by Arthur Stone
He started looking all about him in despair, and suddenly he saw an information window pop up—the same kind he’d see when looking at his equipment or at one of the buildings in the city. He tried to find that spot again, and found himself looking at the following legend: “Worthless black shale with traces of copper ore. Chance of finding a piece of ore: 79.23%. Chance of finding an additional piece of ore: 8.08%. Chance of discovering an unexpected resource: 0.01%.”
Ros got a better grip on the pickaxe and hit the rock as hard as he could. The tool produced a cascade of sparks and rebounded, striking his helmet tangentially. The impact made his vision blur. Ros couldn’t stay on his feet and fell down on his behind, shaking his head in confusion as he tried to hold the encroaching darkness at bay. He saw several system messages in his chat window and scrolled through to read it: “The copper ore vein sustains 10 damage. Attention: you sustain 1 damage.”
What just happened? Did he actually hurt himself with the rebounding pickaxe? That seemed to be the case—his health bar was no longer full, with 127 hit points instead of 128. If he carried on like this, he was likely to do himself in, and then he’d have to climb all the way down into the mine again.
He was very careful with his next hit: “The copper ore vein sustains 10 damage.”
So, it appeared that the harder you swung, the more damage you dealt. He decided he’d go slowly, without taking any unnecessary risks. Now, what could this be? He saw a thin red bar over the description of the copper ore’s properties. It looked a bit like his health bar, and was also slightly less than full. He took a closer look and saw the numbers: “1148/1164.” So he’d have to hit the ore around two hundred times to “defeat” it.
Sure enough, it looked like it would take quite a while…
Ros kept chipping at the rock, and, finally, the resource hit point bar emptied completely. The pickaxe struck the rock one last time, the red bar blinked and disappeared, and a sizeable chunk of rock fell out of the wall, hitting his boot and rolling away.
When Ros picked up his trophy, he discovered that the piece of ore was rather heavy, even though it was only fist-sized. All he had managed to chip off previously were tiny flakes resembling the scales of a very large fish, albeit black rather than silvery. Once he studied the chunk carefully, the information window popped up: “Lump of Poor Quality Copper Ore. Weight: 1.07 kg. Metal content: 3.55%.”
Ros put the ore into his bag and examined the spot he had been working on. However, he didn’t find any information there—only the marks left by his pickaxe. It was clear enough: he’d have to start searching again.
Experience is priceless. This time around, the search didn’t take him long. Later on, in the course of his work Ros noticed that some of his strikes failed to deal any damage at all. On the other hand, he would occasionally deal up to fourteen points of damage instead of the usual five or seven—once he even managed a whopping fifteen points. He had no idea how that happened. He decided he’d ask Pup or someone else about it—it would sure be nice if they could help make his labor more productive.
The sixth lump of ore would be his in about a minute. Suddenly, Ros felt his arms go leaden, unable to lift the pickaxe, while his legs shook like they would fold any minute.
“Attention: you are tired. You need to rest or restore your Vigor at once.”
The Vigor bar was empty—he didn’t even notice its eighty-two points get used up. On the other hand, his health bar was full again.
Should he have a rest? It would be worth a try. After all, Pup must have had a good reason be sitting instead of chipping away at the rock.
The restoration of vigor was an excruciatingly slow process. It took around ten minutes to replenish half the bar. Tired of waiting, Ros rose and chipped off two more lumps, and then headed back, hoping to reach Pup when he’d be resting.
Unfortunately, the dwarf kept tapping away at the rock with the enthusiasm of a hammer drill. Ros sat down next to him, waiting for his Vigor to recover. He had already discovered that the less you moved, the quicker it replenished.
Pup bent to pick up the lump he’d chipped off, and said gruffly:
“I bet you have a bunch of questions again.”
“I sure do.”
“A sure sign of a noob. Well, I used to be one myself. All right, I’ll take a break—I hardly have any vigor left, anyway.”
“Is there any quicker way of restoring it?”
“You might take a drink of water from the creek. That should give you about ten points. You can’t do it more often than once an hour, though.”
“The creek’s a long way off.”
“Use a flask.”
“Where can I find one?”
“You can buy it.”
“But I don’t have any money.”
“Talk to Greedie. He can get you one in advance, and you’ll pay him back in ore. It’ll cost you an arm and a leg, but there are no other vendors here, so you don’t have much choice. You have a novice’s bag, so the flask will occupy a single slot, but that’s better than having it tied to your belt, anyway. Any falling pebble can make a hole in it. If the flask is cheap, that is. But Greedie doesn’t have any other kind.”
“So water works once an hour?”
“Yup.”
“Are there any other means?”
“You can use potions.”
“Where would I find them?”
“Greedie sells those, too. His potions work once an hour, but they restore fifty points. There’s no point for you to bother with them—you’re not likely to earn much, anyway, and with those expenses you’ll end up owing him a pretty penny.”
“Is there any way to harvest ore faster?”
“Sure. The higher your Strength and Attack coefficients, the more damage you deal, so the ore vein hit points get vanquished quicker. The higher your Accuracy, the fewer misses you make.”
