Benjamin Bookworm

Ben's face perked up as he heard the offer to help out, bringing his hand up immediately, but visibly hesitated before he shook. "That would be quite helpful. I, um, wasn't expecting that answer... sorry.  I'll do my best to help out, um, Shion- these kinds of quests really help out getting extra col to upgrade my shop with." he honestly answered while he felt the knight's strong grip in his much less confident handshake. He was a bit intimidated by big guys like this- and wasn't familiar enough with Japanese names yet to realize otherwise.

While he didn't know just what this guy wanted, or if he was just trying to help, he was glad to take it either way. "Benjamin's my name.  Just call me Ben if you'd like."  he replied as e opened up his menu with his off hand and selected the party function, inviting Shion to form a party for the quest. A task that only someone who spent a lot of time working with those menus would find coming to them so naturally.

@Azhoda

Ben looked back in surprise at the response, taking a look at the tank who had spoken. "I didn't think I was being that loud... and I'm pretty sure we don't have some sort of secret cabal of PKers hiding out in the Town of Beginnings, watching for merchants heading out of town." he said with a shake of his head. "I mean, I appreciate the advice and all- but I'm not even actually going on the quest anyways. Not many groups are big enough to just have a support fighter in them, and it's not like I could take it myself." He looked away at the fields out of town as he spoke, lost in thought for a few seconds as he watched some other players heading out.

Letting out a sigh before turning to face the stranger, he pulled himself back to the present. "Um, anyways, I just came from my shop- if you want to stop by, I got plenty of healing items and stuff. If you're worried about getting attacked out there having a few buff crystals might help out."  Ben had switched back to his cheery salesman mode as he spoke, obviously trying to switch the the topic away from the quest he couldn't do. "What kinda stuff are you looking for on the lower floors anyways? With that kind of gear I figured you for someone close to the front line."

@Azhoda

Taking matters into his own hands, Ben decided to jump up onto the branches of one of the trees, pulling himself up (gracefully to anyone who asks and there was nobody else around who could disagree with that assessment) and balancing himself on top, better able to grab at the materials for himself. He should have done this from the start, as it was the fastest he had filled up his inventory today.

Balancing precariously on the branches was fast, but also a lot trickier than it looked. H hadn't put any skills into athletics, and didn't have any real life experience to back his actions up with, being that he spent most of his days indoors playing video games. So moving from one branch to another was an exercise in caution with any mistake sending him back down to the ground- probably quite painfully. So far luck had been at his side and he hadn't missed a step, so he could only hope that luck kept up the rest of the trip.

Beginning of thread Stats:

Benjamin was bored.  Manning his alchemy stall was never very interesting, but at least he made sure the players in the Town of Beginnings got enough healing that they wouldn't be in danger.  He had contemplated moving to a higher floor with the front liners, but it would just be chasing after them as they moved up each floor. People knew where he was if they needed to find him, and his prices were low enough to keep them coming back.  Still... he needed to grab a few quests to make sure he had enough col.

He left his familiar to watch over the shop as he headed out to the town's bulletin board- most quests were way below his level here, but his skills weren't in combat, so he couldn't take anything larger on his own. With a dejected sigh, he checked his own ad- 'Support specialist looking for groups to quest with!'- and made sure it was still visible. Even down here there were quests he could get XP from, if only he had someone to go with. Even the big dragon slaying quest line could be possible, and he may even level up enough to make better crystals out of it! "That's all- I just need to find a dragon slayer in the Town of Beginnings. How hard could that be?" he said out loud, chuckling at his own joke as he looked over the quest notice once more.

@Azhoda

Looking up and down the rows of plots in the garden, it was hard to tell which way would be the most fruitful. And if you were not careful, you could end up going down the way you came in and going around in circles. Which is why Ben was using his map to try and stay on the right path- hopefully. 

As he walked away from his rest, a bit more cautious after his close call with falling into the stream of water, his gaze passed across several different types of plants that he could work on, wondering which would be the most fruitful.  This phrasing wasn't lost on him when he saw a patch of fruit trees coming up, and he decided to stop by them next.

The fruit they had on them was some sort of purple... oblong thing. He wasn't sure what he was expecting, but this would at least work for materials so he loaded up his pouch with as many as he could, the slowness of gathering from the lower branches offset by the extra speed his gathering skill gave him in finding the best spots.

As Ben continued on through the garden on his quest, , he spotted a bench on the side of the main path. It looked nice and comfy, and he had been walking for w while... "OK Sebastian, you and me are gonna grab some rest for a minute or two." he told his familiar as he sank his butt into the seat. Sebastian wiggled in his shoulder, settling into place as Ben pulled out a water flank and gave them both a drink as the sat there, idly picking up some of the wildflowers next to the bench as they sat there to regain some of their energy. It had been a long day so far, and he needed a little break in order to keep up the work- it was already mid morning by now.

