[Copper Piton] = Copper (Bar, 0.2-0.3kg) + [Hammer] (Copper) + [Workbench] (Any)
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Only a few seconds to make this work…
“Hiding will not save you!” Hyuk called out.
Jay kept the shack interposed between him and his enemies. He would have merely used [Leap] to buy himself time for this tactic, but with Viktor watching, he couldn’t afford to be seen with this ace up his sleeve.
Before the moment could be lost, Jay reached into his backpack and grabbed a fistful of pemmican. He gorged on the entire block of dried meat and fruit, absorbing his emergency supply in one swallow, followed by chasing it with potion to further boost his speed.
Hyuk reached the corner just as he finished… His enemy [Quickstepped], but Jay dodged from the follow-up [Slash] without breaking a sweat.
Jay dashed to the side and countered, easily cutting into his armor. Hyuk tried to [Parry], but his reflexes were so much slower now.
Another pair of [Slashes] knocked his opponent off-balance completely. An unskilled shove launched him backwards, shattering through Viktor’s crates.
Hyuk grit his teeth and lunged forth, but Jay slipped into his flank without missing a beat.
It didn’t matter which of the two was the better swordsman. Jay had used his pemmican filled with D-Rank monster meat to boost his vitality to the maximum state possible for an F-Rank Expat. But that required him to gorge on low-quality food as a counter-balance. The pemmican itself could bump his vitality into the 200s if left alone. It was that powerful.
So with his body drained of hunger from a day of hard work and fighting, the moment Jay absorbed more, that diet balance was thrown off, favoring the high-nutrition pemmican. Jay speculated that he’d gone from 99 to the 150s by burning through all this food at once.
The fight was over within moments.
Snap.
Snap.
Hyuk fell to his knees, his armor shattered and weapon cast aside. His eyes widened with fear, and his arms quivered from the shock of being overpowered so quickly. He opened his mouth to shout, but only blood spilled free.
And Jay towered above, victorious yet again. He clutched his sword tight and watched Hyuk cower beneath, powerless.
Was Jay going to do this? Why not? Hyuk was the one who started the fight. Not him. He’d only defended himself from an unnecessary attack. He would be well within his rights to end his enemy, once and for all.
Then there was the chance to leave. The rule had been simple. Whoever kills the other gets to escape the island. He couldn’t pass that chance up, even if it meant taking the life of someone else.
He wanted to, too. Not just for defense, but to prove that he could. Slash him. Gut him. A single [Power Attack] to reduce another man to shredded meat. There were no rules in this world. He could get away with it. No, he could be rewarded for it.
And yet…
Jay turned to see Viktor beaming wide, enthralled by the spectacle he’d created. Even as he fought to the death, their overlord still cared nothing about it. Worse, even. This was amusing to him, like some kind of barbaric form of television.
Jay looked once again to Hyuk, still crippled by the injuries he’d inflicted. He looked into the other man who’d been forced into this crisis, same as him.
And he turned and walked away without saying another word.
Jay was nobody’s pawn.
* * *
Lush, towering trees swayed in the gentle breeze of the day, their canopies casting shadows into the underbrush beneath. Despite the bright sky above, the jungle had become a darker, more inhospitable place.
Jay crept through this place, bow in hand and head once again on a swivel as he hunted more game. Even with the perception boosting tea, his body was still re-acclimating from the vitality charge he’d handled the day before, and the night had not gone well.
Two days more, he reminded himself. Need to get this done in the next two days.
He couldn’t let Viktor win. He couldn’t have one man force the rest of the world to bend to his whims. If that meant putting in overtime to finish the hunts himself, then that was what he’d do. Jay may have lost his gun, but his vitality control would put him ahead of everyone else.
He could afford to be stubborn about this.
But damn, did it seem that this place was a dead zone now. The territory east of his home had once been overflowing with monsters and animals, but with each successive day, it only became more quiet and foreboding than the one before. Between the threat from Viktor, the E-Rank group having to overhunt to maintain their vitality, and the environmental damage that never recovered from that zeppelin attack, Jay wasn’t sure if there was anything left.
There’s still alternatives. He stroked his chin and considered today’s mission.
