[Book 1] [12. Anti-cheat system]
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[The item Broken Spear is now repaired]

[You lost 512 ranks in a job. Operation terminated because the level of the job is zero]

I worked without a rest for countless hours, and this was the result! My heart raced as I failed for the last time. Please, please overflow.

[The item Broken Spear is now repaired]

[You lost -512 ranks in a job.]
[Congratulations! You are now 5-Grandmaster Enchantress; Maximum rank had been reached]
[Please select your mark and an alias, if you desire]

“Can I pick a snowflake as a mark and Ice Princess as an alias?” I blurted out even before the blue box materialized.

[Congratulations! Your mark is a snowflake]
[Congratulations! Your Enchanting alias is Ice Princess]
[You were caught by the anti-cheat system. Please remain still. Investigation is in progress…]

My hands were unresponsive as my body grew increasingly numb. Well, I expected as much. A pleasant voice of a young man entered my ears, “Manipulation not detected, achieved only by the means of the game. Reward in progress… Grandmaster not obtainable, suggesting Expert, level zero. Do you consent?”

Yes I do, dear System! I screamed in my mind. My vision was suddenly engulfed in a bright, blinding white light, and I felt the strange grip on my body slowly release as I yelled triumphantly, "I am an Expert Enchantress!"

[Congratulations! You are now 3-Expert Enchantress]

My screaming woke up Lucas, and he yelled, “Alfa six!” After getting a grip on a reality, his hazy eyes inspected me, as I was running around and applauding, so it took a while before he said, “Is that good?”

“Yup! Levels in spells and jobs are in six ranks and normally you can advance to the Expert only after years!” Jumping around, I got to him and hugged, but after a second of doing that, I rose and hugged a tree.

At first he was observing me with his confused stare, but then he got up and dusted his clothing, albeit it took him a while. I hugged another tree with the largest grin on my lips because giddiness filled me. He carefully touched my shoulder. “Okay, but how does that exactly help us?”

“Silly Lucas, we can sell the enchanted items!”

Lucas held his head in his palms for a second and then turned back to me. “I am sorry to say it like this, but you need to hear it. I found out that they sold the most expensive item for around twelve golds. Even if we sold them for fifteen, that is only thirty dollars. How do you expect to make ten thousands? Charlie…” He couldn’t look me in eyes and walked away.

A silly guy. He didn’t have any imagination, as always. “Stop being so rational.” Noticing the spear near me, I threw it at him and it broke the instant it crashed into him. As I expected, he still stood there like an idiot, but that was okay. Not everyone could have a knack for exploiting. For that - the next thing I had to do was to enchant a shield.

“Hey, Mr. Mage, look for a fallen tree. I’ll make a shield and that will be our ticket to the greatness!” I grinned and spread my arms wide. “We need a huge one! Well, at least feet wide.”

Lucas reluctantly nodded, and we started searching the woodland, which were full of trees; but who would have thought it will be so hard to find a fallen one?

A sound of snapping twigs announced we were trashing through a small overgrown ravine, where we found a perfect tree.

Okay, almost. It was almost decayed, with a lot of mushrooms growing from it. “Yep, that’s… fine, I guess.” I said and cut off one big circle. That decayed wood almost disintegrated in my hands, but despite that, I carved an improvised holder with a chisel. What a masterpiece! A rotten shield!

[You created Pitiful Shield]
[Pitiful Shield]
Quality: 0-broken
DEF: 1
Durability: 1/1
This is garbage; do not use it.

As Lucas rested on the trunk, I offered him the item. He inspected it, and his eyes widened in surprise, almost causing him to lose his balance. He turned to me with a look of disbelief, as if I had offered him a non-alcoholic beer. I laughed at his expression.

My jokes are the best!

“I understand, Charlie. Do it, if you must. I will fight some wolves over there.” He left me to my unstopping laughter and climbed up into the ravine. Did he finally got fed up with me? Whatever, I’ll save him. This debt situation still felt like a gigantic bear was pressing on my chest, so I examined the shield again. I hope it’ll work.

 

Since I had something I could enchant the Fire Resistance with, I had to engrave the runes and because I couldn’t afford any mistakes; I re-ran the instructional video a few times.

Just like the figure in the video, I scattered the dust over the entire shield, but no matter how hard I tried to spread it out, the dust stubbornly clung together in clumps. Useless garbage! I clenched my fist, blasted it away, and tried again. This time, it was the wind that gently blown it away. That damn thing!