After a couple of minutes, his thirst was quenched, and the aches in his legs were less painful. He wasn't fully rested, but enough that he could continue on his quest. He needed to continue to gather crafting materials, and got back on his feet, tucking the few wildflowers he had into his pouch before moving on.

Ben continued down the stream of water, picking up more and more water lilies and tossing them into his pouch as he went, treading as carefully as he could. While this was a good place to gather from, he was going at a pace that was much slower than he would like, and was trying to hurry it up.

That is, until the stream met up with the garden wall it was coming out of, and Ben didn't notice. As he walked along without looking ahead, he smacked his foot into the wall and stumbled, almost going head over heels into the water, but managing to catch himself and simply landing butt first into the moist ground. "Great... hopefully that dries out quickly..." he muttered to himself as he stood up and brushed off the grass from his pants. It wasn't bad, but he reached the end of the water and should probably move on. Especially after he sat down on a bunch of the flowers that were left- there wasn't going to be many materials left after that.

Ben finished up with the terraced plants, moving on to something that was easier to pick through rather than relying on his experience to find the right ones. Plus, he would eventually run through all of the good spots there really quickly anyways.

So, he headed on to the next patch of garden, filled with some water lilies next to a small stream of water. It was a good place to start, as long as he didn't accidentally step in the water and get his feet wet. Even if it was just virtual water, it wouldn't be pleasant to feel that all over his feet. Especially his socks- wet socks are the worst.

Even with the extra effort of stepping around, he did find a good amount of crafting materials here. The watery plants were very useful in a lot of places, and not too bad to snap up and get into his bag. Plus he could keep following the little stream of water to find more and more of them. 

Ben gave his familiar one last scratch behind he antennae before he moved on to the next garden plot, this one a patchwork of smaller plots with brick dividers between them. Each of the smaller plots held inside of it a small selection of flowers of different type, and were terraced on each other in order to fit a larger amount into the space available.

Ben took a good look at the varied and colorful selection of flowers available in each plot, carefully inspecting them for usefulness before finding that they were fairly spread out in that regard- some plots had very useful flowers, and many had useless ones. Lucky enough for him, enough of the crafting material quests allowed him to spot which ones were which in quick order, not wasting his time picking items he would have no use for. It made things go smoothly this way, allowing a lot of materials to be gathered from here, even if this particular spot wasn't very useful for normal gathering attempts.

Ben continued working on the sunflowers (or whatever they were) with help from his familiar this time, cutting down the amount of work that it took to fill up the last bag from the patch before he needed to move it to his inventory. He was glad that he had brought plenty of extra bags with him on this trip- trying to stuff all the materials he gathered up into his inventory individually wouldn't work with this much.

"OK Sebastian, I think that's it for this field. You can hop back on and we can move on." he told his familiar, who was more than happy to jump back onto his favorite napping spot after working. At least he was a reliably lazy little caterpillar. "So, any preferences on where we move out to next? No? OK then, I'll pick which way we go and you can just close your eyes." Even though he was already half asleep by now, Ben still felt like including him in the conversation. He was Ben's partner after all.

Ben continued to work at getting more materials, still going slower than he wanted to. Sebastian, however, decided to answer his question by crawling over to the flowers Ben was working on, grabbing a bunch of them into his grip all at once. "Oh Sebastian... what are you doing? Wait, that might actually work..." he commented, realizing that having all the flowers in one group would allow him to dump all the seeds into his bag all at once. Which was a lot faster than grabbing one handful at a time like before. 

"OK, that actually works out pretty well. Good job there little guy." He gave Sebastian a nice pat on the head as they worked, filling up another bag quick enough. "Looks like we might finish up in time to actually get something decent for dinner tonight. If we can keep up this pace at least."

He finished up with the current bag as he took a look over the field he was working on, guessing he could get one last bag's worth from it before he would have to move on, though luckily there was plenty of places for him to move on to after this. It was a big garden after all.

Ben continued his work through the larger substitute sunflower plants, switching to holding his bag out and trying to simply knock one handful of seeds at a time into his bag. Which unfortunately didn't speed up his gathering speed at all- these plants were just tricky to grab anything out of.

He checked on his familiar once more, making sure that he wasn't doing anything more than glancing over at his work- the last thing he needed was to have his work interrupted again by one of Sebastian's snack attacks. He really needed to get enough materials for a month or two in one go.

He considered once again opening up his friends list for the quest, but decided against it. Most of the other players he knew were focused on fighting and combat- they would be bored as heck just looking for materials for a whole day. Though the extra conversation he would get from having friends would be nice- "Well Sebastian, it looks like you're going to be my sounding board for a while longer. So how do we go about gathering these faster do you think?"

