by Arthur Stone
Ros may have been a noob, but he wasn’t an idiot. It was easy enough to conclude that his two skills must be related in some way. He produced one of the three Soul Crystals acquired today out of his bag, stared at it intently, and activated it by saying, “Rise and shine!”
The crystal made a rustling sound as it turned into fine sand which passed right through his fingers. The grains of sand did not reach the earth, forming a tiny tornado, even though the air had been perfectly still. The air around it started to ripple, with currents reaching into the center of the vortex, picking up all sorts of garbage, pebbles, earth particles and dust. The center of this phenomenon was then covered by an impenetrable dome of darkness which disappeared after a second or two with a bang, and Ros jerked back, reaching for his pickaxe—standing there right in front of him was a plump rat.
He started to swing, but then stopped—the mob didn’t seem the least bit aggressive. It didn’t look that well, either, with its skin covered in bald patches and wounds oozing some liquid, one ear torn away completely, and not a single glimmer of reason in its dull eyes.
“Zombie Rat. A creature summoned from the realm of darkness. Level: 2. Skills: none. Stats: Defense: 1; Attack: 2.”
“Achievement earned: you’ve become a Summoner. Achievement bonus: new auxiliary stat unlocked: Summoning. Skill acquired: Lesser Healing of the Summoned Creature. Bonus effect: permanent. Achievement unlocked: Summoner. Summon 150 creatures to complete the achievement. Achievement reward: random.”
Ros barely managed to admire his summoned creature when Greedie appeared from around the corner, cursing shortly and then giving the rat a good kick. The summoned mob flew into the crater’s abyss without so much as a squeak.
“Your summoned creature dies.”
“Those beasts find you even here, you meganoob, though I rarely see one make it all the way up here. Why don’t you go inside already? I’m tired of seeing your mug even more than of my mother-in-law’s nagging.”
“Greedie, I have a question.”
“You’re all questions and no use. I’m sick to my gut of you already.”
“You’re gonna like this one.”
“Oh yeah? Well, try surprising me, I’m all ears.”
“I have already eaten, slept, drank, and washed myself in the game. But haven’t been to the bathroom once yet—and I haven’t felt any urges of that sort. Does one do without it here?”
“Well, you haven’t surprised me, but you’re right in general—that is an interesting question. This game models real life very faithfully. If you eat something, you gotta go to the can. Only nobody does. Now, why is that? There are all kinds of theories, but the one I like best is this. I heard that in real hardcore battles in locations where no minors are allowed, some characters are occasionally torn to pieces, and they say you can sometimes notice an interesting sort of a structure somewhere among the flying pieces of guts, like a miniature teleport arch similar to the ones they have in bigger cities. So my idea—not only mine, actually—is that food gets into your stomach through your gullet the way it should, then it ends up in your colon, where it transforms into shit. Once it reaches the teleportation portal, it gets sent somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Now that is something nobody knows. But I do believe there is an enormous privy out there somewhere—the king of all shithouses, as it were, and all our shit ends up in there. Over four hundred million users, and around two or three times as many NPCs. Can you even imagine the sheer scale of the thing?”
“It’s hard to imagine.”
“If you keep on finding trouble in the most mundane places, I won’t be much surprised if you find that shithouse someday. You’ve got a knack for that, it would seem.”
* * *
“Thus, what we are dealing with here is but another tax—and a voluntary one at that. The player pays for accessing the game, and some of this money is used to finance high-cost government project—that is one of the reasons why this year’s military budget is so scandalously inflated.”
Currently, a substantial part of the funds received from the players is invested in the expansion of the project: infrastructure construction and upgrades, attraction of new users, and further research of hardware that would be even more advanced. The portion of these expenses keeps dwindling as the project expands, which will invariably result in lower user fees. We are already seeing it happen—there are all sorts of promo campaigns, low-cost packages, and discounts for regular users.
