The Copper Rose

by David Lingard

  I threw my body between the spider and Rachel before it had a chance to strike even its first blow and took it myself full on, my health bar shrunk by about a third and I was shocked by how much the attack had actually hurt me. It was an odd pain and very difficult to describe, if I was forced to I would say it was like turning one of those electronic muscle stimulator machines up high and placing it on my chest – it seemed to come from the inside, out.

  “Ow. Fuck!” I cried out in surprise, the last ones hadn’t hurt like that.

  “They didn’t hurt you before?” Rachel asked over my shoulder as I downed the aggressive eight-legged beast.

  “Well yes, it had hurt, but not like that’ I replied exasperated. “It really fucking hurt.” I kicked the fallen spider and moved to pick up the loot that it left behind but I hadn’t been keeping a track on my inventory and it was already full.

  “Maybe it’s your brain or something getting used to the game?” she questioned.

  It did seem to make some sense to me, but it was still only a theory.

  It was getting late. All of the waiting around for Bones had meant a whole lot of wasted time, and now that we needed to wait again I could tell that it was going to be dark before he was revived for the, was it tenth? time so we made our move back to the campsite.

  Upon arrival, I immediately checked on the camp’s statistics to see where we were and was very surprised to see just how big we were getting as a clan.

  Coyote Creek Settlement Information

  Central Building: Goblin Chief’s Hut

  Current Occupant: Tandy [Crocodile’s Teeth Clan]

  Buildings:Goblin Chief’s Hut1 (100%)

  Goblin Breeding Hut1 (100%)

  Unspecified Shelter1 (100%)

  Campfire1 (100%)

  Goblin Longhouse1 (100%)

  Goblin Construction Yard1 (100%)

  Spider Nest (Dark Forest)3 (100%)

  Goblin Barracks1 (100%)

  Sawmill1 (100%)

  Armoury1 (100%)

  Hydroponic Farm1 (100%)

  Occupants:31

  Skill types:Goblin Baby0

  Goblin Adolescent8

  Goblin Cook1

  Goblin Feeder7

  Goblin Builder1

  Goblin Worker7

  Goblin Hauler1

  Goblin Healer1

  Goblin Warrior1

  Goblin Crafter2

  Human2

  Current Food Available: 32

  Current Maintenance Level: 78

  Current Food Generation: 104 Units / Day

  ‘Unspecified shelter’ was still a bit of a kick in the teeth for me, as it was one of my first creations in Coyote Creek and I kind of liked having it around. Sure, it was a bit of an eyesore when compared to the wonderous barracks or the hydroponic farm which, by the way was contributing massively to our food generation at over one hundred units per day, but it was mine. I made it, and with no help from the game.

  I didn’t hesitate to summon a new worker and a feeder, just to keep things moving onwards and upwards, and it seemed that keeping an equal amount of each was working quite well anyway.

  Chapter Eighteen, Intelligence

  T

  he walls were my crowning achievement. Well, I should say the walls were Ushuk’s crowning achievement but like a self-assured leader, I took the stance that ‘I told him to do it, therefore the glory was all mine’. They were wonderous. They had been situated so far out from the main campsite that if I stood at my Chief’s hut in the centre of Coyote Creek, I almost couldn’t see them, partly due to the distance and partly due to the fact that they were both made from, and hidden by the surrounding forest. Running from the edge of the lake in a wide horseshoe, the walls provided cover from every angle, a fact that made me feel all warm inside.

  From the inside they looked like densely packed planks held upright by angled stanchions, it was like something right out of a temporary Roman fort. Near the top of the wall was a cantilevered walkway so that (and I use the term liberally) archers, could patrol the top while looking out into the forest, with the added bonus of cover that the pointed tops of the wall provided – of course, not that we actually had any archers.

  From the outside, the walls were absolutely covered by vegetation, undergrowth, branches, leaves and anything else that the goblins could find lying around to camouflage the frontage. Taking twenty steps away into the forest, the entire structure would completely disappear, it was a very strange phenomenon. Of course, if you were to come a little closer you might think “why is there a huge wall of branches and leaves here, and also there’s smoke rising from somewhere behind it” – but there wasn’t much that could be done about that.

  In short they were a marvel, and I couldn’t thank Ushuk enough – even if they had taken a week to build and had taken up nearly all of the settlement’s resources, they weren’t really being used anyway.

  It could have been worse though, in the time that they had taken to erect my protective perimeter I had gone out into the forest a few times to level up mine and Rachel’s skills and characters – although it had started to take a little longer again as we were between the ability levels to venture farther into the nest, being either too strong for the early spiders to really count for anything and too weak to take down the groups of stronger spiders farther in.

  In truth, I had only gained one level, up to eleven, but Rachel had reached seven. I could tell that we were getting closer and closer to being able to handle the next level, and as our skills also increased each of the battles were getting quicker and easier. My Healing Aura skill had reached level three, which meant that I could heal for twenty health in a single go now, and with the additional mana that I was hoarding it meant that waiting in between casts had been reduced. Bones was progressing nicely too, still not dishing out too much damage but able to soak up a lot more than when I had first met him.