Ben moved to a new patch of flowers- this time keeping a closer eye on his caterpillar familiar. It wouldn't do to have him jumping straight into the potential crafting materials before he even got a chance to pick them.

These flowers that he picked this time were taller, reaching up to the middle of his chest with their flowering parts. They reminded him of sunflowers in the real world, except that they had a much large amount of petals and seed pods. It made them look kind of off, but it was a video game, so he was having to get used to it.

As he inspected the first handful of seeds, it appeared that they would be the useful parts of the plant- which at least meant that he didn't have to bend down again. Though it also meant that he had to pick out each handful at a time. It figures all the ingredients he looked at would be a pain to pick up- at least he had the skills to help him out.

It took a minute of maneuvering to get the chest in place, and another for him to get in open properly- these things were secured tight. But soon Ben popped open the lid to the chest and didn't bother to hide his smile- not that there was anyone to hide it from. This chest was filled to the brim with stuff- not only was it more col than he had gotten in a while, but it also held a few more materials for him as well. He picked through everything useful, adding it to his inventory, including a few unidentified items. He'd probably sell them for the col... though the armor might have something interesting in it. He would have to figure out if it was worth the cost of identifying though.

Once it was all in his inventory, he simply had to close the chest up- he wasn't sure if that caused them to respawn faster or not, but he would give it a try anyways- and pick a new direction to start harvesting some materials in.

As Ben stood up to take a look around him, he glanced back the way he came, making sure to check on how fast the materials he had already picked up were respawning. But, to his surprise, he saw a glint of shined metal around some of the trees he had finished searching through previously.

"Eh, Sebastian, is that what I think it is?" he asked a grand smile spreading across of his face as he said it. "I think this may be the haul of ours that finally gets rid of our col problems for a while. Maybe it'll even have enough for us to finally get some furniture. Or at least a nice sleeping nest for you." he joked.

Still, no matter how you cut it, getting this much treasure  at once would be a great windfall for him. So he wasted no time at all in pulling the chest from between the trees it was stuck in and out into the open where he could get at the lock right away.

Of course the first time he pays attention to how quiet Sebastian is being is when he decides he is hungry again. It's like he has a sixth sense for just when he isn't needed sometimes.

"Hey, quit it!" was all he had time to call out before Sebastian slipped from his perch and grabbed a mouthful of flowers for himself to munch on, knocking most of the rest over and spilling the materials on the ground. "Sebastian... I was having good luck harvesting those.  Did you really have to dive in like that?" He let out another sigh as he watched his familiar take the next couple of minutes to chew his way through the rest of the flowers, too stunned to do anything but sit there and rest until Sebastian decided he was done and crawled up his torso and back onto his perch.

"Well then buddy, how about we go on to another patch. And this time you don't dive in head first?" he asked as he took one more look at the trampled flowers in front of him before he stood up and prepared to get moving.

Ben continued the slow and painstaking process of picking each of the blue tulip flowers - well, blue mana bowls if you went by their in game description- one at a time, making sure to take his time so he did not accidentally spill anything as he added each one to his inventory. It wasn't as fast as some of the other materials he could grab from around here, but it had the benefit of getting him a constant stream on materials. Hopefully this rate kept up and he could get a few weeks of materials done in a day. Especially with having to use a fairly powerful search boosting item- he couldn't afford to let things like that go to waste. Quite frankly, he needed to save up all the Col he could since grinding it from monsters wasn't a choice for him. 

At least Sebastian had eaten his fill for a while, and was curled up quietly on his shoulder for now. How long that would last is anyone's guess, so he was taking advantage of it while he could.

Ben took a look around at where to go next, figuring which of the plots of flowers would have the best return on his time. The problem was he didn't really know much about any of the items that could be gathered from here, so he settled on simply picking out the most colorful ones nearby. After all, this was a gathering quest, so whichever route he picked should be workable from his view.

The patch of flowers that he chose to approach was a bright blue bunch, with their heads shaped like tulips in the real world. Actually, since tulips did come in blue, they might be exactly like the real world variants- he wouldn't have any way of knowing. The important part was the liquid inside of the flowers were considered a useful crafting material, so as long as he could pick up each of the flowers carefully, he could quickly fill up another pouch with little effort- or having to move from one spot to another to often.

Ben perked up as he saw Dazia teleport in, a bright smile crossing his face. "It's nice to see you're well too Dazia. I hope I'm not interrupting any of your grinding and such." he said as he moved to meet her halfway. "I'm glad you could take a break though."

