It looked at her like it had never seen her before. With a tentative step it moved closer, and the creature flinched as it put weight on its injured leg. It looked down at the wound, where the rope was still tied around it, before looking back up at her.
“Do you want me to get rid of that for you?” She gave him a friendly smile and gestured for it to come closer. “Come here and I’ll see what I can do.”
She expected it to run. Or to just sit there and stare at her like a vapid dog. But it approached. Cautiously, sure. But she couldn’t expect the quest completion to take away all instincts. With her arranged in as much of a seated position as she could manage, she still towered over the foot-tall creature. But that was probably good. It meant that, if she straightened up and leaned back, she could keep her face out of reach of its fangs, if it suddenly decided she was a threat.
The mustelan limped up to her, stopping just out of arm’s reach. It stretched its neck out towards her. Tanisha held her hand out for it, like she would a strange cat, letting it sniff her fingers. It leaned forward and Tanisha noticed its neck stretched out pretty far from its shoulders. The real-world design must have been inspired by a ferret or weasel. It was pretty cute. As long as it didn’t attack her, that was. She fought the urge to start petting it. It was vaguely humanoid, and she didn’t know if it was intelligent enough to be offended by her treating it like a pet.
After a moment’s study of the scent of her hand, the creature stepped closer. It held out its leg towards Tanisha.
“Alright,” she said, reaching out to it. “This might hurt a little. But I’m just going to untie the rope.” She gingerly took hold of the loose end of the rope and lifted it to get a good view of the knot. It looked to be relatively simple, but it wasn’t one of the common knots she recognized. “Please, stay calm. This will only take a moment.”
The creature watched her work. It winced when she tugged at the knot, but seemed to submit to her attentions. Getting the knot started took a bit of effort—it seemed that the creature’s struggle had tightened it considerably—but once it loosened, it was easy to unravel. The fur beneath the rope had been mostly rubbed away, and the revealed skin was a raw ring of scabs.
“Poor little thing.” She tossed the bit of rope away. “How long were you trapped like that?”
It looked up at her with little black, beady eyes. If it had any way to communicate, it wasn’t using it. It looked down at its leg and tested it with its weight. Almost immediately the mustelan flinched and leaned away with a whimper. It looked up at her, and the expression on its stubby snout looked like that of a begging puppy.
“Hmm. Let’s see if we can do something about that.” Tanisha opened her inventory and jumped over to the crafting tab. “If I can’t find a bandage, or something, you can come with me and I can gather us both a few red mushrooms.”
The bandage she found in the menu required cloth, of course, but right below it was a recipe for a salve. And that was just honey and wax, which she did have. She was reluctant to part with the wax, since it was needed to craft nets for more traps for raquail. But just the same, she couldn’t leave the creature in obvious pain. It wouldn’t be too hard for her to hunt for bees later.
She opened up the blueprint and then went to her inventory to gather the ingredients. The blueprint was very simplistic. It had her reshape the wax into a simple bowl, and then tear open the honeycombs and empty them into the wax. One she’d added all of her honey, the spectral version of the bowl in her hands folded over itself. She followed the directions, first sealing the wax bowl closed over the honey within, and then digging her hands into it, kneading it as the spectral instructions demanded. Her expectation was for her fingers to pop into the pocket of honey and send it dribbling over her hands, but instead, the wax seemed to thin and turn from its semisolid state into a clay-like texture. Without revealing the honey at all. After a minute, the instructions stopped, and the salve was about the texture of thick putty.
When she returned her attention back to the mustelan, it was watching her work. Curiosity was plainly visible in its eyes. It was an inquisitive little creature, that was for sure. Tanisha wondered where it had come from. There were no such creatures in dARkness: Online, that she had noticed. Or maybe they had been buried in the game files so deep that not even the dataminers could find them. It was possible that they were a component of the early development of the game, but were phased out when they decided they wanted to focus on encouraging activities that collected data.
