by Arthur Stone
“That sucks…”
“You’re right on that one.”
“I’ve been killing rats faster than that mob of miners can eat them. Is it OK if I get you nothing by lunchtime?”
“No problem, my stock will last a while. But bear in mind there’s nowhere to store it. The uncooked meat will begin to rot in a day or two.”
“In that case, come at lunchtime. Tell me about the pter, and you can collect the meat I’ll have gathered by then.”
“Do you intend to hunt those creatures tomorrow, too? I took a short peek at the shadowcrawler’s description—it’s one creeping horror of a mob.”
“I told you—hunters have their tricks. Also, can you get me a cartload of sticks and poles so as not to waste the journey?”
* * *
He didn’t feel sleepy at all—he only wanted to keep going. Ros had never slept more than five hours a night in his past life, and he needed even less than that here.
So off he went in search of his next adventure.
The adventure was waiting for him near the cave entrance, just like the first time. He dispatched a pter, and ran into a trumus a few minutes later. From here he was encountering mobs with more and more frequency, even though he was following his old tracks, having just recently exterminated the local creatures. It must have been the time of their daily migration—perhaps that was the reason the mines became dangerous in the evening.
After repulsing an attack by no fewer than four pters, at the end of which Ros was left with a mere 11 HP, it became obvious that venturing further would be foolhardy of him. The pet fared fabulously, but his owner could buy the farm at any moment. Even the bonus of another point to Stamina, Attack, and, most rewardingly, Strength—due to his furious stabbing with the pike—failed to lift his spirits too much.
He was forced to return to his bunk earlier than planned.
But he would get to it again in the morning.
Chapter 17
A pter, a trumus, another pter, then another trumus, then two more pters, and so on. He didn’t encounter any lepruses—the genocide must have been complete. In between killing mobs he harvested amethysts, collected loot, and licked his wounds. His Stamina had risen by another point, and Attack and Intellect by two points each since he got back to collecting soul crystals. This was beneficial for leveling magic stats, and it gave him some useful objects to boot. These mobs were nowhere near as good as his current pet, but should he lose it, he would at least have someone to deal with the rats.
Ros was a bit late by noon, so the orc had beaten him to it—something he had never allowed before. Thankfully, Shoto didn’t seem to mind; on the contrary, he seemed very enthusiastic as the rrokh approached.
“Hey, Ros! Did you get the pters?!”
“I can get you one, it’s nearby.”
“Drag it over!”
“So they’re useful?”
“Get me the carcass, and I’ll tell you more.”
Ros walked about a hundred feet back, to the leprus waiting in the gallery, and took the pter carcass from his pet. He thought it would be nice to bring Shoto a small gift.
The return took him four times as long. Ros couldn’t lift the pter, so he had to drag the carcass across the floor. Fortunately, the orc helped him once he got close enough.
“How much Strength do you have if you can easily lift something like this?” Ros was amazed.
“Apparently, more than certain secretive hunters.”
“Touché. Now, what about that meat?”
“Look for yourself,” the orc produced a deliciously-smelling roast from his bag.
“Roast Cave Pter Meat with Spices. Tender, white, very nutritious, with a pleasant taste. Effects: restores 60 Vigor over forty seconds; restores 40 HP over a minute; raises Strength by 2 for two hours, hastens Vigor regeneration by 4 for ten minutes. To experience the full set of effects, do not consume more often than once every forty minutes.”
“Not bad.”
“Not bad? It’s the bomb! The guys are prepared to pay triple for it! I have a line of customers waiting! Screw the rats, get me this stuff. This bonus to Vigor is no joke. It will make it possible to harvest ore much faster, especially with the higher Strength. I wish I could get some corn oil and a decent frying pan—I could achieve an even better effect. I was thinking of ordering them through the guards.”
“How many pters a day do you need?”
“How many can you get me?”
“Just tell me.”
“Would you be able to get three carcasses?”
“I would.”
“How about five?”
“I could try, but transportation may be a problem—I’ll have to drag them over quite a distance.”
“I could push the cart closer—I just hope the mobs don’t gobble me up on my way.”
“You can go for another mile and a half along the tunnel without any encounters—there are but a couple of rats that haven’t been finished off.”
“Rats can be weird at times… Three or four can gang up and attack. That would be enough to take me out.
“They don’t come out into the main tunnel—you’ll find them huddling at the ends of galleries. That’s where their nests are.”
“Young rats grow up fast. It’s not that I’m afraid of dying, but I’d really hate to waste time running back and forth.”
“I have sixteen points of native Strength, and I can raise it to twenty with rings and a bracelet. Would that allow me to push the cart?”
“Sure, but it’s gonna take you a while, and your Vigor will get used up faster.”
“So how about I take this cart? You can skip your evening visit, and be here tomorrow by lunchtime with an empty cart. I’ll take it, and you’ll take the pter carcasses. Would that be OK, or is anyone going to miss the cart?”
“Like anyone kept track of them. Sure.”
“Take a look at the drops I got,” Ros showed the orc a dented bronze helmet and steel boots.
