it alone. Most of the time, the other players won't see the stats of these quests.」

The first incident had occurred during Hiros.h.i.+'s summer of ninth grade, his last year of middle school. He had begun getting desperate to move away, to the point where he barely logged into the game. Thanks to the fact that he had stayed logged out for a while, other than Harvesting skills and Carpentry (which he had just mastered Advanced), and s.h.i.+pbuilding (which he was actively progressing by not logging in), all of his skills were below average for a craftsman. In fact, the first production skill Hiros.h.i.+ had mastered was Carpentry, and the second was s.h.i.+pbuilding.

Of course, Haruna didn't know much about this incident either, since she had been offline studying for entrance exams, as well. The incident had resolved (for the time being) on October of the same year, which meant that, by the time Hiros.h.i.+ and Haruna started logging in regularly again, the incident was not forgotten but treated as a taboo. They both knew something had happened, but they judged from their friends' and acquaintances' att.i.tudes, that it would only leave a bad taste in their mouths if they'd heard it. So, they each decided not to look into what everyone wanted to let be bygones.

「I see. And do you still hear about that kind of stuff?」

「Recently, a girl last one was gettin' hara.s.sed. It seemed like the perp was an OG still believin' in all the tall tales 'bout craftin'. Took care of him with a call to the GM, but he just changed his name and face, and ghosted. Sure, that took care of it, but it just gets so darn annoyin'. And idiots nowadays don't know when to stop. Won't be funny if there's a murder or somethin' in real life.」

Makoto put on a frown, hearing this. The craftsmen were in hiding simply because nothing guaranteed their safety, yet. It was only natural that neither the admin nor the police could do anything until something went south. It was difficult for admin to step in just for some in-game hara.s.sment, unless it crossed a line. The lies spread by the people who caused the incident in the first place, which were unnecessarily convincing, had not yet lost their effect entirely. Collectively, the craftsmen recognized that it was still too early to walk under the sun.

It wasn't like some of the upper-level players didn't get together in attempt to protect the craftsmen. However, the average top player at the time only had Intermediate skills, which made it difficult to protect the craftsmen population (which was too large to protect but small enough for the perps to target), and the discussion ended with the conclusion that the best course of action was for the craftsmen to protect themselves. To boot, some of the upper-level players were deceived by the lies, and ended up acting against the interest of the craftsmen.

The people arrested by police and publicized by admin were publically known for their bad manners already, which lead to most players ignoring the lies spewed by them by now, and on the surface, the negative vibes revolving around Crafting skills and craftsmen had subsided.

Still, despite three years being pa.s.sed after the incident, there were more than a few OGs who still saw craftsmen players as con artists. And there were more than a few new players believed what these OGs told them. It was ironic that once the OG craftsmen tried to defend themselves from those rumors and new players started reaching Advanced on their own, the new players became more noticeable and easier to target.

「Meh, that kind of stuff don't matter to us no more. Once we're on the same page with our skills and the like, we should decide on what we're gonna do next.」

「Right. Of course, we should start by dealing with Elle-chan's situation so we can gather more information.」

So, Hiros.h.i.+ and Haruna decided to change the subject from one that would probably leave a bad taste in their mouths. While Haruna still didn't know much about the incident, she decided she still didn't need to stick her nose in it just yet, and decided to not ask for any details.

「I'm sure Makoto-san knows what's goin' on, already, but I wanna hear this kind of stuff from the horse's mouth. I'll try askin' 'em again, tomorrow.」

「Okay. I'll let you handle all that. What about Tatsuya's equipment?」

「I'll whip somethin' up for Brother this week usin' the furnace and the anvil. It's just temporary, anyhow, and ya wanna practice makin' ya own, right, Mio?」

「Yep.」

And so, the group finally decided on a reasonable plan. The next day, Makoto would witness Hiros.h.i.+ and Mio "whip up" a staff, bow, and dagger, before losing all faith. But that's another story.