Quantum Leap - Vol. 10 Overpowered Awesomeness

C009 Time To Get Weapon Refinements

Matilda walked over to where I was hiding in the low plantations of the sweetcorn where I could see the baby corn was budding. "Hey, ring leader...are you trying to hide from me? Cone out now, you better have a good explanation for me."

Hearing Matilda coming my way, I stepped out from the corn plantations and suddenly she ran a bit and gave me a hug.

"Errr...you have seen the table all laid out with food, don't you?"

"You half dimwit dum dum...how can I be so blind not to see all those you had set up for me huh? Thanks...I thought you had forgotten about me."

Matilda was still in my embrace when she said that.

"It's the guy's joint effort Matilda, it's not me alone, all by myself. It's just a little something I've got from the market, the scones and muffins were specially ordered from Salisbury."

"Come, let's head there and eat. The dwarfs would be coming out very soon too. it's close to sundown now." I slowly extracted Matilda's arms that had entwined around my waist and released it while I held them in my hands and walked towards the camp.

"Welcome back, Matilda..." I finally said and she gave me the biggest and the broadest grin she could ever muster and handed me a friendly punch on my arm.

The four of us sat down and chatted noisily as Will.I.Am prepared strawberry tea in a pot and we all drank up and in a short moment, the dwarfs emerged from their mine shaft and numbered eagerly to us and welcome Matilda back to the band.

Soon, we all sat down with the spread of food before us and tucked in beginning with the fried potato crisp with dippings and finally to the garlic fried rice, chops, crabs and clams.

In short, it was a feast to behold as everyone happily tucked in and was also to commemorate each week of successful mining.

....

"Here you go, young adventurer. This feast is simply wonderful and delectable especially the clams and crabs from this river. Once again, we would like to give our thanks for the meals that you had provided and me seeing you again tomorrow for breakfast."

The dwarf handed me 4 pouches of gems and was added to the collections of shards. I thanked them for all the shards. " So when would you be making the Fair quality gems?"

"It's not as simple as it seemed, my friend. It would take about 400 poor quality gems to hit a 100% success rate for the Fair quality ones and to hit 400 poor quality ones, we need 2000 shards."

"Then how many gems would you require to turn the fair ones to good ones? Would it be 400 gems at an increment of .25 every fusion?"

"That's right my friend, I haven't made the calculation yet but I think by the end of this 90 days I would be churning out a few hundred pieces of poor gems. We still have 83 days left, right my dwarven friend?"

"Yes, my young adventurer friend. 83 days would give you 4067 pieces of shards per gem and by that period of time, you would have made quite a substantial amount of poor quality gems."

"That's right, my dwarven friend. That amount could be made into 813 poor quality gems. I won't be making those poor quality gems yet, I'd rather wait for the end of 90 days before I embark on making these gems."

"That's a fair thought, my young adventurer. Alright, we are off now. See you at breakfast tomorrow."

The dwarfs bade farewell and shoulders the picks over and lumbered off towards the path that they had come from and disappeared from view after some time.

"So boss, we won't be having our sockets filled with gem soon right?"

"Let's go to Nuneaton next...! I saw an adventurer when I'm on the way back here and his equipment had an aura and he said he got it through refinement at that town he mentioned."

Matilda excitedly pointed out and she related how she met with the young man and what he had created to Matilda regards the basic tier refinement that would enhance the drops ny monsters.

When the required amount of gold coins was mentioned, it made me wonder how much Refined Steel Plates that need to be sold to make up for that amount. I've got slightly more than 58k Refined plates and was wondering how much would I get if I exchanged a few thousand plates at one time.

At least, I don't have to think if going in and out to get the plates and would just take about 850 plates and trade them in one shot. This amount of plates would yield 2125 gold coins and it would be worthwhile to use in a very long period of time.

"Alright, guys hang on a bit, I'm heading to the trading area to change for some gold coins for our next adventure after this."

With that, I walked out of camp, went behind a tree and sneaked into the Realm of mine and removed the balance Refined steel plates and head back to the real world. I then walked gingerly toward Byram village and exchanged the plates with the Smithy for 2125 gold coins and walked back to the camp.

I had gone for 40 minutes to complete the task and was sitting at the dining table when Matilda approached me, " You managed to exchange the coins?"

"Yup...we now have more than 2150 gold coins that we could use to refine our weapons and armour. We would head to Nuneaton once we finished the 90 days here."

"Boss, could I suggest we use a portal to move between cities instead? When I first move out from Port Isaac, I used the Inn to quickly move to Plymouth for 3 gold coins. Actually, it's not quickly moving, I checked in and stayed for the night and when I exit my bedroom, I'm already in Plymouth."

