Three lamps plopped into my lap. I juggled them, nearly dropping the last one a second before it hit the ground. With three lamps in hand, I quickly selected health as the skill to put the lamps in, and the three lamps melted in my hands.
That seemed to have had the side effect of fully healing me, which was nice, and I now knew for certain how the lamps granted ten times the skill's level in experience per lamp. To get the most out of every lamp, using them on health, my highest leveled skill would be best. On the other hand, there didn't seem to be a good way to train defense at the moment.
Hmm...
Perhaps a more pressing concern was that I still didn’t know how to complete the chunk objectives. I settled into a cross-legged pose as the rat circled in the distance. It wasn't wandering far from its spawn, so I felt safe enough to close my eyes and focus inward.
As easily as breathing, my stats popped up. I glanced at them, but after a second, I dismissed the stat screen and focused deeper. Not on my stats or my body, but on that elusive image of the fading rat. The one the system had sent to me after it had gone silent.
It took several minutes, but slowly — ever so slowly — a thought coalesced. It was gentle and vague, as if unsure of itself. I didn’t know why this one was so much less aggressive than the other system messages from the system. Minutes passed, and a bead of sweat dripped down my temple.
The rat was the chunk objective. But not exactly. It wasn’t the rat itself, but rather its drops. I had received rat meat already, but there was a sense of incompleteness. A hole that I had yet to fill. If I understood correctly, the rat had another drop I hadn’t yet received from killing it. Wait! No. Two drops. Yes. I got the distinct impression that there were two additional items I needed to acquire.
My eyes snapped open as my goal coalesced. I abandoned my small loot pile and approached the rat. As I walked, I took the time to take my shirt and ball it up around my left hand to serve as a makeshift shield. The second I stepped within five tiles of the rat, it attacked. The battle was swift and brutal, but with my improvised shield to fend off the rabid creature, I managed to come out of the fight unscathed.
It dropped more rat meat, so I settled in to wait. A minute later, another rat spawned, and I got another rat meat upon its death. I set the pair of steaks aside, idly wondering whether it was edible or not before dealing with the next rat. This process repeated for another twenty-two kills before something new dropped.
I kneeled down and brushed aside the cool gel to reveal a long rat tail coiled up on top of some more rat meat. I picked it up and felt a small shift inside of me as the system acknowledged the accomplishment. I grinned. It was such a small thing, but after killing so many rats, it felt good to have made a step in the right direction.
Still with a smile on my face, I named the rat tail and put the experience lamp into health as I reviewed my stats.
Combat level:6 Health:14/14 Attack:8/8 Defense:1/1
Killing all the rats massively increased my attack with a smaller but distinct increase in health. My combat level had reached level 5, though the impression I got was that combat level didn't directly determine ability. My attack stat, however, did. With eight levels under my belt, I was able to defeat the rats in two to three hits each.
Every once in a while, they managed to sneak past my shirt and get a cheeky bite in, but I was still mostly healthy. Especially with the periodic health level-ups to fully heal me. If only I could figure out how to train defense properly, then I wouldn’t need the shirt at all.
There was one more item to collect, so I set the rat tail aside and settled in to grind.
After ten rats, I started piling their meat into neat piles to help me count my progress. After 30 more, I got another rat tail, but still nothing else. It seemed that the drop rates for some of the items were few and far between. By the time I had killed 60 rats, my combat stats had hit the point where I was routinely one-shotting the little critters with no hope of retaliation.
At 100 rats, I started to get worried. It had dropped another rat tail, which put the drop chance of that item on the order of 1 in 30. Maybe 1 in 32. That was a pleasing multiple of two and the likely drop chance, given the dimensions of the chunk. The problem, though, was that the last drop could be 1 in 128 or 1 in 256 or even higher. I could stay here for hours, and I might just get unlucky as I killed more and more rats.
By the 150th kill, I settled into a rhythm. Another rat tail dropped, and the whole process was becoming pretty zen. It gave me time to think. My stats were still rising, but much more slowly than the earlier levels. Given the gamelike nature of the system, it wasn't surprising that levels grew harder to acquire as they increased. How I had found myself in this sandbox, I didn’t know, but the more I delved into my memories, the more fragmented they turned out to be.
