Chapter 33 : System Upgrade

(AN : Errors maybe present.)

*ding*

[[ System notification :

Juggard's short sword completed.

Analysing product...

Product has failed to reach the required rank ]]

'What am I missing? To make things worse, my time is almost up' Sato wondered desperately.

It had been 3 hours since Sato had completed his first work. During this time, he was able to reduce the amount of time it took him to finish forging a weapon however, that didn't imply that he was improving. In the total allocated time of 4 hours, Sato had forged 5 swords. Despite that, only 2 were capable of reaching the common rank, apart from his first work, with the remaining being failed products.

'It seems like Master Owen had a reason to be so smug as to give a mission.'

*Ding dong* *Ding dong* *Ding dong*

'Oh? I guess that should be the timer Amelia told me about…ten minutes left right? I guess I should be going. I doubt I can accomplish anything in 10 minutes.'

Sato stood up from the stool he sat and began arranging the place. He returned the blueprints he used back to the bookshelf, gathered the remnant materials and stored them in his beginner bag. As for the scraps, he tossed them into a trash-bin in the workshop.

Staring at his works;both the failed and the common ranks, he packed them all and tossed it into his beginner bag.

'If I have a chance, I can recycle them. Better that than tossing away good stuff.'

Once he was done, Sato left the workshop and headed back to the reception hall on the first floor where he met Amelia once more.

"Amelia-san. Here's the key to room 107." Sato handed the key over to her.

"Oh? You aren't planning on renewing your stay?" Amelia asked with surprise while receiving the key.

"Nah. I have an appointment with someone right now so I have to go." Sato casually said.

"Oh? Ok. See you later, sir." Amelia waved him out.

"Uhm. Bye."

"*sigh* just when I wanted to chat with him after my shift, he left."

"Amelia-san, are you crushing on him?" A lady who also worked as receptionist questioned her.

"..."

. . . . .

"Hey Sato! Over here." Fudo called out beside the Blacksmith guild's entrance.

"You're done already?"

"Yeah. The test wasn't so hard; all I had to do was read and write." Fudo calmly stated with a smile on his face. "As of now, I'm an official Apprentice Alchemist."

"Good for you. With that, we should be one step closer to independence." Sato commented while they began walking towards the West Gate.

"By the way Sato, do you really don't plan on starting a guild?" asked Fudo.

Sato looked at him with confusion "Why do you ask?"

"Because, it would be quite simple for you to start up a guild. We've got our friends from school to use as the foundation plus there's your old man with us. It might not be capable of rivalling powerhouses but it should be able to rival top 4th tier guilds and with time, it should be able to rival top 2nd tier guilds." Fudo said with a prideful tone.

Starting a guild wasn't easy, even more so achieving a high rank. The guild ranks are normally published by many separate gaming media channels however, the official and accepted one comes from the company, Amazon corporation or to be more accurate, their subsidiary company, the Media and ranking Super guild, Hermes' guild. Normally, it takes a year before a guild can be officially ranked by Hermes. This is due to the fact that many of such upcoming guilds aren't able to stand the test of time or of their fellow mates, being eliminated probably for offending a greater power or so.

Even so, due to Sato's popularity of playing with a big guild together with his self-attestable skills, he could easily attract his close friends and some other people to team up with him and apart from funding, he would be all set. To be able to rival a ranked guild while being an unassigned one is quite impressive, especially when yours' is just an upstart guild with no sponsorship or funding and that was how Fudo felt about a guild that would have Sato at its helm.

"So why don't you think about it?"

"I"ll think about it later on but a guild isn't my kind of thing. There's a lot of issues and serious competitions. A stable party is more better."

"Alright whatever you say."

[[ World wide System notification :

Dear players, the world is about to undergo and update as such, you are required to go offline. This is to improve the efficiency of the world and player controls.

Kindly look for a suitable spot for your avatar to stay and go offline to avoid forced shut down. You have 30 minutes to do so. Please adhere to the instruction.

The update would take approximately 4 hours in reality.

I thank you for your understanding.

Yours systematically,

The Heaven System.

]]

In the woods, the mountains, the towns and villages, every single possibly existing location in Infinite Realm, the players were all alerted of the update.

"An update? But the game just started today and I haven't even gotten myself a waifu. What are they even updating?" Fudo cried out with a confused tone.

"I don't know but there's nothing we can do about it. It's a good thing we're still in town. I think I'll head over to a hotel and book a room." Sato said after which walked away.

"Wait for me. Let's share a room; it's cheaper."

"No. We're guys. It's weird for us to go to a hotel and share a room even if it's just to go offline. What would the NPCs and readers think about us?" Sato sternly asked.

Fudo then said with a look of realisation "You're right. Fine. Looks like I'd have to spend…" (AN : With that, I hope I have destroyed any fangirl's weird BL ideas…)

It didn't take them long to arrive at a hotel after all, they were at the West district, the town's economical centre. Even though there was still a couple of minutes before the forced shut-down, most of the hotel rooms were being booked at an incredible pace. Luckily for them both, there were still a few left. With that, Fudo and Sato hurriedly got two separate rooms at the price of 15 coppers each at an average hotel.

Laying on the somewhat uncomfortable bed, Sato logged out of the game.

. . . . .

Out in the woods, some distance away from Riverdale.

"An update? Hmm, it seems they are planning to remove those underhanded cards." A young man in his mid 20s with a sense of authority filling the air around him lightly chuckled. He wore an exquisite mage gown with blue and white colours as its theme. The crooked staff he held had a fist sized blue orb attached to its tip.

"Hehehe. It's better that way. At least I can enjoy hunting." a weird guy with a black cloak draped on his body commented. He had painted stripes and lines on his black face with white and black paints, looking like a voodoo specialist or a tribesman from Africa.

"You speak about hunting but you're about to die at my hands." The young man smiled.

The cloaked man replied with a laugh "Hahaha. Azure, it seems no one has taught you to rein in that pride of yours. Worry not, I shall fix it for you…but not today."

Azure Dragon frowned and said "You want to escape? Dream on." He immediately brought out a scroll and tore it. As he did so, a water barrier with a radius of 6 metres took shape around them.

Shaking his head, the cloaked man said "You're still young, Azure. Even your master has never been confident of trapping me much less you. We shall meet again soon and at that time, I will let you experience the terror of the Nightmare."

With that, the man disintegrated into bones of different sizes and kinds. There were skulls, femurs,ulnae, tibiae and spines all scattered around. They weighed differently and had different sizes though not surpassing the length of an average femur or the width of an average skull. They all had a gloomy feeling to them as if death was looming around them and if one stared closely, you would notice that there was an extremely faint gray gas around them, though it was dispersing into the atmosphere.

'I can't believe the Savage Tribe are here too. Even the 'King' Chike is with them. At this rate, we won't be their match. No, I have to tell the guild leader before its too late.'

Azure Dragon took in a deep breath and canceled the barrier before scanning his surrounding. On the ground were bodies, a lot of them with the ground stained in a deep red colour. They ranged from players of the Warrior jobs to players of the Specialist jobs. They were all dead with blood flowing beneath them. Even the assassin who earlier escorted Azure Dragon was dead.

'What a dreadful opponent. I was quite lucky to have survived him.'

*sigh*

AN :

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the future where you can date your waifus! Encourage me in the production of 4UHDR and let's make our waifus real!!!

I decided to introduce an African heritage cause I'm not racist…

So far, there's European, Caucasian, Asian and African. I don't think I'm missing any other right.