Steel Orc- Player Reborn

by Deck Davis

  Andesite – intermediate volcanic rock

  Carbonatite – Igneous rock with carbonite material

  “This would be like porn for a geologist, but it’s not what I need.”

  He walked a while down the tunnel and repeated the process, each time coming up with the same underlay analysis. Before he knew it, he’d run his manus dry.

  Soon, the tunnel curved to the left, where it opened out more so that the ceiling was twenty feet above him. Parts of the walls were reinforced with wooden beams, while interspersed torches gave off snatches of light. The ground was covered by scatterings of loose rocks and grit, while some stretches of the walls bore holes made by pickaxes.

  “This might be the spot.”

  Once his manus replenished, he cast underlay again.

  Underlay Analysis

  Andesite – intermediate volcanic rock

  Carbonatite – Igneous rock with carbonite material

  Basalt – magnesium and iron-rich igneous rock

  “There, you see? Iron-rich igneous rock. The most exciting words I ever read. I know where to start now.”

  “Good work!” said Bee.

  “The work’s only just started. Now I know where the iron is, I’ve gotta mine it.”

  Before he swung his pickaxe, a dialogue box appeared.

  Underlay skill leveled to Nickel 3

  - Quick-underlay unlocked!

  For fewer manus but with increased speed, underlay will display colors on material analyzed. Colors indicate which components are present.

  “Quick-underlay, huh? This could be what I need. Let me try something.”

  “You don’t lose enthusiasm easily, do you?” said Bee.

  “Enthusiasm isn’t like loose change. You don’t just lose it. It’s more like a muscle, and the harder you train it, the stronger it gets. Failure, when things look hopeless - those are the weights you need to lift to get stronger.”

  He walked around the cavern and cast quick-underlay on the wall surface. Now, it didn’t send back a detailed list of what was in the rock but instead spread a dim color over the walls.

  Some parts were black, others brown. But the first patch where he’d found the iron-rich basalt was a silver-grey.

  There were three patches of silver-grey wall, and Tripp walked up to the one that had the strongest color. That must have been where the iron was hidden.

  He raised his pickaxe and started hacking at the wall. Stones crumbled to the ground, and his arms ached more than he’d expected, each successive strike sending heat through him until before he knew it, he’d built up a sweat.

  He wasn’t rewarded for his efforts with iron, but at least there was something.

  Skill Gained: Mining

  Level: Nickel 1

  The art, if you can call it that, of harvesting metals and gems using tools and hard work.

  - Mining costs fewer manus

  - Swing efficiency increased

  After earning the base level of the mining skill, he found that it got a little easier. Not much, but at least his arms ached less, and more and more rock crumbled with each hit, pattering down onto his steel boots and then forming a pile around him.

  He took off his steel chest plate and gauntlets so that he was just in his undershirt. With the chill of Old Kimby’s bowels cooling him, he got to work. Serious work.

  Smash the wall, let the rocks crumble, then see what’d he’d mined while he let his manus replenish - that became his ritual for the next few hours. It was hard going because his mining skill was so low that each strike took eight manus from him, meaning he could only use his pickaxe 18 times before he felt feeble again.

  Persistence meant keeping going when things were hard and when progress felt slow, so Tripp labored on even when he was sick of looking at the rock, when his hands felt sore from holding his pickaxe, and when Bee had asked him for the fiftieth time if they could leave and go find something else to do.

  When he finally got sick of his pickaxe chinking against the rock, he put the tool by the wall.

  “You just leveled mining up to Nickel 3,” said Bee.

  “Yeah, I felt like it was getting easier.”

  “I guess persistence does pay off.”

  He stood over the giant pile of rocks that he’d made and he cast underlay, and this time he looked at the rocks with a smile.

  “Five iron pieces,” he said. “Five. That’s just over one piece per hour. Man, they weren’t lying about the grind.”

  “There’s got to be an easier way,” said Bee.

  “No, see. That’s where you don’t get it. I could go out and buy iron if I had enough gold coins, but it wouldn’t be the same. Nothing worth having comes easily. This is what it’s all about for me; getting the materials myself, working them into something valuable without anyone’s help.”

  “I can’t believe you’re getting sentimental about lumps of iron,” said Bee. “It’s sweet, though.”

  “Nothing wrong in getting passionate about something, Bee. Doesn’t matter what it is. If you like it, you like it. Don’t let anyone tell you what you should feel good about.”

  “What if someone was starting to like herbalism, and they didn’t want to admit it?”

  “I’d ask them, who the hell is so important that you care so much about what they think? You know, I used to have this habit where I’d watch a film, and if I loved it I’d go online and see what people were saying about it.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s the thing; I don’t know why. I guess I wanted to see if other people loved it too. Only, I’d skip over the comments from people who loved it and I’d find myself reading the bad stuff, and it started to make me wonder, was I wrong about the film? Was it actually crappy, after all? That’s the power of words, Bee. Listen to what other people say, sure. But learn to compartmentalize; to hear their words without letting it into the place you keep your emotions, because opinions and emotions are a bad mix.”

