by Arthur Stone
Excerpts from the interview given by Aaron Gray, the founding director of the Second World Corporation’s USA/Canada Sector, to the Gamer magazine.
Chapter 6
“The Great Armada guild reports that the player Aribrosten Docarabarus is a fraudster. He has terminated a contract unilaterally, escaping from an unguarded mine without handing in the ore. The breach of contract has been registered by the Cythrimon Miners’ Guild.”
“Acknowledged. Confirmed. Blacklisted by the Cartagena guild.”
The first two posts in one of the numerous threads of the Hispanic sector of the game forum.
“Tamsakhurdia Abushan is a thief. He took all the goods from a trolley on the second day of a month-long contract and split. If you want to confirm it, check with the NPCs at the Llasa Miners’ Guild. The Unforgiving.”
“He’s just a khach[7] with a name to match!”
“All of you are hopeless noobs!”
The first three posts in one of the numerous threads of the Russian sector of the game forum.
* * *
“Hey! You! Wake up!”
Ros blinked his eyes in confusion. Could he have fallen asleep? In this mercilessly bumpy cart, and with the gloomiest kind of thoughts in his head? And all of this inside the game?!
Well… It seemed that sleep was a basic necessity even here.
He got off the cart. Once his eyes adapted to the bright morning sun, he saw that he was standing on a patch of ground, tamped down to concrete hardness. There was a tall palisade made of thick logs in front of him, roughly twice human height. It completely blocked the entrance to a narrow gorge with vertical walls splitting an enormous rock in two. There was a single gate for entry, clad in strips of slightly rusty iron.
When he turned around, he saw the edge of a gloomy fir wood with a narrow dirt road leading to the gate—the one they took to get here.
“Hey!” shouted the driver—an elderly yet still sturdy geezer with a thin beard and a mighty belly. “Come out to meet your guest of honor! Have you all gone deaf?”
A head in a full steel helm emerged from behind the palisade and rumbled:
“Is that you, Taror? Why so early? Wandering through the woods at night, have you gone mad?”
“Duh, I joined a villager caravan, they know me well there. I got you this guy from the office, and I can take some of your stuff back if we reach an agreement.”
“Yeah, how much is your cart going to carry?”
“As much as it has to.”
“I know your tricks. And who would you be?”
“Me?” Ros pointed to himself.
“No, I was asking Taror’s horse. You’re not very bright, are you? On the other hand, we rarely ever get any other kind, so I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“I’m your new worker.”
“Well, ain’t I grateful to you for your explanation—I just mistook you for an emperor. You’re too late for breakfast, but not too late for work. Hey! Greedie! Get your ass off your perch already! We have a new worker! Come over, will you? You have a delivery: fresh meat!!!”
The latch banged loudly, and the gate opened with a creak. A broad-shouldered dwarf came out. Judging by the expression on his face, he had just eaten a bucketful of lemons without sugar, and Ros thought the two of them were probably unlikely to become friends.
His name was Greedius Knappy—didn’t look much like a work account. Instead of the “squiggle” he had a paunchy diamond, and another icon that looked like a spade sticking from a grave.
“Who are you?” asked the dwarf grumpily.
“My name is right there over my head, and I can’t pronounce it. You can call me Ros.”
“Call? You? You’ve got a big head on those shoulders, noob. So what do we have above that big and empty head of yours? Rostendrix Poterentax. Took you a while to come up with, didn’t it? All right, Ros it is.”
“I agree.”
“Did anyone ask for your agreement, you clown? Follow me and don’t lag behind.”
Another palisade stood a few dozen meters behind the first. This one was much higher, and they had to wait outside for a while before the gate could open. There were lots of interesting things behind. The gorge became much wider here, forming something like a volcanic crater with vertical walls. The climb uphill would be some two hundred meters from where they stood now—the bottom of the crater lay deep underground, and Ros couldn’t see it from here.
