Without using his 'All Seeing Eyes', Thomas worked much faster on his second uniform for the day. He felt like he had learned an important lesson. While going for perfection is fine and all, it's not always necessary and sometimes really wasn't worth the effort. Since he had come to that realization he decided to just put his time to better use and focused on working as efficiently as he could. He kept his stitching neat but did it with greater speed than last time.

Thanks to not using 'All Seeing Eyes', the practice he'd had over the last few days, and his increased Tailoring rank he knocked out the last female uniform in about an hour and a half. After earning himself 231 Tailoring experience and turning in the quest, Thomas got back to work. Only this time he grabbed one of the male uniforms since that was all that was left. Looking at the remaining baskets it seemed like the guild that ordered the uniforms was mostly female.

There was nothing wrong with a mostly female guild, but Thomas wouldn't join one. Well, he wouldn't join any guilds usually. He always felt women did better in all-female guilds or in guilds with an even mix of the sexes. When women outnumbered men in a guild it always caused issues, not because of the women but because of the men. They always seemed to want to try to overcompensate to show the women how 'strong' and 'virile' they were. In other words, the men were just horndogs. Maybe not all of them, but enough of them.

Thomas continued to contemplate to himself and reminisce over his past experiences while his hands continued to move. Like always he traced out the patterns for the pieces of the uniform. For the men's clothing, it was significantly easier. The slacks were just two pieces, the front and back halves, that needed to be sewn together. The clients had chosen to make the pants the same dark red color as the skirts and left the shirt white so that the uniforms would match between the sexes.

Once every piece was traced and cut out, Thomas began to hem the sections of cloth that wouldn't become part of the seams when the pieces were sewn together to make a single article of clothing. Just like the women's outfit, the men's shirt had an open collar with three buttons that would require him to reinforce the buttonholes. That was the single most annoying part of making the men's outfit, the rest was simple and easy taking very little time at all. It only took barely over an hour for Thomas to complete his first set of the men's uniform.

System Notice: You have created a Normal pair of cloth pants. Quality: Excellent. You have gained 71 Tailoring experience. System Notice: You have created a Normal cloth shirt. Quality: Above Average. You have gained 91 Tailoring experience. System Notice: Quest Complete, Repeatable Quest! Zella has requested that you make uniforms for the budding guild 'Heaven's Harmony'. You may repeat this quest until the order has been finished.

Rewards: 100 Exp, 25 gold per uniform completed with a grade of 'Above Average' or higher

Time Limit: None

Failure: For each uniform below 'Above Average' quality you must pay for the cost of materials. System Notice: You have gained 100 experience.

Pocketing the gold after turning in the quest, Thomas went back into the backroom and selected another basket for the men's uniform. Given how little time it had taken him he should easily be able to produce two more of the men's uniforms before calling it a day today. Though he should probably spend a little more effort on the men's shirt to make sure it at least gets up to excellent quality to match the pants.

Over the next three and a half hours, Thomas completed two full sets of the men's uniforms of excellent quality earning himself 330 Tailoring experience, 200 experience, and 50 gold. Thomas was pretty content. He had been correct when he guessed that making the women's uniforms would earn him more tailoring experience than making the men's uniforms. Though if he was more interested in regular experience and gold it would have been better to make the men's uniforms to complete the quest more often. Everything in balance, he supposed.

With his work for the day done, Thomas stopped by Rock's Armory to talk to Rock and hopefully pick up his new tool. Given that his Tailoring rank had reached twenty now it seemed almost like a waste to get the tool now, but even if he didn't use it a whole lot for tailoring it might come in handy in the future so it was worth having anyway. Upon arriving inside the smithy he was boisterously greeted by a hard slap on his shoulder from Rock, "Thomas! You little gold mine! Come by to drop off yet another revolutionary idea?"

Thomas laughed and clapped Rock's back in return, "Hardly. I was hoping to pick up the tool tonight so I could use it tomorrow at Zella's place."