On the other hand, government involvement in every sector is likewise on the increase. There has also been an increase in the number of attempts to influence game-related events on the governmental level. The recent opposition between several Asian countries that nearly escalated into a military conflict is a typical example.”
From the annual supplement to the American Journal of Economics and Sociology.
Chapter 9
The summoned rat kept following Ros like a pet dog. It would stop whenever he stopped, and sit whenever he sat. It wasn’t that hard to figure out the controls of the zombie rat for an intelligent person, regardless of their relative lack of experience in the game, and so Ros kept going further away from the sounds of miners working, itching to try the beast out in a real engagement.
He didn’t have to search too long, giving the Attack command without taking his eye off the first spotted rat that was chewing on something. The zombie attacked, and the mobs started fighting. Ros’ protégé won, but he had to heal it twice with his new skill.
It turned out to be a resource-intensive procedure, as casting the healing spell once consumed ten points of magic energy. On the plus side, there was no risk this way, and his pants remained undamaged.
Ros also noticed that the new rat was weaker than the one summoned yesterday. He had already suspected the beasts to differ from one another, judging them by size. It was also very obvious in battle: some were stronger, and others much weaker. What he really needed was a Soul Crystal from the fattest beast out there—that way he would be able to mop up the small fry without breaking a sweat.
Ros grabbed his pickaxe and went off to work the rock. Mobs were best for leveling up Strength, of course, but he still had his duties. Greedie would hardly be overjoyed with small yields. Ros had already managed to figure out that the dwarf was in charge of virtually everything here, which meant he should stay on good terms with him.
His activities now alternated between mining for ore and using the zombie rat to kill its living kin. After the fifth hunt Ros noticed that his Strength had stopped growing, stuck at yesterday’s infinitesimal value. Now why would that be?
He found his answer soon enough. The Mining & Quarrying stat grew when you mined for ore—it wouldn’t grow one whit from killing rats, no matter how many of them you vanquished. It was therefore easy to deduce that Strength only grew when it was used for killing mobs, whereas he hadn’t done anything other than healing his zombie. This had made his Intellect and Mental Power grow a little, but there were no other benefits.
He had to start using his pickaxe for something other than chipping away at rock, getting his pants torn, and then restoring his health while mining. On the other hand, he had gotten much better at hunting from yesterday—he was more experienced, and the summoned rat was a big help. He was getting outstanding results by siccing his familiar on a mob, then running around the foes engaged in combat and dealing blows from the rear. In roughly half the cases this led to a spinal injury, which made it a breeze to finish off the mobs safely. But even when that didn’t happen, he would still deal good damage, wrapping the battle up without too much effort.
Having slain yet another rat, Ros discovered an unexpected item inside. “Enchanted Copper Ring. Enchantment effect: +1 to Disguise.”
Ros couldn’t understand why this overgrown rodent would be dragging a ring about, and a charmed one to boot, but what really amazed him was the bonus to Disguise. He decided he wouldn’t be able to solve that one
on his own, so he ordered the summoned rat to stay put, and headed back to the “social” part of the mine in order to submit the ore he had mined and try to find Pup. He hadn’t been able to establish contact with any other miners, despite his best efforts.
* * *
He found Pup in the same gallery as the day before, with the dwarf tapping away at the rock monotonously. Ros decided it would be wrong to wait for him to rest without doing anything, and, upon finding a prospective vein nearby, joined him in digging for ore.
Pup stopped at once.
“Hey, Ros. Look, it’s best to avoid doing what you’re doing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t tap. The closer the miners stand to each other, the higher the risk of a rockfall.”
“You have rockfalls here?”
“We sure do—this mine’s a total load of crap. It’s fine if it kills you at once, but what if it just buries you underneath? You’ll waste hours trying to dig yourself out.”
“Sorry for interrupting—I just wanted to have a word with you.”
“Oh, all right, I might as well rest for a few minutes—you’re not likely to let me be, anyway.”
