5. Antique shop and shopping

Waldina spent the following few days leveling up. She visited the forest and meadow areas close to Inizio daily, searching for suitable targets - monsters to defeat. At times she chose her targets from the quests meant for adventurers getting more money out of the job that way. And experience. In just a few days she felt like she really got the hang of it all.

Her current rank at Adventurer’s guild was a mere F but as her skills ranked much higher, she was allowed to work B rank quests. Usually the guild didn’t want to give high ranks for beginners so that working hard would have some actual meaning. Waldina valued the system even though it meant she wasn’t in that respected position yet. Though it allowed her to leisure around more.

The forest close to Inizio contained mostly slimes and other small monsters which were easy opponents even for beginners. First the purple haired ninja was grateful about this but as she kept leveling up and got more used to her new skills she began to want more challenging opponents. As this world was almost a perfect copy of the game AO Waldina had a nagging feeling even its monsters were similar. Which mostly meant that Vermell wouldn’t be anything like these low level monsters. In the game Vermell was the first opponent causing trouble for the player. And thus she came to the conclusion that she desperately needed more powerful opponents to get better before her first stage-exam. She really didn’t want to find out whether this world offered second chances or reset-buttons.

And so Waldina completed her final shoppings for her battle against Vermell and perhaps the next town. She bought a whole lot of food and once no one was looking, she stored that into her bracelet’s inventory. After that she bought new weapons as she wanted something way stronger than beginner weapons. And she wasn’t about to return to town just to buy new weapons again before she’d fought with Vermell. That on the other hand meant she needed to buy camping gear.

Lastly, Waldina stopped in front of a small antique shop. Having to carry her bathe water these past couple of nights wasn’t exactly her favorite thing to do. Not to mention having to buy drinking water all the time. As a ninja she couldn’t just choose her next skill to be water magic. Instead she needed to get it through other means which meant losing a lot of money. Yet she was sure it was all worth it. Besides, if using magic was possible, who wouldn’t want to try it after ending up in a different world? Sure it would cost but at least she had a lot of money for god knows what reason.

Fresh water whenever I wish, Waldina dreamt. To be able to use magic with the snap of her fingers. She wasn’t sure which one excited her more right now.

The antique shop was small. Right next to the door there was a tiny counter and an elderly lady was seated behind it. Her eyes shone briefly with interest, yet she didn’t say anything. Waldina nodded a silent greeting at her and stepped deeper into the shop.

Though the shop itself was rather small, it was full of merchandise. Shelves were packed with stuff from floor to ceiling. The aisles were narrow and labyrinthine. It was surprisingly inviting in its chaos. The more time one spent there, the more the space captivated the visitors.

Waldina shook her head and began searching for books. As she looked past all the exciting and curious things she could locate the bookshelves at the back of the shop. She was, after all, looking for a book for water magic.

Bookshelves filled the back of the shop and it was so full of all sorts of books that Waldina was unsure where to begin searching. After a while she found a section meant solely for magical books, grimoires. It eased her search, though there were still way too many books and not at all organized. The selves were way too packed with books.

There were many different grimoires. If Waldina had an endless amount of money she’d love to buy not just a water grimoire but also fire and wind grimoires. But in the game grimoires were costly. Even though she had a nice amount of money as of now, she wasn’t thrilled about spending it all so soon. She didn’t want to take big risks before she knew more of the world and secured a stable income. Extra money was usually the way to solve one’s problems and it wasn’t wise to travel without proper preparation.

All in all, as of now Waldina’s plan was to buy water grimoire and save up for fire grimoire. Those were essential for her after all. No human could survive without clean water and that made it her number one priority. Fire on the other hand would mainly increase the quality of life as camping would become way easier. In other words it was handy. Not to mention how cool fire magic usually looked.

In Adventurous Online there were mainly two ways to acquire skills outside your selected class. Both required having a grimoire. Firstly the player could choose an NPC to teach them about the skills the grimoire had. Secondly the player could read through the grimoire and try different ways to use the skills and thus “accidently” learn the skills. In the golden age of the Internet almost everyone chose the latter: an NPC teacher cost money, internet guides did not. So there weren’t really accidents in learning anything, mostly just copying guides.