  “What about if it’s your own opinion that you’re worried about?” said Bee.

  “As in, if you don’t agree with yourself?”

  “No. If the things you enjoy change, then maybe you’re changing too.”

  “Then ride it. Change isn’t always bad. Resisting it is like trying to fix a leak by pressing your finger against it. The water’s not coming through, but it’s building and building, ready to burst as soon as you give up.”

  Tripp put his new pieces of iron and carbon in his inventory.

  “So you have your iron…now what?” said Bee.

  “I mined some iron and some carbon. Now the real hard part. Working out what the hell to do with it.”

  When he left old Kimby, he stopped a second outside Konrad’s shop and took a deep breath. It felt good to be outside, even in the fading daylight. Kimby might have been rich in materials, but she sure wasn’t a pleasant place to be in.

  Outside, the air was lighter, fresher, and his hours spent him darkness made him appreciate the lanterns glowing from poles fixed on every street of Mountmend, it made him glad to hear distant chatter from players in the streets beyond Konrad’s shop.

  Readjusted and feeling motivated, it was time to get to work. He had the embryo of a plan for room one in his head, but it was going to take some work to birth it.

  His first stop was at the crafter’s guild, and he went through the main meeting area where the din of chatter and jokes and bragging was so thick it was almost like a net he had to cut through. He caught a few stares passing through, but he ignored them and went outside to the courtyard where he found the traders.

  One of them, an old dwarf with hair greyer than rat fur and just as dirty, was selling crafting cards. When Tripp spoke to him, a dialogue box opened and showed what he had to offer.

  He looked down the list until he found what he wanted.

  Crafting Card: Shield

  A basic crafting card for a metal shield, used to defend against melee attacks and arrows. Can also be used in of
fensive maneuvers such as shield stuns by certain character classes.

  Cost: 400 gold

  “Damn it. I don’t have enough.”

  “Looks like you’ll have to get a job or something,” said Bee.

  “My ass. I didn’t come to Soulboxe to work a nine-to-five. I’ll find a way.”

  After leaving the guild and walking back through the plaza and north, he found Konrad’s work studio unlocked, but empty.

  At three times the size of his actual shop where he conducted business, it was a place where Tripp felt at home immediately. There were long, wooden work benches stained with oil, some with chunks missing from where tools had hit them, others with parts charred black, presumably from artificery.

  Standing there, Tripp could imagine all the hours Konrad had spent creating his weapons, forging them from steel and then delicately layering them with artificery to give them magic effects.

  Then, he’d sell them in his shop to human players. In almost any other game, Tripp would have been one of those players. Now, though, it was different; he was learning to make them himself, to create rather than just buy.

  “Let’s see,” he said, looking around. “So that’s the forge.”

  The forge was a deep-set, oval stone construction, glowing red with heat from the coals inside it.

  “Do you know how to use that?” said Bee.

  “If this were real, then no. It takes time to learn how to do it properly. But Soulboxe wouldn’t be much fun if it was that realistic.”

  He found that using the forge was simple – he just added whatever material he wanted to it, and the forge did the rest. In this way, he combined his iron with the carbon he’d mined, and the forge turned it into steel.

  You have made a [poor] steel piece

  You have made a [poor] steel piece

  You have made a [mediocre] steel piece

  “Huh. Takes more iron and carbon than I expected. At least I improved the quality, though. Third time’s the charm.”

  “What do you need it for, anyway? Can’t you make the shield from iron?”

  “I need the crafting card first, and I don’t think the traders at the guild are charitable enough to just give it to me.”

  “So what’s this all about?”

  “Watch.”

  Laying his newly-created steel on the workbench, he used his repair hammer to whack it into shape. It was easier this time than it had been when he first tried it. Keeping focused, using his crafting card for reference, Tripp worked with the metal, bending and forming it until he was happy.

  When he was done, he was covered in sweat, and the sun had disappeared outside, leaving the glowing forge coals as the only source of light.

  It had been worth it.

  You have made a [mediocre] steel gauntlet

  You have made a [mediocre] steel gauntlet

  You have made a [good] steel gauntlet

  Woohoo! The first steel gauntlet he’d made to finish his armor set had been poor, but now he had gone through mediocre and all the way to the dizzy heights of good. He wasn’t a crafter of legend yet, but even guys who made legendary magic swords must have started by churning out crappy daggers.

  He could tell just by how the gauntlets looked that they were better than the first one that he’d made. Checking their stats, he saw that these had a durability of six, while the first he’d made was only five.

  He was improving. He hadn’t leveled up his armorer skill again, but progress meant moving forward, even when that movement felt like the gentle float of a glacier over the sea.

  He swapped his new good gauntlet for his old one. It fit better, it seemed stronger, and even that small improvement made him feel just that bit better protected.

  With his work done, he left the workshop, ready for the gold coins. One visit to the craftsman guild later, and he’d sold the gauntlets for 402 gold, which was just enough to get what he needed. He kept the first one that he’d made, though. Call it sentimentality, but he couldn’t bring himself to part with it.

