The Copper Rose

by David Lingard

  It was about four hours after she’d started that she came running up to me squealing about how she’d leanred the skill. I could barely step out of the way when she bounded up to me and hugged me.

  “I made this for you!” she announced as she handed me a small copper object. I smiled as I accepted the trade and analysed it.

  Copper Rose

  Quality: Terrible

  Durability: 2/2

  Crafted by: Rachel

  This is a terrible quality item. It will just about pass for use in its intended purpose, however it is not likely to stand the test of time.

  It wasn’t a lovely copper rose. More like it was an oddly shaped mass of copper that if you looked at in just the right way you could kind of see where the rose was coming from, but you couldn’t be entirely sure. It wasn’t about the object anyway, it was more about the gesture and the fact that she had gained the skill.

  “So what should I make next?” she asked with a beaming smile.

  I laughed. “You do need some practice, but something will come along!” I knew it would, it always did. I didn’t tell her that I hadn’t made anything better than terrible yet either.

  I told Rachel to use what she wanted from the clan resources, but to make sure that she didn’t ever take too much. I didn’t want to put a number on it but they really weren’t being put to good use at the moment anyway. I was right though, in return for showing Rachel how to craft she taught me about the mapping skill. I didn’t however take her approach to creatively amend her process, doing exactly what she told me that she had done.

  She told me that when she was deep in the forest, she had come to the conclusion that she would have to climb a tree to see where she was and in what direction he should be travelling.

  Following her instructions, I tentatively tested the lower branches of a nearby tree which seemed to be thicker at the base than its neighbours and worked my way slowly up to the groupings of thicker branches above.

  Surprisingly, although I hadn’t climbed a tree since I was about seven years old, at which time I’d promptly fallen out and broken my writs in a rather undignified landing, the process was definitely easier than I had imagined it would have been. My hands seemed to reach out naturally to the next branches and I had no problems in pulling my own body weight up and around the thick trunk. I wondered if this was because of my earlier increased strength statistic.

  When I reached a small ‘T section’ of branches around ten feet from the top, I noticed that he could now see for miles in every direction over the top of the surrounding treelines.

  I could see that the forest that I was within was not only ridiculously huge, but also perfectly round. The thickness of the trees, their branches and their leaves made discerning any further detail impossible. It was miles across and gave no indication of life within from this new vantage point.

  Willing my eyesight to let me see further, I squinted at the landscape in the distance. There were indeed fires far away, betrayed by their pinprick of distant glow. In all directions, in fact, there was something to be seen, somewhere to explore that had whispered its secret of life to me. Smiling to myself at my new knowledge I retraced my steps back down from my perch and stepped once again onto the soft earth with the soft crunch of twigs.

  Now that I knew where I was (modestly speaking) I moved onto the next task that Rachel had identified.

  I drew a cross on the ground right in the centre of the Creek and marked each arm with a ‘N’, ‘S’, ‘W’ and ‘E’ to denote the points of a compass. Walking in a straight line from each point I then took two hundred short paces forward. This would give me a roundabout circle of discovery with a diameter of four hundred paces – some quick mental arithmetic and of course the obligatory rounding of pi up to exactly three led me to the conclusion that I had covered an area of about one hundred and twenty thousand square paces – which I mentally converted to square feet at a rate of one-to-one – which, if my memory served me was about the area of two football fields centred around my compass. It was funny though, it didn’t even actually cover the extremities of Coyote Creek, with all of my movements well within the protection of my new wooden walls.

  At each extremity of my straight lines, I made a demarcation of sorts with whatever I had to hand at the time. At his North and South I simply placed a circle and triangle of rocks respectively, at East I had dug a shallow hole in the soft ground with my hands and placed a stone marker much like a gravestone above it and on the Western point I placed the Copper Rose into the ground so that it stood upright on its own. This had taken all in all about an hour, but I knew that if Rachel wasn’t having me on and there was no reason to think that she was, then I was in line to gain a shiny new skill.