  The biggest surprise was that my analyse skill had been slowly increasing in the background, seemingly unnoticed and I smiled as it ticked over and I received the notification that it had increased to skill level eight. I had been getting used to the range and detail of the skill, and each time it had levelled up in the past, both of those variables had increased. For a non-combat, non-direct skill it was definitely a handy one to have.

  Finally, it was time to address the stone situation. The roads had been all but finished by my crew of workers and miners, but I knew that if I wanted to carry on increasing in size I would need to step things up. The problem was that I simply didn’t know anything about mining rocks.

  With everything else I had created, the sawmill, the hydroponics farm, I was able to visualise how they worked and the game recognised that and filled in some of the gaps. How could I possibly revolutionise a mine without knowing what needed to be done? I tried asking Rachel but she stared at me blankly as though I’d just asked her the meaning of life.

  I watched a few of my workers hitting the big flat stones to see if there was anything immediately obvious that could be done, but if there was then I didn’t see it. I even tried to force my thoughts into ‘make a better mine’ but nothing happened. Eventually I interrupted Matuk, which I should probably have done in the first place.

  “Is there anything that I can do to make the mine more efficient?” I asked once he had dropped his pick to his side.

  “Mine for stone, quicker with good tools and more people,” He said, glancing back to his stone.

  “Is there anything I can automate?” I asked, then added “Like when the sawmill was made?” I thought he probably wouldn’t have known what ‘automate’ meant without some additional explanation.

  “More workers make faster.” He repeated.

  “I know that,” I replied slowly, my patience in having to explain everything three times wearing thin. “But is there something without adding more workers that can be done to make mining go faster?”

  I hadn’t noticed Rachel standing beside me, listening to our
conversation. She leapt to Matuk’s aid.

  “What about a cart system?” She said. “Like when gold mines had carts in them so that the miners didn’t have to carry their stuff about?”

  I scratched my chin in thought and frowned deeply. ‘That sounded like a damn good idea.’

  “Actually, that sounds like just what I’m looking for,” I announced to my necromancer friend. I couldn’t deny the fact that she had come in so helpful to my clan, least of all for her ability to actually talk to me on my level but most of all for her actual work and newfound love for lumberjacking. I knew that feeling all too well.

  “It would mean that all of the workers and haulers could be used as miners instead of having to ferry about wheelbarrows full of stone and other materials,” I summarised.

  “Actually, why don’t you make a whole system of rails all the way around the camp – that way no-one would have to carry anything,” Rachel added.

  I could see the spark of creativity in her eyes, it was something that I liked to think I possessed whenever I started to roll with an idea.

  “The only thing that I’m not sure about is how to power the carts…” she pondered thoughtfully.

  “Aha, I have something to show you…” I said triumphantly, tenting my hands as though portraying some evil genius and I led her back to the main campsite and into the sawmill. When inside I pointed at the copper boiler that was used to generate the steam that powered the entire building but Rachel didn’t seem to comprehend what was happening. Silently, still pointing I moved closer to the boiler to emphasise my point but it didn’t seem to help.

  “What?” Rachel asked, shrugging her shoulders.

  “It’s a steam engine. I made it to run the sawmill,” I said with a smile.

  “You made it?” she asked, narrowing her eyes slightly, “how?”

  “It’s a skill,” I announced. I knew that it meant laying a few more cards on the table, but I’d spent enough time with Rachel by now that I felt like not only was she trustworthy, but that she was also a friend.

  “Crafting,” I clarified. “Apparently, if I have the right materials, and I think a good knowledge of how something is supposed to work I can make it and the game kind of fills in the gaps.” It was the best explanation I could come up with after numerous attempts to try a range of different things.

  “So you can make anything?” Rachel asked with wide eyes.

  “Well…I guess so, as long as I have the materials and know enough about how it was supposed to work.” I replied slowly.

  “So you could just, like, make a car?” She asked.

  “Well, I don’t think I could make a car, but maybe a representation of one. Like I know I wouldn’t have the rubber to make tyres or all of the types of metal for all the different parts, or even glass for that matter. I really need to visualise the thing, so maybe I could make a steam engine power wooden wheels – you know something like that. I really don’t know how car engines work in that much detail, besides getting the fuel to power it.” I said.

  Rachel didn’t speak for a moment, I could see that she was trying to come to her own conclusions before she asked quietly, “What about guns?”.

  I really hadn’t thought about that, and I imagined the question coming from her even less. ‘What about guns?’ “Hmmm…well…” I thought about my answer very carefully. “I know how they work in principle, but I’m not really one hundred percent on why the bullets don’t just explode. I could probably work through how a cannon works, or maybe even an old-fashioned black-powder pistol – but then I would need to find something that explodes when it’s ignited, a flint to make a spark…there are just so many variables.”

  “Right…” Rachel answered. There was clearly something that she wanted to ask but didn’t want to outright say it.

