by Arthur Stone
You deal Beaver 16 damage. Beaver is stunned.
The sharp sticks didn’t do much damage, sure, but their purpose was to hold the enemy, not kill it.
After a couple of additional strikes, Dark checked the enemy’s info box and saw that its life was preposterously low. It would be dead after two more stabs.
He activated Avalanche of Feeling.
If the beaver escaped within the next thirty seconds and attacked, Dark might very well faint at the first bite. This location’s sensation level and his race’s susceptibility to pain were a hellish cocktail already, and now they were multiplied by the magic ability he had just activated.
But the beaver wouldn’t make it.
Dark circled around and precisely stabbed the beast in the back, just to the side of its spine. He pulled the spear from the fresh wound and stabbed again at the same point.
Note: Personal victory! Beaver killed! Weak mob. Level 3. Location sensation level: 40%. Personal sensation level: 180%. 52 progress points received. The following skills played a significant role in this fight: Athletics, Heavy Weapons, Physical Attack, Physical Critical Hit, Light Armor, Ranged Weapons, Poisoncraft, Accuracy, Physical Evasion, Physical Defense, Speed.
Progress points distributed.
+5 Athletics progress points.
+12 Heavy Weapons progress points.
+14 Physical Attack progress points.
+3 Physical Critical Hit progress points.
+3 Light Armor progress points.
+1 Ranged Weapon progress point.
+2 Poisoncraft progress points.
+2 Accuracy progress points.
+3 Physical Evasion progress points.
+3 Physical Defense progress points.
+4 Speed progress points.
One more beaver down. Unlike with the first, this time he felt no disappointment. His legs felt great, he wasn’t exhausted, and he received an impressive 52 experience points. Nearly triple what that first beaver had given him.
His opponent had been identical. Both its appearance and its stats. A typical weak beaver mob. The base experience for a mob like that was its base level times 5. Level 0 mobs were an exception, since the minimum XP that could be awarded was 1. The frogs were a good example of that.
The huge difference was the simple result of battle calculations.
The beaver’s level was 3. Multiplied by 5, that meant 15 XP, plus a distributable point which Dark still never received due to some immature stat. Which stat exactly, he didn’t know.
So he counted only base XP. There was a reason he had lured the beaver to the edge of the sandbar. The creature had to die here, in the location where sensation emulation was at 40%. With his Ethrian race bonus, Dark experienced 90% sensation here, good and bad sensations alike. And when he activated Avalanche of Feeling, he experienced 180% sensation. A near-double dose of whatever he should feel, be it misery or jubilation.
He had no idea why the developers had created such a bonus, but there was no point guessing. If his character level was equal to the mob’s or boss’s level, then his base XP was multiplied by whatever his total sensation multiplier was. At 10%, this multiplier was 1.1x. At 20%, it was 1.2x. And so on.
The total was then further multiplied by a level difference modifier. If his level and the mob’s were the same, that was 1x. If the mob was one level below him, 0.9x. And so on, down to 0.1x. Below that, the math stopped working, and XP was cut to 1 point to prevent powerful characters from farming weaklings. If the enemy’s level was 1 level higher, this multiplier was 1.1x. And so on, adding 0.1 for each level of difference, this time without any upper limit. The calculations for distributable points were similar, though Dark couldn’t receive those yet. The total results were always rounded down.
So his 15 progress points were multiplied by his sensation multiplier of 2.7x and then by 1.3x for the level difference between Dark (0) and the beaver (3). That was 52.65 XP in total.
Math wasn’t Dark’s favorite pastime, but he had to do it in order to figure out his best course of action. So, shifting the battlefield slightly and using his race skill at the right time nearly tripled his progress.
He evaluated the Durability of his weapon and his trap and concluded it should be sufficient for one more beaver. Walking along the dam, he would raise his spear. Throwing it would start the conflict. It had not broken, so Dark simply re-applied the poison and was ready to use it again.
Still, the beavers had a small break before their doom continued. His skill took an hour to cool down, and it didn’t make sense to fight without the 100% sensation bonus, as it made such a big difference in the progress points he earned. Yet Dark wasn’t about to lounge about on the beach.
Striding confidently downstream about two hundred yards, he reached a dead tree which had collapsed into the water. The larger river dwellers often fed here. If the location was promising, he would be back to wipe out the local fish population.
Even along the way, he didn’t waste time. Now and then he would reload his slingshot with the pieces of flint left over from his club production and take shots at the frogs. It was much easier to hit this way, shooting rather than throwing, and by using flint scraps instead of rocks he avoided carrying the extra weight.
Dark’s equipment was no longer valueless junk. On his third attempt, he had made a bag out of a beaver pelt that was excellent quality, at least for a novice like him. In the real world, even a homeless man would have rejected it, but it carried twenty-six cells of inventory. Each could carry an ordinary stone or a hundred small stones, so he no longer had trouble carrying ammunition around.