  You have gained the skill Mapping

  Through determination, perseverance and sheer willpower, you have gained the skill Mapping. With this skill, you will be able to draw maps, find new locations and more!

  ‘Bullseye’ I thought. Rachel hadn’t been leading me up the garden path at all.

  I was reading through the prompt to see if I could discover any hidden meaning when Rachel tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Umm, I got a new skill,” she said slowly.

  “What? I only just taught you crafting!” I said astonished.

  “Well once you taught me crafting I started thinking about what to make next, and I thought that maybe I could do something with Bones. I thought that maybe he could use a shield or something, and the game sort of…well just let me…you know…look,” She stumbled over her words and eventually decided to just show me. She summoned Bones from the ground and I could see what she was talking about right away. The bones that once constituted his left hand were now thin, wide and were curved into a large disc that looked exactly like a huge shield. Rachel dismissed Bones back to the ground when I’d finally managed to close my eyes.

  “It said it was something called ‘bonecraft’ because the crafting skill worked with my necromancy skill I think? Haven’t you had anything like that?” She had read my astonishment correctly.

  I could hardly stop from gritting my teeth before growling a “no.”

  I stared at my character screen to see if there were any items that I could conceivably work together with in tandem. I ignored mapping because it was so new, and analyse was more of a passive thing. Maybe Crafting and…Smelting? No there was nothing there. I couldn’t think of anything that I could merge together like Rachel had done with Necromancy and Crafting. I sure wished that I had a skill that gave me a companion right now though, a million ideas swam through my head all at once. A bone dragon, a boat made entirely of bones, a bone giant. The list was endless.

  I couldn’t use the necromancy skill, but perhaps I could craft myself a different kind of companion though. It seemed that Rachel was using Crafting to augment her already active friend, so why couldn’t I just craft myself a friend from scratch? I instantly thought about all of the suits of armour that came to life to offer protection to their homes in films and TV shows that I’d watched in the past, but ended up thinking about what a golem was, and how they were made having seen them in a few games before. As far as I could remember, they were generally man-shaped things made of hardened clay that did their master’s bidding. They were man-made but animated in some magical way. I was pretty sure that I could make one, but was there a skill in my arsenal that could animate it? I kept on coming up with nothing, but the train of thought led me to something else. I did have the ability to summon pets, well kind of anyway. I had the Breeding Hut. Could I combine my Crafting skill with my newly summoned goblins?

  I wasted no time. My excitement levels had piqued and I could barely contain myself. I summoned a new goblin feeder – it didn’t really matter what it was for my purpose, and waited for him to emerge from the hut. Once I could see him, I concentrated as hard as I could, willing my crafting skill into action but to my dismay no matter how hard I tried it just wasn’t happening and three more ne
w goblins later I struck the idea off as a non-runner.

  Just as I had given up all hope though, a thought came into my head. Rachel had augmented Bones before he’d been summoned, perhaps that was the key. With that in mind, I called up the Breeding Hut screen again and visualised an adult goblin with no main skill. In my mind’s eye I imagined making him taller, a little more muscular and, why not, I thought about how he could be more intelligent.

  To my surprise, the goblin in my mind’s eye seemed to solidify as I focussed harder on his form until I instinctively knew that I would be able to summon him and as if by magic, my creation adopted his place amongst the other available goblins.

  Goblin Behemoth - 30 Food required

  Goblin Behemoths are huge goblins that are able to be given many tasks where their overbearing size is a significant advantage. Next to an average sized goblin, a behemoth can shift three times the weight, take three times less and deal three times more damage. Of course, ‘overbearing size’ is only relative to other goblins, as the behemoth is still smaller than many other races within the world of Freedom Online

  Progression to: Behemoth Goblin Worker, Behemoth Goblin Hauler, Behemoth Goblin Warrior etc.

