I reincarnated in game

3 Earn Money with Knowledge from Game

Hugh mourned the loss of a mother he never knew; in a sense, she was the only mother he had ever known.  Through the course of the day, Hugh got in contact with a crematorium and made arrangements for his mother’s body to be picked up the next day.  For now, he was alone with his thoughts; pondering the events of the last twenty-four hours, and wondering what the future held for him.

The silence of the night was broken by voices just outside.  A loud pounding sound came from the front door.  Hugh got up quickly, and walked out of his room, towards the sound; his mother’s body still lay in the next room.  Another loud c***k came from outside.  As he continued towards the front door, it was pushed off its hinges into the room, knocking him to the ground.  The three boys from the alley walked through the doorway towards him.

“Oh isn’t this great… Boys, remember him?” the leader of the trio exclaimed, pointing at Hugh, who was still recovering from being knocked to the ground by the door.

“What do you want?” Hugh asked, dusting himself off.  He used the table to help himself up.

“Well, did you think you were going to get away with stealing the medicine from our employer?  That’s going to cost you five thousand gold pieces!  We are taking everything you have here as collateral until you pay Mr. Townsend back, in full, plus interest, as well as an additional fifteen percent!” the thug explained, with a sick smirk on his face.

“That’s way too much!  I know I owe him, but five thousand gold pieces?  Plus interest?  And what’s the extra?”  Hugh exclaimed, in shock and disbelief.  He realized that the original owner of his body had stolen the potion of healing to save his mom.  While he was willing to pay for the elixir, he couldn’t understand why it was priced so exorbitantly high and had no idea what the extra charge could be for.

“That is just the terms, and since we had to come here, we will call the rest a collection fee,” the bigger of the three kids said, with a bit of a chuckle.

“That’s the breaks, kid,” one of the other thugs said, as he walked past Hugh, and stood in the middle of the kitchen.

“Um, Kevin, you should take a look at this …” the blond-haired thug said to the leader.

Kevin walked to the room and looked into where Hugh’s mother's body lay on the mattress. “Oh well, that sucks for him … take everything else except the body and the mattress, then.”

Hugh cried out, “NO!” and threw himself at Kevin who quickly countered with a punch to the stomach, making Hugh crumble to the ground again, gasping for air.

“Cory and Mathew, start taking things out of this room first,” Kevin said, pointing to Hugh’s mother’s room.  The two thugs picked up the furniture and a few pictures, stepping over Hugh, who still lay on the ground.  As he regained his breath, he attempted to get back to his feet.  Kevin stood over him, seeming to enjoy Hugh’s struggling, especially after the beating they had laid on him in the alley earlier that day.

Cory and Mathew took the kitchen table out and finished clearing everything else out of the house.  Kevin reached down and placed his hand under Hugh’s chin, lifting his face to meet his.  “Now listen up.  You have one week to start making payments … if you don’t, we will come back and burn this sorry excuse of a house down!”  He then pushed Hugh’s face down to the ground to punctuate his statement.  Hugh raised himself up for a brief moment; his efforts were greeted with a swift kick to the side of his face by Kevin.  “Now … that was from me; for getting that guard after us.”

Even though he was known for his ability to avoid taking damage as a top player in Ether Sword, Hugh realized that his physical body was too weak, at this point, to win the battle.  He would have to bide his time.

At some point, later on, Hugh got up, on shaky legs, and looked around his empty home.  He could feel his split lip had reopened from the kick he suffered.  He walked to his mother’s room; the bullies were true to their word.  They took everything but had left his mother’s body and mattress.  There was little else he could do at this point so he knelt down and adjusted her body to make it look more comfortable; like she had just laid down for a nap.

Leaving his mom’s room, Hugh walked to the bathroom to wash his wounds and found that the bullies had even taken the mirror from the wall.   He cleaned up as best as he could.  Since he was going to have to deal with the trouble, he would need to recover his energy first.  He then lay down on the floor and fell asleep. 

In the morning, he had just finished lifting the door back up and reattaching the hinges when the crematorium staff arrived.  They removed his mother’s body leaving him to his thoughts on how to come up with enough money to pay the debts he owed.

Hugh knew it would be impossible to find a job because of the serious racial discrimination against those who were of mixed race. 

Based on his background as a top gamer, he knew of other ways he could make money.  He could brew up some potions; he knew many precious formulae, but the materials were too costly.  He could slay monsters; there were always rewards for someone who got rid of a scourge to society.  He knew that griffon eggs were very valuable; he also knew the secret of how to protect himself when he had to kill the griffon to get them, but there was no time to go and find a griffon.   That was, in fact, his real problem; he did not have the luxury of time.

He sunk down and sat on the sidewalk just outside a local bar, mulling over his situation.  The sounds of an animated conversation inside interrupted his train of thought.

He moved closer to the open door and could see that the barkeep was in conversation with the two men at the bar.  As he poured them another cup, he said, “I heard that there are some rare and valuable herbs to be found in the east; in the Punished Land.  They are supposed to be on the big mountain, but rumor has it that it is very dangerous to go there.  That is where it is said the gods fought, leaving some of their energy behind which spawned ravenous monsters!” 

“You would never get me to go there!  That’s crazy!” one of the patrons responded.  

“Yea, it is some dangerous terrain, but think of the money we could have … we could pay for a week’s worth of drinks with just one flower!” exclaimed the smaller and skinnier of the two.

“Yea, but I am not going near those monsters!  I had a friend go up there looking for the same herb, and he never came back!” the bigger man responded, as he took a long pull from his tankard. 

 “That is it!”

Hugh crept a little closer, staying out of eyesight; this conversation intrigued him.  He listened carefully to every word the rowdy drunkards and the barkeep had to say.  Their talk called to memory a quest he had done in Ether Sword.  In it, he had to retrieve “Flameborn”; a magical herb that was the main ingredient of a powerful potion known as “Dragon Fire”.  It commanded a very good price.

Hugh decided to take the journey; he left the bar behind and made his way towards the Punished Land.  This would be the first challenge in his new world.  He set out with confidence; he had undertaken many of these challenges in Ether Sword as a professional gamer.