  Item received: Crafting Card – Shield

  Now it was time to see if he had the skill to act on his plan for room one.

  CHAPTER 31

  ‘Let me be free

  Free me please

  The walls can bend

  Or I will bend them.’

  - Words found in an otherwise blank in-game book. The book should have been part of a quest titled ‘Hungry Dragons’ and should have contained a light-hearted clue to guide players in their quest.

  Instead, one player found a book containing just these lines. Note: in-game scripts can be written by either an authorized member of the dev team or by Boxe himself.

  ~

  You didn’t conquer Everest until you took your first step. True, there were a million more steps after the first that you needed to take, so the quote wasn’t as simple as it sounded, but still, it was time to get on with it.

  Now that he had the crafting card he still needed to make the shield, and he’d used up all of his iron and carbon crafting the gauntlets.

  This meant a trip back into Old Kimby’s belly, where he spent the next morning carving chunks out of the mountain. Bee had been a nuisance for the first hour until Tripp gave her something to do.

  “The distance we can be apart from each other increases every time I level, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So can you go map out some other tunnels for me? Go as far as it’ll let you.”

  “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “Yep.”

  By the time he finished mining, he had iron pieces, some carbon, he’d leveled his mining skill, and Bee had filled in some of his map for him.

  He left old Kimby and went back to Konrad’s work studio, ready to craft things. The work studio was empty again, though there was a faint aroma of stale sweat in the air, and Tripp could almost imagine Konrad in here, his torso naked, hammering at some iron. It was an image he could live without, so he opened a window and hoped the breeze would carry away both the sweat smell and the mental picture.

  First up was the shield. While his steel armor gave him some protection, its armor rating wasn’t good enough to deflect arrows, as he’d found to his cost. When he saw the shield crafting card, he realized why. It was simple, really: the shield was thicker.

  With his repair hammer in his hand, his mind focused, he laid the iron pieces out on the workbench.

  He’d mined twelve pieces, and the crafting card said he needed six. Sweet; that fit with his plan for room one. He got to work, pummeling the metal until bit by bit it started to bend, to mesh together, to take the shape he wanted it to.

  When he saw that he was finished, a rush of dopamine flooded his head; a fuzzy feeling, like he’d scratched a mental itch.

  “Well,” he said, “What do you think?”

  Bee eyed the shield. “It doesn’t look big enough.”

  “I’d need a different crafting card for something bigger, but watch.”

  He put the shield down so that it touched the floor and was standing vertically, and then he kneeled down behind it.

  “It just about covers me,” he said. “That’s the arrows taken care of.”

  “I’m impressed,” said Bee. “That looks pretty good. Maybe you could make a mini one for me.”

  “Sure, as soon as you have arms to hold it with. As good as it is, still no level up. I’m only one level from moving up from the Nickel armorer rank. I can feel that it’s close.”

  Next came the trickiest part; he needed to do something about the lava. And unlike the floor is lava game he used to play as a kid, he doubted throwing couch cushions into the lava would be enough to get him safely across and onto the other platform.

  He put the rest of his iron pieces on the workbench and he strapped his artificer goggles over his head. When he adjusted the eyepieces, he’d hoped that something would happen, that he’d see the iron differently, that the lenses would open up a new world view for him
.

  Nope. The iron looked exactly the same.

  “What are you trying to do?” said Bee.

  “I have the frorarg fire essence, right?” he said. “I figure I can use artificery to infuse some of it into the iron.”

  “But you don’t have the artificery skill.”

  He nodded. “That’s what I’m trying to learn.”

  “Konrad said he was going to teach you that.”

  “I realized something; this whole thing isn’t about Konrad teaching me. Or at least, it’s not about him showing me what to do. There are two types of teachers: the ones who just give you a step-by-step list of what to do, and the ones who are more like guides. They lay out little markers to lead you, but ultimately all they’re doing is helping you find your own way out of the maze. Guess which one you learn more from?”

  “Konrad doesn’t look, I don’t know, deep enough for that kind of thing.”

  “You’d be surprised. I’m starting to understand how he thinks. Notice that he’s nowhere to be seen? When I looked in on his shop this morning, some dwarf kid was serving behind the counter. I need to learn this myself.”

  He tried the artificer goggles again. He stared at the iron until he felt like his eyes were going to pop out of their sockets, but nothing happened, and he didn’t get some new view of the metal.

  “Let me try this.”

  He cast underlay on the iron, but the analysis didn’t return any information. He guessed that iron was a base material itself, so underlay couldn’t break down its components any further.

  Pacing around the room, he tried to think of what he was missing. He’d learned the armorer, mining, and alchemy skills by doing them, but that was part of the problem - they were much more intuitive.

  Artificery was complex. It wasn’t just about bashing metal with a rock to bend it back into place. It wasn’t as easy as swinging a pickaxe at a rock to earn the mining skill.

  Maybe that was it, though.