=*=

"A portal eh...How comes it is not stated here in the Maps...oh there it is...how could I overlook it. It looked like a door here. Come take a look JL, is this the one you mentioned smack here in the big city?"

I handed the map of our current location to the group and everyone peered at it and Jean Lethal conformed it was a portal. We were right in the middle of cities around is such as Leeds, Sheffield, Doncaster, Scunthorpe, York and Harrogate.

"Sir...Leeds is the nearest to us and it seems to be in bold and that means its the bigger cities than the rest of the ones here. These towns which are around us seemed to be not in bold but also serves as a town as well."

"Sir, I had been to Scunthorpe before and it was a very big town with its own Mayor and there are several marketplaces and trading districts there as well. The city was quite enormous too. I had seen quite a lot kf other adventurers too and they set up their own trade stalls in the common marketplace as well."

"Sir, use this fishing line to find out the distance and we can calculate using this map measurement guideline here." Will.I.Am handed me a piece of fishing line as long as a foot long and I used it to Mark our current location against the towns.

"Hmm, Leeds seems to be about 23 km from us, Wakefield is 20km, Barnsley is 27km, Doncaster is 29km, Scunthorpe is 54km, York is 34 km, Sheffield is 46 km and Harrogate is 40 km. You're damn right boss, we are smack in the centre of these cities and I could even purchase their home and away soccer jerseys when we are at that town."

"It means to say we need to go to Wakefield to enter a portal at their Inn to make a journey out to the other bigger cities, am I right, JL?" Matilda asked as a 20km trip would almost take a 4hr trip on normal walking speed and slightly over an hour on Cruising Along.

"It sure is, Matilda. It certainly would be that way. Do you think there's a refinement place over at Wakefield? If not, means, we have to head to Leeds directly which had a higher chance of finding such refinement establishment. It wouldn't hurt to ask around in Byram." Jean Lethal was saying as the chances of such an establishment would only exist in bigger cities.

"Let's ask the people there tomorrow at Byram. Maybe they could give us some information that we need especially from the Smithy. It's late now, the balance food we just cover it with the food cover and we could warm or up and make breakfast tomorrow."

"Sir, we still have crabs and clams, would it be okay for me to prepare a seafood chowder? We could have them with muffin and scones left over here. The chops we could have them for lunch later on. I just need to smoke them for a while before I store them. It would make a good breakfast tomorrow."

"Proceed with your plan, Will. You'd be alright if you stay back in camp here to prepare dinner for our guests later on in case we make a trip to Leeds?"

"Thank you, sir, no problem. I'd prefer to stay back and I could tend to the farm and starts weeding them. Those soil nutrients and compost made the weeds grow wild. There are some weeds that I would just leave them be. They are the wild spinach leaves."

"You had done a good job, Will, alright we three had something to discuss and you may 5ake your rest once you had settled with the dishes and the food here. It's already past 9 and you should have a good read afterwards."

"Boss, any plans for a hearth soon? How many pieces of stones or wood to make the floor?" Jean Lethal asked as he can't wait to have our own hearth here to store our equipment and a place to sleep peacefully without getting wet with dew every morning."

"We need 5 stones to make a stone slab flooring and 1 log makes 4 pieces of planks which can be made into a wooden hearth in no time. The trees spawning time is 1 minute and we would get leaves and silkworms as well."

"A plank would be 1-foot x 3 feet and if we make like the hearth before, which is 24x24, we just need 8 x 24 planks. It's a total of 192 planks from 48 trees. We can get to work on those and we would need a plan from tomorrow onwards. To gather resources first or to head for refinement later."

"Boss, we just make the hearth first, as for the refinement, we would be able to do it anytime. That place is not going anywhere."

"Matilda, a 24x24 hearth would be okay for the 4 of us this time or you want to make something bigger than this? 48 logs would be enough to create the floorings alone except for the walls and roof. Another 24 logs to make the walls and 48 to make a flat roof. That makes about 120 logs altogether."

"A 24x24 hearth would be fine, we would all be sprawling on the ground with our sleeping bags after all. Hii...Hii...Hii...And I would be chasing everyone off the hearth if I need to change my clothes or something."

"Here's 500 gold coins to make your refinements. Keep it with you first. I would still continue to make the poor quality gems before I hit 100% to produce fair quality gems. I need to make 400 poor quality gems. Such a difficult system to begin with. I wonder if those other gem crafters had easier and straight forward ones or not. Hahaha."

....

The next day, after breakfast with the dwarfs, we headed to Byram and asked about refinements from the smithy.

"Good morning, my good Smithy, we would inquire if you can provide us with some advice on weapons and material refinement. Would we need some ornaments to complement the refinement?"