21. A Leap of Faith

"Diligence is the mother of good luck." — Benjamin Franklin

It was less than an hour into farming that Claire was beginning to get bored of constantly killing cows, thankfully her inventory was almost full, and Paul's was the same; he had been farming for some time before she arrived, and she hadn't emptied the less valuable items from her inventory to make space.

As they were looting the last cows they were going to kill, she looked over at Paul.

"What do you think the fastest way to level up tailoring is so we can start getting high-level upgrade materials quicker."

Thinking for a second, Paul looked over and signed.

"In theory, it would be to have a large number of players feed us leather gear for us to deconstruct into materials that give the most professional XP in the shortest time, but we are both broke and likely have nobody to have to feed us like that. Don't worry, though; even though refining gives the lowest amount of XP towards our professions, the sheer quantity we are refining has a quality all of its own."

As they left, Claire suddenly said something he had not expected.

"Wouldn't it be better if one of us refined all of the leather then, to boost our profession level as quickly as possible so we can get to getting those upgrade materials in a lower amount of materials?"

"Do you think I haven't realized that simple math? The question is, though, how can either of us trust each other, having only known each other for a little more than an hour?" 

After thinking for a few minutes, she looked at him somewhat shyly.

"I am willing to farm you up, but I want us to go 50/50."

Turning to look at her, Paul scrutinized her, looking for anything wrong with her.

"How could you possibly trust me to do that? We don't even technically have a binding agreement; now you are willing to pass all of your shares to me to refine so we can start making the big profits faster." 

Turning to look at him straight up, she spoke without pause.

"I know it is in bad taste to talk about real life in the game, but I want enough money to move out in a short amount of time; I also believe that no matter how black-hearted you potentially could be, you at least wouldn't take my share of the leather. So if we drag our feet and need both of us to level up, we will lose out on a lot of money; in my mind, I would rather risk the large profits for even larger profits since I could not imagine you running with the leather or my safety net. Negotiating to 50/50 also gets me more money."

Thinking quickly, Paul almost instantly extended his hand.

"Deal, let's get back to the city and refine."

After coming to an agreement, Claire turned to walk back to the city, but Paul stopped her.

"If we walk back, it will take 20 minutes there and 20 minutes back with around 10 minutes to refine and store the materials; there is a better way."

Leading her to the cliff, she looked at him dumbfounded.

"We are death porting to the city?"

Smiling, Paul walked to the edge and looked over, seeing the beautiful white waves crashing on the rocks below.

"This is an extremely strong time save for us; although it is somewhat grim, this increases our yield by thousands of hides a day. Anyways, for dying like this, we only lose the XP into our current level and some armor durability."

Doing some quick math to think about how much money this would make them, Claire instantly walked to the edge, looking over with a somewhat pale expression.

Seeing her like that, Paul stepped over with one foot and looked back.

"I guess you can call this a leap of faith."

As he fell, Claire's eyes followed him all the way down until there was a very disturbing squelching noise accompanied by blood splattering and bones crunching. 

With her eyes locked on the horror, the remains of Lazarus quickly disappeared into nothing, signally that he had respawned somewhere else. 

After calming her breathing and convincing herself that this was a game and it was not real, simply a shortcut to more money.

As she stepped over the edge and began her plummet, she had one stray thought that made me smile before hitting the bottom.

The image of her late mother looking at her exasperatedly, saying a common parent phrase.

"If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?"