  “What is it?” I asked, taking the opportunity to withhold her question out of her hands.

  “It’s just that, well doesn’t it sound too easy, like it’s cheating or something? I mean what if people like Theodore could do this, and in the real world they were nuclear physicists or something?” I could see her beginning to spiral.

  “There would be no way that Rapture Entertainment would let anything like that happen. Besides, I don’t see any radioactive materials around here, do you?” She did make a good point, but I was yet to discover a real offensive value to my skill without having everything I needed handed right to me on a plate.

  “I mean let’s look at a gun again. Do you know how to make gunpowder? I think I remember reading somewhere that the Chinese invented it by accident, so it’s pretty unlikely that someone here will do the same. So what if someone knows how to make it? Well all Rapture would have to do is code into the game that gunpowder cant be made, isn’t made that way, explosions cant be man-made or a whole range of other ways to block that little cheat.”

  Rachel visibly tensed up at the mention of Rapture Entertainment, but I let it go.

  “I guess you’re right,” she replied still speaking quietly. “I guess its just that I can see everything you have built here, everything you have created and I can’t help but feel like in the wrong hands this could have been a very different scene.”

  “It could be, but that is the nature of games. There are rules and boundaries that are always present and as much as people like to bend and break them, cheaters never win in the end.” My statement did seem to placate her somewhat, but I wondered if I’d shown her a little too much of what could be done with the right tools.

  Back to the matter at hand, I walked over to the construction yard where Rok was doing his daily whatever, (I made a note to ask him what exactly that was at some point) and started to explain the whole railway plan. It wasn’t hard or complicated because I wasn’t actually asking him to make a train or anything like that, just a pair of strong, reliable parallel tracks that ran through and around all of the Creek, including the mine. I wondered about laying a track to the Spider’s Nest, but I knew that it would definitely be a bad idea as one, it would take more resources than I’d care to think about, two, take absolutely forever and three, if anyone found the tracks and followed them it would bring them right to my door. Three great reasons to stay away from that particular endeavour.

  I trusted Rok, so I knew that if I just left him to it my tracks would eventually be complete. I put it to the back of my mind that I would actually have to craft a train to suit them at some point, but I had the feeling that with the slow production of iron from the smelter I wouldn’t have to deal with that issue any time soon.

  Next on the cards was a visit to the armourers. I knew that they had been making goblin short swords and leathers as well, everyone except Rachel and I in the clan were goblins, but I had a new task for them to have a go at. I wanted to start setting archers atop the walls in order to act as a sort of early warning system and a way to deter attacks from anything that wasn’t a really high level and that meant that I needed bows and arrows. The armourers were actually pretty knowledgeable in weaponry, obviously as that was their trade but I didn’t need to explain anything to them – I simply said “do you think you can make some bows and arrows?” and they both nodded happily. I was kind of expecting to have to explain it in detail or perhaps even craft one for them, but like the swords it seemed to be a part of their programming. I wondered why they had chosen swords and leathers as their default crafting items, leathers I kind of understood but why not spears, or knives, or even bows if they knew how to make them? It didn’t really matter and I didn’t really want to waste any energy in finding out. All I really wanted to do was cut down some god damned trees.

  Thump.

  Crack.

  Thump.

  Crack.

  Thump.

  CRACK CRACK CRACK. It was the delightful sound of another hard day’s work. Every time a tree fell I was hit with a warming sensation that flowed over my body and made me feel all tingly inside. Every time I felt it I just knew I had to do whatever I could so that I c
ould feel it again as soon as possible.

  I knew that I’d eventually have to start teaching Rachel what I knew about the game, partly because I thought that she would be able to teach me things too, but partly because we were friends and a team. If we were strong individually then we would also be stronger together and that was a bonus that I simply couldn’t overlook. I found her working on her own tree with a huge goofy grin on her face and her eyes completely glazed over. I wondered if I’d looked like that while I was working, but it didn’t really matter anyway it was worth it.

  “Rachel?” I asked as she took a final swing to fell the tree that she had been working on. I found it funny that it took her so long to take a single tree down. My own skill level had progressed to a level that apparently dwarfed hers and it made me very thankful for finding out about it early on.

  Rachel turned to look at me as she regained her awareness of her surroundings.

  “Wh…what? Did you say something?” She asked in mild confusion.

  “It’s OK, sometimes using that skill can take you over a bit. I just wanted to say I think it’s time I taught you all about the crafting skill. Rachel didn’t answer but dropped her axe to the ground and turned to face me entirely.

  My approach to teaching her was simple. I told her exactly how I had come by the skill, the way I’d worked on the steam boiler for the sawmill and the way that the game filled in the blanks for me. I’d expected Rachel to follow suit in crafting something from copper sheet once I’d handed her the material and a hammer, but as I watched I could see that she was taking a slightly smaller approach to the task.

  I got bored of watching her hammering the small piece of copper after a few hours. My excitement in teaching her the craft had hit rock bottom and I could feel the itch to be, well anywhere else but there.