I turned my right finger towards the pickaxe and said "Execute Appraisal". The sound of an electronic buzzer went off in my head, and a translucent window popped up near my index finger.
Name : Novice Iron Cube Pickaxe
Creator : Aoi Kousaka
Durability : 498/500
Special Effect : Effective against inorganic matter. Turns target into cubes.
Oh, it sure looked like a real appraisal. It consumed some Willpower because it was a skill, but I would say one point was pretty reasonable, all things considered.
---I see, so the pickaxe effect is what's cutting down the rocks into cubes. They seem like they'll fetch a higher price like that, instead of just crushing them, so that's a plus.
I kept digging afterwards and managed to gather up 20 stone pieces with the pickaxe. The fatigue of manual work was not something I was used to. After a while, my hands started to ache from the constant shock of digging into the rocks with the pickaxe. Seeing the 20 pieces of rock made me feel a sense of accomplishment, though. But there remained another problem.
---The cabin is 20 meters away or so. It's not that far away... But carrying 20 of these is gonna be a little...
Don't underestimate these mere 20 meters. To carry so many pieces of stone without a wheelbarrow or a backpack of some kind was going to be painful. True to that thought, I was out of breath and sweating bullets by the time I was done carrying them. I had left the suit jacket back in the cabin, but I still felt manual labor was twice as tiring wearing formal clothes like I was.
---Alright then, I hope these things actually fetch some sort of price.
Even if they didn't fetch a good price, I could make a furnace or a workbench with them. There were a bunch of ways to use them, so there wasn't really any loss.
I placed one of the stones inside the delivery box and closed the lid. The metallic sound didn't take long to follow. There were several coins inside. The total amount summed up to 802 DL. That was quite the price compared to normal stuff like gravel and rocks. It seemed like being turned into cubes was beneficial after all.
I sold the other 19 rocks.
The price didn't change even if I sold two or three at the same time. The estimated value for each was always 802 DL. The total amount for the 20 of them was 16040 DL. I would have gotten the same amount selling 150 pieces of bubblegum. The thought of that made me happy, for some reason. I couldn't help but be concerned as I saw the mountain of coins piling up. There didn't seem to be any sort of paper currency here.
"First, food. Then, some light. And finally, some blankets. I'll be happy as long as I have those."
Fortunately, it seemed like summer was right around the corner here. Despite there being a bunch of water nearby, I didn't feel all that cold right now. It would get cold from here all the way into tomorrow morning though, so it would be nice to have at least one blanket. I also figured it'd be safe to expect that one could see the moon and stars in a nature-filled place like this, so it wouldn't hurt to have a lantern and some candles.
I operated the translucent window and opened the catalog.
There was nothing in the eShop like magazines, games, or anything that reminded me of the civilization I came from---but it was full of fantasy-like stuff. There were cast iron swords starting from 30000 DL. There was also a seemingly old introductory book to summoning evil spirits for 280000 DL. I also found an 'Automated Defense (Golem)' that looked like a plain piece of armor, for the special bargain price of 300000 DL...
"Y-Yeah... There's a lot of fantasy items, alright."
Although, I was awfully curious about whether the book for summoning evil spirits was the real deal or not. My motivation to get it slowly dissipated when I thought about how many stone pieces I had to carry here to get the money.
---Let's see, food... A set of 'Hard-baked Barley Bread and Beef Jerky (Adult Male, Std. 5 Meal Set)' is 3000 DL. That seems pretty reasonable, all things considered.
Preserved meals like this usually didn't need to be cooked and could last for a long while, but 600 DL per serving was kinda high. Even if it was the cost of just one piece of stone, I needed a lot of stuff besides food, so I'd like to reduce expenses as much as possible.
"Hmm... Are there buyer reviews? It would be nice if they had impressions of the taste."
The display switched immediately as I touched the 'Review' button.
Rating : ★★★★☆
Reviewer : Manager, Labyrinth #112
- Water is a must, but the taste isn't bad. The hard barley bread is pretty hard, but does last for a long while. That, coupled with the salty pork taste of the jerky, will really make you want some water to go with it. You can eat it as is, but it's kind of difficult. You can get some vegetables and make a stew to make it really delicious.
Rating : ★★★★★
Reviewer : Manager's Family, Labyrinth #48
- The meat is yummy~ The meat was delicious~! ♥
I definitely would eat it again~
Rating : ★★☆☆☆
Reviewer : Manager, Labyrinth #28
- the cold district sux. the climate around here makes the bread so hard i think i could break my teeth if i tried. be careful if ur in a cold place like me. u wont be able to eat it without heating it up 1st.
"They actually have buyer reviews!?"
After having lost my composure for a second, my shoulders dropped with a sigh.
---What's with this halfway point between reality and fantasy... Oh well, it's always convenient to get the impressions from people who have tried it if you haven't.