“Duh, those are regular items—you’re not gonna get much for them. You’ll more or less be selling them for scrap metal value.”
“I see. So let’s wait for me to get hold of something better, and then we’ll sort the bag issue out.”
“Is it that urgent?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe.”
“I have already brought it up. There’s a penalized player that arrived yesterday. It seems that you can deal with him. He’s gonna stay here for over a week, so there’s enough time. I don’t see any other options so far.”
“All right, let’s see what happens tomorrow.”
* * *
Ros spent a couple of hours hunting and mining amethysts, raising his Stamina by yet another point, and then returned to the cave entrance, where the mine tunnel cut through the cave. The area was driest here, and it wasn’t hard for him to push the cart all the way to this spot using the grooves in the flat rock.
As a matter of fact, the leprus did most of the pushing—fortunately, he understood simple commands perfectly, and even the more complex ones usually didn’t present any problems. The creature was much smarter than rats.
It was time to load up the cart. Ros managed to bring one, depleting his Vigor bar almost to zero in the process, and the pet brought two more. It made sense to get more tomorrow—there was no shortage of these creatures here. They weren’t as common as rats, though. You could find those around any corner, while pters were the kind of critter you had to look for.
Another option was to bang your pickaxe against the rock—the fiends were used to the miners being helpless, and were likely come look for you themselves.
Ros found a fitting place for setting up a defensible spot with fortifications where he could sleep. He placed wooden lattices made from the material delivered by the orc between the stalagmites, putting a larger lattice on top. Now the monsters would have to get through the obstacles before they could reach his body. The leprus standing guard would hardly remain ind
ifferent to that. The passage leading to his cul-de-sac was narrow and passed right by the pet’s hiding place. Ros explained it at length in every way he could that the leprus should stay there all the time, and only jump out when a mob tried to get at his master. Once the mob was strangled, the body needed to be dragged away and out of sight.
Ros feared that the mobs would be cautious about following a path where instead of a lure such as a sleeping human—or a rrokh, in his case—they would find a high-level leprus with a suspiciously mean look on its snout crouching among the bodies of their kin.
Incidentally, he hadn’t seen any other mobs but pters, trumuses, and a single shadowcrawler. Were there any other lepruses left? And what of the mine demon of mischief? He’d only encountered it once—as a system message about having been killed by this elusive bastard. Where could it be hiding? As for the lepruses, could they all have been killed in the raid following their attack on the settlement? That would be a welcome development, as Ros didn’t feel confident he’d be able to withstand an assault like that.
He didn’t feel particularly tired, but sleep was a subtle beast, swallowing him up like the deepest morass of all the worlds.
* * *
The same data center.
“This is a weird bug—I don’t recollect anything of this sort.”
“What about it?”
“Take a look at the log and see for yourself.”
“So?”
“See anything weird?”
“An achievement. What about it?”
“Don’t you know the conditions for it? It’s an impossible achievement. The character levels up, so you need mobs of an ever-increasing level. The furthest you can get before you’re stuck is about one third of the way.”
“Someone must have invested lots of cash to equip a level zero player to hunt level twenty-five mobs.”
“Sure. It’s just that a level zero will have a single type of a mob counted against this achievement only once. If you kill a wolf, killing another won’t do you any good since it won’t be counted. Or you can kill the ones that are thirty levels above you—there are no limits on those. That means you’d have to search for zones with new types of mobs and have them kill you a whole bunch of times before you manage to get one of each. You’d need to drag high-level buffers along with you all this time, too. This would take more than a month. And what would be the point? If you have that much dough, you can invest it in something a lot more interesting. Also, the reward for one of the stages of this achievement makes you a hero. A noobish kind of hero, to be sure—Great Hunter or some such. The bonuses are nothing much, and you won’t get glorified in chats worldwide. However, what will happen is that the zero-level lock will be removed and you’ll reach level ten; there’s no way back after that. And a level ten player will find it much harder to kill mobs over a hundred levels above his own, regardless of his equipment.”
“But it clearly says that the achievement belongs to a player with no levels registered less than a month ago.”
“Exactly. It’s got to be a glitch of some sort.”
“Hey, don’t level zero workers have no level whatsoever?”
“They don’t have a regular level. Their virtual level is one.”
“What if he has accessories with a temporary level bonus that let him wear level ten gear? Epics, unique, or legendary items, lots of bonuses, that kind of thing. Or maybe he even managed to put a low-level set together, if there is such a thing. This can be boosted by high-level buffs, high-quality food, and potions.”
“No dice. Even a level 25 mob would require equipment with substantial bonuses to defeat. But in his case, most of the spots would be taken up by gear raising his virtual level. We’re talking noob equipment, after all—it never gives any decent bonuses. Equipment without level requirements that nonetheless yields lots of benefits is unbelievably expensive. I’ve read about folks trying it to some degree of success, and even more than once, but none of them got very far. Even doing it once is a pain in the neck, let alone several times. It would be easier to remove the lock and level up properly—and once you reach a high enough level, the reward for this kind of achievement becomes meaningless. There’s no point wasting time and money. The heroic title is rather weak, too, and doesn’t do you that much good. It would be easier to complete a heroic quest and slay some raid bosses—it’s cheaper, and the rewards are better. You can get it done realistically in a month or two if money is no object.”