The space before the crater was filled with chaotically-placed log cabins, all of the same size. They looked like peasant cottages. A little further on there stood an unremarkable building with two pot-bellied smelting furnaces disgorging thick smoke right next to it. There were a few bare-chested figures fiddling with something next to them—orcs, judging by their build. No one else in the settlement seemed to be doing anything.
Ros took in all these details as they moved. Greedie walked in the direction opposite the furnaces without stopping for breaks. There was a circle of boulders with a short pole in the middle.
“Bind here,” the dwarf grumbled.
“Say what?”
“I said, bind to the respawn point.”
“Come again?”
“Are you a total noob?”
“Something like that.”
“What a day…I wonder where they find idiots like you? This is our respawn point, we should all be bound to it. Including you.”
“What for?”
“Squiggly, if you get squashed by a rock fall, where do you think you’ll end up once you’ve resurrected?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t died yet.”
“Aren’t you one lucky immortal? I’m amazed. OK, let me give you a few life lessons—free of charge, so far. If you get snuffed, you’ll reappear where you began the game. That was your first respawn point. So you’d have to cross forests and fields to get here, and the ever-ravenous wolves and other representatives of the local fauna and flora will doubtlessly gobble you up at some point. So you’ll have to walk again, and you’ll get eaten again. So who’s going to work while you keep feeding those fiends? Let me give you a hint: no one.”
“I get it. So I’ll be able to come back to life at this spot?”
“Well, you can choose another spot—right there at the crater, for instance, to respawn right over the drop, or perhaps you could find a privy and bind there. They’ll be happy to see your face everywhere.”
“How does one bind?”
“Approach the pole, touch it, and say out loud, ‘I want to make this my new respawn point.’ You might try doing it mentally, too—that usually works as well.”
Ros followed the instruction, and a system message flashed up before him:
“Would you like to make the present location your new respawn point?”
“Yes,” he answered out loud.
“Your current respawn point: miner settlement next to the Ravenas mine, in the Rallia Province. The current owner is the Sword Power guild. Attention: this is a dangerous zone. There is high likelihood of aggressive actions from monsters and players. It is not recommended to place your bind points in dangerous zones.”
“Are you done, or did you decide to pee on the pole as well?”
“Yeah, looks like it.”
“Follow me, then.”
Greedie took Ros to a nondescript log cabin and told him to wait by the door. He didn’t have to wait long—the dwarf reappeared in a few minutes with a bundle of rags and a pickaxe.
“Here you go, squiggly, and don’t forget to thank me.”
“Thank you. Now, what am I supposed to do with these?”
“You noobs sure are a test of one’s patience. Get these royal garments on instead of your rags. What you have now is for novices—a single sneeze in the mine will blow it to pieces. You should also get a hard hat—they’re under the awning over there. They’ve seen better days, but will do just fine for noobs like you. You have a bag and boots of your own. If any of them fall apart, we’ll deduct t
he cost of new ones from your pay. Also keep in mind that we don’t do advance payments. We serve meals in the morning and in the evening. You can only wash in the evening. If you’re a cleanliness freak, you can wash your face in the creek down in the crater. Got it? Now go to the mine—it’s down there in the crater as well.”
“I have some problems with my stats distribution.”
“They’re your problems, so you deal with them. I have enough of mine.”
“But your requirements?”
“Can you lift a pickaxe? If you can, we can use you. Don’t forget to take a token before you enter the mine. Since you’re a total noob, I’ll explain it to you: there’s a board on one of the walls with pieces of tin on wires hanging on it. You can pick any of those.”
“But I don’t know what to do there. I’m not a miner—I’ve never tried it.”
“Everyone tries something for the first time at some point. Don’t forget it—especially if you drop a bar of soap in the showers and then decide to pick it up.”
“Shouldn’t there be some sort of a briefing?”
“I’ve just finished it. Get into the mine. You won’t receive anything for today, since you won’t be properly registered until tomorrow evening, but you can keep whatever ore you manage to get in your bag for tomorrow. You can also learn from experienced miners—there are lots of them down there.”
