by Arthur Stone
“Do we have a choice? They all have the same damage stats, so any of them will do.”
“Good thinking. So, shall we get to it?”
“Let’s go.”
“I’d work near you, but this mine looks far from simple. Whoever had dug it was anything but a specialist. So, we shouldn’t stand too close to each other.”
“I know, higher chance of a rockfall.”
“Well, you sure know your stuff… Aren’t you a human by race? What was the point of learning Mining & Quarrying?”
“I try to unlock everything I can. And it brought some profit, too. Do you seriously intend to work here?”
“I can’t see why not. Did you hear what that bony ape said? It’s a goldmine, or it has gold alongside other ores, as is usually the case. They want us to bring them ten chunks a day, but they didn’t say anything else. I have a big bag, and I can stash away a good deal. If I manage to stuff it full, I might even make some money. This isn’t a clan-owned mine, so there are no inventory control agreements, and you can keep whatever you like.”
“The quest description said there’d be an extra reward for exceeding the quota.”
“Oh, sure. Have you seen these critters’ snouts? And their equipment? It’s all noobish, and they still look smug. Are you sure they’ll part with anything useful?”
“What’s the point in such a quest otherwise?”
“So that the likes of me could earn a bit of moolah.”
“Nearly all the miners and other workers have been killed—they hardly captured anyone. I’ve only seen two other dwarves in the crowd.”
“There were two orcs, too.”
“Well, they didn’t really look like miners.”
“True enough.”
“How are the rest of them going to handle it? I’m not sure they know which end of the pickaxe is the business end.”
“Sucks to be them. They’re going to have a totally infernal month. If I were them, I’d leave their characters and take a break from the game.”
“A famished character dies.”
“Oh, sure. But if you keep from moving and stay absolutely still, you won’t die for six or seven days, maybe more. After that, if you still keep immobile, it will take half that time to die. That wouldn’t lose you much experience, and you get to keep your stuff. The worst thing is that you’d still have to pay for your account. But trying to work in a mine with a fighter character is even worse. They can’t so much as see the ore, and their chances of coming back with anything but copper are minute.”
As they kept talking, they didn’t even notice reaching the bottom of the crater. There were several smelting furnaces here, just like at Ros’ first mine, but only one of them produced any smoke, and even that was barely visible. There were four unarmed mobs sitting on rocks around it, dressed in nothing but filthy aprons. They started to wave their thin hairy arms and yell in thin voices,
“Hey! Food! Give us food, we so hungry! Come on! Share food! No be greedy!”
“We don’t have any ourselves,” replied Goro and pointed to the main tunnel entrance. “The mine really sucks. I’ve seen a few like it—only unaffiliated miners dare to work there. Rockfalls are very common, and you run into all kinds of critters. Looks like we’re in for a lot of respawning. You should take it easy, Ros. There aren’t any galleries, and it’s one hell of a maze. Very easy to get lost.”
“My Cartography is pretty high.”
“Still, don’t take any risks—the further away you get from the entrance, the more mobs there will be.”
“Got it.”
“Right, then buff me, and I’m off.”
Ros cast the buffs that amplified physical damage and hastened Vigor regeneration, telling the dwarf:
“These buffs won’t last long without my staff and the rest of my equipment.”
“Well, they’ll see me through the beginning, at least. Good luck, Ros. Be seeing you.”
The dwarf entered the tunnel. Ros looked behind him and saw other players descending with pickaxes in their hands. He followed Goro. Congestion was always a bad idea, making rockfalls far more likely. He should get as far as possible before the main body of the players would arrive, and try not to get eaten.
* * *
Ros had never seen a mine like this. It was really more like a cave. Nothing like the usual straight tunnels with grooves for the cart wheels, and no galleries for mining. It was a maze of winding passages, some of them so narrow you had to squeeze through sideways, others growing into enormous halls with stalactites the size of a log hanging from the ceiling. The walls looked like molten wax, often with mildew or lush moss growing at the bottom. There were mushrooms there as well. Ros couldn’t tell the species, but fat woodlice and jet-black centipedes seemed to be interested. There was a smell of dampness and something musty that he couldn’t identify.
There was a lot of ore of various kinds. The most common varieties were plain old copper and tin, but there was other stuff as well: lead, zinc, and iron. He even came across silver twice. There were non-metallic resources, too: quartz, amethyst, agate, and jasper. Those were valuable enough, but he was looking for something different.
Ros had a whopping 17 Perception points—high enough even for a player pushing level 200. He also had a few stats that boosted it. This meant he no longer had to peer at the rock for ages on end—the cave walls let him know what treasures they concealed by the faint color-coded glints of ore veins. But it still took him about ten minutes to find what he’d been looking for—the level of the resource was just too high, and the resource itself, too rare.