Or maybe Otekah had created it.
Tanisha frowned at that thought, but then held out the salve to the creature. “Will this help you?” It leaned in and sniffed at it, and then presented its injured leg to her. “I can take a hint,” she said with a small laugh. Tanisha scooped a bit of the salve onto her thumb and moved to spread it over the wound. “I’ll just take care of this for you.”
The salve sunk into the skin rapidly. Tanisha kept reapplying it around the ring of the wound. After she’d applied the last of it, the skin looked intact and healthy again, although it was still missing the fur.
“There you go, little guy.” She wiped her hands on the grass before straightening up. “Feel better?”
The creature tested the leg again, and this time it took a few steps. Its limp was gone. The mustelan made a little squeaky chittering noise, and then looked up at her with unmistakable adoration.
“Well, I guess we’re friends for real, then.” She offered her hand, as if in a handshake. “I’m Tanisha. Do you have a name? Or a language?”
It leaned its neck forward again, sniffing her extended fingers. But it made no other response.
“Right, then. Guess I have to continue speaking to myself.” She looked up at the sky and saw the position of the sun. “Crap. I really do need to get back to my camp.” Tanisha dragged herself back to her chair and hefted herself up into it. The mustelan followed her. It sat at the bottom of her chair, looking up at her, as if it expected something. “What?” she asked. “Do you need something else?”
The furry creature gave no response, though one of its little hands reached down to itch at the furless ring around its leg.
“You’re welcome to come with me if you want.” She gestured before turning the chair back towards camp. “I would be lying if I said I wouldn’t enjoy the company.”
The mustelan perked up and stepped forward, against the base of one of the chair legs. It seemed that it could somewhat understand her. At least enough to know that she had invited it to join her.
“Hop on up, then.” Tanisha patted the arm of her chair. “You can ride with me, if you want.”
It stared at her. The creature sniffed at the nearby leg of the chair distrustfully, and then gave a sneeze. It looked at her like it was an imperious cat.
“Fine, then,” she said, smirking, before she lowered her hands to direct the chair forward. “Don’t get in the robot, Shinji. See if I care.”
Chapter 29
Shinji—as the mustelan would thus be called until such time that he told her otherwise—didn’t ride with her in the chair. Instead, he was content to walk alongside her on the way back to camp. She took a brief stop at her trap to harvest the raquail within. Tanisha was rewarded with two meat, and egg, and a single feather, as well as another butchering skill increase.
“Perfect sense. Open trap, become butcher.”
She looked down at Shinji and gave him a sage nod. The mustelan seemed more interested in sniffing at her haul than paying attention to her jokes. Tanisha tried to not judge. She didn’t think it was very funny either.
Back at camp, Tanisha grabbed one of the logs from her inventory and threw it on the campfire. Once again, it lit itself up to a blaze usable for cooking in the time it took her to prepare her meal. She used the head of her axe again to cook the egg, and she skewered both bits of meat on a single stick to heat with the other hand. As with breakfast, she draped the egg over one of the morsels of meat, and then she h
anded the other morsel over to Shinji. The creature devoured the meal eagerly, finishing before Tanisha was even halfway through hers.
“So, Shinji. The quest said that befriending you would let you help me. Any idea what that means? Can you actually help me with stuff? Or are you just cute?”
He looked up at her, tilting his head curiously for a moment before turning away. She watched him sniff around her camp.
“Not really an answer, buddy.” She pulled up the quest log to look at the text again. “Improved reputation? I wonder what that means.” In response, he sniffed at the row of clay pots she’d made that morning. “I am in no way okay with you joining me in combat, so let’s just hope it doesn’t mean that.”
Reputation wasn’t something in dARkness: Online, so this was a whole new mechanic. She’d seen it before in other games, so she knew about what to expect. Over time her reputation would increase, and eventually it would result in some cool things. She just didn’t know what those would be. Or how to track the reputation increase.