“Higher Accuracy means fewer useless strikes?”
“Yeah. Didn’t you have Agility pumped all the way up?”
“That’s right.”
“It is related to Accuracy, so you shouldn’t miss all that often. However, the damage you deal is unlikely to be much to write home about.”
“Five to seven points. I’m afraid to hit harder—it would also take longer to swing.”
“Well, that’s next to nothing, lad. You screwed up royally there. I deal a minimum of 35 points of damage per hit.”
“Wow!”
“Over a hundred if I crit.”
“Crit?”
“Hit critically—that’s when you deal more damage to the resource. It usually doubles the average value. Ever noticed that happen?”
“I did.”
“When you fight a mob, a crit hit deals some serious damage—breaks a paw, busts an eye, and so on. Ore has no vulnerable organs, so you just double the damage you deal. By the way, the chance of dealing a crit depends on Agility, among other things, so you should see them a bit more often than usual.”
“I’d say they’re rare enough, and I never managed to deal more that fifteen damage. You’re way above me there.”
“My pickaxe is also better than yours, although not by much.”
“Where did you get it?”
“It’s my own.”
“Can I get something similar from Greedie?”
“Sure, he might extend you a line of credit, but at rip-off interest, of course. Paying cash would be a more reasonable option.”
“But I haven’t got a single coin.”
“In that case, pray for something of value to drop.”
“Come again?”
“Did you see that ore veins have the Chance of Discovering an Unexpected Resource property?”
“I sure did. Right next to the part about the additional piece of ore.”
“An additional piece of ore is easy enough—you get two or more lumps at the end. This usually happens on every twelfth attempt or so. Unexpected resources are something else, though—more compli
cated. We harvest copper, which is a metal. So you usually get some other metal as an unexpected drop—most often tin, occasionally iron. In theory, you might get mithril or adamantite, but I’ve never heard of that actually happening here—copper is too much of a noob thing, after all. However, even though copper is a metal, you can get some stone as a bonus. An inexpensive piece of malachite is your best bet, but, in theory, nothing would prevent a diamond from winding up in your bag, either. So this is the deal: we are only obliged to submit copper. Everything else is our personal bonus, so make your own arrangements with Greedie. Got it?”
“One chance in ten thousand. I won’t manage to dig up one of those in a week with my speed.”
“It’s all a matter of luck. Some get three drops a day, while others hardly see them in a month. There’s also another way of making a few coins, but you’re still too green for that.”
“What’s that?”
“Kill a few mobs and get some loot.”
“Loot?”
“You’re one incredible noob. A mob doesn’t only give you experience. When you off one of those, you end up with the carcass, and you can find all sorts of stuff in there, some of it quite unexpected. Pelts, claws, fangs, and so on are obvious enough. But you get lots of other fun stuff as well—it all depends on the mob. They even used to drop coins back in the day, but they stopped that during beta testing. Mobs also make your stats grow much faster than ore.”
“Stats?”
“Your statistics. How much did your strength grow today?”
“It was nine, and nine it remains.”
“So it didn’t even increase by a hundredth of a percent?”
“Apparently, it didn’t. So where does one find those mobs? Do you have to go into the woods?”
“They won’t let you out of the mines, so don’t even dream of the woods.”
“Why won’t they?”
“So that you wouldn’t run away with those rags and that pickaxe. It’s a noob clan and a noob mine, so the rules are the kind you’d expect for noobs, too. Their contract is a joke. It isn’t registered at any Miners’ Guild, so they have nothing on you, even if you do a runner before your contract expires and take a few souvenirs with you. Did you bind to the respawn point up there?”
“Sure, just like they told me.”
“That bind spot is only good for a month. Then you’ll respawn at the altar of the nearest Temple of Light. If you don’t manage to get your due from these noobs, and they start coercing you into extending the contract, your only chance of getting away without much fuss is to kill yourself.”
“You mean they can rip you off in the end?”
“It’s a snake pit of the highest order. The in crowd manages to turn a profit; the likes of us get stuck here right and proper. It’s much like slavery. How did you end up here, anyway?”
Ros recollected what Digits had told him.
“Someone helped me… He did warn me, though, that I would end up cursing him.”
“An honest guy. Well, honest in his own way, of course.”
“Well, I haven’t cursed him yet.”
“That’s because you and your Agility wouldn’t cut the mustard in any decent place. Noobs like the Swords don’t care—you could have dumped all your points into Intellect or whatever. But no decent clan will pick up trash with misaligned stats. This isn’t that bad an option for you. Spend a month here, and you’ll end up leveling up your Mining & Quarrying, and maybe also your Strength as well.”
“Mining & Quarrying? I don’t think I even have that stat.”
“It’s an auxiliary stat, so you find it at the very end.”
“I tried to tap on that line, but without any result.”
“That’s because you have no auxiliary stats unlocked—leveled to one, that is. You’ll see it pop up once you reach one point. There are hundreds of auxiliary stats, possibly thousands; nobody knows how many for sure. Anyway, it’s time for me to carry on.”