“Quartz vein, fissured, rust-colored, impregnated with pyrite and small grains of gold. Chance of finding a piece of gold ore: 84.56%. Chance of finding an additional piece of gold ore: 9.92%. Chance of discovering an unexpected resource: 0.02%.”
The chances looked much better than what he remembered from his first mine, and comparable to those encountered in the thylbit dungeon. That much was good. However, the fact that gold required Mining & Quarrying to be at 25 was real bad news. Ros should be able to mine for gold, but the risk of wasting time and receiving nothing in return was rather high. Although his Luck should compensate for it.
On second thought, better not rely on Luck overly much. He hadn’t been particularly lucky of late. Maybe his Luck was broken?
Or, perhaps, it had decided to lie low, and then shower a torrent of bonuses upon him?
That would be nice…
Gold wasn’t copper—the resource had a lot more “HP.” Ros also had a good-for-nothing pickaxe that wasn’t particularly suited to high-level resource production. Additionally, he had minimized his Attack for easier leveling of the stat and subsequent redistribution of the points among stats more useful for a mage. All of the above affected the mining speed—the vein took him almost ten minutes of continuous tapping.
“Lump of low-grade gold ore. Weight: 1.02 kg. Metal content: 0.68%.”
Ros placed the first trophy in the bag and scurried along to find the next. He needed nine more, and he didn’t want to go hungry. When losing health due to hunger, you couldn’t restore it with healing spells. Only high-level healers could do it, and that capacity was limited, too—you still needed a proper meal afterwards, and the sooner, the better. Also, if you went without food for a long time, your mana and Vigor stopped regenerating. Ros didn’t plan on laying about for a month and occasionally dying from starvation.
Half an hour later, just after getting his second lump of ore, he was about to keep moving when he got attacked by a macabre-looking creature that fell onto his head from the wall of the cavern. It looked like a spider, but instead of legs it had six furry arms with long and thin fingers tipped with razor-sharp talons.
Ros lost half his HP trying to break the creature’s grip, and suffered a Bleeding effect in the process. Running off to the side, he dispelled the debuff, and then cast Sleep at the rapidly approaching mob. Despite his high Intellect, the spell didn’t
take.
He really missed the staff. Even the most primitive kind would significantly raise the chance of using a magic skill successfully.
Entangling Roots worked—the mob became immobile just a few steps away from Ros, desperately trying to jerk itself free.
The rrokh unleashed a Chaos Arrow, followed by another one.
“You hit the unidentified creature for 183 damage.” “You hit the unidentified creature for 202 damage.”
The mob pulled itself free, leaped, and hit him with four of its paws at once.
“The unknown creature hits you for 389 damage.”
Ros hurried to heal himself, and then again. The critter puffed itself up and gave a piercing whistle that made his legs stop moving. The spider with hands for feet then jumped up and started spinning like a top, its talons tearing through Ros’ body like a chainsaw.
The skill didn’t deal that much damage by itself, but it had a very high attack speed, and Ros couldn’t get away since he couldn’t move.
“The unknown creature hits you for 143 damage.” “The unknown creature hits you for 156 damage.” “The unknown creature hits you for 139 damage.” “Critical damage sustained: you are bleeding. You are losing hit points rapidly.” “The unknown creature hits you for 158 damage.”
Everything went dark before his eyes, and Ros fell into a well-familiar darkness.
* * *
“The unknown creature kills you. XP lost: 10.1% of the current value. Attention! Use scrolls and skills that lower the loss of experience upon death, or have players with high-level resurrecting skills help you. Attention! Another death may result in the loss of a level! You are resurrected at your current bind point: Locked Lands, Granite Wall Ridge, Rotten Canyon Mine. Current owner: Agythric’s Gang. There is high likelihood of aggressive actions from monsters and players. It is not recommended to place your bind points in dangerous zones.”
This wasn’t the first time Ros was reading this rather unpleasant message, and it was barely noon. His loss of XP resulted in a level loss, dropping him back to 44. This was less annoying than the low production rate—he’d only amassed five lumps thus far—and the fact that he still couldn’t get in touch with Digits.
But the worst thing was that he didn’t see any way out of his predicament. The local mobs were too strong, killing him before he could take off so much as ten percent of their HP. That was without Chaos Aura, which could further reduce the opponent’s HP by as much, but only once per battle. He couldn’t summon any pets—that would require a soul crystal, and those had been confiscated along with the rest of his stuff. And scoring a new crystal was impossible, for it would require not Ros’ death, but that of his enemies.
He wasn’t just a “rag” now—he was a naked rag without any protection, utterly helpless.