But the bag had filled up quickly. Soon he had more than a dozen hiding places filled with all sorts of things. Good-quality sticks, pieces of flint, bones and pelts. Even the less successful bag crafting attempts had made small bags suitable for carrying alchemy ingredients. Perhaps they’d come in handy later. He’d saved everything that might have some use in the future. What could he need fish bladders for, anyway? Well, at first he hadn’t known the answer to that. But as he dug through thousands of official forum posts, he found a message in which a generous player made a helpful comment.
He followed up and manufactured a primitive stone mortar and ground frog bones to powder with it. The helmet he had grabbed from the skeleton became a pot, and in this pot he simmered a mixture of bone powder and fish bladders. After a few minutes of boiling this concoction, he had decent glue for making flint swords and bone harpoons.
But it didn’t stop there. Without any hints this time, he figured out that strips of fish bladder soaked in a clay solution could substitute for rubber. That let him craft a slingshot, and his frog-slaying efficiency was multiplied. He could hit frogs far from the shore, and hit them often, and he didn’t have to carry a bunch of heavy stones around. He could kill more in an hour now than he had killed in a day before. Perhaps even more than he could in a week, but alas, their population dropped to zero too quickly. Searching for new backwater areas would cost time and risk stumbling into a serious threat. Dark had learned that this area of the riverbank was one of the safest areas in the whole region. Upstream and downstream both, he had seen large black cats with eyes of fire. They could kill him in one or two hits, unless he escaped by running deep into the water.
Dark circled a thicket of thorn bushes, turning back towards the bank, and stopped at the sight of a large beast. It looked like a deer with massive horns. They came to get a drink now and then—he had even hit one with a shot from a bow at one point. It had fled in a scramble of hooves, obviously showing no aggression. But the arrow had taken so little of its health that he knew he was too weak to tackle such an animal.
Should he go scare it off? Begone! Drink not from the forbidden waters of Dark! The beasts had trampled the whole area down. He had seen their tracks when first he reached the river.
From here, he could see the skeleton of the unknown half-submerged monster, and something large was splashing around it.
Perhaps that would make a good spot. That skull had been positioned perfectly for a fishing perch. The water was certainly not shallow, but his harpoons had coarse twine tied to them, and he would be able to hold his prey from escaping. And being on an island of bone amidst deep waters, no black cat or other dangerous predator would be able to sneak up on him.
It was worth a try.
Chapter 22
Lands of the Ancient Treasure
Total stat levels: 6
Character level: 0
Mastery level: 0
As he had suspected, Dark was unable to wade out into the river. He tried, but thirty yards was the closest he could get. So he left most of his things on the shore and went swimming, for his first time in eight days of gameplay. Fears of creatures from the depths were unfounded, and he reached the skull quickly without losing any of his harpoons.
Climbing onto the skull, he perched on its left parietal bone and saw schools of decently sized fish floating around underneath its tusk-like protrusions. He could tell that level 2 fish were available here near the surface and that bigger quarry was sometimes visible deeper down.
Settling in, Dark began. The first fish took a harpoon, and he dragged it up to him in moments, while it was still in shock. Wrapping the harpoon cord around a three-foot-long incisor, he raised his flint pickax and hit the fish’s head and spine over and over. Quickly, without any regard for his Stamina. His prey was unable to escape, its leash too short, and it made no move in self-defense besides writhing and spraying Dark with water. The victory message appeared less than a minute later.
Good catch. Delaying the kill was not a good idea, since the harpoon cord was weak and would quickly fail when presented with prolonged struggle. This had already happened a couple of times, resulting in the loss of his quarry, and once even in the loss of a weapon. His pickax had been quite difficult to make, since it required large pieces of flint, which were rarely found.
The game counted a pickax as similar to a hammer: usable both as a weapon and as a tool. So it boosts his Hammers skill, and that was one that Dark had found no other way to boost.
After collecting a bunch of mediocre trophies, he frowned at his harpoon. Its Durability had decreased, and so had its Damage. It might not be enough for the next fish. He could probably repair it one more time. The materials were simply not high enough quality, so they couldn’t take endless repairs.
His harpoon was weak, his rope was weak, and his pickax, while still strong, would not be for long. One or two more fish and it would lose a damage point. Then Dark’s repair job might work or might disintegrate it into a pile of useless flint scraps. He would have to try to spend a portion of his materials to make the necessary flint blade again.
I have to figure out some better way to manage resources here. Flint was too rare on the coast and took too long to find, and most of it was low quality. But for making weapons, it was miles better than wood and fish bones.
Wait. Bones. Dark was sitting on the skeleton of some unknown creature the size of a whale. This game prevented you from using everything in the environment: certain things were usable, and the rest were not. But it was worth checking out.
Dark stared at the place where the creature’s nose once sat and summoned the information panel.
Remains of a Giant Quathos. Elite Mob. Level 147. Base skill progress points: 4410. Base distributable skill progress points: 735. Detailed stats: unavailable. Abilities: unavailable.
A monster slain by unknown heroes in the days when darkness and chaos struggled for domination over the world. The monster was cast down into the River of Tears, and time has taken all of its flesh but its bones. The unknown heroes did not claim the loot that was rightfully theirs; now anyone who finds a path to these forgotten lands may seize it.