“Just one more thing, Pup—can you find any mobs here in the mines?”
“You can, but you’ll have a hard time with your stats and your pickaxe. The mobs will swat you like a fly.”
“So what? I could at least try.”
“Go for the ore. It’s better for your health and your purse.”
“I don’t have to submit any ore today, anyway.”
“Oh, so you arrived too late, did you? Those noobs only register their arrivals in the morning and in the evening. If you keep on following the mine deep into the mountain, you’ll find a bunch of abandoned galleries with no one working there.”
“Galleries?”
“Sideways tunnels like this one. They follow the veins of ore.”
“Got it.”
“That’s where you find the mobs—at some distance from the miners. And the deeper you go, the more you’ll see. If you go really deep, you may find monsters that will incinerate you with a single glance. They come out at night—sometimes they reach the mine entrance, and even the settlement itself, so all the work stops in the evening, as the sound of pickaxe tapping the rock will sure draw them to you. It’s a noob mine, a noob clan, and noob ore that no one needs except for said noobs. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to stop chatting and get back to work.”
Chapter 8
Ros kept on walking further and further, counting the galleries that branched away from the main tunnel. The sounds of the miners working were left far behind, and the light from the last torch disappeared a while ago—there were no sources of light here at all. Only his vision saved him: he couldn’t tell any colors apart, but otherwise he could see just fine.
The mine looked like the set of a horror film, with tatters of some sort hanging from above, looking like fragments of gigantic cobwebs. He had to tread carefully—there were patches of loose gravel here and there, as well as rock-hard fluorescent mushrooms. He tripped on one of those and fell, without causing any visible damage to the mushroom.
So where were the promised mobs? He could see no signs of life. Could Pup have been pulling his leg? You couldn’t trust anyone here… He must have been had like the worst kind of noob.
There was a suspicious sound of shuffling coming from above. Ros froze, wincing in disgust. It was a perfectly ordinary rat—albeit the size of a small dog. So revolting… So this was a mob?
“Mine Rat. Aggression: low. Sociality: high. Level: hidden. Skills: hidden. Stats: hidden.”
Ros wasn’t too fond of rats, but he had no choice. He started toward the oversized rodent, aiming to strike it with his pickaxe. The mob looked at the trouble heading its way suspiciously, and promptly pattered forward, disappearing in the next gallery.
“Stop, you!” shouted Ros, dashing after the rat.
The rat didn’t obey—moreover, it started running faster. Ros hurried to catch up with it. The gallery was bound to end sooner or later, and he would punish the cowardly beast there.
However, Ros never managed to reach the end of the gallery. He halted suddenly, seeing that instead of one rat he was now facing three. The new ones were also a lot larger than the first. The critters did not seem to hurry anywhere—they just stood there, looking at Ros.
And he really didn’t like that look.
He assessed his chances soberly, and decided against getting involved. The rats, however, were of a different mind. They rushed him at once, shrieking revoltingly, as if following a command.
Ros managed to meet the first rat with a well-placed hit on the snout that made it rebound with an even uglier shriek, but the second one managed to grab him by the leg. His ankle felt like a bear trap closed around it. It was hardly painful, but the sensation was far from pleasant.
However, when the third rat closed its jaws over his thigh, Ros screamed from pain that felt as real as any. Not unbearable by any means, but quite unexpected.
What kind of game was this, where everything was real, including pain?
He dealt the rat a hard blow on the back and s
wung at another. But that was when darkness engulfed everything… The next moment he felt sunlight, so bright it hurt the eyes. Ros was sitting in the stone circle next to the pole, gazing up at Greedie who was sitting on a narrow bench underneath an awning next to the edge of the crater with an astounded grin.
The entire battle took just a few lines of system messages to describe. “You hit the Mine Rat for 8 damage. The Mine Rat hits you for 4 damage. The Mine Rat hits you for 8 damage. The Mine Rat hits you for 7 damage. Critical damage sustained: Severe Bleeding effect applied—you are losing your hit points rapidly. The Mine Rat hits you for 7 damage. The Mine Rat kills you. Achievement earned: First Death. Achievement bonus: 5 extra hit points. Bonus effect: permanent. You are resurrected at your current respawn point: miner settlement next to the Ravenas mine, Rallia Province. The current owner is the Sword Power guild. Attention: this is a dangerous zone. There is high likelihood of aggressive actions from monsters and players. It is not recommended to place your bind points in dangerous zones.”
“What’s up, noob? Not your day, is it?” Greedie grinned. “Congratulations on popping your cherry kicking the bucket. Who got you? Or did you do yourself in? Hit yourself on the forehead with a pickaxe, maybe?”
“I need a flask and a better pickaxe,” said Ros once he came to his senses.
“Oh yeah? And how about my mom in black stockings and a garter?”
“Is she pretty, at least?”
“Even uglier than you are.”
“In that case, I’ll pass. So, how about that pickaxe and flask?”
“You’ll get your pickaxe tomorrow, once production starts again—you’ll pay that back in ore. A flask is worth real money, though.”
“How about I pay for that in ore, too?”
