"Huugh" I Looked over all my equipment and started having anxiety knots in my stomach. Over the years, I was never a person to suffer for saving pennies. How can i survive as a self-referred applicant.

The empirical army has high standards for its enlistment. If i want to join a company of my choice, than i need to be either powerful or have connections. Of course i had no expectations for that.

The problem is that if i come in to the recruitment base with the low quality equipment that i have right now. They will dump me into the lowest of the low places and switch from self employed grunt work, to state employed grunt work.

Looking at my status, I need to spend everything on a profession focus and from there. I will automatically have a place for myself. Looking at my status right now, It is severely neglected. Having never needed to fight, i never bothered leveling my focus to a really high level.

Status Board

Name:

Eleir Lukegh

Wealth:

25,510 Coins

heritage:

Syla Human

Focus: Arbeiter

level: 32

Stats

strength 23 Weapon skills + amount:1 vitality 40 Manifestation skills + amount:0 finesse 26 Meta skills + amount:2 cognitive 11

Natural skills +

amount:42 academia 5 Magic skills+ amount:0 spirit 7 Unique skills+ amount:0

Titles

Primary title:

Working Journeyman

Effect:Improved Product and labour effects. Blessings of arcane:0 Blessings of Primal:1

Secondary title:

Infinite wealth (workers)

Effect: Multiplied coin gain(base*1.45) when doing labour work. Blessings of Divine: 0

Expand For advanced data+

removing a focus halves the levels and there is a chance that it makes you lose skills attached to the focus. There are exceptions, but lets not even bother with that. I need to go to a System shop or a levelers shop. To get my new combat focus.

I am in the Turin county. Which is mainly an industrial place, that has no use for any combat strength outside of a police force. So the combat related supplies are a little lacking.

If i want to bypass the no combat accessibility and low position afforded to low quality combatants. Then i need to access a Blackmarket seller and blackmarkets all work on a huge mark up. This mark up is already billed over the original marked up price that is naturally occurring. from a certain perspective both are done by criminals.

My focus and farm would sell for a decent price. But if i do that, then it would really reach the point of no return. There are a couple knick knack, that i could sell. Needing the funds, then i would need to go to the local market place.

Walking up to Cranky Bert's Shop. A fairly popular shop in the main market street. A shop that i use to sell rare drops that i manage to get from the farm. My hands hovers over the door handle for a second. I open the door and shuffle in.

"Hi, welcome to Cranky Berts shop." A ditzy girl standing behind the counter greets me. Her smile seems carved into her face since birth. A chronic happiness. Which gives me an incredibly upsetting realization. I cant relate at all.

"Is there anything you need." oblivious to my thoughts, she continues her practiced speech for any visiting customer

"uhm, i would like to sell my focus." I say, while still being uncomfortable with the idea.

"is it separated or do you need to separate it in shop." I think her name is Yuria. Named after the previous queen of syla. Shes an employee that i usually interact with, when doing business in here.

"its not separated."

"If you want to sell it now, then you need to fill out this form and have your focus' value evaluated. She pulls out a form and pen. Handing them to me, she leads me to a table. Where she directs me in filling out the document.

"Okay, everything is set. Now we can see the going rate for the Arbeiter focus." she walks over to a pillar-like computer. An expensive looking device. Owning a Computer is a luxury, only businesses and wealthy individuals with peculiar needs have it.

She walks over to a shelf and pulls out a cylindrical stick. connecting the storage device to the computer. she gets this years evaluation of multiple products and services. after going through multiple menus, she finds focus values and clicks on the Arbeiter focus. While shes doing all this, i am standing behind her. Smelling her hair, i notice a perfumed shampoo smell.

I pull my self back. Feeling ashamed for the creepy thoughts. She continues her work oblivious to my thoughts.

"A level 10 Arbeiter focus is 40,000 and +2000 for every level above. We can buy your focus directly off of you, if you sell directly then we will give separation service free of charge." she says in a happy tone, not really caring if i sell or not.

Most focuses only sell at level 10 or higher. because of experience Orbs being a thing. Most focus that are sold or bought are pre-leveled, with XP Orbs. The Orbs are cheap and can level focuses up to level 9 and level ten is achieved with a break through item.

The only reason that i have a high level Arbeiter focus, is because i spend most of my time at the coin farm. You can level up from low level creature, but it becomes exponentially slower over time. i stopped leveling completely last year.

"i would like to sell it here." i already decided to sell it here from the beginning. This shop has a great reputation. I also don't really have to many options. Cranky berts is one of a few shops that buy focuses.

