by R K Billiau
“Did you unequip the charms?” he asked as he blocked the rabbits but didn’t strike them.
I was gasping for air, the Pain debuff already past green. “Yes, help me get these things!”
“Have you tried re-equipping them yet?” he asked me, kicking a rabbit out of the air, but not so hard that it died.
“Oh. Uh. No.” Embarrassed for forgetting this part of my test, I equipped the dungeon core. Like flipping a switch, the rabbits forgot about me and turned screaming towards Kai. “Well, I guess that answers that,” I said and stooped down to pick up a few rocks.
Sucker Punch! Your attack catches the opponent off guard!
You have slain a rabbit!
Kai made short work of the rest of the rabbits, but once again there was no experience gain.
“Attunement huh?” Kai asked.
“Yeah, I guess that’s the difference in the hate lists of the creatures. I tried looking up attunement in the primer when I got the cores, but there was no entry,” I said.
“I’ve noticed the primer is sparse, what’s up with that?”
“My only thought is the devs want us to figure stuff out on our own. They gave us the tutorial, some basic info, and figured that with a lifetime ahead of us, we would figure it out,” I said, shrugging.
“Maybe. It’s a little annoying though.”
“Sure, but you have to admit, it keeps you interested in learning more, eh?”
Kai just looked me, his usual exuberance replaced with a deadpan stare. “No. I like to know what I’m doing.”
“Ah, well, this must annoy you then. If it helps, there is a skill called Archive that helps you figure stuff out.” I whipped out my Infinite Notebook and showed him the few entries I had in it, and pointed to the one about Scavenging. “When I put this entry in, it gave me a miniscule bonus to looting items.”
Kai perused the entry then lifted an eyebrow. “Well that’s great. When we get around to inventing paper I’ll be sure to pick that skill up. Anyway, we should tell the Chief about this attunement thing,” Kai said.
I turned towards the corpses to hide the redness in my face. “Let me loot the bodies first. I’d like to get these quests completed before we go back, and before it gets dark.” I checked my mini-map and saw another rabbit nest nearby. “There’s another rabbit nest close, and maybe If I can get a deer or something...”
Kai looked around as if noticing the waning light for the first time. “Let’s keep going until dark, then we’ll go back no matter what we have.”
“Perfect.” Without another word I headed out to the rabbit nest on my mini-map. As soon as I got close enough, I pulled them and kited them back to Kai. After looting, I charged back out again, this time in search of something else.
I had seen deer once, and the bison I had seen from a distance. I wanted to bring something big back for the tribe. A deer would be best I figured because it would be easy to get a single one but finding any was turning out to be difficult. I could see the massive herd of bison, and ran as fast as I could towards it, not knowing what my plan was.
I watched on my mini-map for a few precious minutes as the land darkened when I saw it; an opportunity. There was a lone bison grazing far from the from the rest of the herd. I inspected it, looking to make sure it was on its own. I had no idea what its threat range was or even if it would aggro without being attacked first. It wasn’t the time to experiment however, so I scooped up a rock, and walked to the edge of my range, targeted the bison, and threw.
I know I should have expected it, but the massive beast charged me so fast I barely had time to react. I dove to the side, feeling the wind as it rushed past, making it out of the way just in time. It was a lot bigger when it was trying to kill me than it was when I was just looking at it. I scrambled to my feet and ran as fast as they would carry me towards the cave, screaming the whole way.
Obviously, it wasn’t fast enough. I mean, me, a puny human with a running of 10, versus a massive 4-legged creature literally designed to move quickly. It wasn’t even a contest as I found out the hard, painful way.
You have been rammed by an angry bison!
‘Holy crap that hurt’, I had time to think as I flew through the air and my health bar drained by almost a third. Then I landed in the painful caress of Mother Earth and her rocks and plants and I rolled to the side as fast as I could, just in time to avoid being trampled. The beast was not the fastest about turning around, and I had enough time to get to my feet before it charged me again. I threw another rock at it, bouncing it off its hide with no other effect, and jumped out of the way.