Shinji seemed completely unphased by her concern. Instead, he stretched his neck up and sniffed at the lid of the nearest pot. It was about as tall as he was, and so he struggled to reach enough to remove the lid.
Tanisha smiled, watching as she ate. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a pet that wasn’t just a cosmetic item in some game. It was kinda fun.
Shinji took a moment to get the lid off, but once he did, he quickly scrambled up the side of the pot and clambered into it head-first. Tanisha almost sprayed a mouthful of egg into the fire with a surprised laugh. There was a tapping sound from inside the pot, and, after a moment, a fuzzy head popped out of the top.
“Alright, fine. You can just be cute,” she said, laughing as Shinji vanished back into the pot. “That’s good enough for me.”
With her new friend settled into exploring her sad little camp, and her stats bars seen to—with the exception of her half-empty HP bar—she was ready to get to work. The sun wasn’t yet low enough in the sky to turn the landscape dark, but she had so much to do. She lowered herself down off the chair, arranged her legs as close as she could get them to cross-legged beneath her, and opened her inventory to get started.
Tanisha considered the how. Obviously, she needed to turn all of her rocks into cut stone first. But how to manage it? A part of her thought it would be best to empty her inventory into a pile and sit on the ground next to it. She’d just mechanically process each of them one at a time into a second pile.
The engineer part of her brain warned against it.
Every cut stone she’d made so far had been done with the blueprint tool, and the process included some impossible physical interactions reshaping the stone. Without the blueprint, would the craft work the same? Or would she just be banging rocks together? If she was going to open her inventory every time to access her crafting menu, she wasn’t saving time by piling the rocks up in the real world.
“Well, time to experiment!” Tanisha clapped her hands together and grabbed two rocks out of the stack. “First, the control group.” She navigated to the crafting menu and pulled up the cut stone blueprint.
Previously, she had just followed along with the spectral instructions. This time, she paid close attention to each step, muttering to herself the pattern. Two strikes on top, two strikes on the side. Then there were two more on the left side… turn the rock over completely and strike it twice diagonally… rinse, and repeat. After a minute of this, her striking stone broke apart to dust, and the stone in her other hand was a square-edged brick.
She set the brick down next to her on the ground and went back into her inventory, fetching two more stones. Closing her inventory, she held the stones up carefully, and walked through the pattern of strikes she’d just completed.
“Two on top,” she muttered, “then like this… two here… turn it over…”
It was well before she completed the meticulous recreation that she knew this wasn’t working. After the last strike, the stone she was working on was entirely unchanged, and the striking stone was still intact.
“So, not great. But this doesn’t necessarily mean anything?” She opened her inventory and navigated to the crafting menu. Once again, she opened the cut stone blueprint. “It’s possible that different stones need the strikes in different places. Stones weren’t all the same, after all.
Unfortunately, the spectral stones moved through the same sequence of strikes as the craft she’d completed, all the way to the end. She did the exact same motions, right down to the very end, but this time, the rock in one hand disintegrated, and the other was a well-shaped brick.
“I guess that settles it,” she said, frowning. “I would have liked for it to go the other way, but, well, now I know for sure?”
Tanisha sighed and opened her inventory. She placed the two cut stone she already had into one of her last remaining open spaces. And began, trying to focus on getting into a rhythm. Grab rocks. Swap to crafting. Open blueprint. Bang rocks together. Open inventory. Stack stone. Grab rocks. Goto 10.
Her refining skill was slow to increase. It was a failsafe to keep people from being scut-synth bots. Almost every refining craft only rewarded a single point of experience gain, instead of the two to eight for other crafting categories. Still, the experience gain was steady, and she planned on cutting eighty stone. Eighty experience was a lot, no matter how fast or slow you build it up.
She just really wished she had access to a movie streaming service. Or even music. Something. Anything to make the time feel less grindy.