He hesitated before they met, unsure for a second before moving in to give Dazia a hug. No matter the circumstances, it was good to be with her again. "So, um, like I said in my message, I'm not to sure about what kinds of restaurants are around here. So I figured we could take a walk around the outside of town, near the edge of the safe zone, and see what's open. Look for a place with a good view of the forest."  He could feel the nervousness in his voice as he spoke, still not fully confident of himself yet. Plus she'd probably have a lot of her own things to talk about first- there was a lot going on he missed in his lab, and he would love to hear about it all. 

@Dazia

Ben continued to toss materials into his pouch, but found that he was getting diminishing returns on as he kept poking his way through the patch he was working on right now. It seemed he had started to use up all of the useful materials he could harvest out of the flowers, leaving only the ones with shallow roots left. Even his gathering skill wasn't finding anything much more for him to pick up.

With a sigh, he tossed the last few of the picked flowers into his pouch and stood up to brush the rest of the dirt off of himself. He didn't even have to glance at the clock in his menu to know how early it still was, and how much longer he had to go until lunch. Or until the day was done. Still, it was for the front liners. To help everyone get out of this game faster- and to help make sure that everyone got out. No deaths if they could be avoided. Not as long as his healing items could help.

Ben was at the plaza of Floor 8, next to the teleport plaza in the city of Florenthia. He had come here after dropping his familiar off at his shop- the little guy could usually watch over things while he was gone. And after switching out of his usual dirt stained armor into something nicer looking. He hadn't had many times he needed to dress nicely, but today was an exception. So he had grabbed himself a long sleeved blue shirt he picked up a while back and some nice looking slacks, and added them to the blue scarf he was wore.

Just a few minute ago he had sent over a message to Dazia, asking her to meet him in the plaza. They... hadn't gotten a chance to talk to her since the Gala. Since the night that they confessed their love. It wasn't how he ever imagined falling in love, but he didn't care. It was the first really good thing ever to happen in the entire death game. And she was going to be here soon to have lunch, maybe spend the day together.  It almost felt normal for once.

He stood by the teleport gate and just waited, taking in the sunshine as he did, and wondering if he should have brought flowers or something...

@Dazia

Ben and Sebastian stepped past the grove of trees in the large garden to take a look at a patch of wildflowers growing in the shade nearby. The purple petals they had looked promising for the work he needed to do, so he grabbed one an inspected it. Luckily it was something he could use in healing potions- but unfortunately only the roots would be useful. And he had no idea of which ones would have good roots and which would not.

"That's why we have the gathering skill, right?" he asked to his familiar, who didn't answer as usual, and simply reached down and let the system's skill take over guiding his hand. More often than not, he plucked up something good that could be used in his craftings, attesting to the usefulness of the skills he had picked up. He tossed the ones he could use in his pouch and just left the rest on the ground to disappear into polygons soon enough. No reason to cram his inventory full of useless items if he didn't need to.

As he started running out of vines to grab any more crafting materials, Ben took another look up at his familiar who was still sitting on one of the branches, happily munching away at all the leaves that he could reach. He wondered if he should just leave the little guy here while he scooped up what he could from the nearby flower patches and bushes. It would be quicker without the interruptions... but he felt if he didn't have anyone to talk to it would be a lot more boring. Just walking around with your own thoughts for hours at a time was not an idea that appealed to him.

"Come on Sebastian, lets hop over to the next patch." he called out, finished with the flowers and walking over to the branch his familiar was on before he moved on. Sebastian hopped onto Ben's shoulder once more, ready to grab a nap as they continued their work. Hopefully it would be with as much success as he had just had from here on out.

Even if he needed to do everything carefully, Ben still tried to find ways to make the work go faster. Picking a few flowers from the spot they attached to the vines, a few by cutting them off the vine, and just by grabbing and yanking. It seemed to work the best when he just grabbed the attachment part, with a few of the flowers bursting into a spray of polygons as he picked the wrong area, but most of them ending up inside of his pouch for use later.

Still, even after spending a couple hours here, he barely had enough to last him four days of crafting. Even less if he was going to be making expensive crystals out of them. He let out a sigh... this was always the case, but players still needed them. And he wasn't going to let them down by not filling his inventory up to the brim before going home would be letting the front liners down. Or at least letting down his own plans to help them. 

Putting aside the random leaves that seemed to quell his familiar's appetite, he continued to pick the flowers from the hanging vines, filling up another bag to send to his inventory as he worked. It was hard work as usual, but at least this time he was reaching up instead of bending down, which probably helped his back. Or virtual back. Or whatever this game did- he was never clear on how exactly the hardware worked, and he wasn't in a position to find out now. All he could do was keep spitting out crafting items to help out the front lines as much as he could.

He got himself into a rhythm as he plucked one flower after another, careful not to destroy any of the petals as he worked- these items were a lot more delicate than he had thought, and it was slowing him down to work with each one of them. But that was why he carved out the full day to work on this- it was important enough he could take all the time he needed to get this done right.