I ran screaming again. This time, watching my mini-map as I ran, I attempted to dodge the creature as it came up on me from behind. It was fast though, and I failed in spectacular fashion. Another 50 health gone. I repeated my maneuvers, jumping out of the way as it charged me from the front, and tried my mini-map trick again. This time I got it right and watched as it blasted past me. A mad grin made its home on my face as I charged past the bison while it spun back around. I repeated this several times before Kai and the cave came into sight, the setting sun at my back.
Congratulations! You have learned the Active Dodge skill!
Congratulations! You have increased your Agility attribute!
I was battered, bloody and beaten, but I loved this and getting a new skill was icing on the cake! I saw Kai jump up and run back into the cave. What. The. Hell?
I got within throwing distance of the cave, contemplating what my next step was going be. Just die? I had less than 100 health left when I felt the head of the great beast ram me again and send me flying. This time I had the wall of the hill there to stop me. With great force. I was just thinking about lying there and letting the damn thing trample me to death when I heard Kai... and other voices? Then the bison bellowed with bowel softening hatred as it saw Kai and another five Hunters all armed with spears and determination.
I turned to watch the tableau. There was Kai, kicking and dodging around the bison, with a large circle of Hunters who jabbed at it every time it came close. This enraged the beast and it kept swirling around not knowing which target to hit. Every time it would turn, it would get pierced by another spear. It settled on a target and charged the Hunter attached to the spear that had just poked him. The Hunter didn’t get out of the way fast enough, and he flew through the air, landing hard. I could relate.
The bison continued in its mad run, trampling the poor Hunter who didn’t get back up. It turned and charged toward Kai. It had bloody wounds all over and wasn’t looking great. As it was charging, Kai shouted to the Hunters, “Throw your spears, NOW!”
Not being trained to attack on command, it was a mess. But three of the spears hit, slowing down the enraged beast. When it got to Kai, the Martial Artist performed a powerful axe kick, the heel of his foot crashing down on the bison’s snout with tremendous force.
To its credit it didn’t fall dead. Its sheer momentum crashed it into Kai, sending the man to the ground. Then much slower than before, it lumbered away back towards the plains. It was still too fast for the unarmed Hunters to do anything about, and Kai looked pretty dazed.
I did the only combat thing that I had thus far been able to do with any effectiveness; grabbed a rock, and chucked it at the bison’s head, hitting it in its damaged snout.
Sucker Punch! Your attack catches the opponent off guard!
Critical hit!
You have slain a bison!
A chorus of cheers broke out behind me, the Hunters bellowing with joy as I felled the massive beast. Two helped Kai up, and they all came over. “Hold up, let Hudson loot it! He has a skill that lets him get extra loot. Meat for everyone tonight!” he shouted.
Oh yeah, loot time. I activated the corpse and grinned with satisfaction when this time, three separate loot windows opened! The first window was the standard loot window. Wow, that was a lot of meat. Ten stacks of ten pounds each. I thought there would have been even more, this thing was hug
e! Maybe there was a skill to maximize how much you could get out of a kill? Either way, this was a great haul! I couldn’t even hold it all.
“Hey guys,” I said to the small group of Hunters, “I can’t carry all of this meat, can you take it into the cave?” They lined up, all but drooling. I handed out the meat and had to wait for them to return for more. Time to look at what else we got.
The other two loot windows were a Scavenging window with another 40 pounds of meat, and a Lucky Find window. Awesome! Inside that loot window was another core!
Small Core: Plains Bison
Grants Minor attunement – Earth
“Oh yeah baby! Kai! Come here!” I shouted, turning to find him right over my shoulder. “There’s a core here that grants attunement!”
“It just dropped? Was it part of your skills?”