“Is there any chance this isn’t a bug? What if someone was actually patient enough to pull it off?”
“Everything is possible. This log doesn’t even contain a username, and the race name is gibberish. Well, it’s like they say—the only thing logs are good for these days is printing them out and wiping your ass with them.”
“Uh-huh. It’s weird there was no worldwide chat message in that case, though. This is the first such achievement in the history of the game, after all.”
“Apparently, not even the system considered the feat heroic enough.”
Chapter 18
“Achievement bonus: +1 to Perception, +1 to Crafting, +1 to Creation. Congratulations! You are the first person alive to have fulfilled the requirements for this achievement! You are headed in the right direction, Hero! Keep at it! Here’s a little something to help you on your way: +1 to Perception and +1 to Luck. A hero needs to see the right path, and luck will help them see it through to the end. Achievement unlocked: Monster Bane. Kill 100 monsters whose level exceeds yours tenfold or more without any help to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: 5 random secondary base stat points. Your Summoning grows by 1. Current value: 6. Your Cunning grows by 1. Current value: 2. Your Summoning grows by 1. Current value: 7. Your Summoning grows by 1. Current value: 8. Achievement completed: Giant Slayer. Achievement bonus: 1 undistributed primary base stat point, 1 undistributed secondary base stat point, 3% to Physical and Magic Resistance. Bonus effect: permanent. Achievement unlocked: Giant Exterminator. Kill 100 monsters whose level exceeds yours by thirty or more without any help to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: random. Your Cunning grows by 1. Current value: 3.”
These system messages were the first thing Ros noticed as he woke up. He suspected there was a reason for them to be displayed, so he lifted the lattice up a little and looked at the pet. The leprus was standing guard, covered by two huge stalagmites fused together at the bottom, with piles of pter and trumus carcasses to either side.
“Well, you’ve been busy… Did they attempt a mass assault or were they just coming one by one all night long?”
No reply followed—the leprus wasn’t much of a talker.
He had missed many opportunities to level up anything other than Summoning and Cunning. But there were trophies galore. Ros spent at least half an hour inspecting and collecting his loot. Apart from the giblets, he found seven undamaged items. He hid the plainer and bulkier stuff among the stalactites, covering it with rocks—he didn’t want to overload his bag—taking with him a level twenty-nine enhanced helmet and a level thirty-three belt. As for the ring, he took his sweet time examining it.
“Enchanted Silver Porter’s Ring. Properties: merging. Stats: +10 kg to Carrying Capacity, +1 to Strength. Enchantment: +1 to Carrying Capacity.”
He’d been complaining about being overloaded, right? This looked to be a partial solution to the problem. It was easy enough to see that this trinket was worth a great deal more than much of what he’d found before. He could keep it for his own use, but the bag was still more important. Oh well…
Right, he should show his trophies to the orc first and decide later.
He loaded five more carcasses into the cart, choosing the best-looking ones. Then Ros got into his usual routine again: pters, trumuses, and amethysts, stopping shortly before lunchtime. There were fewer and fewer mobs around—he must have killed off the stupidest ones in the area, and the smarter ones were probably scrambling to get out of his way. He didn’t get muc
h loot, but still managed to raise his Stamina and Attack by using his pike.
* * *
Shoto heard the creaking of ungreased axles from afar and hastened to meet him. Ros had barely managed to command the pet to hide in a gallery before realizing how much he’d overloaded the wooden cart. It took all his effort to push it forward, and it was still barely moving.
Well, that was his own damn fault. He should have equipped the accessories with bonuses to Strength in advance.
“Hi, Ros. Let me help. Dang! You sure have a lot here! How did you manage to transport it all by yourself? You don’t even seem out of breath.”
“I’m on my second wind…”
“What do you have there?”
“Eight pters.”
“How many?!”
“Eight. I remember we spoke of five carcasses tops, but I thought a few extra ones wouldn’t hurt.”
“Uh, sure thing.”
“I also put a trumus in there—it might be useful for something.”
“I’ll try. Look, you’ve got so many pters… This should be enough for the whole mine, or almost enough. But not everyone may be able to afford the meat.”
“Lower the prices—I’ll bring more tomorrow.”
“As you say. Some job this is…”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ll be saying my farewells to copper and switching to meat full time.”
“So, what’s wrong about that? You’re leveling up your Cooking skill, after all.”
“Meat of this level makes leveling happen really fast. I’m not complaining, far from it. It’s just that I didn’t expect to turn into a full-time cook.”
“Take a look at these. Found me an enhanced helmet and belt.”
“Have you checked the forum?”
“I didn’t exactly have that much time for the forum.”
“I get it, silly question. Given what you’ve been up to, the forum must have been the least of your concerns. Won’t take me a sec—have a rest.”
