Genesis: Tale of a Jobless Engineer

Chapter 03 - Descendent of the Benevolent saint

After sweet-talking the kid for about fifteen minutes, the kid finally gave in as he agreed to take Mike to his house.

“Fine I guess will show you my house since you are begging me this much”

In return Mike helped him to carry water to the house where he was working, after which both Mike and the kid walked towards his home.

“Who do you live with kid"

“I am not a kid”

“ah!... ah…well, Max, who do you live with?”

“In my house, there is my sister who is 8 this year and my young brother who is 9 and there is also our youngest who is 6 and as I said I am the Oldest in the house”

He said pointing at himself as if he was proud of it.

“Where are your parents?”. Kyle asked with curiosity as the kid didn’t mention anything about them.

The face of the kid paled as he looked down with a sad look.

“They said that Father and mother died while fighting against the Demons”

“Ah...! I am sorry”, Mike apologized as he felt bad for asking something like this to the kid.

He himself had experienced how it would feel to live without parents, in the cruel world, without anyone to rely on. It was quite impressive that this young child managed to survive with his siblings.

He looked at the kid with a sympathizing eye.

For some time they both walked quietly without any conversations, as expected of our nerd engineer, he sucks at socializing.

“There that is my house”

The awkward atmosphere was resolved as they arrived at their destination.

The kid pointed toward the small tent-like structure….

“You live in that?”, Mike pointed at the tent-like thing and asked the kid.

“What do you mean ‘that’, it's my home!”

The kid retorted feeling offended.

“Ah…sorry….”, Mike who was still dumbly watching the entrance of the tent with a blank expression said scratching the back of his head.

“Brother!! You are home early today?”

A young girl came out of the tent greeting the kid politely.

“That! This old man here helped me, so the work finished earlier than expected”

“What? Oldman….me?”, Mike said pointing towards himself.

“Oh! Thank you so much for helping my brother”

The young lady politely bowed as she thanked Mike.

“Don’t worry about it, I was just helping a Kid in need that’s all”

The young lady seemed polite, unlike the pricky brat!

“Hey Old man who are you calling a Kid?”

The nerves on mike’s forehead bulged hearing the kid calling him Oldman again and again.

“Ah! Who else but you ‘little kid’?”  He smirked as he said that to Max.

“Don’t provoke me, you old man!”

“What? You are going to hit me? Huh?”

Mike and Max seemed to ponce on one another at any moment as the young lady intervened.

“My, my you two seem close, don’t you?”

She glared at Max as if implying ‘if you utter one more word, you are dead’

Mike also seemed to sense the danger as he tactfully retreated.

“Anyway, my name is Luna, Thank you for helping out Max, what can I address you, sir”

“Ah…My name is Micha…. Mike, its Mike, feel free to talk to me” It seemed like he needed more time to get used to the game world as he almost forgot his name was Mike not Michael in the game.

Besides that he was also amazed at how life-like the NPCs feelt.

‘Implementing individual AI to each and every character, it doesn’t seem like a lie, now that I have experienced it myself.’

He thought as he remembered an article that said that all the each NPCs of Genesis have their own AI.

“Please come inside, I apologies in advance if you feel uncomfortable”

“No, no I am used to it,” he said as he had quite a share of himself living in a totally rundown place in the countryside.

The three of them entered the tent.

The inside of the tent was nothing special either, there were some cooking utensils on one side, an oil lamp that seemed to be made by themselves, and a boy was sleeping on the ground. he seemed to be about 8-9 years old and seemed sick as Mike could see him shiver under the old blanket.

“He is our youngest, He had been like that for a week now, please don't mind”

The young lady said noticing Mike looking at their brother.

“Then why don’t you take him to the hospital”

“That…” Luna seemed a bit hesitant to answer but the answer came from elsewhere.

“It’s because we don’t have any money, The people at the church said that they need money to treat him but as you can see we could hardly afford a bread for meal. But even then we are saving money by reducing our portions of food, even my young brother went out saying he would find a job...” Max said.

“Hmm…” Mike thought about it, He really wanted to help them but he too didn’t have any money.

‘Will this work’

He pondered while opening his inventory.

He took out a ‘basic health potion’ and handed it to Luna.

“See if this works”

“Huh?!!”, Luna was taken aback by him as she hurriedly put it back in his hand.

“NO, no we can’t take something precious like this”

Mike who didn’t know anything about the game looked at Max as he was asked him to explain.

“Is this precious?”, Mike asked dumbly.

Max and Luna were dumfounded for a second, they didn’t expect the man to give something without knowing its value!

“It’s worth 1 gold, do you know how much that is? I barely make 50 coppers while working a full day”, But Max didn’t bother to explain to him how precious it is and just said something by which he could understand its value easily.

“OH! That means it’s worth two months of your work”

He was quite shocked that the normal quest reward is this precious in the game, what he didn’t know was that health potions were only available in small quantities and no player has learned the skills to brew the potion for themself yet, so the price of the health portion was quite high due to its high demand.

Another reason was the Genesis Market, it evaluated the value of item by how much demand there is for it in the market.

For example, if the demand is less then the price will go down and if the demand increase, the price will also increase proportionally.

While Mike didn’t know about all this, he also didn’t care about it. He looked at the youngest who was shivering from cold and handed the potion to Luna.

“Valuable items are supposed to be used for a valuable cause, Is there anything more valuable than the life of a person, so don;t mind and just use it on him”

Mike had already decided that he would avoid fighting as much as possible and only focus on developing his project, making his dreams come true, so he thought he didn’t need the potions not to mention he had another one in spare for any unforeseen situations.

“This…” Luna was still not ready to accept it but Max persuaded her.

“Just accept it, this Oldman is quite persisting, he helped me even when I said I don’t need it a hundred times”

“hmm…. okay” She finally gave in and went towards the youngest to give him the potion,

Mike who was crossing his hands and watching Luna feeding the potion to the young kid, talked to Max in an annoyed tone.

“Hey kid, call me ‘Oldman’ one more time and I don’t mind spanking your butt”

And Max who was also watching Luna beside sneered at him.

“Try me if you dare, ‘O-l-d-m-a-n’”

“This prick….” Mike turned his head aside as it seemed like he would get high blood pressure if he talked anymore with this kid.

“Hehe”

“a…h.a…ah! Sis”, The boy seemed to regain consciousness after drinking the potion as his low exhausted voice was heard.

“Will”, Even the little prick who was taunting Mike ran to his brother’s side.

“hmm…good thing that the potion worked”

Mike was also happy that the potion worked.

Even though they were NPC’s and everything he did may not have any effect, he felt a sense of accomplishment inside him.

And right whe he was about to turn around and leave, a system message informed him something.

Ding!

<Hidden quest ‘Saint of Benevolence- 01’ completed>

<As a reward you can now change your class to ‘Descendent of the Benevolent saint’>

<Do you wish to continue>

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