“I got it from my Lucky Find skill. I don’t know if it drops from the normal loot table. This could be a huge help! Let me see if I can open the loot box up for you. If I get it, it becomes soulbound.”
I inspected the UI element of the Lucky Find loot box and saw that the only options were to take the item or close the box. I figured it was no big deal to lose the core since I already had a core with an attunement, and didn’t have the skills to use cores anyway, (whatever they were) so I closed the box.
You are closing a bonus item window; would you like to:
Destroy the items?
Open the window for public?
I selected the ‘public’ option and heard Kai’s sharp intake of breath. “A glowing loot pile just showed up. Is this one of your skills?” he asked.
“Open it up! See if the core is in it!” I was excited that I had a way to get great loot, and could share with the group.
“Small Plains Bison core?” Kai asked.
“Yes! That’s great! We have a way to get you guys attunement now! Take it!”
“This is good news,” the exuberant Martial Artist said, “but I want to check with the Chief. If this can help the tribe then I want to make sure it goes to the best person.”
“Wait, so is he the actual leader? Isn’t ‘Tribal Chief’ just a class?”
“Yes, it’s a class, but the skills it has helps the clan, and he can only level them by doing things that involve leadership. It’s kind of symbiotic, the more we work with him the better he gets, the better he gets the better the tribe gets. The leadership classes are interesting. Not my cup of tea, but interesting.”
“Huh, I wonder how the game can do all this stuff. That’s damn impressive. If a game like this had been active on Earth, it would have been insanely popular.”
Kai shrugged. “Let’s go talk to Arnold.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a quest to turn in!” I started towards the cave entrance with Kai following. When we got inside the scene differed greatly from before. The miasma was gone, with many of the injured people now up and about, socializing.
The warm fire in the center had two Gatherers around it tending to pieces of rabbit meat roasting on spits. Arnold saw us walking in, and a huge grin exploded on his face. Before he even got to me the quest updated.
Quest updated!
You have surpassed all the required components!
Do you accept membership into the Tribe ‘Ascendants’?
I selected the YES button and my buff bar filled with a small buff; ‘Tribal Energy’ granting me a 10% increase in regeneration speeds for all expendables, and a 10% buff (min 1) to all abilities and known skills.
“Wow that’s a nice buff! We get this just for being members of the tribe?” I asked Kai as Arnold reached us. Kai nodded, a smirk on his face.
“Hudson, what you’ve done is amazing,” Chief Arnold said. “You’ve provided us with enough food to feed everyone here, removing their starvation debuffs. We should be able to heal again! The morale boost alone is wonderful, but there’s enough food here from that bison for us to keep eating for a long while. Maybe we can get strong enough to try more hunting and gathering, to get ourselves established.”
Congratulations! You have increased your Connection attribute!
Winning friends and influencing people seemed to be a great way to raise my Connection attribute. No wonder it hadn’t gone up on the island.
“That’s not all Chief,” Kai said. “You have to come see something.” He motioned for Arnold to follow us, and we went back out to the bison corpse. “Look at what’s on this corpse.”
The Chief accessed the loot window. “Bonus items? I haven’t seen this window before,” he said.
“It’s one of my skills,” I told him.
“I see, some Treasure Hunter thing. What exactly am I looking at here? A soulbound item, something that requires skills I’ve never heard of to use.” Chief Arnold glanced at Kai. “What’s important about this?”
Kai smiled. “The important part isn’t what the core can do, but by equipping it you gain an attunement. The attunement takes you off the hate list of the wildlife. They act like normal animals around you.”
The Chiefs jaw fell open. “Really? Are you sure? This could change everything!”
Kai nodded. “I know, that’s why I brought you out here.” He gestured towards me. “I think it would be helpful if I could work with Hudson to get more of these for our tribe, but I wanted to check with you first, to see if you wanted this to go to someone else. They’re soulbound, so once someone picks it up, it’s theirs.”
The Chief nodded. “I appreciate that, how much help did you give him collecting all this stuff?”