Greedie grinned unpleasantly as he said that, and Ros got the suspicion that the professional level of the local miners may turn out to be somewhat lower than that of truly weathered workers.
Or, alternatively, they may refuse to teach him.
* * *
“Novice Miner’s Jacket. Workwear. Protects from underground dampness. Not a good choice of clothing for hot weather. Melee Defense: 2. Ranged Defense: 0. Magic Defense: 0. Workwear bonus: protects from being hit with rocks. Requirements: none. Weight: 1.34 kg. Durability: 17/40.”
Right, no surprises there—they gave him a bunch of old rags. What about the pickaxe?
“Novice Miner’s Pickaxe. Tool and crushing weapon. Damage: 1-2. Tool bonus: 2-4 to damage to rock. Requirements: none. Weight: 3.14 kg. Durability: 19/80.”
Not exactly a shiny new tool. Even without the description it was easy enough to see that the pickaxe would soon see its last hour. Lots of chips in the metal, rust stains, and cracks in the handle. What about his head protection?
“Novice Miner’s Hard Hat. Protective equipment. Protects from falling rocks, melee and ranged weapons. Weapons Defense: 3. Magic Defense: 0. Protective equipment bonus: defense from crushing weapons: 5; protection from rock strikes: 6. Requirements: none. Durability: 22/50.”
Now wasn’t that great? His head would be protected by a piece of junk—just like the rest of him.
Ros was a different person as he approached the crater. He may have been a noob before, but now he was one of the noob scum. Wearing an ill-fitting canvas jacket and incredibly shabby pants made of the same kind of fabric, a cracked hard hat of unidentifiable color on his head and a rusty pickaxe in his hands.
His career was surely taking off.
Chapter 7
A narrow path meandered toward the center of the crater. The orcs that kept coming up along it, pushing wooden carts on tiny wheels that glided along parallel grooves left in the stone, made it harder to navigate. Greenskins paid no more attention to Ros than they would to an empty space, and he kept flinging himself back against the tunnel walls in order to evade a collision.
It didn’t take him long to get to the bottom—it lay about a hundred meters below the surface, and the distance wasn’t long despite the road circling the crater a few times. Two more smoking furnaces stood at the flat bottom—their noxious smoke made Ros sneeze on the way down. He crossed the wooden bridge that led across a narrow creek, approached one of the bare-chested orcs working the furnaces, and asked politely:
“I’m new here. How do I find who’s in charge?”
“Come to my dorm tonight. I’ll tell you if you scratch my heels,” said the green gorilla eagerly.
His partner laughed out loud, and Ros realized he would hardly get any useful information here. He replied, as politely as he could:
“Thank you, I’ll think on your proposal.”
Both orcs started guffawing while Ros headed toward one of the numerous holes burrowing into the rock underneath the crater. The only reason he chose that one was that it was much bigger than the rest of them, and didn’t look abandoned. Also, it was the only one that kept disgorging carts from time to time. The greenskins must have been busy with the transportation, while the others took care of production. They were the ones Ros intended to join.
Inside it wasn’t any darker than at bright midday, despite his expectations. The tunnel burrowed deep into the mountain, and the torches hung on the walls at uneven intervals. He could see no more carts—all of them probably got left behind.
He did meet an orc where the first tunnel crossed another one. He sat near a wooden cart of the same sort, and didn’t pay any attention to Ros, who decided to refrain from addressing him, recollecting how the rest of his green-skinned kin treated him.
Ros cocked an ear and heard the sounds of iron striking rock at a distance. That must be where he should go.
The tunnel kept getting narrower and darker. There were fewer torches, and their light was dimmer. But that didn’t seem to matter to Ros, apparently as the result of Night Vision, his racial skill. Well, his choice might be good for something, after all.
