by Arthur Stone
“It’s worth something, and I’m not exactly demanding its weight in gold. Just think about it.”
“We’ll work something out—just get me enough meat. I need a lot to level up.”
“When should I come back to get this batch?”
“Are you in a hurry?”
“Not particularly.”
“Two hours good enough?”
“Absolutely.”
“OK, as long as you don’t bother me any earlier.”
Ros turned around and started toward the black maw of the mine tunnel.
* * *
Pup fiddled with the crystal for a while and shook his head.
“This quartz crystal is low-quality. It’s worth something, but it won’t make you rich. You’ll be lucky if you get a silver coin or two for all these crystals.”
“I see. Look, Pup, I had rats drop a bronze bracelet and a silver hairpin today.”
“Is the hairpin big?”
“Very little.”
“Sure. They’re rats, after all.”
“What’s wrong with rats?”
“They’re small mobs. Critters drop items for a reason—it’s presumed they ate a hero at some point, and something from the hero’s inventory ended up in their stomachs. It isn’t necessary for a mob to actually eat someone, but what kind of hero gets eaten by noob mobs like rats, anyway? That’s right, a noob of the same level. That’s why they drop all kinds of cheap junk.”
“You said they can drop good stuff too in theory?”
“Well, in theory they can discover the body of a high-level hero and gobble it up with all the valuable little things they carry, but you don’t see such bodies left and right. They usually fall to high-level monsters, and it’s the bosses that you have to kill for their loot. You’ll never receive any item drops from deer, roebucks and the like. They’re vegetarian and don’t eat any meat. That’s one of the game’s principles.”
“I’ve got some meat for you, Pup.”
“Wow! Well-cooked! It even gives you a buff—neat!”
“A buff?”
“Take a look yourself.”
“Roast Rat Meat with Spices. Tender, very nutritious, with a pleasant taste. Effects: restores 30 Vigor over one minute; restores 20 HP over one minute; raises your Strength by 1 for an hour. To experience the full set of effects, do not consume more often than once an hour.”
“Neat is the word…”
“How did you manage to cook this?”
“Wasn’t me. Some orc at the furnace saw me cook the meat and offered his help. Not quite help—he’s trying to level up his Cooking skill. But it suits me just fine—I don’t have to waste my time cooking. It’s not that easy to cook meat this good, I assume?”
“Your Cooking skill has to be 2 or higher. I don’t know for sure—never tried it myself. But with your zero-level culinary skills you won’t manage cooking anything remotely as good as this, so it’s a great arrangement.”
“There’s another thing I wanted to ask. It’s my fifth day in the mine, but today was the first time I saw quartz crystals—three times, no less. Also, I have killed a bunch of rats before, but they only dropped a single ring once, whereas today I got a copper bracelet and a silver hairpin.”
“Is the bracelet enchanted?”
“No, just a regular bracelet. Am I just lucky today, or is there something I’m missing?”
“Hm… Well… It could be luck. But are you sure nothing unusual happened to you yesterday? Some non-primary stat raised, perhaps?”
Ros decided not to spill all the beans at once, and divulged only a part of the truth:
“Actually, I had my Luck raised by two yesterday. Could that be the reason I’ve been so lucky?”
“How exactly did you manage to raise it by two?”
“Sorry, Pup—you have your own secrets, and I have mine.”
“Not a problem. Was anything else raised?”
“Nothing special—only Strength, Intellect, and Mining & Quarrying.”
“How the hell did you manage to level up Intellect?!”
“Look, Pup…”
“I know, I know—it’s a secret. Must be some skill of yours. Keep working on it—everything that can be leveled up, should be. The more different stats your character has, the more valuable you become.”
“So what do you say about today’s luck?”
“What’s your Mining & Quarrying at?”
“Two points.”
“Intellect?”
“Three.”
“Perception?”
“Two.”
“Arcane Knowledge?”
“One.”
“Two points of Luck?”
“Nope, four…”
“I say…” Pup made a surprised face. “What about the Essence of Things and Reason?”
“One and two, respectively.”
“Well, let me tell you something, Ros—you’re the weirdest noob I’ve ever seen.”
“That sounds almost like a compliment.”
“It sure is. I’ve been suspecting something since you started killing rats on your first day. It’s not so hard for us workers, but we need to level up our stats a bit before we can do it, and you were a big fat zero. Either you have skills IRL, which can also come in handy here, or perhaps your skills are combined with the right kind of stats. The latter is more likely to be true—mining is hard enough for you, but you manage hunting perfectly well.”
“Could you please explain? I didn’t understand anything.”