The overworld was the most efficient place to hunt. The monster scaling was predictable and followed a linear pattern, where the further one went inland, the tougher the threats became. If the coast had been stripped first, then that was the next logical place where everyone else would go, and therefore the worst place to go next.
Cairns were also viable. They were localized dungeons filled to the brim with monsters, but his few stints in them suggested that they were almost always higher than whatever zone they lay in, and most of the monsters were inedible. Even if it could be used for cores, there was no guarantee that he wouldn’t get ensnared by some mental prison again.
But that still left one viable location within a reasonable walk of his base, and it was here where Jay pivoted to next.
A web of vines and Spanish moss coiled along granite cliffs. Tall sentinels held sway. But this was to mask the shadows that clung beneath, for in the valley beneath Jay’s base, narrow crags gave way to sinkholes that bored deep into the Earth, and at their base, they split off into a cavernous maze, filled to the brim with everything from monsters to veins of gold.
And it would be here where the fewest people would journey. If it wasn’t for the disorientation, then one would face the asymmetric levels that got more jarring the closer one came to the Evershadow. Jay knew this location all too well after his recent crisis down below.
But, fortunately for him, he had put in the time and research to prepare for this too.
He started by popping the potion he’d discovered a few days back, “Night Owl.” As the fluid rolled down his throat, the world changed, with the shadows turning lighter and grayer, and the sun dimming a beat.
The pitons came next.
Whack. Whack. Whack.
Jay had made the mistake several times of trusting that ropes could be tied securely with no more than a rock for support.
Pitons changed the game by allowing him to anchor in multiple spots whenever he needed, and he happened to have researched copper variants a few week back in preparation for a run like this.
The rope came last. With several pitons in place, it was easy for him to rappel into the sinkhole. All he had to do was tie his body with a rope reinforced by hemp and let the anchors do the most work. Even if one piton broke, others would pick up the slack.
Slowly, carefully, Jay descended into the pit.
The light of the sun dimmed the further down he went, but the alchemic power of night owl cast it in a gray, even light. In the past, he would have been at the mercy of torches or groped blindly in the dark until hitting the bottom, but his new potion made the process easy.
He reached the base. Though the sinkhole had tightened enough to barely support two men climbing down at once, a half-dozen caves split off from there. With his current level of night vision, he could see their fine intricacies for over a hundred yards. Nooks and crannies, stalagmites and stalactites, ores and gemstones.
And monsters. Jay could see a cave system replete with monsters, just waiting to be cleared.
He put away his climbing gear, prepped his weapons, and descended into the shadows.
* * *
It wasn’t the hardest hunting spree.
Jay moved quickly and aggressively to ensure he got the most value out of his night owl potion. The Lux essence it relied upon was difficult to find on the surface, and he wasn’t about to deconstruct a diamond every time he needed to go spelunking. They were rare enough, and his storage space was now limited.
Thus, Jay used every ounce of vision he had for the easy kills, relying on the strength of his softwood bow with elemental buffs to make short work of the monsters he came across. Because they were cave creatures, he surmised that lightning damage would be most effective against them, and therefore socketed a tourmaline for its Tempus essence.
Not every creature was susceptible to this technique, but he also kept a number of greases on hand to further wear them down. In the end, Jay managed to net five cores above twenty, and had more meat than he could carry.
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Oh, how he regretted losing his Bag ‘a Mats.
His campfire burned hot where he’d set one up near the sinkhole entrance. The smoke slowly filtered through the opening.
His copper cooking pot sat atop, with meat simmering inside. Jay continued to slice it up with his knife before mashing it back together, followed by watching as it congealed into a smaller, meatier block.
This was the recipe for upscaling food. Since vitality was affected by diet and quality was based on levels, farming low level monsters would serve no purpose without learning how to upscale. By grinding them down and pressing them back together, they were artificially raised by five levels, or the equivalent of one infusion tier. But the cost was the hunger spent, mats burned, and heat needed to meld them all together.
Nothing came for free in this world.
It was strange watching an entire bear’s body get compressed into a slab of cooked flesh small enough to fit into his pocket, but it was the most effective way to make use of the mats down here.
Pulling a dead bear out of a sinkhole was a non-starter.
Firelight flickered in the distance. Jay squinted, but his night vision had ended before processing, and he could not make out the shape closing in. He casually set aside his cooking pot and gripped his sword.
