All right! I’ll fish and fish, and fish the night away!
†
Morning came, and I was on my knees, my head hung, and my hands planted to the ground.
As for the results, I caught close to two hundred...things. It was less that I fished for them, and more like I just managed to snag them. I looked at the list of items filling my inventory:
Empty Can x137, Boot x2, Intermediary Crystal (Unappraised), Herring x40, Sardine x25, Sea Bass x12, Common Dark Fish x4, Zombie Fish x3
“What’s all of this?!”
Yeah, there was no getting around it... It was mostly empty cans.
Give me back the happiness I felt, thinking I’d caught the mother lode! In the first place, how do empty cans fit into this world?
I’d managed to confirm my initial suspicions—there was indeed a difference in what could be caught during the day and at night—so that was something, at least. Yes, I wasn’t going to tactlessly shout out, Just how much trash is in this sea?!
Also, I wasn’t going to say anything about that last entry that clearly had an undead attribute. Hopefully, it would give me some good materials if I dismantled it. No, please do. I’m begging you.
With that in mind, I began taking the fish apart with my Beginner’s Dismantling Knife.
Yeah, I doubt the empty cans can be dismantled.
†
It took two whole hours to dismantle everything. I’d still yet to unlock any dismantling skill. Seriously, what were the conditions to get it? Now and then, I’d take a break from all the slicing to try grilling some fish on my own, and I managed to unlock cooking before dismantling.
Culinary Art I
10% bonus to all actions involving cooking, and additional recipes.
100 Energy consumed per hour.
Required Mana to Acquire: 30
Unlock condition: Produce 10 or more items using cooking utensils.
Upgrade condition: Produce 300 or more items using cooking utensils.
Maybe I have to fight with a dismantling weapon to get dismantling skills? Is that what I’m missing? I plan to keep fishing for a while, so I can’t test that.
Still, the more time I spent dismantling, the more items I got for my trouble. Dismantling weapons were convenient, so I didn’t regret picking one. This was just my instinct speaking, but it probably worked on things that weren’t fish too. I’d have to see if I ever got a chance to fight a monster.
“Now, to sell some items.”
Checking the clock, I saw it read 9:27. Knowing Alto and his strong business spirit, I suspected he was already awake.
Let’s try sending him a chat. As I recall, his full name was...
The name, “Altorese Company” was stuck in my ears. I vividly remembered him saying it. Just like when I’d sent a chat to Tsumugi, I heard the ringing of a phone as I awaited Alto’s reply.
“Hello, this is Altorese.”
A spirited voice that was kind on the ears. He was all business today as usual.
“It’s me.”
“By that voice, you must be the girl—I mean, the girl character I met yesterday.”
“That’s right, it’s Kizuna.”
“So Kizuna’s your name? I’m realizing I forgot to ask yesterday.”
Now that you mention it... I’d heard Alto’s name, but hadn’t divulged my cringe-inducing Kizuna†Exceed identity. Part of me felt this was intentional on my part. Unfortunately, though, my name was revealed the instant I sent the chat.
“So what can I do for you today?”
“I was hoping you’d buy a few items. It’s all fish, if that’s all right with you.”
“Of course. Where are you right now?”
“If you look at the map, do you see a pier by the ocean? I’m on the right side, where—”
†
We told each other our locations but ultimately settled on meeting at the same plaza where we’d met before. I thought I’d come in quite a hurry, but Alto was already there when I arrived.
He’d been in starter gear yesterday, but that was no longer the case. Business seemed to be booming.
“Hey, Kizuna. You said fish, right? How much fish are we talking about?”
“About this much.”
I accepted the trade window Alto had sent me. Although you could also hand over things normally, according to Alto, this was far more convenient when negotiating a large number of items. I dragged the dismantled scales, bones, meat, heads, fangs, dorsal fins, and more onto the window.
“You’ve already prepped them too? That’s quite a lot. I’m shocked, honestly.”
“Prepped?”
Don’t you mean dismantled? I wondered. But before I could ask, Alto explained.
“Yes, if you use the Culinary Art skill and a kitchen knife to prep a fish, you can get a few extra items.”
“Hmm...”
Is a kitchen knife a dismantling weapon? No, I think it’s categorized as a cooking utensil.
It felt like our conversations weren’t quite meshing. After all, I could dismantle even when I hadn’t learned Culinary Art. I didn’t get any extra items when I was making the grilled fish either. Maybe I ought to buy a cooking knife to see if it’s the same as dismantling.
“I guess that means you learned Culinary Art too, Kizuna. If you need some ingredients, I could sell you a few things.”
“Alto, I know I’m changing the topic here, but do you know what effects dismantling weapons have?”
“Huh? As I recall, they inflict high bonus damage against specific types of enemies, and that enemy type varies based on the weapon. Unfortunately, their base attack power is low, so there aren’t many people who use them.”
“I see...”
“Also, if you defeat monsters you have a bonus against, you sometimes get items you can’t obtain normally.”
Could this be...something that hasn’t been figured out yet?
As far as I could tell, carefully dismantling a fish yielded scales and meat. However, this process could apparently be substituted with Culinary Art, and that seemed to be seen as the most effective method. If I keep quiet on this, I might be able to make a bit of money, I concluded.
Naturally, this would become common knowledge sooner or later, but I could make good use of this info before it got out. This was quite common in the opening days of an online game.
“So why were you asking about dismantling weapons?”
“Yeah, well, that’s the sort of weapon I use. I see, so it’s a weapon specialized for specific enemy types...”
“I see. You really do like playing with finicky mechanics.”
“Pretty much.”
“Getting back to it, how does six thousand Serin sound?”
“That much?”
Alto said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Just yesterday, he’d told me he only had eight thousand Serin, but he’d evidently raked in a lot of money while I was taking it easy.
“Using your Culinary Art takes time, right? This is about what it comes out to if you convert it to an hourly wage. And this is quite a quantity. I’d even say it’s a bit lower than market price.”
Buy low, sell high. This was the resale trick he’d mentioned earlier.
Very well, then. That’s a lot more than I’m going to get from an NPC.
I pressed “OK” on the trade window and received my six thousand Serin.
“Pleasure doing business with you. Feel free to call me whenever you have something to sell.”
“Yeah, you’ll be the first on the list.”
Now then... I gazed at the empty cans that remained in my inventory. Honestly, having a hundred thirty-seven of them didn’t mean much when they were useless. When I showed one to an NPC, the buying price was either one or five Serin. That depended on whether the can was aluminum or steel.
Wait. Aluminum or steel?
“Hey, Alto. One more question. How much would you buy empty cans for?”
“Empty cans? They’re not worth anything, unfortunately. You’d be better off selling them to a shop.”
“I see... It just occurred to me, but cans are made of aluminum and steel...right?”
It seemed he got the message. As I spoke to him in a hushed tone, Alto’s face turned to shock.
“I...see. We might be able to make ingots at the blast furnace!”
“There’s a blast furnace?”
“Yeah. There’s a production skill that melts down ores to produce ingots that can be worked with.”
“Then could you look into whether or not you can do that with these? If we really can melt them down, I’ve got loads of them.”