What a monster! With their level difference and Dark’s sensation multiplier, if he defeated this mob in battle, he could in theory receive hundreds of thousands of skill progress points. But there was no possible scenario in which he would be victorious. A beast like this could kill a dozen novices like him by just spitting at them. Or maybe even by looking at them.
But Dark was not interested in the hypothetical. His initial interest, getting some nice bones, was gone. The final sentence of the beast’s description changed everything.
Was Dark perched atop a mob someone had once killed long ago, only to leave the loot behind? The fact that nothing but bones were visible didn’t mean anything in this game.
The trophies could be under its spine, or at the bottom of the river, or completely invisible except in the loot collection screen.
Afraid to open this Schrodinger box, Dark hesitantly put his hand up against the skull and press the Collect Loot icon. It obediently expanded into fourteen cells with stylized icons of objects stashed in the beast’s remains. 1 Mountain Drakh Fang Club, 1 Fire Steel Helmet, 2 Fire Steel Armor Fragments, 1 Large Essence Crystal, 2 Small Essence Modifiers, 1 Level 147 Shining Soul Essence, 2 Vials of Mana Potion, 1 Quiver of 26 Krecher Bone Tip Arrows, 2 Giant Quathos Fangs, and 2 Giant Quathos Bones.
He couldn’t discern anything besides names and flashy graphics. In order to learn the stats, values, and limitations of these items, he would have to collect them.
He paused. This was not his first day in X. He knew these remains had been here for a long time. How long exactly, he couldn’t be sure. But he knew how to turn them into dust. Once he took the loot, the skeleton would crumble. This was probably just a mechanism to keep the land clean—otherwise corpses of worthless frogs, mice, and birds would litter every field and forest. That would make for an unseemly and unwieldy game world. But this giant quathos was no joke. It might be kept here for many years. The lore of the world, of course, said it had been here for centuries.
Dark knew that this loot was orders of magnitude better than anything he had seen thus far. Perhaps the fang club was mighty enough to sweep away a beaver and its dam together. In one blow. The chitin hunters, too. But could he wield it?
A level 147 monster would have loot of roughly matching levels. No novice could use any of this. Even using the material for primitive crafting wouldn’t work out. Though the game did not display any levels for raw materials, he had learned in the forum that they did exist, just inaccessibly buried somewhere in the code. A novice with approximately zero crafting talent would not be able to work a metal intended to create equipment and weapons for players level 100+ and up. He would have to hold onto them or hope to sell them.
This discovery destroyed his plans for the day. Forgetting about fishing, Dark dove into the forums and began searching for various pieces of information. Among the millions of posts and comments, he looked for anything on new regions discovered by players. Earlier this had not been very interesting to him, but everything was different now.
The future might be very bright, in fact.
Perhaps the fact that he was situated in a location unknown to anyone else was a great blessing rather than a curse. Perhaps.
Fifteen minutes later, Dark was certain that he had drawn a winning lottery ticket. All of this world’s players would envy him, if they knew. Or most. A few had experienced similar luck. But they had encountered problems that prevented them from taking advantage of their full reward.
First of all, new game regions were quite removed from discovered regions. The way to these regions was long and dangerous. Sometimes, a quest chain would lead you to a new discovery. But neither path was an option for single players, no matter how pumped their characters. If there was a way, it wasn’t publicized in the forums.
Players had to party up in order to seek these new regions.
When a party of strong players overcame all the many obstacles in their way and discovered a theretofore-unknown place, sometimes it wasn’t worth it.
X had a complicated lore full of magical catastrophes and ancient wars. New locations could be devoid of anything of value. Lifeless fields of slag and oceans of lava were co
mmon in a post-cataclysmic world. Nothing survived a volcanic flood.
But this game was unpredictable. Sometimes, you would get lucky. Even filthy rich.
If the location was not incinerated, it might be full of mineral deposits, valuable plants, and common monsters and bosses unseen in other regions. That meant completely new alchemical ingredients and items.
If the location was inhabited by NPCs, it might contain quests with rewards greater than any player dared dream of. A player could earn a great reputation with the locals and became an oligarch of the region. And if there were no intelligent beings around, but there were in the distant past, players could search the ruins of their civilizations for long-lost treasures. Uncovering the secrets of extinct nations could unlock access to new technologies.
One player named ForestBison was often mentioned in the comments. The kid was a legend. He and a weak party had found a location where a dying people eked out a wretched existence, a people which had once been the drivers of the world’s history. Only one city still survived, and most of it had been destroyed. Unfortunate groups of NPCs hid in holes and hovels amid the majestic ruins of old.
The source of the devastation was unclear, since the area was still rich. Dozens of abandoned ancient mines held many tons of valuable raw materials, and they proved simple to restore. Hunting grounds teemed with vast numbers of monsters of all levels, including undiscovered species. A nearby river sparkled with gems which had been extremely rare and found only in expensive jewelry. Jewelry for which mages were willing to trade their right hands, and perhaps a few fingers from their left. The gems were priceless for wielders of elemental magic. Demand for them was colossal, but until this discovery, there had been no supply.