The torch paused, and the hail bounded off the cavern walls.
“Jay!? Is that you!?”
He lowered his sword. “Kevin!? Where the hell have you been?”
“Trying to hunt! Same as everyone else.”
Jay grinned. “Come on, then. There’s plenty of room for us both.”
His friend hobbled into the open, the light of the fire casting his reddish face under a layer of orange light, and Jay’s smile dissolved the closer he came.
Heavy bags had formed beneath Kevin’s blue eyes, and his dirty blonde beard had grown more haggard since last they’d met. Even his beer belly had sagged with a loss of weight, and his limbs had thinned out as well, perverting the anchor tattoo that stood proudly on an arm.
But it was the exhaustion more than anything that threw Jay off. Where Kevin had always managed to squeak out a grin, he now seemed ready to pass out just by coming here. His copper plate-mail whined with each step, and he gripped his spear as if it were made of lead.
Kevin plopped down and took a swig from his waterskin, eyes staring emptily into the cavern.
“You doing alright?” Jay asked after a moment of uncomfortable silence.
“No, Jay. I’m not doing alright. This week has been a nightmare to get through.”
“What happened?”
He scoffed. “What do you think? Everyone’s gone nuts. I used to be able to go hunting on my side of the mountain, but the land got sucked dry. Too much violence spilling from the north end.”
“Huh? What’s going on there?”
“Viktormania is going on there,” Kevin explained. “That was where most of my friends went when the zeppelin came. The land is a lot easier to navigate and there’s plenty of fresh water. But after Viktor did his thing, I’ve been hearing nothing but bad news from up there. Apparently, Amadi got the idea of forming a group with the sole purpose of “taxing” the others until they have enough to fill the basket when Misha comes. They don’t have to pay up though. They’re putting it on everyone else.”
Jay grimaced. “He can’t do that. People will die if they can’t maintain their hunger, and that’s the lifeblood for everything else.”
“So? Who’s going to stop him? Viktor? Naomi? Ben? I didn’t realize how quick folks would turn on each other without that group. There really are no laws to hold them back, and they know it.” He stroked his beard. “The worst part is that this is rippling out now. Those who couldn’t deal with Amadi are poaching from our land instead. Just taking everything they can before going back into hiding.”
“Yeah, I saw that too,” Jay said. “I think the other Expats have all figured out that it’s to their benefit to collect first before anyone else has the chance.”
Kevin rubbed his eyes. “Well, easy for the ones that went first, I guess. I didn’t think of that though. I figured it’d be business as usual and we all put in our part, or something. Now? I got nothing, man. Absolutely nothing up there. Unless you count lifeberries and coconuts…
“Been trying to get by with them, too. Thought if I only used a little, I’d get to keep my vitality high, but if you don’t have that monster meat coming in, it drops quick. Went from the fifties to high thirties in the past day alone. Hell, I came all the way down here hoping to find something, but these caves are just as empty too.”
“They’re not so bad,” Jay said. “I managed to get some good stuff.”
His nose suddenly wrinkled. He studied the cooking pot suspiciously. “What’s that?”
“Some bear meat. Managed to find a couple down here before you showed up.”
Kevin blinked. “A couple? Huh? Why’s that all you got then.”
Jay scratched his neck. “Oh, right. I upscaled them down to be easier to carry.”
“Doesn’t that, like, waste most of the meat?”
“Eh, it can be a little rough, but it’s not as bad as ore grinding. It seems to be static drop based on the starting monster level. So, if you have something that’s twenty and bump it to twenty-five, it has the same one-third reduction as taking a level thirty monster and upscaling to thirty-five. Only if you try to take the upscaled level twenty meat to thirty and beyond does it get worse.”
Buzz.
Whoops. Jay had forgotten about Rule 5. Too long since they’d spoken.
But the color merely drained from Kevin’s face.
“Dude… What the hell? Why would you do that?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m here, struggling to get by, and you’re just throwing meat away.”
Jay gaped. “No, it’s not like that! This is the only way to get it out of the entrance.” He pointed to the sinkhole to prove his point.
Kevin only glowered further. “What? You’re too cool to walk now?”