Rock nodded while laughing again and led Thomas into the finishing room to pick up his less functional version of the x-acto knife. The one he was given was just a single piece of iron with a thin rounded handle and wickedly sharp straight edge that came to a fine point. It looked pretty similar to what he was expecting the final product to look like when Rock managed to make all the parts, just this one did not have a replaceable blade so it would only last until the blade was ruined.

After looking it over, Thomas nodded in approval and turned to Rock, "So how is progress on making the version with replaceable blades going?"

Rock grumbled and rubbed the back of his shaven head, "Not so great. For the most part, it's kind of easy, but getting the threading right and especially making that... what did you call it again?" Rock grumbles and frowns while trying to recall the term, "Collen?"

Thomas chuckles, "Close, collet. It's the most important part so take your time to make sure you get it right. Without it making the blade easy to change would become a real pain."

Rock nodded his head in agreement, "Yeah, that part. It's small and a little more complex than I expected. So what we decided to do was make one out of wax so we could do a mold of it and use the mold to cast the part. I hired a local sculptor to sculpt the part out of wax fist so we could make a permanent mold from it."

Thomas grinned, "Good thinking. After that, you can just cast the collet and clean it up. That should save some time and effort on your part."

Secretly, Thomas wished he could just build some industrial machines to do all the work for Rock. Even just a press to turn sheets of metal into the blades so they only needed to be sharpened would be a huge help to Rock. Thomas was pretty sure he could make a simple press from memory, but with the weights involved he figured it would be best if he brushed up on it back in reality first before attempting to make one in the game. It would just have to wait a while.

With his prize collected, Thomas bid Rock a good night and headed for The Swans Nest to get a good nights rest. Today was only his fourth day working at Zella's place to train up his tailoring to rank 25. He had three days left to get the last five ranks in tailoring to complete the quest for Hekrin. He still needed over one thousand experience to get tailoring to rank 25, that was nearly one-third of all the experience required to go from rank one to rank 25. However, he managed to earn 585 experience today and would continue to earn at least 165 tailoring experience per male uniform. He just hoped there were enough left for him to get his tailoring to rank 25!

After a delicious dinner, courtesy of Martha, Thomas retired to his room and lay on his bed to stare at the ceiling for a time to rank up his 'All Seeing Eyes' while he contemplated what he wanted to do. He was straight up determined to complete the quest chain for Hekrin, but he was also slowly becoming annoyed with it as well. He was nearly two weeks into the game and he didn't feel any closer to completing Hekrin's quest. He was one hundred percent convinced that he would have to do at least a few more quests at other professions.

It's not that he didn't enjoy what he was doing, but he also enjoyed taking the things he'd made out and playing with them. He'd forged the first magical item in the game, but he had yet to take it out into the field or into the dungeon and use it in combat. Even his character sheet seemed to be mocking him with his complete lack of abilities or anything even remotely related to combat. Sure he wasn't the worlds greatest fighter or anything, but half the fun of making a suit of armor out of dragon scales was going out and hunting the dragon!

Slowly the corners of his lips arched upwards as he came up with a plan. He was going to push himself as hard as he could to finish getting his tailoring up to 25 in the next two days. After that, he was going to spend the last day of the quest out fighting or hunting something so he could blow off a little steam, gain a little more experience, and earn a few combat abilities. After his day of hunting, he would turn in the quest to Hekrin and begin the next profession grind. With his course of action decided, Thomas finished grinding 'All Seeing Eyes' and used 'Serenity' to help himself fall asleep.

After arriving at Zella's Fashions the following morning Thomas had his plan in mind. Today his goal was to make six complete sets of the male uniform. They only took about an hour and a half each so it should be possible for him to pull it off. He would even be able to save time thanks to the x-acto knife-like tool he got from Rock last night. Stepping into the back of the shop, Thomas headed over to the shelf with the baskets of materials and froze. There were only four left!

"Shit!"

