With that done, she drew the pot of sticks out of her inventory. It was still vibrating, but at a much stronger intensity. Instead of putting it back in her inventory like a smart person, she decided to put it on the ground as far from the campsite as she could, but still close enough that she could watch it. She moved away from it, dragging herself to the very opposite side of her little camp. From this distance she could see when it finished, but was far from the blast radius if it decided to explode.
Until one of those two things happened, Tanisha had other fish to fry. And there was a big one that wouldn’t require her chair, for now.
She had to make sure that she had a safe place to sleep. There was the sleeping mat, sure, but she was unprotected and exposed to the elements. And that was unacceptable. She dug into her crafting menu to find a solution.The first thing she looked for was other types of traps. There were a few listed under the survival section of her crafting menu, but they all had difficult requirements. Some wanted monster drops, like antlers or living stone, and others required metal sheets… which meant she’d need a metalworking workbench.
“Best way to keep myself safe, then, is structures.” Tanisha navigated to the appropriate menu. “So how do these even work?”
In dARkness: Online, constructions had been an abandoned part of the game. The developers had decided workbenches were better. At launch, the intent had been that base building would be an inevitable necessity. There would be strategy and even a bit of community building. But the concept was eventually abandoned. All of the walls, floors, and roofs that had been hard coded into the game were removed, and the crafting menu was cleared. In compensation for resources spent, any structures were converted into consumables that gave a passive buff. Tanisha knew a player, Gravekeeper, who had come to dARkness from a more building-focused PC game, and they claimed to still have enough consumables to keep the passive buff running even today.
Tanisha didn’t know what to expect. She never invested in structures when they were a thing, since the whole concept ran counter to the mobile AR aspects. It was also live when she was drawing up plans for her eventual tiny house, and all the stress of that make the gamified version seem like less fun.
From where she was standing, structures looked like a massive resource sink. She didn’t know how big a single unit of wall would be, but it required a lot of its respective material, which could be wood, metal, or stone.
“I need wood for too much else,” Tanisha reasoned, “because wood logs go into workbenches, and it seems like any extra wood I have is already spoken for.” She gestured at the vibrating pot on the other side of camp. “Metal’s out, too. Basically, anything requiring a metalworking workbench is just too far out of my reach.
She frowned at the crafting menu. “I guess stone it is, then.”
From the look of it, stone structures were mostly made out of cut stone. It meant she’d need a lot of rocks. Tanisha looked out over the grasslands. There were small stones scattered around, but that wouldn’t be enough, unless she scoured every inch of the field. And that would deprive her of future easy resources. What if she desperately needed to make a tool and she was out of stone at camp? She didn’t think they would replenish.
In the distance, Tanisha could see the mountain to the east. The foothills around it looked uneven and rocky. Perhaps she could reach that and collect a big haul of rocks to bring back?
“Alright, let’s assume I’m going to do that. What do I need to prepare first?”
She started by making herself a pickaxe. It was the same recipe as the axe and shovel, just altered in intent to produce a different product. She pulled the clay pot out of her inventory and stowed the pickaxe with her other tools. Tanisha paused before putting it away. Tool durability seemed to be low at her current level, so with a shrug, she cut another stone, wove another rope, and make another pick. A notification popped up that she earned a skill gain in toolmaking. “The first of many,” she said with a reassuring nod.
She put the second pickaxe into her “cheat pot” and put it in her inventory. As soon as it was away, the pot of sticks on the far side of her camp made a somewhat alarming hissing sound. Some steam escaped around the rim of the lid, and then it lay still.
“That’s… probably good?” Tanisha approached it carefully, taking her time in crossing her camp to investigate.
The pot seemed as still and inert as the empty ones she had left in a row next to her campfire. She lifted the lid, carefully, and peered inside. The sticks in there were gone now, apparently replaced by some sort of liquid. Without a light source, she couldn’t see it very clearly. And since her only light source was fire, and this was supposed to be fuel, she really didn’t have a better option. The liquid barely filled the bottom third of the pot, making Tanisha worried that sticks weren’t the best material for this purpose.