Waldina herself was never interested in magic in videogames and that’s why she didn’t have any basic knowledge about learning magic either. However she didn’t have time - nor interest - to get a teacher so after she’d get the grimoire she’d just aim to practice relentlessly. And hopefully she’d arrive at satisfactory results with her skills. For starters she’d be more than happy if she could just cast water out of thin air.

After hours of searching Waldina finally found a grimoire about beginner level water magic. She took it happily from the shelf and headed to the counter. In the game there was a special rule that players couldn’t open grimoires before buying them as only opening the book meant an opportunity to learn the skills. The grimoires kind of offered the player - or here perhaps any person - a possibility to use the skill right away. It meant one didn’t have to read through it to learn the skills. In this world the grimoire was actually specially locked which fascinated Waldina.

As one could guess, the book was expensive. Regular townspeople wouldn’t have money for these and even Waldina felt bad having to pay so much. It seemed water magic was super popular here so it ended up costing her over a hundred gold coins. With that sort of money she could perhaps live leisurely without having to work for over a year in towns like Inizio. She thanked herself for being able to limit her spending to only water grimoire even though fire magic would offer lots of quality of life improvements.

Back in her room at the inn Waldina checked through her shoppings. She wanted to make sure she’d bought enough for camping outside and a few days’ worth of a trip. She was prepared for a over a couple of weeks long trip as she couldn’t quite calculate how long it would take to reach Vermell, defeat it and the aftermath that followed. Not to forget the leveling up before facing Vermell. Waldina was currently level seven and her leveling up had gotten extremely slower as her level had gone up. The weak monsters here definitely weren’t enough for her level to go up. She was hoping to face off some more powerful monsters to warm her up for the upcoming battle against Vermell. She hoped her level to be at least ten by that point.

Considering all this she really needed to prepare carefully. She had bought a couple of spare swords and a bagful of shurikens and daggers. Weapons wore down fast in these levels which meant she needed a lot of spares to last long enough.

After checking everything was okay she finally took the grimoire and opened it. A blue light sprang up from the book blinding her. It took her a minute to see clearly again. Slowly the light dimmed to a comfortable level and she could see a tiny fairy in the middle of the light. The fairy kept looking around in wonder, nervousness and something Waldina couldn’t quite recognize.

“What on ear-” Waldina yelped, keeping her eyes at the fairy. She had never seen nor heard of fairies in the game AO - at least it wasn’t discussed among players. But surely someone would have talked about it. After all, the fairy was absolutely adorably magical.

“Hello, my name is Kiandra. Water fairy. Nice to meet you, my new owner”, the brightly shining fairy presented herself. Kiandra’s hair was long and wavy, dark blue and it reached up to her toes. Her wings were a beautiful light blue color. Her v-neck dress had the same color in. The dress was short, not even reaching her mid-thighs. That twenty centimeterish fairy was the most beautiful - and sensual - being Waldina had ever seen. She was completely enamored.

“How can I be of help to my master?” Kiandra asked, fluttering her wings uncertainly. The words brought Waldina back to reality: “Master? Owner?”

“Yes. You bought a grimoire and the fairy locked in it. Isn’t that right?” Kiandra explained as if it was common knowledge. Waldina got more surprised by every word.

“Wow. Didn’t know that. I just wanted to learn water magic”, Waldina muttered, clearly uncomfortable. The words owner and master both sounded somehow so enslaving…

“I can teach you magic. But… Am I useless to you, owner?” Kiandra’s face twisted into fear mixed with disappointment.

“Uhh well… How about you teach me the basics of water magic and after that you’re free to do whatever you wish. Be free or something”, Waldina scratched the back of her neck trying to mask her discomfort.

“Tha-that works. Is the master planning to release me from the grimoire afterwards?” This time the blue fairy was slightly happier, hopeful. It made Waldina slightly suspicious of the fairy’s past but she felt like now was not the time to talk about it. Instead she said:

“Yes, if you just teach me water magic and how to release you of course. Oh and please stop calling me master or owner. My name is Waldina.”