  Was someone having a laugh with me? Was someone watching what I was doing? There weren’t many other explanations for the new goblin class. Either the game adapted fantastically to a series of variables that just boggled the mind to think about, or this type of goblin had been anticipated at the outset and had been created in the off chance that someone like me would come along and craft it. I wasn’t that predictable, was I?

  That was something to think about later though, right now I couldn’t press the button fast enough to get my new goblin into the settlement. I watched as he unfolded himself from the Breeding Hut, the door only just big enough to let him out. In fact, he actually had to walk out sideways because his shoulders were so broad.

  The behemoth walked straight toward me as though he was a bodybuilder. The dark green veins bulged under his skin which had been pulled tight by his bulging muscles and his arms didn’t lay flat against his sides. It was actually quite intimidating until he reached me and I realised that for all his additional size and bulk above the other goblins, he was still only just a little shorter than me.

  “Me new. Me work. Me strong.” The behemoth proclaimed. It seemed that my attempt to increase his intellect had failed miserably and left him unable to speak in anything more than two-word sentences.

  “Right.” I said. “and what is your name?”

  “Me work. Me strong,” he repeated. He clearly either didn’t care to respond to me or he was simply too stupid to understand what was going on.

  “Fine, I’ll call you Tim.” I said, and added, “as in Tiny,” I don’t think anyone got it though, and Rachel wasn’t close enough to back me up in my chuckle.

  “Me TIM!” he proclaimed as he beat on his chest. “Me strong! Me work!”

  I got the message. “OK, OK!” I tried to placate the beast by waving my hands downwards in a sort of ‘calm down’ motion as a plan formed itself in my head. I checked to make sure but I knew it would be the case, he was at level one and his stats were the normal base stats just like the rest of the goblins, although he had almost double the health. It wasn’t quite as high as mine but to have that advantage at level one only meant one thing – levelling him up was the number one priority.

  I checked the resource list to see if I could get another behemoth while the thought was fresh in my mind, and although I could afford one it seemed that my new pal had quite the insatiable appetite – my camp’s food production was now almost equal to its maintenance, and that was bad news.

  It did change my plans slightly, but not all too much. The best way to increase my food production was to level up a few of the feeders. I picked three at random from my settlement and added them to a warparty along with Tim. As much as I wanted to take Rachel with us on a hunt, I felt that she was having a whale of a time levelling up her lumberjack skill and besides, as her level increased it meant that she took a bigger and bigger chunk of any experience gained.

  I took the four goblins to the nest after getting Tim equipped with a short sword - which was comically short, just like mine was - and a vest - which fit him but did nothing to hide his muscular arms. I must admit he did look kind of menacing, even for a goblin.

  I made the decision to only deal with the single spiders on the outskirts of the nest. With one at a time and Tim’s superior health, it meant that we could pretty much fight indefinitely until he levelled up to such a degree that the weaker spiders no longer gave him enough experience to make a difference. I was amazed when after only a few hours, Tim and the three workers had all reached level five, and I hadn’t made so much as a dent on my way to level twelve.

  It was kind of annoying that I’d had to throw away a few hours just to get my camp back in order and my new goblin up to scratch. I’d hoped beyond hope that Tim had decided to place some of his attribute points into wisdom, but who was I kidding really, when I checked, each and every point had gone into increasing his strength. His muscles were noticeably bigger and it had started to seem comical that he couldn’t straighten then down to his sides even slightly.

  “Tim, would you like to be a warrior?” I asked as we made our way back to the camp. Small talk was never my thing, but at least with Tim I didn’t have to try very hard.

  “Tim strong!” he announced.

  I sighed.

  “Tim…not…warrior.” He continued. I looked at him in delight at his three-word sentence and saw that the vein in his temple was pulsating and almost ready to burst.

  “You don’t want to be a warrior?” I asked with a rather bemused expression on his face.

  “Tim…mine.” He exhaled loudly to indicate that he’d stopped talking and therefore didn’t need to think any more.