Kai smirked. “Hudson may be helpful getting stuff for us, but his combat effectiveness is pretty much nil.”
“HEY!” I shouted. “It’s not that bad! I’ve taken out nests of rabbits by myself.”
The Chief looked back and forth between the two of us. “Kai, you’ve been our strongest defender here, if you go out with him, we will have nobody to defend the tribe.”
Kai nodded. “Yes, but if everyone has eaten, then the debuffs should fade and you’ll have more than enough Hunters to station as a guard.”
“If these cores are soulbound, how will we get them to our people? You can’t very well take everyone out with you or else the same problem we’ve had with being KOS will still happen.”
I jumped in. “We can pull the same trick we were using here, we pull them, and kite them to the cave to finish them.”
“All right then, this sounds like a good plan. I leveled up after everything that happened in this last day and can now give some XP as a quest reward. Let me get something set up here,” the Chief said.
You have been offered a quest!
Ongoing quest: Obtain attunement for a tribe member. Reward - 10 XP.
Ongoing quests may be repeated until the quest giver deems appropriate.
Do you accept this quest? Yes/ No
I accepted the quest; this would be great. I could level up just from helping out! Kai reached down and took the core, a few seconds later it showed up on his belt in his charm slot. “Shouldn’t I have gotten XP for that?” I asked.
“You have to check in with me each time I think,” the Chief said. I considered this.
“I’m checking in on the quest,” I said.
You have completed a quest!
Quest: Obtain attunement for a tribe member. Reward 10 XP.
I rose into the air a few feet, light exploding out of me. All my expendable resource bars grew in front of my eyes, leaving a small empty spot that quickly filled up. After a few seconds they reverted to their normal size, but with larger totals.
Congratulations! You have leveled up!
Chapter 10
I leveled up! This quest could be my leveling lifesaver since I still couldn’t figure out the XP distribution from fighting. “Congratulations!” Both Kai and Chief Arnold said simultaneously then laughed. With a blink I assigned all my level points into HP, it seemed the most important.
“Thanks, I had almost forgotten about leveling,” I joked. I looked
at the corpse of the bison. “Why hasn’t this disappeared yet? Don’t they fade quickly once looted?”
The Chief nodded. “Usually, but I think the System can detect when there is someone nearby that can still use skills with the corpse before it fades, so it stays around a little longer.”
I was curious. “What do you mean? What else can you do with it?”
In reply the Chief called out “Jake! Come out here, please!” Soon after a short man with long brown hair in Hunters garb came out.
“Yeah, Chief?” Jake said.
“You’re next in line, go ahead and dress this kill.” The Chief gestured to the bison.
“Oh great! I think I should level Field Dressing on this! It should be much better than rabbits for leveling my skill.” The Hunter knelt next to the bison, and I watched as he activated it. “Chief! This is crazy, but there’s a whole Field Dressing mini-game here that can be accessed by three Hunters and two Gatherers to maximize this harvest! I think we should get as many people out as we can to do this together.”
We all stood in shocked silence for a moment. Chief Arnold was the first to react. “Jake, go round up everyone on the list that wants to level up their Field Dressing skill, and a couple Gatherers too.”
“This game surprises me with the way it gives people opportunities to level their skills.” I said.
The Chief nodded. “The tribe will be so much stronger if we can keep doing things like this. I’ll issue quests as well.”
“Can you issue as many as you want?” I asked.
“No, right now I have a limit of two, I can issue them to as many people as I want, but I can only make two quests.”
Jake broke in. “A quest to maximize the harvest would be great, but we couldn’t complete it on this bison, it looks like using the loot windows to take the meat and stuff, damages it. The mini-game only allows for a 40% completion, just the skin and organs and stuff. If this was whole, I think we could get significantly more meat out, and the other stuff too, probably.”
“That’s just so... cool!” I said. “I’ve got to take a note of this...” I pulled out my notebook to jot down what Jake had told me.