Systematic Survival

31 - Scammer

Matt searched around the shelves of the store for books that sounded like they could give him a skill. The store was full of basically every type of book since the owner wanted to keep a diverse stock for any type of customer.

He knew this because he was usually the one sorting them. Matt went over the different sections in his mind and remembered that there was a section of the store that was full of "how-to" books and he thought that would be a good place to start.

He headed there and started reading the titles. There were many about crafting, like woodwork and knitting. But he didn't think those skills would really come in handy, at least any time soon.

He thought about how he could potentially make money using them and selling what he made, but that would take a long time, and he would need to figure out where to sell them or who to sell them to.

He could always come back here if he needed them. But for now, he looked through the section to see if there was anything immediately useful.

He remembered he also had a book already stored that was about wilderness survival, but he wanted something that would actually apply to living in a city. Wilderness survival was not applicable at all to his daily life.

While looking around, he mainly only found language-learning books, fishing guides, and a lot of niche things that weren't too beneficial for him. He thought about moving to another section but then noticed one book in particular.

[Commanding Conversations]

He was instantly interested and started reading through it. He didn't just commit it to memory because he wanted to see if the content of the book would be helpful or not first.

It seemed to explain not only how to converse properly with people, but also seemed to discuss how to move conversations in the direction you want them to go. There was even a section about appearing more confident in conversation.

It seemed to be one of those instant charisma books but it actually had some good advice, unlike a lot of those clickbait videos that seemed to be popular.

'This one might come in handy, especially for that one quest.'

He remembered how one of the new quests wanted him to convince someone he was a celebrity. It seemed like an annoying and difficult task, let alone embarrassing.

But he thought with an actual skill based on controlling a conversation, it might be more feasible. Though he didn't need to control a conversation, he needed to flat-out lie. He wondered if it would still apply though.

He saved the book to his mental space by once again going through it and glancing at every page. After that, he decided it wouldn't hurt to save a few of the other how-to books that weren't instantly helpful but could be good to learn later, in case he ever needed them.

He finished collecting the books to his mental space and went around saving more random books that were unrelated to learning skills, just to have more. Once he had a decent amount, he clocked out of work for the day.

'It's time for my plan!'

Matt headed toward downtown and tried to find an area that was busy. For this to work, he needed enough people walking by so that at least a few people would try it out.

He found a nice-looking plaza with a lot of people going about their days. Once he found a spot, he just needed supplies.

'Ok, so I'll need a table, a big piece of paper, maybe some tape, and something to write with.'

He went to a general supply store nearby and bought everything he needed. He ended up getting one of those folding plastic tables, but it was still a little expensive. Overall, everything cost a total of $59. It was a little more than he was expecting to spend, but he couldn't do anything about it. He also went to an ATM and withdrew $100 from his bank account.