  “That’s great!” I replied. “I’ll set you up with a nice pickaxe for you to work with,” I promised.

  I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I saw Tim’s eyes well up before he turned away from me.

  Arriving back at the campsite, through the huge wooden gates I barely had time to kick off my metaphorical shoes before Ushuk frantically bounded up to me. He was moving so fast and speaking so quickly that I could barely understand the little goblin.

  “Visitors…boat…there…quick!...run!” he was shouting.

  I got the message, and from where we stood I could see that there was indeed a boat anchored in our little lake.

  Chapter Nineteen, Guilt

  T

  he two men in black suits and ties examined the closed gaming pod that Rachel had let herself into and frowned at each other.

  “She’s not responsive, she must already be in the game,” The first man said. The second simply nodded without responding.

  “Are you fucking kidding me? Get her out of there!” Rachel’s boss, or more likely soon to be ex-boss was almost screaming at the pair.

  “Mr Wilson, you know we can’t just do that right?”

  “And why the fuck not?” Wilson replied.

  “The brain damage alone could leave her permanently disabled…” the suited man spoke again in a concerned tone. “that’s if it doesn’t outright kill her, you know?”

  “They are safety measures for the public, not for the guilty!” Wilson retorted. He had started to go red as his blood pressure increased – he was not used to not getting his own way.

  “I’m afraid I just can’t do it sir. Besides you’ve heard of innocent until proven guilty, haven’t you?” the suited man replied again.

  “Yes of course I have you fucking moron,” Wilson replied, “But she is obviously fucking guilty. She stole and then tried to leak company information. Now she has stolen a place in our fucking game that’s worth fucking millions and you’re telling me she’s innocent?!”

  “She is innocent.” The second suited man chimed in. “Until a jury of her peers finds her guilty, she’s in
nocent and that’s that.” He folded his arms to punctuate his sentence.

  “Get out of my fucking way.” Wilson forced out through gritted teeth.

  Both of the men, now each with their arms folded stood in front of Rachel’s gaming pod so that Mr Wilson couldn’t reach it to enact his own justice. “if you don’t move out of the way right-fucking-now…” he continued through gritted teeth, but as though in perfect timing to interrupt him, three policemen entered the room loudly behind him. The two suited men watched as Wilson forcibly relaxed his snarling face into a smile before turning to greet them.

  “Gentlemen, we have located the suspect,” he announced happily. “It appears that she has gone straight into an immersive gaming pod of ours so I am afraid that it will be unlikely we will be able to capture and condemn her for at least six months.”

  “Six months? I thought you had to stay in there for a year?” One of the policemen asked.

  “Six months was the minimum that our scientists found so as to not endanger the mental state of the player. Rapture Entertainment set the minimum timeframe to a year as a factor of safety,” he explained.

  “Well, I can’t comment on that. And I don’t suppose that we can move her while she’s in the pod?” the policeman asked. Wilson shook his head.

  “Unfortunately not. The pods are hardwired into nutrient solutions, health monitors and the game net servers. They weren’t designed to be moved,” he replied.

  “Well we have ourselves a bit of a situation here then don’t we?” the policeman said as he pulled out his mobile phone, “Just wait here and I’ll see what we have to do.”

  After a few minutes, the policeman entered the room again and put his phone down with a sigh.

  “The word from the top is that the lady in that capsule is under arrest. I'm sure you know that already. Now the problem is that without her being actually conscious she can’t actually defend her actions and therefore is unable to be tried in a court of law. In effect, she is and will remain an innocent person, at least until she exits your game here.” The policeman explained. “Now we don’t have the resources to guard over her pod for the next year, or six months or whatever, which means if she were to come out of it for any reason and nobody was there to collect her, well you could say goodbye to catching her. What we are recommending is that Rapture Entertainment post a guard on her pod until such a time that she emerges of her own accord.”