Haven Online

Chapter 21: Bellport*

The next ten minutes passed quickly and, after a flash of light, Xinya has transported away. After the light faded and Xinya could see again, he saw he was in the middle of a new town. Like all towns in-game, Bellport had an old-world charm to it. It was styled like a 16th-century European town, from the building to the way the NPC's were dressed.

The town was bustling with players, they were everywhere Xinya looked. Some were setting up shops, some were trying to recruit other players into their guild and others were grouping up to do quests together. Seeing the different types of activity everywhere made Xinya truly feel like he was back once again, that this really was his second chance.

As he was taking it all in, a notification popped up, telling him that the map function has been activated. Xinya walked through the crowd while opening the map to see which town in Ziam he was in. The map was semi-transparent, so he didn't have to worry about bumping into anyone as he walked.

The town he was currently in was called Bellport. The map also showed the local produce, monsters, and the different types of minerals that could be found here. Which was great, the only drawback is that it doesn't show you their exact location.

Bellport was in the inner area of the region and very close to the capital. There were a couple of towns in the inner area, all basic starting towns for new adventures. These towns in the inner area all had monsters that were low leveled, but the farther a player goes out to the further away cities, the higher the level of the monsters would be.

Xinya didn't need to worry about that now since he wasn't strong enough yet to venture out to those towns anyway. He needed to go get himself a class before thinking of doing anything else, either way. The class that Xinya wanted to be was a bit different from the regular ones, it was a completely new one that had just been introduced by the creators this past year.

The class was called Artisan, and there were two different versions of it. There were the tailor/blacksmith hybrid and the chef/potion maker hybrid. An artisan is a worker in a skilled trade, especially one that involves making things by hand.

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So, of course, the Artisan would be a mishmash of life skills. Many people thought that the Artisan was a way for the creators of the game to pander to the people who do life skills, giving them a class that will help them fight so they can collect items they need, while still letting them do the life skills they wanted. 

The class even gives double skill points, which made a lot of people jealous, until they learned that at every five levels the Artisan has to pass a test of their chosen life skill and if they fail they would lose five levels. People stopped being upset after that became public knowledge.

The reason was that the early tests were quite easy, but as they level up their life skills, the harder the test becomes. Some players even become stuck in an endless loop of failure and reach an impasse.

Xinya remembered reading all the stories from the players who choose the class on the game forums and, in his past life, he really wished he could be one of them, he always thought that, if it was him, he could pass the tests for his chosen life skill if he had a chance, and now he does.

The Artisan is separated into two types of fighting styles, close combat, and ranged. For the blacksmith/tailor hybrid, if a player chooses blacksmith as the fighter class they will be able to fight with a giant hammer; if they choose tailor, on the other hand, they will have ranged attacks with poisoned needles. The Chef/Potion-making hybrid is kind of a mystery, although it became popular after the update, most players used chef as the fighter class and the few who tried potions, switched back after a couple of days, saying it was difficult to figure out how to use the skills.

Xinya doesn't really enjoy close combat, so he decided to make potion-making the fighter class and, if he couldn't figure out the skills, he would just suck it up and change it.

Xinya walked through the town for a while before he found the place he was looking for. To change your class in the game one needs to get a quest from a job instructor. Each job instructor is located in a different place. To be a warrior you need to go to the barracks, for a mage you need to head to a magic tower and so on, but the artisan instructors were located in a variety of places. In this town, it was an old toy crafting shop.

Taking a deep breath, Xinya went to open the door of the shop. This was him officially starting on a new path inside the game and he could hardly wait. Before opening the door a beeping sound interrupted him, it was his friend's chat, it seemed that Melting Snow noticed that he had left the beginner town. Sighing, Xinya paused in his actions and opened up the chat.

"Congrats, you're finally out of beginner town, you took forever." Melting Snow's booming voice rang out.

Smiling, Xinya said, "There was something I had to do, that's why it took so long."

"It's fine, in what town did you wind up?" asked Melting Snow.

"Bellport."

Melting Snow was silent for a minute before saying, "That's really close to the city I'm at. I'll come to where you are, it will only take a few hours to get there."

"But what about" Before he could finish Melting Snow already disconnected, he just shook his head in wonder at the boy and entered the shop.