“Crystal is easy to explain—with your Luck and Perception it’s much easier for you to spot a cluster of gems than it is for me. The only way for me to notice it is to have it under my very nose, and I’d have to know where they can be found the most frequently. For example, the intersections of veins, or the spots where they expand or merge with other minerals, or in areas where there are many cavities in the rock. And you can spot them just as you pass by. Also, your Arcane Knowledge, Reason, and Essence of Things all have non-zero values. Their influence isn’t that big, but they still have their effect. Intellect must give a good bonus to Perception, Arcane Knowledge, and Reason—probably, the Essence of Things as well. Absolutely every stat is part of a system that remains a great mystery to this day. Every change will affect something somehow. A character isn’t just a set of digits—all those digits form a system. Everything affects everything and is affected by everything, so it’s best to level up everything you can. Your Mining & Quarrying and Intellect have grown, and you can now spot gems. Once you level up some other stat, you’ll gain some other skill.”
“I don’t see any such relations mentioned in the stat descriptions.”
“And you won’t. They’re very brief, and they can contain errors, too. I’m telling you—no one has full knowledge of the subject, and that’s what’s cool about the game.”
“OK, quartz I understand. But what about the items dropped by rats?”
“That’s easy: the higher your Luck, the higher your chances of scoring extra loot. Intellect, Reason, and the Essence of Things boost it rather nicely, too. You’ve raised your Luck by two, and your Intellect by one, and now you can see the results.”
“The results aren’t much to boast about so far…”
“Well, you won’t be getting junk all the time. You’ll get a good haul soon enough. I’m actually a bit envious. It’s excruciatingly hard to level up Luck—even four points are deemed a good result. Some reach their hundredth level with their Luck at three or less. It’s easier to raise it by using the undistributed points you get every ten levels.”
“What exactly makes you envious? The fact that you didn’t bungle your stats like I did?”
“Nah… I just said that without thinking. We are simple miners, and ore is the main thing we care for. That’s why we dump all our secondary points into Carrying Capacity and Speed. That way we can fit more into our bags, and get to the cart and back quicker.”
“I would have pr
obably done the same if I knew stat redistribution was so hard. I had assumed I’d be able to rearrange them optimally later on.”
“That’s pretty typical of total noobs—don’t take it the wrong way.”
“Oh, I’m used to it now.”
“Time to get to work. How much do I owe you?”
“Nothing. I’m the one who owes you for the knife.”
“Oh, come on—it costs a few pennies at best. But I have a Strength buff courtesy of you now. The exchange is unequal.”
“How about I keep asking you questions?”
“Oh no!” the dwarf feigned terror at the suggestion. “I’d rather pay in gold! If a noob of your caliber is given free rein, I’ll spend days answering your questions!”
Chapter 15
“You hit the Mine Rat for 9 damage. The Mine Rat hits you for 5 damage. You kill the Mine Rat. XP received: 12. Points left until the next level: unknown.”
Ros took a breath and winced at the pain from the bite in his leg—the beast was pretty big, and the victory wasn’t quite flawless. He healed his summoned rat, then proceeded to scold it:
“Had you grabbed it by the paw, it wouldn’t have turned around to face me. I lost half my HP because of you, dummy.”
Actually, Ros had slipped when the mob attacked, exposing himself to the damage, but it always felt nice being able to blame others for your blunders. Especially when the someone in question couldn’t so much as glare at you in response, but simply kept staring into nothingness with dull eyes reflecting nothing.
Anyway, self-pity was pointless. And the pain wasn’t even that bad. His trousers, however, were losing more and more of their durability, though his Stamina grew each time he sustained damage and restored his HP subsequently. Ros had already managed to raise it by one, adding nine HP points. He would be a little harder to kill now.
It was his sixth day underground. Well, actually, he had spent some of his time above ground—each night he would emerge into the crater and climb into a grotto found in the slope. It was chilly, but bearable. He could, of course, come all the way up into the settlement—ten extra minutes of walking weren’t that critical. But for him it was a matter of principle to make some serious headway before seeing Greedie again.
So far, however, nothing really qualified as serious headway. His average daily copper ore production didn’t exceed a hundred and thirty lumps. He could probably harvest a hundred and fifty or more by now, but he’d have to stop hunting to accomplish that. And it was hunting that he had the highest hopes for. He knew that loot from rats was cheap, but it didn’t weigh much, either, nor was it bulky. He had hundreds of fangs already, and they all fit into a single slot of his bag perfectly well.
He’d reach the town with substantially higher stats once his contract expired. He could sell his hoard of prizes there and try to invest the profits into items that raised stats. Then he could start looking for a decent clan offering better employment terms. Or he could arrange it with his attorney to purchase an expanded account for a month, level up to ten or more, and then resume work.