What was it that Digits had said? Something about Ros’ souped-up stats being sufficient to easily dispense with mobs in the 100+ level range even without decent gear. But who could have predicted that his character would be facing such monsters completely naked? Even stats were rendered largely useless in such a case, only really preventing him from being one-shot. The difference in levels also amplified incoming damage while reducing his damage output and critical hit probability. Even if the latter effect wasn’t all that manifest, it would be felt when the difference was substantial enough.
Ros was even worse than a rag. He was less than zero against such foes.
His morbid thoughts overwhelmed him. Sitting down onto one of the flat stones near the bind point, he opened the forum. He could only register under his character’s current name, so Ros couldn’t disguise himself—he had to log on as Tarros4.
He used the search option to find an old thread where Digits warned him of danger—he didn’t trust his memory to input his complex name correctly—and sent him a private message.
“Did you hear about the events in Rallia? I got lucky as usual—right in the thick of it all. I’m more or less alive and well, working as a slave in a mine. You need three hundred lumps of ore to get out. You can also pay them off or stay here until the end of the term. It’s hard to mine for ore, paying ransom would be a waste of money—which I don’t have, anyway—and the slaver mobs won’t take my word for it. The term is one month, and I’d prefer not to waste that much time. Escape is a non-option—there’s just a single exit that leads through a narrow canyon with several walls guarded by high-level mobs. So, yeah, I’m amazed at just how ‘lucky’ I am.”
As Ros re-entered the game, he was about to get up and head into the mine for yet another inglorious death. But then a strange noise made him stop—something he’d never heard here before. Someone was crying nearby—bawling loudly and desperately.
He turned around and saw something strange—the resurrection circle was filled with bodies of logged-off players, and there was a girl crouching among them, crying out loud while covering her face with her hands.
He’d have to be an odd egg to ignore something like that.
“What happened?” he addressed her.
The girl gave a jerk, turned around, looked at him with her hands still covering her face, and sobbed.
“Why didn’t you leave?”
“Leave where?”
“Well… All of them… Would you just look? They all logged off. Abandoned their characters. They no longer go down into the mine.”
“Well, what do I have to do with it? Why would I leave?”
“What would you do here? Only dwarves can mine for ore. They get killed, but they still go and try. They don’t mind losing XP—they’re all either level zero or level 10. But for the rest of us, there’s no point—the local mobs will slaughter you a dozen times a day. I got killed three times, and I haven’t found a single lump of ore. So, why bother going on?”
“Is that why you’re crying?”
The girl nodded slightly, then took her hands from her tear-stained face, and explained:
“I lost a level. And I’ve just gotten equipped correspondingly. I won’t be able to wear my gear even when they give it back—the penalties for my class are way too high. Leveling with no equipment is just out of the question—I’m only level 93, after all…”
“You can find something cheap for a while.”
“I haven’t got a penny left. I invested everything into my character. Nothing at all. And I cannot afford to lose a month. I had plans—I cannot just sit around like this.”
Ros felt a strange feeling looking at the girl. It was as if he’d seen her like before. Then he nearly slapped himself on the forehead—how could he have been so blind?
She was lean—but not scrawny, as one might think at first glance, for the rags dispensed by the mobs wouldn’t flatter the most attractive figure. Her hands were slender, with narrow palms. She had porcelain-colored skin and a delicate neck, but the overall effect was one of harmony and balance. The face was like everything else: delicate features, a small mouth and a tiny nose, with green eyes that were a little larger than normal. She looked more confused than sad, though that could hardly be considered a flaw. Also, the symbol next to her name testified to her appearance being based on her real-life looks, and one couldn’t make major changes to one’s features, but only minor tweaks, such as hairstyle. Her auburn hair reached all the way down to her waist—Ros doubted she had them as long in real life.
She was a flighting. They were a peculiar race with many drawbacks, and had to rely completely on others. Incapable of learning any powerful combat skills, and boasting no racial bonuses to combat. But they did have something else. These dainty creatures made excellent healers and even better buffers—the best the game could offer.
Anyone planning a serious raid couldn’t do better than have a flighting on their team. A flighting’s support could boost the strength of fighters enough to make a party with cheap equipment nearly equal in strength to a similar party clad in epic and legendary items. A few waves of the hand, and a fighter wearing five thousand gold pieces’ worth
of equipment became the equivalent of one who’d invested fifty thousand into their character. The effect was temporary, needless to say, but pretty great just the same. The only hitch was that few players wanted to play a character so completely lacking in autonomy. Besides, what was the fun in that? Spending all your time healing and buffing others, without shedding your foe’s blood once?
For these reasons, the race was very particular—and unpopular. There were few flightings in the game, and they were usually clan-sanctioned; the clan would then help them level.
So that was who she reminded him of—a recent version of himself disguised so well even his mother would never recognize him.
That was when he noticed her name: Danger Babe.
It was in Russian, Cyrillic script and all.
“Hey, Danger Babe, are you Russian?”