She put the pot in her inventory regardless, mostly just to make the trek to her chair that much easier.
The fuel-less mech sat like an abandoned relic, somehow droopy and forlorn. Tanisha circled around it and found the visible hatch on the back. It was up high on the mech, almost at the top of the back. She hadn’t been able to lower it when it ran out of fuel, so the hatch was uncomfortably out of reach from the ground. From the seat, it wasn’t much better. She had to arrange herself awkwardly on the seat, draped across one of the arms, to reach it. Once she was able to safely access it, the hatch opened easily. The door swung open to reveal what looked like the opening of a funnel.
“I was hoping this would explain some things,” Tanisha said as she leaned down close to the funnel to examine it, “but this is somehow worse. Like… where does the fuel go? Where’s the engine that consumes it? Why is there no exhaust to expel the smoke from burning the fuel?”
Her simple examination returned no answers. It was just videogame nonsense, and she had to live with it. Uncomfortable as that was. She struggled for a moment to navigate the clay pot into position so she could dump the contents into the funnel. The pot was heavy, and she was already balancing precariously on the arm of the chair. Leaning even more forward gave her an odd sense of vertigo, but the mech didn’t tip over.
The liquid that poured into the chair was clear with a yellowish tint. Almost like apple juice, but with a very strong alcohol scent. Tanisha suspected at first that it was an ethanol-based fuel, but she dismissed the idea eventually. It likely smelled like alcohol because the tutorial had called the process “fermentation” and videogame logic was an amazing thing.
When Tanisha was finished pouring the liquid, she closed the hatch on the back of the chair. The fuel bar filled almost a third of the way up instantly, and she was nearly thrown from the chair as power was restored to the leg, causing the mechanical contraption to move in the heading it had been going when it stopped. Luckily, it only went a step or two before lowering itself down into a crouching position. Tanisha was able to recover quickly, and with much less yelping than she’d originally thought.
“Alright. A handful of sticks makes a third of a tank. That’s not a terrible conversion of materials to fuel, but I’ll need more. That’s basically only enough for a day.” She tapped her finger to her chin before opening her inventory. “What else do I have available at a pretty decent amount?”
She had a bunch of grass, but Tanisha knew she’d end up using that for ropes. Ropes were a really common ingredient in a lot of crafts, including tools and torches. She did still have plenty of sticks, but also a few boards. Boards needed progression to make, and so they’d likely be worth more fuel. Tanisha suspected she would be using more of them as she went about crafting her base, but since chopping down a tree provided so many resources—one log was four boards, and one tree made several logs—it was likely fine. She had a woodworking workbench already, too.
So the boards went into the pot.
It was a tight squeeze through the narrow mouth, but once inside, they seemed to slide out of the way to make room for the next.
Once the lid was on and vibrating, Tanisha put the pot safely in her inventory once more. “That’s another thing off the list… now…” She looked towards the horizon, where the mountain loomed. Tanisha climbed up into the seat of her chair and touched the sides. “Let’s go! Run, then! Show me the meaning of haste!” The chair responded positively to her command and stood up, before heading off in the correct direction. It seemed a little more responsive. Not faster, of course, but easier to control. It turned smoother, and it didn’t seem to jerk suddenly upon starting, or lurch when she experimentally brought it to a stop.
“Hm. Might be a hidden skill.” Tanisha opened her character sheet and scanned it. There wasn’t anything she could see that would control the chair usage, and it wasn’t being calculated into her level. “Makes sense that it would be something that I can’t exploit, but still have to level.”
She resumed her trek towards the mountains, letting herself question every aspect of the chair as she did. It was possible that the chair just handled better with fresh fuel. Or that she was adjusting to it in a way that had nothing to do with skills. But without a definitive answer, she couldn’t exactly come to any substantial conclusions. And it wasn’t like she could just track Otekah down and ask them herself.
