Just like that, I was on the road. Really, the more I thought about it, the odder it seemed that as I leveled up there were more paths that I noticed were open and more areas to explore. Like, how had I missed the very obvious road? It sort of felt odd, like finding a door in your house you didn’t know about before. This was clearly a throwback to old school video games. Fez and Argyle assured me that eventually it would be a more open world after level 15. In the mean time, it was a trip to realize that there was a 10 foot wide road I hadn’t noticed before.
In fact, past the field where the Silverberries grew I found a crossroad with a sign pointing in a number of directions with level recommendations. Abandoned Mine: level 3-10. Mountain Peak: level 8-14. Haunted Graveyard: level 10-22 . Forbidden Forest: level 17-25. Elven City of Sequoia: level 20-30. Well, as much leveling as I had done over the past couple of days I was still only level six, so I decided to stick to the recommendation and go to the Abandoned Mine. “Hey, Fez, what are the odds that the Abandoned Mine is as oversaturated as the Silverberry glade?”
“Well, I'd say it really depends. You know that noobie area is supposed to have a whole bunch of people in and out of it every single day. As you level up, it's supposed to be fewer and fewer people going into different areas. But some areas are meant to be spots to gather materials for crafting. Those spots have fewer overall creatures and slower respawn times, but a random chance to call a wave of mobs if you make to much noise. I'd say there's still a pretty high likelihood that the area is going to be pretty full, but probably not as oversaturated as that first area, and if you can clear a bit, it may be a while before creatures respawn.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“No, but of course I'm not currently an admin. So, until I get admin powers again, I won't be able to tell you and even if I was an admin in this moment, I wouldn't be able to tell you directly. I just sort of, you know, hint vaguely or nudge a few numbers here and there. Rreally, admin powers limit my ability to communicate directly to you.”
“All right. Well, that makes me feel a lot better.”
“Glad I could help.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
“Oh, well, you sounded genuine.”
“You are really bad at reading human emotion, aren't you?”
“I am insulted by your insinuation. I am an advanced AI with GPP features. I can read and display all kinds of human emotion relevant to my task.“
“Your task of making and selling hats.”
“That's right.”
"Does sarcasm fit into that?”
“Sometimes, not always. Some people wear hats ironically, and those tiny clip on lady hats can be very sarcastic.”
“Riiiight.”
We continued on like that. Somehow, I had a sense of travel and moving through the environment, of time spent, but no real sense of what I had actually seen on the road. Maybe it was five minutes maybe an hour. Then, before I really could register how long I had been traveling, “Ah, here we are. The Abandoned Mine,” Fez announced.
“That was fast.”
“Yeah, the game plays with the time dilation for long travel. People want to adventure, not walk through the idealic scenery.”
I couldn’t argue; clearly I had had enough of redwoods, and gave it up to come here.
An ancient wooden archway was set into the gray stone of the mountainside. A rusted, flickering lamp, running on its last drops of lamp oil, swayed, creaking back and forth in the cave beyond. Cobwebs caked in a century of dust filled the corners. A smell of damp earth and stale air filled my nostrils.
“This looks like the place,” said Fez.
“Yeah, looks like its too late to turn back now.”
“Nah, it's never too late. We could just go back and make hats all day.”
“Yep, way to late. I'm going in.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I'm sure.” Using my trusty stick, I gently snagged the ancient lamp from over the door. Holding it in front of me, I set off down the mineshaft.
At first, everything seemed simple and straightforward. The mineshaft would branch occasionally. I would follow it to the left or to the right. Everything seemed fine... until the floor beneath my feet started to sink and bulge downwards. It collapsed and I fell.
“You have fallen into a pit trap. You have suffered 42 damage due to falling.”
“Ouch,” I said, picking myself up off the floor. That fall would have killed me yesterday. As it was, I was still over half full on health. I brushed off the dirt and looked up. I could see hand and foot holds leading up and out of the pit. “That's convenient,” I thought. “Now all I need to do is climb up out of here and I’ll be good to go.”
My head had barely poked above the lip of the pit trap when I saw a dozen tiny red eyes in the darkness. I heard the squeaking of tiny critters and the gnashing of tiny teeth. “Oh crap,” I said, pulling myself out more quickly. I had barely pulled my hips above the line of the hole before the first one nipped at my fingers with its pointy needle-like teeth.
“You have been bitten by Mine Rat. You have taken 16 damage from Mine Rat.”
“How does this game make money when it causes so much pain?”
The worst part was that it made me pull my hand away from the top of the pit. For a long moment I hung there, teetering on the edge. One lone butt cheek was all that prevented me from falling back down.
“You have been bitten by Mine Rat. You have taken 18 damage from Mine Rat.”
