Kyle woke up again at about noon. Outside, the village inhabitants had already gathered. They were standing in a loose circle, tossing rocks out of their inventory into a pile on the ground. Jacob was trying to add them to his as fast as possible.

Kyle stepped out and went to go watch.

“How thick did you say you wanted this wall, guys?” Jacob asked, touching the rocks and adding them to his inventory. He was finally starting to navigate his inventory as well as one would expect from a gamer.

“Maybe two feet thick?” Mason asked.

“And at least twelve feet high,” Mia said. “Fifteen if we can manage it.”

Jacob, having finished collecting the rocks, started scribbling some numbers in the dirt.

“Okay, guys, looks like this is enough for a wall… twelve feet high, two feet thick… and a little less than four and a half feet long.

“What the crap,” Mia said in a falling tone. Dvorak shook his head and muttered.

Lumen exhaled in frustration. “We’ve been collecting rocks from the woods for hours. This is nuts. Is stone supposed to be this hard to collect?” He grumbled in a way that sounded eerily like a tiger’s low growl.

“No,” Jacob said, with a confused look on his face. “In fact, it says we should be able to get more stone from a mine. But the thing is, the pickaxe I made won’t dig any deeper than a few feet underground. After that, I hit bedrock. Or, well, rock that my pick won’t break, at least. I dunno.”

“Wait,” said Lumen. “Did it say you needed to mine it, or did you say you got it from a mine?”

“Is there a difference?” asked Braden. His eyes were focused on the air in front of him and he would occasionally push invisible buttons; probably searching the help text.

“Uh, I think the guide said I got it from a mine,” Jacob said, opening up his menus as well. “Let me check.”

“I mean, I’ve got this entry called ‘mine’ under the ‘adventure sites’ heading,” Lumen said, opening up his menus as well. “I didn’t look at it much. Seems like a mine is some sort of dungeon. Someplace with mobs and treasure and stuff.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“I don’t have that topic,” Kyle interjected, walking up to the group at a pleasantly normal speed. “I’d know. I go through the docs pretty regularly.”

“Yeah, I’m not seeing it,” said Braden.

“Me neither,” said Jacob.

Mia finally opened up her menus too, and shook her head. “Why do you have it?”

“Wait,” said Kyle. “How long have you had that entry? Do you remember when you first saw it?”

Lumen shrugged. “A day or two ago.”

“Help text appears on some sort of triggering condition, right?” Kyle asked. “So if Lumen has it, he’s probably been near an entrance to a mine.”

Jacob smiled. “There’s got to be one nearby then!”

Kyle nodded. “Where did you go hunting in the past few days, Lumen?”

Lumen thought. “Day before yesterday, I kinda followed that river to the southwest further than I usually do. We could check there, I guess?”

“Better yet,” Kyle said, “If you bring others along, and they leave their help menus open, we can see when we get close because the mine will be added to their list of topics.”

“Working as intended,” Lumen said with a toothy grin.

Braden rolled his eyes. “This game. Seriously. How many exploits does it have?”

“Well, in theory, we’re in a prerelease tournament. We’re actually probably the beta testers,” Kyle said. “Unless there’s been some really twisted testing going on.”

“Probably not all that twisted. The testers probably had a logout button,” Mason said.

“Well, enough talking. I ought to go mine some stone.” Jacob said.

“Hold it, dad-kid,” Mia said, “This isn’t a quarry. This is a dungeon crawl. An “Adventure Site’. We want people good at games to go.”

“I’m so totally in.” Lumen said. His bow appeared in his hand and his quiver materialized on his back.

“Yeah, me too,” Mia said.

“A quest! At last, a noble crusade! To gather stone, for the defense of Crystopia!” Dvorak started excitedly hopping up and down. “Guys, I’m in this a hundred percent. Let’s do this!”

“You sure the bunny should go?” asked Braden skeptically.

“Murder bunny, thankyouverymuch.” Dvorak said. “And I wouldn’t miss it for the world!”

“In theory, I signed up to be the fighter,” Mason said. “Guess I’m going.”

“Parties go up to five,” Lumen said, “Anybody else want in?” He glanced expectantly at Kyle.

“I think we might need some skilled people here,” said Mia, not making eye contact with Kyle. “In case raiders come back.”

“Oh come on, Adrianne,” Lumen said, using Mia’s screen name. “You were fine with only three people at the village when we were out looking for rocks.”

“Yeah, well…” Mia rolled her eyes towards Kyle.

“I want to come,” Kyle said firmly. “If it opens up more topics in my help menu, I should be there too. My job is to know everything, right? Gotta get my bookworm on.”

“And that’s five,” Lumen said. “You guys can hold down the fort, right? For a few hours?”

Jacob nodded. “I gotta fix the tannery anyway.” Braden hesitated, but nodded. Avina didn’t respond, eyes cast towards the woods.

“Okay, let’s head,” said Lumen.

“First, our spellcrafter should hit the library,” Braden said. “Give us five minutes. It’ll be worth it. Trust me.”

Kyle smiled.