The sun was just about to reach its zenith when the grasslands gave way to the stony foothills. Like with the forest, the boundary between the two zones was almost a straight line with very little blending. Tanisha tried to not dwell on it, though, as she pushed forwards towards a visible rock outcropping only a dozen feet beyond that border.
She hesitated for a moment. At the base of the rock was a purple mushroom. She would hate to waste the inventory space if she didn’t need it, but, while Tanisha was making an effort to maintain her stability, there was no guarantee that Otekah wouldn’t manipulate things to make the challenge harder. So, Tanisha directed her chair to kneel down so she could pluck the mushroom out of the ground. She deposited it into one of her few remaining inventory slots, and while her inventory was open, she grabbed out the pot of tools. Removing exact tool she wanted took a little juggling, but Tanisha returned the space-saving pot to its place minus one pickaxe.
Before getting to work, Tanisha examined the rocky outcropping. It was oddly shaped and low to the ground, which would make it a challenge to mine from atop her chair. She lowered the mech. If she couldn’t really reach from there, she’d need to climb down and do her mining from the ground, which would be highly inconvenient. The chair crouched down for her, but it was too high up still. With a shudder, the chair lowered more. Her feet touched the ground, but the chair continued lowering itself down, raising her knees up. It put her in the perfect position to use the pick without having to hunch way forward.
“Well, that’s a handy feature.” Tanisha smirked. “But not something you’ve done before. So you are getting better!” She hesitated for a moment. “Wait. What if it’s not a skill? Are you… are you sentient?” She maneuvered herself so she could look at the mech with fresh eyes. There wasn’t any sort of face or anything. “I mean, you are a mech. Are my synchronization levels climbing?”
The chair made no response.
Of course it didn’t.
It didn’t have room inside it for the engine that was supposedly consuming the fuel she provided, so how was it coming to hold any kind of intelligence? And if it could, how would it communicate? It was a chair.
“Alright, if you’re intelligent, move on your own.” Tanisha put her hands on the armrests, even though it felt a little like crossing her arms over her chest in protest. “Just a little wiggle. I just want to know. I mean, it’d be creepy if you were alive and I didn’t know.”
Nothing happened.
“Suit yourself.” Tanisha returned her attention to the rock. “But if you were alive, that would mean I’d name you.” She grunted as she hit the stone with her pickaxe. “Then again, I might do that anyway.”
Chapter 27
Mining so much stone was repetitive, but not strenuous. The pick seemed to bite deeper into the stone outcropping than was warranted for the power she put behind her swings. It took a few minutes of hacking away before the stone splintered and crumbled in a way that was overly dramatic. Much of the stone turned to thin, unusable gravel. But among the rubble was a sizable mound of rocks. Tanisha opened her inventory and started piling them in. There was already a small stack of rocks she’d held onto. Some of the newer stones were too small, and they wouldn’t go into the stack. Tanisha decided to just not waste her time with those, and tossed them aside before reaching for the next.
She added over a dozen stones to her stockpile—and two mining skill levels to her character sheet—off that one rocky outcropping. Since she had to process the rocks into cut stone, eventually, all of these stones would only amount to a single wall. Which was pretty annoying. Tanisha just moved on. She could get mad at farming resources, or she could sleep soundly at night. And being able to rest in safety sounded way more important.
“Never again,” she reminded herself.
It was just barely past noon, judging from the position of the sun in the sky. And she still had that considerable walk back to camp ahead of her. Not to mention the time sink of crafting and building. And how many wall segments would an acceptable shack be? Four? Eight? Either way, she only had a few hours to get enough stone for it if she wanted to do the job before nightfall.
“And, of course, we have to figure out what to name you,” she said, addressing her chair. Tanisha arrived at the next outcropping and lowered her chair into a position to hack away at the stone. “I do really wish you were a better color to save me some effort.” She grunted as she set her pick to work. “Like, if you were the same color as something I’d seen before, like Unit 1 or Gurren. I know there’s probably a billion gundams that were white with blue accents, but how am I supposed to remember what they were called without access to the internet?”