After I finally placed the dust and put the fire essence at the center, I had to clean a sweat from my forehead. Wasn’t this one of the easier job? Whatever. Although the rune was only one, it certainly wasn’t easy. It took me a few attempts to only imagine it in the air, and even then the faint imagined contours weren’t easy to trace.

The tricky part was to pour my mana and create the rune by hand. Any half-decent artist would laugh at my attempt as I cautiously drew the lines. 

But hey, I was not an expert; I was The Exploiter. The rune pulsated as the mana was trying to explode, almost as if I tried to hold a boiling pot. The moment I poured in all the mana, a blinding red light shot from the shield, forcing me to shield my eyes.

The dust absorbed the rune like a hungry sponge and engraved it on the surface of the rotten wood, exactly as I drew it. Child’s drawing; but it worked!

A stunning snowflake, with a diameter of 3 inches, formed at the place of the Essence. The name I picked during my exploit, Ice Princess, rounded nicely around the bottom of the snowflake.

[You enchanted the Pitiful Shield. Rating: 46%]
[Pitiful Shield]
Quality: 0-broken
DEF: 1
Durability: 1/1
Enchanting: +5% fire resistance
This is garbage; do not use it. Enchanted by ‘Ice Princess’.

Good! With no further delay, I set for the village again and intuitively only stepped on my toes and even jumped over shrubs! Behold, the art of running! In a corner of my mind, I expected the game to mock me with 0 level of running, but the game windows were silent. Sadly. My stamina lasted only for a few minutes, so I had to walk the rest of the trip. Whatever.

 

At least ten NPCs crowded the auction house, and I squeezed through them, not even apologizing. Four customers were waiting for Ryan, who was now in full business mode.

Come on, move! Sell your useless wares to the NPCs, not my Ryan!

Despite my internal urgency, I had to wait. When it was my turn, I said, “Hey Ryan, look at what I made!” I trashed my shield on his counter and proudly puffed my chest, my breast almost ripping the robe. This thing is useless!

He examined the shield intently, turning it over in his hands, and then looked up at me, his eyes full of confusion. That resulted in rolling my eyes. “God, Ryan! Ignore the shield, I mean the enchantment!”

That foolish Irishman looked at it again, then his eyes widened, and he smashed it with a tiny hammer. Before I could scream about being gentle at him, he said, “Five percent? How is this possible? The best enchanting I saw was at the maximum of 2 percent!”

I couldn't contain my grin and confidently said, "I am that good. Can you contact Lisa, the Fire Goddess?”

Now was his turn to roll eyes. “For the love of god, please do not call her like that! Yes, I know someone who can get in touch with her. But why? Do you want to sell your services?”

“Yes, I need credits, and I need them fast. Ten thousands, and yes, I am desperate enchantress and the only thing I need for the fire resistance enchantment is an Essence of Fire and an Enchanting powder.”

“I understand. Lisa's the one. She's trying to get into the fire dungeons. I’ll get you the money.”

 

As he made the calls, I sat cross-legged on the ground beside him, taking in the hustle and bustle of the auction house. They offered us only two chairs and I couldn’t block the customer's one. Low-level players came one after another and sold everything they found laying on the ground for pitiful silvers.

One customer even brought a wolf leather. A wolf leather! After he unloaded all the furs in the unlimited storage box next to the booth, he grinned happily at only receiving two silver coins. What? Did he know that the two silvers were like… nothing? I gazed at Ryan and refrained from saying anything, but I didn’t know he was in this sort of mafia-like extortion business.

“What’s wrong?” he asked with annoyance after he couldn’t stand all my stares.

“Nothing. It is just… All the work for two silvers?” I followed the receding back of a dwarf and shook my head. “Isn’t it better for them to fight specters and get all that plasma? You can get faster leveling and better money. Several times faster.”

Ryan revealed a few of his teeth in a smile, a rare sight. “You are the power gamer, aren’t you? Don’t deny it, you are, if I ever saw a one. Just enjoy the game. By the way, do you know about the Duke's quest? Are you going?”

Slipping into a customer chair to escape the rough ground once again, I said, “Wait, what quest? I don’t know about that.”

Leaning on a side of his chair, he grimaced as if he was the clever one and beaten my knowledge. The Duke's ship's expedition will arrive soon and they'll be looking for players to join them on a main quest.” He glanced over the hall and let out a long sigh. “I don’t think I can level up to level seven, sadly.”

