Chapter 370: Cost of Self-Study

Kang Taewoo handed Joo Joowon the only spicy rabbit head, finished preparing the remaining rabbit meat, and replied, "I’m only one step away from becoming a Beginner Chef. I can cook the recipes of most races. There are only a few worlds that have just recently joined the game whose recipes I haven’t had time to learn yet."

Naturally, the world whose recipes it had not yet had time to learn included Gaia. Otherwise, it would not have appeared on Joo Joowon’s recruitment panel in the first place.

Secondary professions were different from primary professions. They were divided into only five levels: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Master, and Grandmaster. Unlike primary professions, their levels did not progress alongside a character’s level.

The game had a much greater influence on secondary professions. As long as a player or NPC had learned the basics of a secondary profession, they could reproduce a dish even if they did not understand the cuisine of a particular world. All they needed was to hear the instructions from a local creature or see the recipe.

This was also the reason why most people tended to choose popular secondary professions.

For fully digitized players, things were relatively simple. When they first learned a secondary profession, the game would directly implant the relevant knowledge into their minds. Naturally, they would gain the skills associated with that profession.

Semi-digitized players, however, were different. They had to learn everything by themselves.

Yet the Age of Apocalypse would occasionally open a new game server, and each new server would collect information about new beginner-level secondary professions. Therefore, the longer the game continued, the higher the barrier to entry became for semi-digitized players. After all, there was simply too much knowledge they needed to learn.

With such a high cost, no one would be willing to take up a profession with poor prospects.

As a result, most players who possessed secondary professions were fully digitized players. Semi-digitized players were more like sword cultivators in cultivation novels. They focused entirely on their primary professions, without getting distracted by anything else. Unless they had a special need, they would not bother learning any secondary professions.

Therefore, after hearing Kang Taewoo’s explanation, Joo Joowon immediately understood that all of its secondary professions had been acquired through its own hard work and study.

This left him somewhat astonished.

After all, NPCs followed a learning process for secondary professions that was much closer to that of fully digitized players. They did not have to rely entirely on their own efforts like semi-digitized players.

It was much like how humans had become accustomed to the existence of mobile phones and computers before the apocalypse. Players and NPCs living in the game world also relied on many of the game’s functions. Therefore, even among NPCs, it was uncommon for someone to have acquired every single skill they possessed entirely through their own efforts.

Joo Joowon had seen information on the Lord Forum stating that buildings such as schools within a territory could help children quickly learn simple secondary professions related to everyday life, such as butchery, fishing, and tailoring. More advanced professions included hunting, accounting, and blacksmithing.

NPCs who already possessed a secondary profession could also use a special NPC ability called "Teaching" to help their apprentices learn the basics of that profession directly. The price was that the apprentices had to pay a certain amount of money as tuition fees.

There was also a cooldown restriction. They could not teach their secondary professions to other people without limit every day.

Apart from these restrictions, NPCs faced few other limitations when teaching skills.

This could be considered a benefit exclusive to NPCs, one that players did not enjoy. If players wanted to learn a secondary profession from an NPC, they had to spend experience points. They also usually needed to complete quests.

For NPCs, the tuition fee required to learn a beginner-level secondary profession that was not particularly popular was not very high. NPCs were also not especially picky about the apprentices who came to learn from them. After all, unlike NPC blacksmiths and other popular profession instructors, they did not have people lining up every day, begging to be taught.

Therefore, most NPCs with secondary professions had not actually learned their skills through self-study. Instead, they had simply paid someone to teach them.

Someone like Kang Taewoo, who had learned everything on its own, either had never joined a territory before, since secondary profession NPCs within a territory generally would not teach their skills to anyone who was not a resident, or it had rather high ambitions.

The reason was that secondary professions learned through someone else’s instruction could only be advanced to the Advanced level. After reaching that point, they could no longer make further progress. However, those learned through self-study had no such restriction. As long as the person had the talent, they could continue climbing toward greater heights.

Those who managed to become Master or Grandmaster secondary professionals all possessed natural talent and were willing to work hard. Their potential had not been locked by the game.

However, achieving this was not easy.

Talent was one factor, but another was the considerable expense required for self-study. Not only did they have to practice repeatedly until they became skilled, but they also needed to purchase "textbooks" from the game.

The amount of money spent on these things was almost equivalent to the total cost of advancing to the Intermediate or even Advanced level through the "Teaching" method.

Apart from the expense, the time required was also a serious problem.

The game world was vast beyond imagination. Whenever the game fully digitized a new world, it would incorporate some of that world’s skills into the list of beginner-level secondary professions. Therefore, if someone could not master the basics within a limited period, the amount of knowledge they needed to learn would only continue to grow.

With such a high cost, unless an NPC had the financial backing of a wealthy family and could afford to spend freely, while also possessing considerable natural talent, there were very few NPCs willing to invest so much in a secondary profession.

Yet, judging by Kang Taewoo’s appearance, it did not look like the kind of person who had money to spare.