Home was a colorless place. Factories had darkened the sky with their smoke, and the general outlook on the news had been grim for as long as I could remember. The issue was I didn’t remember faces. I lived with someone. A guy. Tall. Blonde? Or...it was fuzzy. I remembered sitting on the couch. Sometimes with him, sometimes with others. Then there was work. I was trying to fix...a machine? Yes. I was working with a collaborative team to...do something. We were close. I remembered that, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember the details.
At the 200th rat kill, I took a break. I wandered over to the edge of the platform and looked down into the void with a great sigh. Something must have gone pretty wrong back home if I was here. Maybe I was in a coma and hallucinating all this, or maybe it was worse. Limbic system damage was likely, considering my fuzzy memories.
There was something peaceful about staring at the endless darkness like that. I risked sitting, carefully hanging my legs over the edge. My stomach clenched, but that only made me grin as I kicked freely over the void. It was exciting! Daring and risky. Something to get my heart pumping where the rat grind did not. There wasn't much I could do in this place, but I certainly could try my best to enjoy it while I was here.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
A tiny stab of pain shot up my leg from the back of my knee. I quickly recoiled and saw that the sharp edge of the ground had cut a tiny incision on the inside of my right knee. I frowned. The cut was so thin that barely any blood came out, and surprisingly, my health didn’t drop. It still hurt on the order of a tiny paper cut, so with a sigh, I returned to grinding out the rats.
The 246th rat melted, and I caught a brief glimpse of something brown within its melting form before I felt a great shift in my chest. I froze for a second. Then a huge grin split my face as I went to pull the item from the goo. Before I could, the world went black, and I was left floating in a void.
I floated. Confused, then annoyed, then frustrated, then angry. I screamed into the darkness. I wanted to know what the drop was! Dammit.
Eventually, I calmed down. Perhaps this was it. The little strange journey was over, and I would wake up back home. The void loomed, however, and I reached inward to my burgeoning sense of the system. Something was changing. My status blurred, gaining and losing skills before my eyes. Some were odd, or nameless, or mundane. Eventually, my skills resolved, and my vision opened back up with the familiar system message imploring me to complete all the chunk objectives.
It looked like I would stay in this game-like world for a little bit longer.
The trees were the first thing I noticed. The white expanse was back, but this time, dozens of trees sprouted randomly all over the chunk. They were young, no more than a handspan across, but towering above my head was a huge oak with a thick trunk I couldn’t wrap my arms around even if I tried. The rat spawned behind me, and I took care of it before jogging some distance away to prevent being attacked when it respawned moments later.
The chunk had changed drastically, but I was more curious about my status changes. A minute of watching the area around me warily showed that I was safe. At least for now. I pulled up my status to see what new skills had been added to this game.
Combat level:10 Health:19/19 Attack:26/26 Defense:1/1 Recovery:1/1 Woodcutting:1/1 Firemaking:1/1 Crafting:1/1 Mining:1/1 Smithing:1/1 Cooking:1/1
Wait a second...
The game had added a grand total of seven new skills without resetting my gains from the rat-killing grind. All except my combat level, which had dropped three whole levels for some indecipherable reason. I'd also been healed to full, though all my meager physical possessions had vanished during the transition. My clothes had also been reset, but not completely. My clothes had suffered immensely during the rat grind, with my shirt taking the majority of the abuse. The reset had healed most of the damage, even going so far as cleaning the stains in the fabric. The only exception was a single thin incision near the hem of the shirt, as if it was a stark reminder of the thousands of cuts the fabric had endured.
The message rippled across my surface thoughts, much softer and more pleasant than the previous incarnation of the game had done. With the reminder came a much longer list of vague thought-feelings that I had to focus to decipher. Unfortunately, convincing the system to speak English didn't help much.
The rest of the list was just as incomprehensible, requiring collecting, wielding, chopping, burning, crafting, mining, smithing, and cooking various other unidentifiable item IDs. The only identifiable objective was cooking rat meat, which was frustrating but also somehow gave me a tinge of excitement. I got the sense that there was a method to the madness of the list.