There were only four sets of materials left for making the uniforms. With his plan completely ruined before he could even get started on it, Thomas couldn't help but curse. Still, he grabbed all four baskets and got to work on all four uniforms at the exact same time. He was going to get as much out of this quest as possible and he wasn't going to share it with anyone!

Thanks to the new knife, Thomas was able to speed up his work a little bit by not having to mess around with the scissors. It was much easier to just drag the tip of the knife along the lines he drew when tracing out the patterns onto the cloth. Seeing what Thomas was doing, some of the women working in the back room asked about the knife. Thomas explained about the features the real one would have when it was completed as he continued to work. He let them know that Rock would be producing them in the near future and they would all be able to get one of their own then.

Over the next five hours, Thomas traced, cut, and stitched together a total of four male uniforms. Each piece of the uniforms came out as excellent quality netting him a grand total of 668 Tailoring experience. This chunk of experience boosted his tailoring all the way up to rank 23 leaving him with just two more ranks to obtain before he would have sweet, sweet freedom from needles for a good while! Thomas quickly brought all four uniforms to Zella to turn them in. For the first three uniforms he gained 300 experience and 75 gold, but for the fourth...

System Notice: Quest Complete! Zella has requested that you make uniforms for the budding guild 'Heaven's Harmony'. You may repeat this quest until the order has been finished.

Rewards: 100 Exp, 25 gold per uniform completed with a grade of 'Above Average' or higher

Time Limit: None

Failure: For each uniform below 'Above Average' quality you must pay for the cost of materials.

Bonus: You finished 5/20 female and 7/10 male uniforms on your own totaling 40% of the order. Reputation with Zella greatly improved. You have been rewarded 600 bonus experience. System Notice: You have gained 600 experience.

Zella gave Thomas a warm smile as she spoke, "You did a really good job and helped out immensely with the order. The girls even let me know you had a tool invented especially to help out. I have to admit I was starting to wonder if all otherworlders were like that scumbag Drukker, but you've shown me that's not the case."

Thomas smiled and nodded, then tilted his head a little when he realized he hadn't seen Drukker today or yesterday, "What happened to that guy?"

Zella smirked and replied in a somewhat frosty tone, "Since he didn't like to work and wanted to spend his days looking at the women working here I banned him from my shop and let the other shops with mostly female staff know about him. He's likely been banned from half of the shops on the main boulevard by now."

Thomas felt a cold sweat break out on his forehead and back as a shudder ran down his spine. Drukker had seriously fucked up. Being banned from one shop was still liveable, but being banned from half of the best shops on the main street of the city? That was disastrous. Like a bolt of lightning, a thought struck Thomas that made him harbor a deep desire to punch Hekrin right in his face. There was no way that dwarf bastard didn't know about Zella's attitude towards men oggling her employees! That fucking dwarf had tried to set him up!

As if she could read his thoughts from the emotions playing out on his face, Zella let out a lovely laugh and confirmed Thomas's suspicions, "Yes, Hekrin likes to send men that ask him to teach them to me sometimes to teach those men a lesson and to get them off of his back. That old goat causes me no end of troubles. However, this time he sent me you and you've done a wonderful job for me."

Thomas gave Zella a warm smile, while secretly starting to plot his revenge on that bastard Hekrin, but only after learning Magitech Engineering from him. Yes, only after that...

Spoiler: Character Sheet Name: Thomas Darkrose Experience Gained: 5,823 Experience Spent: 4,390 Experience Remaining: 1,433 Power: 15 (+) 160 Exp Endurance: 15 (+) 160 Exp Agility: 15 (+) 160 Exp Magic: 15 (+) 160 Exp Innate Abilities: Transmutation ( A ) // Rank 1 // 0/20 Exp Quick Learner ( C ) // Rank 14 // 45/150 Exp All Seeing Eyes ( S ) // Rank 7 // 5/80 Exp Skills: Serenity // Rank 7 // 35/80 Exp Blacksmithing // Rank 25 // 93/260 Exp Tailoring // Rank 23 // 146/240 Exp Abilities: None Titles: Magical Blacksmith