"great, follow me to the ritual room." she leads me to the backroom of the shop. Its a place obviously intended for system rituals. System rituals are usually extreme to the point that no one will accidentally perform a system ritual. A focus removal ritual involves self mutilations. and the mutilation most be self inflicted and must be willingly done

The ritual room has many different tools. some sinister and others mundane. What i need is a knife and a small cup to hold blood. I am silent as i sit down infront of the table and pick up the tools needed. Applying anesthetic and antibiotic on my arm. Holding the knife over my arm, i start cutting my flesh in an x shape.

After fully cutting through my skin to my fat and muscles. I hold the wound over the cup. pushing open the four flaps of skin to fully reveal the viscera. with a cup of blood in my hands, now i can continue to the last part of the ritual. Dipping my finger in the blood, i start circling the wound and after drawing two circles. i pick the cup of blood and pour it back on top of the open wound.

After the last drops of blood fall on the wound. Everything starts being covered with magical energy all blood collects in the center of the open wound. Forming a sphere of blood, that slowly start losing its red color and becoming slightly more silver over time. Until it fully forms the focus. When the ritual completed, the focus fell down and the open wound has all the flesh healing in a matter of seconds. Not leaving a single scar.

"is there anything else you need help with." she smiles as she takes the focus and places it in storage.

"not really. Just selling the focus."

"Here you go, 52,000 Coins."

You recieved 52,000 Coins from 'Cranky Berts shop' Shared account

Yuria Ernith has initiated the transfer

Status wealth.

77,510 Coins

I smile as i check my status wealth.

"Please come again." she smiles as she sees me off.

i now have to sell the farm and go look for the blackmarket right after.

"Eleir!. You skipping town or something."I jump in shock, as i hear a familiar voice. A thug that goes through the name Biggs.

"No, i am switching jobs."

"i ve been hearing that you have been selling everything that isn't nailed down. If you did something wrong. Dont be afraid to tell me. you are one of my own." Biggs is a hooligan, but the local people see him generally harmless and still like him. He is still a criminal, he sells drugs and traffics illegal goods.

"I am not in any trouble. I really am not in any trouble. I just leaving for a combat job." He looks at me as if hes a cave man looking at magic for the first time. He doesn't seem to believe me.

"Combat job?"

"yea"

Hes scratching his head as if the concept is too foreign to believe. i dont understand why he even bothers to get into my business, but i am to intimidated to tell him off.

"well if you say so. If you did do something wrong, don't be afraid to tell me. I am trying to look out for you." It seem like he had the wind taken off his sails. As the conversation ended, he just says a couple of parting words and leaves.

Damn what a waste of time. I never liked Biggs, But he seems to think that everybodys problems are his problems. When The problems gets really serious he just trys to dips out. As if he didnt have anything to do with it.

I guess its just the neighborhood, everybody is nosy. No one has anything going on and when something vaguely interesting happens, then everybody knows what happened. I hate it. I hate the attitude. I just dont like the type of people that do this shit. i am so sick of it.

Passers by are looking at me as if i am a weirdo. So i just left the area and got on my way.

"so you want the deed to the level 3 spawn point." a bored middle aged man with flappy skin, a neck like a lizards and gray hair. He looks at my information as he incredibly slowly types on his keyboard one letter at a time. i swear, the delay between button presses is like one second.

"yea, i want to sell the property and also the deed to the house." i try to be polite and not show that i dont really like him, he has all my information at his finger tips.

"can i ask why you are selling" he is incredibly experienced in bureaucracy, it seem like work at the same position for 40 year+. all these years seem to do very little in his speed and manners. Maybe making his manners worse.

"i am moving to a different house and the spawn point is to far away from where i want to go" i explain something that isnt even true. Why the hell does he even need to know. They are my property i can sell them and go homeless if i want.

"Okay, i need to ask you a couple more questions." for fuck sake. just GIVE ME MY STUFF. Fine i have to bear through it

...

After 2 hours, i finally proved to the man that i am not going to do any crime, i am not impersonating someone, i am not committing some kind of tax fraud and Reminding him multiple times that he is legally forced to give my documents if i ask for them.

It seems that anyone that sells their life savings with no real context. is committing some kind of crime or is running from loan sharks or something. Do i really seem like the type of person to do that.

Now who will buy my land. I can go to the bank and sell it there. I could also go to the merchants guild. I could find a direct buyer. The problem is. I dont have any friends, i dont know anyone that would like to buy my property.

I am forced to only sell it to the merchant guild or the bank. i would estimate that both would fetch me around 10,000 for the house and 20,000 for the farm.

With the documents at hand, it doesnt matter that i have my name written on it. as long as someone else takes it back and sets it under their name, than they would own it. So selling the paper directly is the only way.

I dont think, that i have time. i am forced to go to the bank. i already wasted 5 hours going shop to shop selling the garbage that accumulated in my life. I cant go to the merchants guild, they will gauge me more than the bankers. as shocking as that sounds, its true.