“I don’t even know the ex–”
“You’re fucking ridiculous, Jay! I thought we were friends! Why would you think it’s chill to just take everything for yourself!?”
“Come on, Kevin. I didn’t know…” How could he?
But Kevin only went on from there. About how Jay was being a pompous ass again. And how he looked down on him just because he never played video games before. And how Jay never bothered communicating unless he wanted to get something out of it, and never so much as considered how difficult his friend’s week had been after Viktor stole his loot.
If Jay didn’t know any better, he’d think that Kevin had let his sanity lapse, but the words stung nonetheless. This wasn’t the first time Kevin had gone off on him like this. Back when he’d first gone to drop out, the first question that left Jay’s mouth had been about who’d replace him on their relay team.
After all their time together, and that was what had come out first.
Kevin let him know exactly how that made him feel before leaving, and they hadn’t seen each other since. Not until Annwyn.
And seeing him go off like this a second time hurt more than anything else. Not because Jay was wrong today, but because he’d once again fallen into the same trap as before. Why hadn’t he ever checked in after Viktor stole a cache right from under Kevin? Why hadn’t he asked how his pregnant girlfriend was doing?
Why didn’t he ever think to ask anyone of anything?
“There should still be more monsters further in,” Jay pointed out, hoping that would be enough to placate his outrage.
Kevin grunted. “Yeah. Maybe.”
He marched off without another word, torch burning bright as he combed through the caves.
And Jay continued to process his meat, his heart now heavy. Stopping now wouldn’t magically give Kevin what he needed, and handing over his own meat would only lead to a much more severe Rule break.
No, there was nothing Jay could do to take this day back.
Their friendship had already been divided again.
Name: Jay Reis (Copper Age)
Vitality – 99/99
Hunger – 65/72
Thirst – 21/24
Fatigue – 40/48
Sanity – 88/100
Main Crafts: Alchemy 2, Armor Crafting 2, Base Building 3, Cooking 2, Jewelry 2, Medicine 2, Tailoring 2, Tool Crafting 3, Vehicles 1, Weapon Crafting 2.
Weapon Crafts: Axes 5, Bows 5, Clubs 5, Daggers 5, Spears 5, Swords 9.
Armor Crafts: Heavy Armor 5, Light Armor 5, Medium Armor 6, Shields 6.
Character Skills:
[Forbidden Knowledge]
Armor Skills:
Heavy Armor: [Push], [Stampede]
Medium Armor: [Recover], [Leap], [Waterform]
Light Armor: [Dash], [Feather Fall]
Shield: [Brace], [Track], [Break]
Weapon Skills:
Axes: [Chop], [Whirlwind]
Bows: [Sharpshooter], [Longshot]
Clubs: [Bash], [Paralyze]
Daggers: [Slice], [Flourish]
Spears: [Thrust], [Sweep]
Swords: [Power Attack], [Slash], [Rend], [Parry]
Armor:
[Pig Ironplated Hat] (Affinity+2), (Hardened+4), (Reinforced+1)
[Pig Ironplated Coat] (Affinity+2), (Hardened+4), (Reinforced+1)
[Pig Ironplated Leggings] (Affinity+2), (Hardened+4), (Reinforced+1)
[Pig Ironplated Shoes] (Affinity+2), (Hardened+4), (Reinforced+1)
[Pig Ironplated Gloves] (Affinity+2), (Hardened+4), (Reinforced+1)
[Silver Amulet]: Socketed with [Chipped Tourmaline] (Tempus)
[Silver Ring]: Socketed with [Chipped Ruby] (Ignis)
[Silver Ring]: Socketed with [Chipped Ruby] (Ignis)
Weapons:
[Pig Iron Sword+3] (Affinity+5), (Hardened+2), (Reinforced+2), (Stable+4)
[Wooden Bow+3] (Elemental), (Reinforced+2): Socketed with [Chipped Ruby] (Ignis)
[Basic Leather Quiver]: Contains 17 [Silver-tipped Arrows] (Elemental+2), (Stability+4)
Tools:
[Copper Knife+3]
[Copper Axe+3]
[Copper Hammer+3]
[Copper Pickaxe+3]
[Copper Shovel+3]
Boons:
[Minor (Speed)] (x3)