The chair offered no response.
But the rocky outcropping she was working on collapsed into gravel, usable rocks, and useless ones, so Tanisha set about collecting again. The mystery of a proper name for her mech would just continue being a mystery. At least while she filtered things into her inventory.
There were more stones this time, around twenty. It meant Tanisha got another mining skill increase upon gathering them. The number of stones was impressive, but still not enough. “Okay, maybe instead of naming you, I should do some napkin math.” She frowned at her inventory. “It might be a waste of resources to build some tiny little shack. But if I don’t need anything larger than just four walls, it might be a waste of time to farm more.” Tanisha tapped the axe against the palm of her hand. “Not like dARkness ever implemented this, so no idea what bonuses I’ll get.”
It was a conundrum.
Tanisha knew she’d also need to craft a hammer. And the hammer tool was an odd one. It occupied the space between tools and weapons, because it was originally intended for breaking down structures. Would it break down a wall she had built and return all of the materials? Just some? Nothing? She didn’t know.
“Uncharted territory. Okay,” she said, hefting the axe into her lap before moving on to the next rocky outcropping. “I need enough to start with. A wall is eight cut stone, so that’s sixteen of these uncut rocks. I’m getting about…” She paused long enough to strike the rock before her enough times for it to shatter into rocks and gravel. Tanisha gathered the fifteen usable rocks from the ground. “Conservative estimate, it takes me about five minutes to break down a rock, and then collect the results. Each rock is at least a dozen stones.” She looked up at the sky, trying to gauge what time it was. “I’ve got maybe two more hours before I should head back to camp. So… two-hundred and fifty? Give or take.”
It was easier to plan out how many she could expect to do, rather than how much she would need. Gathering extra wasn’t too much of a waste. Because she’d eventually need more stone.
Tanisha g
ot to work.
Things continued quietly for the first hour. Or, what she could estimate was about an hour. Tanisha had gathered nearly a hundred and fifty rocks, and gained three levels of mining skill. She still hadn’t quite decided on a name for her mech, but she was feeling pretty confident that there was a hidden skill for it. The machine moved more easily, despite the low fuel levels in the status bar. It was possible that she’d prefer to wait to come up with a proper name for it if the mech developed some new or unique attributes.
How silly would it be if she started calling it “spider” and then it developed some ability to fly?
Tanisha broke down the next chunk of rock, and looked back over the progress she had made. There were piles of gravel scattered around the zone. The number of stones that each boulder left behind seemed to vary wildly, and it wasn’t entirely based on how large the rock was. Weirdly, there was also the occasional bit of ore mixed in, which seemed to be completely random. Tanisha had ten in her inventory so far, but she didn’t really have plans for what to do with them. She was still pretty against making a metalworking workbench.
The rock at her feet held fifteen stones, which seemed a bit above the average so far, but no ore. As she picked up the last stone, she got another mining skill increase. Tanisha frowned. She tried to count backwards before giving up, and opened her character sheet to see that she was only one skill increase from Level 3.
As she closed her character sheet and went to continue to the next stony outcropping, Tanisha paused. The hair on the back of her neck was standing on end. She was being watched. But there was nothing nearby. She looked around, her pickaxe brandished against her shoulder like the weapon used by every pretty girl in horror movies. The one who dies horribly to show how vicious the killer is.
She didn’t see anything.
But the feeling didn’t dissipate.
Tanisha sighed. The feeling wasn’t unusual. She sometimes got it when an animal saw her out in the woods, but they were too well-hidden for her to see in the undergrowth. But there was no undergrowth here. Just the grasslands, but they were nearly fifty yards away. She focused, trying to peer through the tall grass. Maybe she could spot the eyes of some camouflaged creature.
Darkness Named Page 19