The sharp pain made me jump back... and right back down the pit trap.
“You have fallen into a pit trap. You have suffered 31 damage due to falling.”
Just like that, I was on death's door. My circlet would have been perfect right now. Too bad it had been single use. I turned my eyes upward. I could see a few hairy little noses poking over the lip of the pit. “This is not good.” I thought. “This is not good.”
I took a long minute staring up, looking at the handholds and footholds. Looking around at the walls of the pit,I realized three of the walls were identical and that the one with the handholds was the only one even remotely different.
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“Yeah, what's your point?”
“My point is,” I said, pointing at the handholds, “that wall is the only one with any real detail. The other three... well, they're just not that detailed.”
“All right. I'm not really following you, but go on.”
There was something nagging in the back of my brain. Something about looking for what was filled in and what was left empty. I could almost feel a memory pressing into my mind. A memory of the old man explaining. The system was told to create detail and it would create a lot of detail, but the spaces it thought it could ignore were... something. I couldn't remember exactly what, but I knew whatever it was, was important.
“Come on, come on. Don't think game terms, try to see through what they want you to see.” The thought in my head seemed slippery. Like the harder I tried to hold on to the idea, the harder it would slip from my grasp.
I felt my senses sharpening and my focus narrowing on those five little hairy noses poking over the edge of the pit. I looked down and around and saw exactly what I needed at my feet. Dozens of rough little pebbles. Almost, but not quite, the exact size of a golf ball. “That's it! I know what to do.”
With a pebble in one hand and my trusty stick in the other I set my sights on my goal. I licked my left finger and held it up to test the wind. I judged the distance. Picked a target and placed the pebble carefully on the ground. Rotating my torso I swung at the pebble for all I was worth.
“Fore!” With a mighty crack, my stick connected with the pebble, which launched upwards in a high arc, straight towards the hairy little nose and needle teeth of one of those damn rats.
I would like to tell you that it connected directly with that pink little nose, but that really wouldn't be true. In reality, it smashed into the side of the pit and ricocheted off, sending a spray of sand and grit which sprayed upwards causing the insidious little rodents to back up. Unfortunately, the same spray of gravel fell back into the pit. I raised my arms to cover my face. “That was almost a good idea.”
“You have done 2 damage to Mine Rat with improvised stone. You have done 2 damage to Mine Rat with improvised stone.”
Apparently, a chaotically bouncing not-quite-golfball can still do some damage. When I next looked back up, all of the little rat noses had pulled away from the lip of the pit. Aiming higher, I launched another pebble this time at the ceiling.
“You have done 1 damage to Mine Rat with improvised stone. You have done 2 damage to Mine Rat with improvised stone. You have done 1 damage to Mine Rat with improvised stone.”
“Well, I can't do a decent amount of damage, but at least I can scare them back.” With a jump and a heave, I started pulling myself up the obvious, system-designated climbing wall. I pulled myself over the pits edge just in time to see another furry little murder machine scurrying towards me. In desperation, I rolled up to my feet and swung my stick in a wide arc. I felt it connect with the rat, launching it far and away.
“You have done 32 damage to Mine Rat.”
The next one came and I was ready for it.
“You have done 29 damage to Mine Rat.”
“This is working, This is working!” It was working… until it wasn't working. I swung wide and the next rat lept past my swing. Before I could correct, it was already biting into my calf muscle. Red hot pain spread throughout my leg and I fell backwards.Tthankfully I had just enough presence of mind to push myself to the right and I fell on my side, just barely missing the edge of the pit.
I kicked with my good leg towards the infernal rat clamped onto my leg, and knocked it down into the pit that I had just escaped.
“You have kicked Mine Rat for 5 damage. Mine Rat has fallen for 15 damage.” I didn't get any notifications that it was dead, but at least it was far enough away that I didn't have to think about it for the moment.
Once again, I got myself clumsily to my feet, only to see three sets of eyes and three twitchy little noses staring back at me.
“Oh, bother.” Once more hefting the club above my head, I looked at the three rats. I looked at my HP bar flashing in the corner of my vision. “I miss my HP regeneration, why did that have to be a one time use effect?”
I knew what I had to do. I saw them edging closer. I thought I had their pattern down. I waited for the exact moment before they would pounce. I looked back and I launched myself over the pit. Three rats jumped after me, But they did not have my skill in jumping. Just like that, 1, 2, 3 rats fell down into the pit. Now, four out of five rats were squeaking up at me from the bottom of the pit trap, and rat number five couldn't get to me anymore. I tried to stand up and my tender calf rolled underneath me. “Why couldn't you have picked up a Healing Skill? Wait a second, Fez are you high enough level to heal me yet?”