I never heard about this Duke expedition. It should be a minor main quest I hadn’t tried in the past life, so I knew nothing about it, but the main quests were always juicy. “Sounds interesting, Ryan. I’ll try to get there, and thanks for the info.”

But the first thing I needed was to get a steady supply of gold. For that, maybe we should get the meadow - the best property in the “early game” of elven forest. The variable as Irwen was annoying, but she shouldn’t attack right away, right? If I could get Lucas to develop it, we would rake in money.

 

“Ryan! You old snake!” As Lisa spoke, I snapped out of my thoughts and noticed her firm handshake with Ryan. “I was told that you have something interesting for me?” 

As expected, he didn’t appear amused by her antics and simply handed her my shield. “Look at the enchanting.”

“Ice Princess?” Her eyes sparkled. “What a cute nickname! Do you know her?”

I stood up and dusted my poor dirty robe, but a feeling of dread rose inside me, so I sit back down. Okay, me. You can do it. Although my body urged me to stay silent, I rose again, and said, “Me. Princess.”

An imaginary weight on my shoulders cropped up again. Why? Why was this happening to me right now? I couldn’t tear my stare from the ground and took in a deep breath. It’s just a talk inside a game. Nothing hard, right?

“Sweetheart? From the Frexie?" she asked, her eyes widening as she examined me, focusing on my hair in particular. “You are so cute!” Before I could react, she hugged me and squeezed my face. Okay, now I was speechless for… another reason. “But how is that even possible, Princess?”

Despite my body protested, and it felt like something stuck in my throat, I said, “Look, my title.” After that monstrous success of talking, I shared my complete name with her.

[Princess, Hero of Ice Blood]

“You are the Hero? How can I be one? Is there a Fire God?” She couldn’t control her mouth. I suffered in her hug again and she patted my hair like I was some kind of doll; not that I could complain. She gave me two compelling reasons not to.

“Psst! Secret!” I said, and reciprocated her hug, “Leader of the first party, the scorching dungeon, gets title the Fire Tamer. Cool?”

“The Fire Tamer?” Her eyes sparkled again and jumped up and down, dragging me in her embrace. “How many enchantments can you do? Can you tell me more?”

I couldn’t say a word and averted my eyes. Not now, please. Where is my wine, or better yet, whiskey, to lose my tongue? She still hugged me and stared into my eyes from only a few inches away with a pleading look. I wanted to answer her, but my mouth refused to work. Please? No? Okay, okay, my body. I slipped from her hug and sat on the ground without a word.

“Lisa, I said that the trade will go through me. I am the middleman.” Oh, thanks, Ryan! “There is not that powerful enchantment on the market, so our services are expensive.”

“How expensive?” Lisa’s tone changed to a serious one faster than my dazzled mind could think. “Do you know the gold is sparse? The demand is much higher than supply, so the price is up to 3:1 now. I can’t buy the gold in higher quantities.” Yes, this was the heiress burning with fire I vaguely remembered from my old life.

“We are aware of that, thus we are offering you the possibility of buying our services with credits. Twelve thousands is the adequate price. As I gesture of good will, we will not sell the fire resistance to anyone else, not until you complete the dungeon.”

“That is a steep price. But the Fire Tamer…” Her gaze returned to me, and her face brightened as if she wanted to devour me with her cheerful grin. Because of that, my body acted on its own, and I squeaked some intangible words, jumped up, and backpedaled to a stall wall. I would rather face the ultimate boss than her. “Will she enchant the equipment for the entire party?”

“Yes, as long as you supply the ingredients for the enchantment; an Essence of Fire and an Enchanting powder.”

“Agreed. I’ll tell cousin to send the money to your account right away.” Before I could pull up my wine, she ran towards me and said, “Princess, can you come to our rented room at the tavern in the evening?” Just as she said the last word, she buried her head into my chest and navigated my hand to pat her head. What the hell? Is this some kind of normal behavior?

[Lisa wants to add you as a friend.]

“Yes,” sadly, I couldn’t say more, but that was enough for her and she ran away when I accepted her request. I could see her waving at me from afar, and I let out a tired sigh as I slouched my shoulders. I can’t date a girl now, can I? She was more friendly than I expected and not at all the heartless fire destroyer from the rumors flying around. That was the reason I liked her instantly, not that closeness to her chest. For sure.

“It’s a pleasure doing business with you.” Ryan turned to me with a smile and motioned me to go away.

[Ry4n1 wants to add you as a friend.]

“Thanks Ryan, same here. Please send me the money right away.”

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