“Pup, I killed a rat and found a copper ring inside it. Is that normal?”
“What are you, a total noob?”
“Yup, as nooby as they get.”
“Never played anything like this before?”
“Not even once.”
“Now that’s just weird! How did you even end up here?! Anyway, you’d better get used to it. Even though they say the game is just like real life, there are plenty of oddities here. Mobs don’t just drop pelts—it’s been this way in many of the classic games, so this one’s no exception.”
“The ring has a bonus—it adds a point to Disguise. Am I right to understand that only works when you wear it on your finger?”
“Well, sure.”
“Do only rings have bonuses?”
“No, any item, and there are all kinds of them, too,” Pup showed Ros his hand with two rings glittering dimly on two of his fingers. “I have four of them with bonuses to Strength.”
“I only see two.”
“Two of them have a property called Merging. You can put them on and make them invisible and undetectable to the touch, as if they didn’t exist. Less visual clutter, and they don’t get in the way. Hey, wanna sell it to me?”
“What do you need Disguise for?”
“I leave the body here for the night, and sometimes the mobs that crawl out of the distant galleries find it. Which means I have to waste time getting all the way down here in the morning. Disguise should make it a bit harder for them to detect me.”
“What about breakfast and supper? Don’t you ever come up for that?”
“Why would I lap up that slop and have them charge me for it as if it were beluga caviar? No way, I’ve stocked up on food well enough.”
“How about a swap for one of those rings with Strength?”
“Sorry, no can do—I need Strength myself, and I have no extra ones. So, how about selling it?”
“Is it expensive?”
“A plus one ring is worth peanuts.”
“How about I just give it to you, but you tell me its real price in return, and tell me more about mobs and the stuff they drop.”
“Ros, I wasn’t trying to rip you off. It’s hardly worth anything at all—you’ll get a silver coin for it if you’re lucky. I’m gonna tell you about them, anyway, but briefly, while Vigor is still regenerating.”
“I’m all ears.”
“As for mobs, you get the regular and the elite variety. You will find no others here.”
“But there are others?”
“Bosses. Special monsters. There are definitely none of those here. If you have a Perception point or two, you can view the level of regular and elite mobs if it isn’t higher than yours. The difference between the regular and the elite kind is that the latter have much higher stats at the same level—sometimes by an order of magnitude. It’s much harder to kill an elite mob, but you also get more experience for it. You know how to kill rats by now, I take it, and how to get the loot from their carcasses. If you have decent hunting skills, you can get more loot. Otherwise the pelt gets damaged more often, fangs or claws become unrecoverable, and so on. All of that stuff also gets destroyed if you kill a mob in a particularly vicious manner.”
“How does that happen?”
“Let’s say a rat has twenty hit points, and you hit it for two hundred damage.”
“I rarely see even ten damage—how would I do that?”
“You’re a level zero noob—you’re not supposed to see anything bigger than that. A high-level player can deal more than a few hundred damage, but they won’t get anything—no experience and no loot. It’s a good way to protect low-level mobs from high-level farmers.”
“Farmers?”
“Yeah. Farming is going for loot professionally. I make a living mining ore, for example, but some folks hunt mobs and sell the stuff they drop for a living. Whole clans get together to farm bosses. You need a posse even for a low-level boss—they’re that serious. But that’s where you get the best loot. A boss can drop anything, including an epic or a legendary item. I know what you’re gonna ask next, so there we go: items in this game are tiered, from the cheapest junk with minimal stats to rare and expensive stuff that has lots of useful stats. The ring you got from the rat wasn’t of the absolute cheapest sort. If it didn’t give any bonus, it would hardly be worth the trouble of picking it up—you could probably sell it for smelting for a copper. On the other hand, they got the legendary Ice King Sword from a raid boss a month ago, which was then sold for over eleven million.”
“In gold?!”
“Oh yeah. Although they may have arranged a payment in real money—I’m not completely sure.”
“Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick!”
“Amen. It is the absolute auction sale record to date.”
“So you can’t kill a boss like that on your own?”
“Even the easier bosses are real fat—that is to say, they have lots of hit points and high defenses. Their attack is also pretty strong, and they usually have a bunch of unpleasant skills to boot—for example, they can paralyze you and then squash you while you’re incapacitated. The easiest way would be to find a Chaos Den that no one had managed to find before. It’s usually a cave, and you become its discoverer. When you enter it for the first time, it kinda adjusts to you. Even if the mobs you find there are of a higher level than you, it won’t be by much. All of them are elite and buffed, but if you play smart and your equipment is good enough, you have a chance of picking them off one by one. But you won’t be able to kill a boss on your own—it would be like facing a whole pack of elite mobs.”
“And if you bring a high-level player to kill the boss, the corpse won’t drop anything of value?”
“Well, it depends. For example, you could get fragments of the Ice King Sword instead of the item itself. They’re gonna cost more than their weight in gold, but that’s a different scale, as you understand. Also, if you kill a boss whose level is much higher than yours, you risk becoming the recipient of its last curse, which stays with you for a long time and is real hard to remove.”
“So if the rat were of a lower level, I wouldn’t have gotten a ring?”
“The ring wouldn’t disappear, but what you’d manage to pick from the carcass would be something like a ‘Fire-Damaged Copper Ring.” A damaged item will have no stat bonuses. Consequently, it won’t fetch more than a copper, assuming the blacksmith’s in a good mood.”
“So rats don’t drop any valuable items?”
“In theory, developers designed things in such a way that even a rat can drop an epic item. Or, perhaps, even a legendary one, I’m not sure. But don’t get your hopes up if you plan on getting rich that way. You might as well log out and start searching piles of manure for diamonds the size of chicken eggs—you’d have a higher chan
ce going that route.”
“Got it. I have another question about experience. I have about three hundred points, and it keeps accumulating.”
“Of course. You receive XP points even though your levels are locked. Three hundred, eh? That means you’ll become a level 3 character at once if you manage to remove the lock—you need a hundred to get from level 1 to 2, and two hundred more to get from level 2 to 3. The only reason you can’t grow is your zero-level account, but your experience isn’t going anywhere—it keeps adding up.”
“If you can level up your stats without any fuss, what’s the point in having levels? Especially given that once your level grows, you’re no longer capable of getting the rats to drop any loot, and, if I understand everything right, you’ll also get less XP from them.”
“What would you want with low-level rats? You can find enough mobs to match your own level and defeat them, if you’re into violence and all. How about this: with your level zero character you can only equip stuff that has no level requirements. Even the best pickaxes for level zero characters are so lame that it will take you half a day to harvest a lump of iron ore—and iron isn’t even a high-level resource. So we end up with crap like copper. You could, of course, order a custom-made elite tool without any level requirements from a high-level blacksmith, but it would take months of work in an iron mine to make it worth your while. There are, however, items that give a bonus to your level in general—a ring that adds a single point to your level, for instance. You put it on, and the character’s level grows by one. It stays that way for as long as you wear the ring. Such items cost a lot more than the ring you looted off the rat, but it’s feasible enough to get around fifteen bonus levels. That’s what most level zero players do. Then they buy modestly-priced tools and mine all kinds of resources up to silver. Top clans also have buffers working in serious mines—they give you all kinds of useful buffs that boost your stats, speed up Vigor regeneration, raise your general level, and so on. The bonuses are temporary, but a high-level buffer can make them last until the end of the workday. That way advanced zero-level players can mine for silver, or, perhaps, something even better. Take a look at my pickaxe: it deals twice more damage than yours, and also adds a point to Mining & Quarrying. This allows me to deal even more damage to the resource. What this boils down to is that I manage to get two lumps of ore and start tapping for the third before you finish harvesting your first.”
