End Online: Volume 1 by D. Wolfin Page B

that by selling items in game, I haven’t been back to
collect more apples but its time I did that and make some more money.
    If I am to make
something of my life and get my sisters back I will need to go to university,
considering I dropped out of high school I will have either take a competency
test to get a pass from high school or wait until I am 22 before applying to
university, to be considered a mature age student and not require a high
school graduation certificate.
    All this is going to
require money, and a lot of it. The high school competency test will only
require about $500 but university can easily cost $20,000 a year, plus the cost
of books, transport, and everything else.
    I don’t care how I have
to make the money. I will even sell my organs if it comes down to it! No matter
how low I have to act or how many people I have to scam, I will make this
money!
    Steeling my resolution
I go to the kitchen to clean, it is a battlefield in here but don’t hesitate,
starting with the dishes and ending with dusting everything up to as high as I
can reach. The rest of the house was relatively clean, and only needed a light
dust. The girls’ room however was different, it was a mess, and I planned to
leave it that way and make them clean it up when I got them back!
    It was at this moment I
remembered my quest from the apothecary that required me to collect materials
for her.
    “Hmmm, I have no idea
even where to get these materials,” I mumble to myself as I finish cleaning, “I
had better look up the location of them on the internet.”
    On the wiki I am surprised
to find that both the materials that I need can be found in the city, although
in order to be able to correctly identify and harvest them you require the
skill ‘Herbalism’ which not many people choose considering in order to make use
of the herbs you harvest you need even more skills such as ‘Alchemy’, ‘Potion
Creation’ or ‘Distilling’.
    Even if I cannot
harvest them properly at least I will make an attempt as long as I can bring
the old lady twenty of each.
    Logging in I returned
to the wolf hunting ground, in the midst of a considerable amount of
players hunting here. When I was here while I was the only one in the hunting
area, there were other players who passed by, but seeing me hunting in
such an embarrassing way caused them to hunt elsewhere.
    My pouch contains a
little over ten gold coins at the moment, I had made some money selling an
enormous quantity of cheap wolf pelts and spent a little on weapon and armour
maintenance but I never ended up spending much so most of it was left over.
    I am quite close to the
den of the great white wolf so I decide to go collect some apples before I
return back to Iceridge in order to complete my quest. The cave’s location is
still familiar to me so it doesn’t take long to find it. Wolves attack me in
the narrow corridors as soon as I enter, but I am a lot stronger than I
once was and with a quick dash through the wolves, well places slashes reduced
their numbers one by one.
    The whole process of
the wolf attacks and my speed overwhelming them continued until I reached the
cavern in the deepest parts of the cave, I still had full stamina and my health
was at 87%, no reason to wait.
    Just inside the cavern
a familiar howl reaches my ears, followed by an even more familiar wolf looking
down on me from about twenty meters away. It emanates a low growl for a moment
before sniffing the air, catching my scent. The hood I am wearing does nothing
for preventing it from recognizing me by smell.
    All of a sudden the
wolf becomes a little more wary, a snarl creeps onto its face that could either
be from anger or happiness of seeing me again, either way I have the
feeling revenge is the only thing on the wolf’s mind right now.
    Being fully aware
of its speed and given that I was only able to win last time due to being
able to land two incredibly effective critical hits at the