In the end, I got five meals, a pitcher and cup, and a piece of animal fur, since that was cheaper than the blankets---also a lamp with oil, and about 10 matches to light it up. The total for all that ended up being 15120 DL, which meant I had used up almost all of my budget. The blanket was really pricey. I almost didn't have enough to buy a piece of fur big enough to work as a blanket. When you were in a survival setting like this, the first thing you needed to put on your list was to improve your bedding situation.
I kept putting coin after coin inside the piggy bank, but the large amount of coins made it a slow and tedious process. If you cashed in all the stuff you had at once, you'd get more high-value coins, so I resolved to try to putting it all together the next time I used the delivery box.
"Thank you for choosing us!"
There went the mysterious home delivery again. Everything I had ordered came in a single cardboard box. I wondered if that was because I ordered it all at once.
---Oh? Couldn't I put together a makeshift blanket of sorts if I took apart this box?
I opened up Tundra again and hurriedly ordered a utility knife, and promptly used it to dismantle the box. The cardboard was a bit stiff, but you could use it as a mattress, as well as a blanket, so it was rather convenient.
◇
---"What a beautiful sunset..." Is what I would say if I could actually see it from here.
After I took apart the cardboard, I placed it on the wooden bed. I chose a nearby pond to use as my water source, and dug a hole near the attached downstream river to set up a simple bathroom. Before I knew it, it was already evening. I managed to secure food, clothing, and a place to stay... But I guess that was kind of the standard procedure for survival games. By all accounts, I had 'made it' for the night.
Typically around nightfall, there would be dangerous spawns like zombies or dinosaurs, but that depended on the level of realism the games aimed for. That said, anything could end up difficult if the development teams put some real thought into it. Nowadays, survival games aimed more towards putting players into scripted events, and not so much into random variety in the way of dangerous creatures roaming around. The environments weren't even harsh snowing mountains or deserts. It was kind of ironic that real life was easier than the games themselves.
As I sat on a rock, I saw the reflection of the sunset hit the ravine's stone walls, which dyed the whole area an orange
hue. There might be nocturnal carnivores, so I kept my eyes and ears peeled, but there didn't seem to be even the slightest hint of any animals around, big or small.
"Wow, the reviews weren't joking, eh..."
I tried eating some of the food I'd bought from Tundra. The bread was so hard I could barely make a dent in it with my teeth, and the jerky didn't fare much better either. I could only muster putting a little bit in my mouth to consume slowly. I guess preserved foods really were this salty. I wasn't expecting the damn bread to be salty too, though. They were right when they wrote I would need water for this. It wasn't inedible, but it was trying really hard to be. The unappetizing nature of the food made me crave for fruit or a chocolate bar.
I tried to think about my work while I chewed for dear life. First of all, what was with that door in the office building that brought me all the way here? I couldn't think of a good explanation for it aside from it being some sort of hypnotism trick.
I was sure I'd remember if such a breathtaking ravine like this place was part of a list of natural wonders; but I didn't recall any television shows, documentaries, or videos on the net about it. Between the ravine and the eShop with its delivery box, it didn't seem likely I was in the same world as I came from.
There was also the possibility that I was drugged out of my mind and was actually being tied down in a basement somewhere inside the office, or that this was some sort of fever dream. Somehow, I figured being transported to another world still made the most sense. With that in mind, I needed to figure out why they would bring me here in the first place. If I could sort out some sort of goal, it would be easier to work towards it.
So, let's assume this was all real and was part of the training Karumi-san had mentioned. The training period itself would last approximately three months, and it would be safe to assume that a typical Japanese person, who was well-versed in games, would find it difficult to last long in such a natural setting. There weren't many people who were able to survive in this kind of harsh environment, let alone seek out a job for one. Even if their purpose was to kidnap or kill me, it wasn't like I was rich or had good insurance policies, or anything. There was nothing to gain from doing either to me.
If it was just for the thrill of killing, then I would think there would be more effort put into doing so. If I went by those Tundra reviews, there were at least a hundred people out here who lived normally. Which meant there wasn't any sort of conspiracy behind this, and it was truly just backed by a normal company. Realistically then, I really was just stuck in the middle of an evaluation period to see if I could adapt to the labyrinth manager life or not.
Now, if this training was to see if I was fit to be a labyrinth manager in another world, then the survival setting clashed with that. But if I could unravel the true meaning behind all of this, then the whole situation would fall into place.
Then there was the two documents I found today. One with a truthful report which stated there was nothing but a beat up cabin here, and a false one which listed the labyrinth as completed and fully operational. Was that not what caused this confusion in the first place? Which meant the labyrinth was indeed truly finished, according to the documents Karumi-san and the company had. If I went off that, then putting a newbie like me on a three month trial period, with nothing to go off of but a crappy cabin to live in, didn't seem too strange a proposal---like I was expected to do well enough given the circumstance.