It took a dozen cut stone to give her refining skill Level 2. A little more than thirty after that to get to Level 3. Five stones later, the sky started to darken, and Tanisha felt a stab of panic. Night was falling, and she hadn’t even put together her first wall yet.
She looked over at the fire pit. The log she had cooked her dinner on was still burning, so she wouldn’t need to fear the pitch blackness she suffered before. But she still might need to work through more of the night than she’d originally hoped. Sure, her stamina could carry her through the night—and the next day, as she’d seen before—but it wouldn’t be fun.
Tanisha looked around camp for a moment, wondering if there was another way she could protect herself. The Stick Folk in particular worried her, despite her nearly-full stability bar. Would the dark of night embolden them to appear, since she’d disrespected them? She didn’t know, and she was worried that she wouldn’t complete her shelter in time to avoid finding out.
As she looked around, she realized Shinji was close at hand. He’d apparently exhausted his exploration of the camp, and had come to sit next to her. His eyes were locked on the rocks she was holding, and his little clawed fingers were flexing as he sniffed the air.
“What’s up, buddy?” she asked, tilting her head as his attention darted up to her face. “Did you need something?”
The furry critter looked back down at the rocks in her hands, then up at her face. He wiggled his little nose, reached his hands out towards the rocks, and then made a chittering noise. It almost sounded like chicken clucking, but… fuzzier? Not a noise she’d ever heard a creature make.
“You want this?” She held out one of the rocks. He took it from her with an excited little chirp and rotated it around in his hands, examining it for a second before putting it down on the ground in front of himself. Without hesitation, he held out his hands for the other rock. “Oh, you want both of them.” She smiled, amused, and handed him the other rock, before turning back to her inventory to grab two more. “Whatever makes you happy, buddy.”
As soon as her eyes were off him, there was a loud cracking noise, and Tanisha looked back quickly to see him hammering the rock on the ground with the one in his hands. She almost laughed aloud. For a moment, she thought he was imitating her—she must have filled the camp with the rhythm of rock against rock for hours—but the laughter in her throat died when she saw what was happening. After a minute, the roc
k between his paws crumbled to gravel.
The one on the ground? It was a cut brick. Just like the others in her inventory.
“Wait, wait, wait. You can refine stone?”
Shinji chittered happily at her, picking up the finished stone and holding it out. As soon as she took it, he turned around in a little circle, hopping energetically. Once he turned a full circle, he held his hands out again in little grabby gestures.
“I mean…” Tanisha opened her character sheet to confirm her suspicions. “You doing it for me doesn’t give me the experience points. But if it frees up my time, that could be just as important.” She opened her inventory and handed the muselan two more stones. “While you provide these, I’m going to get to work on the walls, okay?”
While he got to work on the stones, she climbed back up into her chair and directed it over to the sleeping mat. It felt silly to build walls up around something as portable as a bunch of woven grass secured to some boards, but she really didn’t have time to play optimization games with her camp layout. Function over form.
She navigated to the construction menu. Walls took eight stone, of course, and so she had enough for six walls right now. She didn’t know if that would even be close enough to what she’d need, but she was about to find out. If the walls were just narrow columns, she could at least build a wall on the side towards the forest, and hope that protected her somewhat.
When she opened the blueprint, it showed a small row of spectral bricks floating in the air in front of her face. As she turned her head, the bricks moved with her. At least there seemed to be some control to where the wall was built. But there was no real indication of how large this thing would be. To be safe, she put the spectral base of the wall just a few inches above the head of her sleeping mat. That way, if all she could do was encircle it, she could do so with maximum efficiency.
She had to climb down out of her chair to place the stones. As soon as they matched the blueprint, they seemed to grow a little, giving Tanisha hope that each wall segment wouldn’t just end up being the same width as her cut stone. She stacked three bricks in a row, and then three more on top of it. The final layer was only two bricks.
Darkness Named Page 21