The sounds kept getting louder, but their source remained in the distance. Ros was starting to think he’d never reach it when he got to an intersection with another tunnel—or, rather, a low and narrow burrow in the mountain. That was where the sounds were coming from. Ros took less than a hundred steps when he saw a dwarf underneath a single torch, hitting the rock furiously with his pickaxe.
“Hi, I’m new here. Could you please tell me what to do?”
“Buzz off, this spot is occupied,” said the dwarf gruffly, without pausing his work.
Ros started to suspect that the local dwarves were just as bad as the orcs, but he kept going—there seemed to be someone else there working the pickaxe. It wasn’t long before he found a torch with another bearded shorty sitting underneath. He appeared to be taking a nap.
“Good morning. I’m new. Could you please explain what one does here?”
The dwarf replied as gruffly as his kinsman:
“My, aren’t you ugly. You must be what my alkie dad was seeing before they took him to the funny farm. What race are you? I’ve never seen anyone like you, and I’ve seen a lot.”
“It’s rare.”
“Sure is. Would anyone become such a freak of their own volition? Are you a total noob?”
“I am,” Ros nodded.
“Well, don’t worry about it—you aren’t the first, and you won’t be the last. Did you get the token?”
“I did.”
“Did you hang it on your neck?”
“I did.”
“Zero Perception?”
“Two points.”
“What the hell? One point would have been more than enough.”
“Twenty-seven points of Agility, too.”
“You don’t say! Screwed up the stats, have you?”
“I have.”
“Happens all the time. Get a different character.”
“I can’t.”
“A promo account with a single choice option?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, wipe the character and choose a different plan with a better choice.”
“I can’t do that, either.”
“Well, aren’t you a lucky SOB… In that case, take your pickaxe and start digging for ore.”
“I wish I knew how…”
“It’s as easy as picking your nose. Walk through the tunnels and look at walls. One point of perception is enough to notice the areas where you can find ore. Not that you’ll have to search
much—this vein is enormous. Once you find a spot with ore, start hitting it with your pickaxe until a chunk falls out. Once your Vigor runs out, rest—that’s what I’m doing now. The fewer movements you make, the faster it regens[8].”
“All right, I’ll try.”
“Go on, there’s nothing hard about it. Any noob should be able to get the hang of things. You’ll learn as you keep going. I can give you a few tips if you need them. Once your bag is full, take it to the section of the mine with the carts. Dump the ore from your bag into one of the carts. In order to facilitate the process, just open the bag and then the cart’s window. Drag a piece of ore into the cart. You’ll be asked whether you want to transfer the piece of ore. Your answer should be, ‘Transfer all ore,’ whether out loud or mentally. Your bag will be emptied, and the token will record your submission. You’ll be able to see how much you submitted by the end of the day.”
“Thanks. You’re the first one to have explained something. Greedie didn’t bother much.”
“Sure. No one likes to talk here. And Greedie is a stinker of the highest order.”
“Why does everyone have the same voice?”
“Are you playing with full immersion?”
“I am.”
“No point in that—they definitely overcharge you.”
“Well, that’s how things are for me.”
“Most of us use 3D. It’s slower and less convenient, but you can direct a character toward the ore, press a key, and he keeps swinging his pickaxe at it until a chunk of ore falls out. The account is a bit cheaper, too. You need all your luck to earn anything at all in one of these Sword Power mines, so people try to save every coin. I used to play in 2D before, but the interface is so lagged these days it’s a torture to try to work. All right, now go—I’ll start swinging my pickaxe in a moment, and I won’t be able to talk while I’m at it.”
“I’m Ros, what’s your name?”
“It’s Pup. Get going already.”
Looking for ore turned out to be a bit harder than Pup had assured him. Ros kept staring at rock until his eyes hurt, but couldn’t see anything worthy of hitting with his pickaxe. He walked hundreds of steps and saw two more miners swinging away at the rock monotonously; this brought about the final conviction that he understood nothing. There should be ore here—yet, for some reason, there was none! Everyone seemed busy with their work—he was the only one wandering about like a blind idiot.