this city is dead

The words caught Jake’s eye as soon as he’d unfolded the page and he immediately read the rest of the sentence they were attached to.

When I asked him why, he told me that this city is dead.

Jake pulled his gaze from the middle of the page and brought it to the top.

Notice: If you’ve found this document or a copy of it, please submit it to Mr. Simmons at the Howard K-8’s Middle School Library or the Golding County Sheriff’s department.

The sheriff’s department? Jake thought. That definitely piqued his interest.

Judging by the fact that the note was written in a similar style to his own handwriting from when he was younger, Jake could assume that this was one of the copies rather than the original. He read on.

“This is the story of my treasure,” the note properly began. “If you’ve found this, then I hope you’re the kind of guy who has the guts to take some of it for yourself. If you’re not, then I at least hope you aren’t the type of rat who’d go running to the teachers and snitch about this sort of thing like Stewie.”

Note: Please hide this somewhere in the middle school library at Howard K-8 if you’re not going to try to find my treasure. I want someone else to get a chance at finding it.

“My name is Kevin. No, that’s not my real name. I need to hide it from you in case you're a rat like Stewie. That’s not important right now. I’m writing this because I found treasure in the old mines and I want someone else to find it after I’m gone.”

“My dad told me that we were moving out of Golding,” Kevin’s story continued. “When I asked him why, he told me that this city is dead.”

“Looks like they knew that back then too,” Jake said to himself. He didn’t have any guess for when exactly the original document was written, but obviously whoever had gone out of their way to copy his middle school handwriting was implying that it was at least a dozen years old.

“Since we’re leaving, I thought I might as well check out what it’s like down in the mines before we left. They talk about how the city was founded back during the Gold Rush all the time at school, so I’ve always wanted to go exploring down there to see if I could find any gold that they might have left behind. Lucky me, I found some.

“I couldn’t bring it all out with me. I would have if I could have, though. They closed the mines down twenty-five years ago, but someone told me that they’d still try to claim what I found if I took enough to make people start asking me where I got it from. I’d hate it if the people who left Golding to die got their hands on it so I’m leaving most of it behind. Feel free to take some of it for yourself, just don’t take it all. I might come back for some more of it someday.”

Hidden Quest Discovered!

The Last Gold in Golding

You have rediscovered the greatest mystery from your childhood. Finish the treasure hunt your younger self was never able to complete and claim ‘Kevin’s’ lost riches for yourself.

Reward

???

“Hmph,” Jake grunted when he read the words ‘greatest mystery from your childhood.’ That was a load of BS.

Sure, the idea of running around and solving mysteries with some friends like his own version of Scooby-Doo or something had been cool to him, but he’d never actually tried. The mystery journal that the goblins threw into the void and all this hidden compartment stuff with a secret map was an entirely fabricated past that The System had generated for him.

That said, the locations on the map and the part about Golding being an old Gold Rush mining town wasn’t. Never actually had much gold, but it had tons of other metals and oil buried under it and up around the mountains. They had run out of most every precious thing buried in the county other than bodies by the late 50s, though, which ended up killing the city.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Anyway, whether Kevin’s treasure was real or generated, Jake was sure that it would definitely have value as The System’s integration progressed. And that made this questline plenty worth pursuing.

“When I went down into the mines,” Kevin’s note continued, “I wrote down my path along the way so I wouldn’t get lost and rewrote it until I had it memorized when I got back up.

“If you aren’t a snitch, a coward, or one of those people who abandoned Golding and want the path that I wrote down, then you’ll have to follow the clues I left behind. Each of them leads to a location where I hid a note and each note has the number for a book I wrote part of the instruction into in the library.

“Don’t snitch about that. The instructions are jumbled up, so you won’t be able to find the treasure unless you find all the clues first…”

The instructions that followed after that all led to places that had already been circled on the map. To keep himself from having to constantly come back here, Jake took a few pictures of everything with his smartphone.

It was nice that all the note locations had already been marked for him, but there was still a problem with all of this. Even if Kevin wasn’t being exact when he wrote that it had been twenty-five years since the mines had closed down, that still placed the original copy of the note back in the early 80s, more than thirty-five years ago.

There was a good chance… No, it was a certainty that some of the clues had to be missing or destroyed by now. What there was actually a good chance of was him having to figure out how to find the treasure without them.

Jake sighed. One step at a time, he thought, deciding to focus on getting the money he had already earned rather than the treasure he didn’t know when he’d ever reach.

As his thoughts returned to the founder’s quest, the three marked locations glowed a bit more brightly.

He placed his gaze on the point of the map that was marked green by his display shades. Immediately, he was presented information about the location. It was an old gas station convenience store that had closed down years ago. He drove by it often.

The other two marked points, the yellow ones, belonged to a small dollar store and a gas station that was still in business.

Sensing that Jake was actually trying to proceed with the quest, his wrist brain displayed him a message.

Note

A location with no existing business currently in place is highly recommended if offered.

“Well, I guess there's not much of a choice,” Jake said. He didn’t even bother asking why it was highly recommended before selecting the abandoned gas station. As long as the abandoned store option wasn't worse, he would have chosen it anyway so he could avoid having to answer questions about the scanners he'd be setting up around his chosen location.

Founder's Quest 3 - Prelude

Since you've chosen a vacant store location, the spawned instance will have to be cleared for store use. Set up your scanners at your chosen location and prepare for battle!

Reward: The next part of this quest!

It would have been nice of them to explain that he’d have to be doing some cleaning up if the store was out of business, but Jake didn’t really care that much. Clearing out the instance would just mean more levels for him and more money that Gamify or The System owed him.

Before he left the generated treehouse, Jake placed the top back over the table’s hidden compartment and twisted it shut. He didn’t expect anyone else to come up there after him, but it was best not to tempt fate.

After heading down from the treehouse, Jake gathered the items he’d used to clear instances already and a few more things along with them. There was no way, the mana overflow was making it all the way from his house to the gas station, so he had to load everything he was bringing into the trunk of his car instead of his Inventory.

Once the trunk was loaded, he headed back inside the house to check up on his grandma before he left. She was where she usually could be found these days. In her den, watching television with her behind practically stitched to the recliner’s leather.

“And there you have it, easy-peasy Carbonara,” the chef on the television said. “I’m sure you’ll all be making it in your houses tonight. Enjoy.”

Yeah, not in this house, buddy, Jake thought. He blocked out whatever else the chef was saying and walked over to his grandmother. “I’m heading out, Grandma,” he told her.

“Getting something to eat?” she asked. Her eyes wide open and glued to the television like she’d make the food on the screen appear in front of her if she stared hard enough.

Jake shook his head. “Not this time.”

“Oh?” She shifted up in her recliner. “Going out for something other than food or work for once?”

“Yep.”

“You’re going to Will’s house?”

“Nope.”

At that, she finally turned away from the television. “Then where are you going?” She asked him, looking confused.

Jake felt an urge not to say. He didn’t want her to start thinking that buying him more junk would be a good idea.

“Jake?”

He sighed. “I’m going out with the Gamify stuff you bought me.”

“Oh…”