The rat was not of the usual sort—it had something uncommon among the standard loot.
“Silver Bell with a Bronze Chain. An amusing trinket traditionally given by the men of the Western Plains to pretty girls as a token of admiration.”
Ros had serious doubts that a pretty girl’s heart would melt at the sight of a creature like a rrokh even if he gave her a ton of such trinkets. But he picked up the trophy, anyway—silver was worth money, as well as bronze.
He heard a suspicious noise behind him. Ros jumped away from the rat carcass, turning around and raising his pickaxe overhead, ready to strike. The time spent underground had been of some use. He had died more times than he could count on his first day like the worst kind of noob; over the last few days, however, no rat had gotten through to him. He wouldn’t wait for the tougher monsters to appear, retreating before they crawled out and working on his Cooking skill, which he’d eventually leveled to one after wasting a whole lot of meat, much to the chagrin of the orc.
“Shoto! You almost gave me a heart attack! What are you doing here?!”
“What else could I be doing here other than waiting for you?” replied the orc. Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. I’m leveling up my Sneak skill, so it’s become a habit of mine to move without a sound.”
“Why did you want to find me?”
The greenskin didn’t answer. He got closer, taking a seat next to the zombie rat, and shook his head.
“So you’re a necromancer. That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“I was just wondering how a level zero noob manages to kill so many rats. I’ll be up to my ears in meat soon enough, thanks to your efforts. So that’s the answer: your familiar is helping you.”
“Familiar?”
“A pet. A creature you can ride, or one that fights for you, is called a familiar, or just a pet. You’re a total noob, evidently?”
“Worse than total, as a matter of fact.”
“This is the first time I’m seeing a worker with the skills of a necro.”
“They don’t help my work much.”
“I hear you… As for me, I don’t care who helps you hunt. Some NPCs get their panties in a bunch when they see animated corpses, so you should stay away from them if your pets are around, but players don’t care. So, yeah, the reason I wanted to find you. The meat we supply is becoming popular. Every batch I cook is gone in an instant, and there are more and more potential customers every day. I keep the prices low, and no one here has much money, anyway, but a bonus to Strength is useful to everyone; besides, the meat boosts your Vigor real nice, too. Once I raise my Cooking skill a bit, the bonuses will be even bigger. So, we have discussed it with the guys, and here’s the offer: why don’t you stop bothering with the ore? The miners will give you two hundred lumps per day in exchange for meat—and the coins, of course.”
“I need to level up Mining & Quarrying, too.”
“A dwarf I know told me you’re also good at finding gems. Just focus on killing rats, and look for gems in the meantime. A cluster of quartz crystals will give you as much XP as twenty lumps of ore, maybe more. So it will your purpose better if you want to level up.”
“In that case, the offer is indeed of some merit. But how much money will it earn me?”
“Well, you do understand I’ll have to take care of the sales—and someone has to spend time cooking the stuff. There’s no reason for me to rip you off, so how about we make it two hundred lumps of ore and a silver coin in its copper equivalent. Deal?”
“Ten silver coins, and in proper silver coinage.”
“Whoa! Man, that’s a lot! I won’t even try to bargain with you—you charge too much!”
“How many miners are there in the mine?”
“A little under three hundred dwarves with pickaxes, around two dozen mules, and around twenty working the furnaces. But the dwarves are the only regular customers, the rest want something nicer for their palates.”
“And all the dwarves like your meat?”
“Who wouldn’t? It’s cheap, it’s tasty, and it’s good for you.”
“How much do you charge for a single piece?”
“Two coppers a portion.”
“So around fifteen coppers from a single worker daily at least, right?”
“Yeah, around that much.”
“A copper is what is known as an Imperial bronze cent, right?”
“Yup.”
“Inasmuch as I understand, a silver coin is an Imperial silver doubloon. It is worth one hundred cents.”
“You’re absolutely right.”
“So we have four and a half thousand cents per day potentially, right?”
“Minus your ore—that will eat up about one half.”
“OK. Let’s say we’re left with two thousand—that’s twenty silver pieces. I take half, the rest is yours. You might manage to make more, but that’s up
to you. Just don’t get cheeky. I end up doing all the dangerous work hunting bloodthirsty monsters, while you stay near the warm furnace and level up your favorite Cooking skill. Admit it, what I’m offering is fair.”
“It would be if I were selling meat to all the dwarves in the mine. But the fact is, only around half of the miners are buying on a regular basis.”
“OK, so you can pay me five silver pieces. For now.”