“Oh, is that what I'm supposed to be doing? I was just thinking about how neat it would be to have one of those miner hats with a flashlight on front.”
“Yes, that's what you're supposed to be doing. Anytime I lose more than half my health, just heal me.”
“Okay, if you say so boss.”
My HP bar jumped up to just below halfway, and then again to nearly full.
“Great,” I said. “Just great. Here I am, first encounter and I almost died. Well, at least I got experience.”
“Buddy, you didn't get any experience for that.”
“What?”
“You didn’t actually kill anything, you just, you know, knocked them around. They're still all, you know, alive.”
I sighed. “All right.” Taking another stone from off the floor, I set it in front of me and took careful aim. “It'll be like shooting fish in a barrel.” Clearly, whoever created the expression 'like shooting fish in a barrel', had never tried to golf violently at energetic rats at the bottom of a 10 foot pit. I would not recommend it. It took the better part of 10 minutes. The 10 experience points each, however was totally worth it.
Yep, totally worth it. No regrets. Okay, some regrets. It was a waste of time. But, after all was said and done.
“Golf Skill +1. Your Golf Skill is now level 13. Improvise Tool Skill +1. Your Improvised Tool Skill is now level 3.”
“Well, that's something,” I said. “At least my Skills are leveling up.”
“I mean, it could be that it took you more than 30 tries to hit them. All that repetition was probably worth something.”
“Quiet, you.”
“And you know, you kind of look like a fool while doing it.”
“Quiet Fez.”
“I mean, it's not really the best way of grinding a Skill.”
“Fez, just let me have this. I am victorious. I won. It's over.”
“Yeah, sure. Sure. You keep telling yourself that.”
“I will, thank you.”
“Whatever suits your little meatbag brain.”
“Thank you. I am very suited.”
“You don't seem very suited. You seem more, kind of, I don't know, on edge.”
“Just let me have this.”
“All right. ALL right.” Just like that we were ready to move on. I decided to go slowly to give my health some time to recover. As I continued on, I moved slowly listening for tiny movements, looking at shadows, examining the walls for any sign of those needle-teeth nasties.
As I continued on, I started to notice something odd about the cave walls. “Yo, Fez. There's something different about this, yeah?”
“Maybe, take a closer look.”
I examined a particularly shiny orange and green patch on a wall.
“Copper Ore vein discovered. Skill Prospecting discovered. Prospecting Skill level 1: novice. You may now identify veins of ore and precious gems within stone and cave systems. Look at that rock. That rock, rocks!”
Looking at the new Skill, I was almost disappointed that I was only learning it at level 1 and not at level 10, like some of the Skills I had gained recently.
Well, I suppose I can't learn all of my Skills from a golf master selling hemorrhoid cream, but a new Skill was a new Skill. I just hoped I could hold on to this one. It would be a shame to die and lose it just after I discovered it.
“You know Boss, it's probably bad luck to say things like that.”
“I mean what could possibly go wrong?” The answer to that as I would soon learn was practically everything.
“You know, I bet you I could mine this,” I said to Fez, readying my stick and wiggling my hips like I was on the PGA tour.
“What are you doing?”
“Don't worry about it, this is gonna be awesome.”
“No, it's not.”
“What do you know?”
“Quite a lot actually.”
With one mighty swing, like a championship golfer about to knock a drive all the way down the fairway, I swung. In that moment, two things broke. The vein cracked, dislodging a piece of copper ore, and so did my trusty stick. It turns out, and I did not know this, durability was very important. I had not been checking the durability of my equipment.
“Oh crap,” I said. “Oh crap, oh crap.” The sound of wood on stone rang out like a dinner bell, calling all of the cave rodents to come and get a sample of noob tartare.
No sooner was the copper ore in my inventory, than dozens of Mine Rats surrounded me from every direction. No matter how valiant, the greatest golf legend in the world cannot defeat overwhelming numbers.
I woke up in my ultra plush bed, back in the inn
“You were killed by Mine Rat. You have died. You have lost experience towards your next level. Jack of all Trades class penalty in effect. You have lost 2 Skill levels. You have lost 2 Skill levels in Cooking.” It turns out, if you watch bacon being made every morning you pick up a thing or two, or five. “You are now at level 8 in Cooking.”
“Oh boy. I'm glad it's just Cooking and not something important.”
“I know,” said Fez. “You could have lost points in Haberdashery. That would have been terrible.”
Reflecting on my situation, I had to agree with him. If I had lost points in Haberdashery, that would put my plans with Argyle back days, if not weeks. Maybe solo adventuring with noob equipment wasn't quite that good of an idea.