It wasn’t just random tasks but the true objectives of the chunk. This included but wasn't limited to acquiring all monster drops. Considering one of the skills was smithing, I likely had to acquire and process all available resources into the best in slot armor and weaponry. I would also bet that one of the chunk objectives was to cut down the great oak tree looming over spawn with my woodcutting skill. Firemaking implied I'd need to burn said logs.
It was exciting!
The objectives were hidden but gave me the sense I was exploring an unknown wilderness designed exactly for me. I had some rat meat, so my first goal would be to try and cook it while naming everything I came across to help resolve the list of requirements in my head.
I still wanted to figure out what the last drop from the rat was, but I could do that after I finished exploring the changes to the chunk.
The first and most obvious change was the introduction of the trees. Touching them popped up a warning message that I didn’t have a wieldable axe in my inventory. When I touched the large oak next to my spawn, I got an additional warning that I did not have the woodcutting level to chop it down.
I named the trees and the oak, granting me two experience lamps. Dumping the lamps into any of my new skills might be good, or I could throw them into defense or health as a safer option. There was also the off chance that I would have to lamp one of my skills or be effectively soft-locked with no way to progress. The game had been sort of consistent up until now, but I couldn’t help but remember that miserable first iteration with nothing to do but wait and die of heatstroke. To prevent such a situation from reoccurring, I tucked the lamps at the base of the oak tree for the future.
There was no obvious axe lying around, so I headed out. The chunk was relatively small, and within minutes, I stepped out of the treeline to what appeared to be a mining camp. The ground dipped, containing five rocky lumps arrayed in a rough circle. Three were colored an orangy copper color, while the other two were silver.
I approached one of the silver veined rocks and touched it.
I hummed to myself, refraining from naming the rock before I better understood what it was. That was the same warning I’d received when trying to chop one of the trees. I didn’t spot a pickaxe lying anywhere around, but as I scanned the area, I noticed a wooden house peeking through the trees.
I froze. My heart bounced in my chest. What if there were other people locked in here with me?
With a stuttering hop, I jogged over to the house. I slowed as I neared, my excitement fading. The house wasn’t so much a house as an open-sided shed. There were no people inside, but rather an unlit forge and one of those medieval anvil-type things you only saw in documentaries. A small hammer lay atop the anvil, and a small metal box sat beside the forge. When opened, it revealed a small pile of wood shavings, a silvery metal rod, and a black rock.
“It’s a tinderbox,” I murmured, suddenly realizing what the object was. The system pinged, and I idly caught the experience lamp as I recalled what I knew about the old-fashioned devices. To use it, I piled some of the wood shavings on top of the cold coals of the furnace and struck the flint with the steel rod.
Sparks cascaded onto the shavings, but my hand bumped into the pile. The shavings scattered before they caught. I recollected them and tried again. It took several attempts as I learned how to use the right amount of force and direction so that the cascade of sparks landed directly on the tinder.
The tinder caught, and I watched in fascination as the tiny flame danced across the shavings. I piled more shavings on top. When the flame had risen between the new fibers, I gently placed a couple of the coals onto the fire.
The system dinged as the coal caught. I quickly pulled on the bellows and then placed the rat meat onto the flames. Nothing seemed to happen for a second. Then two. Then, in an instant, the perfectly marbled steak charred, turning black and releasing a puff of black smoke right in my face.
I coughed, backing up as the fire died without my supervision. It looked like cooking would need some other kind of fire, or perhaps there was simply a probability of success associated with it. Either way, I was back to step one of needing an axe. I did have smithing as a skill, so there was a chance I could make an axe, but to do that, I would need to find a way to mine the ore back in the mining camp.
I made my way back, thinking through the problem that seemed circular in nature. Just to make sure, I touched the other silver-veined rock and got the same message as before: I needed a pickaxe to mine it. I then proceeded to the first copper-colored rock and touched it. To my surprise, the rock shifted, rising up to reveal a four-foot-tall golem made of stone.
“Uh,” I said, taking a step back as I gave the living pile of stone an awkward wave. “Hi?”