This place being located at the bottom of a ravine was pretty poor as far as transportation was concerned. It was like this labyrinth was made to lure in travelers and surprise them with demons and traps. It was safe to say that the possibility of this place being even remotely convenient to travel to, or even find in the first place, was low. It made no sense. All in all, the possibility that Karumi-san sent me here in the first place, under the impression I wouldn't have any difficulty for three months, seemed high. And so, this wasn't really any sort of trial to see if I could become the master of a labyrinth, or a special event to see if I could actually live in another world---I just got unlucky. It would seem that having to survive was the result of a bunch of misfortunes piled up one on top of another. The end goal of this whole ordeal was to just stick it out until the end of the three months.
---Hah, were you expecting a management sim? Well, too bad, it's actually a survival sim! Talk about switching to hard mode...
And so I continued to grind my teeth away on the bread and jerky.
---My first survival gameplay, eh? If I was recording everything I did, it would be like one of those ultra-realistic let's play runs people do sometimes.
Although I had seen them before, I'd never actually streamed one myself. I couldn't figure out how to have the viewers only listen to my commentary, especially when I played them in a multiplayer setting. And if I stopped talking altogether, then it wouldn't be a game stream, but just a normal gameplay video.
Despite all the gripes and concerns I had, this type of living wasn't so bad. It was more challenging than I could have hoped for, too. If this was my training, then managing the facilities would be rather fun, in the end.
The nighttime darkness had finally started to settle in by the time I was done eating the hard bread and smelly jerky, so I put some oil in the lamp, and took out the matches to have them on standby. The ravine quickly went from orange to red as night crept in slowly, but surely.
"Wow..."
The soft evening glow bathed the bottom of the ravine for about five minutes before night finally took over. The night scenery had a phosphorescent tinge of white and blue. The gentle cobalt blue glow seemed as if it were emitted by some sort of creature, and was spread out across the ravine.
---Are those glowing things some sort of moss... or weed? There so much of it.
When I tried looking for the source of the light, I found it was from moss which stuck to stones, and tiny weeds which sprouted from the soil, that emitted the dim glow. The light wasn't that strong, though. Like you probably couldn't read a book with it, for example. But it was bright enough to walk around, or scoop water out of the pond, or even do some light work.
---I guess I'll just use the lamp indoors. I don't wanna ruin this natural view with it.
After I got my fill of the magical view that was the naturally lit ravine, accompanied by the soothing sound of the flowing river, I headed back inside the cabin and fell asleep on top of the cardboard I had placed previously, and covered myself up with the fur blanket.
◇
---Preparing a good place to sleep was the right choice. It's pretty humid around here, so the mornings are pretty cold.
I awoke as the cool breeze of the early morning entered through the gaps in the cabin and across my skin. When I went outside to gaze upon the sky from the bottom of the ravine, I found the left side to be mad with red, while the right was dyed in blue.
My head was clear now, so I thought about the time. If I assumed this world's day lasted 24 hours, and I was at the same latitude as Japan, then sunset started around 6 to 7PM, and I watched the local scenery for about two hours and went to sleep around 9PM. If this place really was another world, then I wasn't sure how far a normal Earth's calendar would go by comparison, but the hands on my wristwatch told me it was 5AM right now, so I would have slept about eight hours in total.
"Ah, if only I could use some of that excess sleep to play games instead..."
A game I recently downloaded for the PC back at home came to mind. It was set in a post-apocalyptic desert world, and you had to explore the desolate land and scrap for materials to craft your own weapons; all this while looking for the remnants of humanity which were said to be below the ruins of the desert, and held a giant stash of weapons and vehicles. There were Non-Player Characters (NPCs) that were people that had survived the collapse of civilization and cooperated with the player, but could also be hostile depending on various parameters. It was a pretty lonely game if you wanted some sort of online multiplayer interaction.
---If the sun rises in the same way it does on Earth, that means the ravine goes from north to south, and the entrance of the cabin is facing the south.
I vaguely predicted my position while I looked up at the sky.
Then again, if this really was a natural environment, then one might be able to discern the same information at this depth using the way the surrounding vegetation and trees turned towards sunlight. But it was kind of hard to calculate the direct angle of said sunlight since it bounced so many times across the walls of the ravine.
"I want to take a look around the ravine today, better get some weapons first..."
I saw medieval swords, lances, maces, and some metal armor in the Tundra catalog. I didn't really feel the presence of dangerous animals yesterday or anything, but if they sold them in this world, then it was because there was something dangerous you might need protection from.
---Alright, let's use the morning to search the same rock I got the stones from yesterday, then buy up the metal weapons, and go exploring.
After I repeated the task of digging up 20 pieces of stone, I sold them to the delivery box four times, and bought a wooden wheelbarrow, a lance with an iron top, and a cast iron dagger from Tundra. By then, the sun had peaked at one side of the ravine, so it must have been close to noon. I looked over the valley while I gnawed on some of my hard lunch. With my cabin as the center, the ravine extended about 700 to 800 meters, north and south respectively. If my calculations were correct, then that was approximately 1.5 kilometers. The steepness of the cliff didn't diminish at all across the length of the ravine, and there didn't seem to be an easy way to descend down here from the surface.
Strongest Gamer; Let's Play in Another World Volume 1 Page 3
