The woods were trackless, and going was slow. Kyle and Jacob had to be careful not to get hit by the tree branches Mason was pushing aside, and they in turn had to be careful not to hit Mia, who was looking behind herself more often than not.

They lost sight of the beacon as they went under the canopy, but they would occasionally encounter thinner spots or small clearings they used to re-orient themselves. After an hour or so, the width of the bright beam of light looked much wider. Kyle guessed they were about five hours away at their painfully slow travel rate.

Kyle was no botanist, but he was pretty sure the trees and plants were not something from Earth. He didn’t recognize any of them, at least. He recognized their general shape; this was a fern, that was a shrub, that other thing was a sapling. But they weren’t any shrubs, ferns, or saplings that he recognized. The patterns on the flowers were unusual. The shapes of the leaves didn’t feel right.

The same applied to the creatures they found. They saw some bizarre species of squirrel that had blue-green fur and unusually large black eyes. They saw reptiles of three or four different colors climbing on trees which retreated into their turtle-like shells if the group got too close. Once, they saw a large red-brown deer with long stick-like legs and a single massive curved horn. As they approached, it paused slightly and flicked its ears before bounding silently into the forest, as though mocking them for lacking a ranged weapon. They even saw a large moose-like creature with a giant spiked ball on its tail. It didn’t retreat as they approached, but even Mia admitted it looked a little outside their ability to take down.

“Weird mobs in this place. I guess I was kind of expecting more slimes and goblins,” Mia said.

“It’s not night yet. That’s when the monsters come out,” Jacob replied.

“Wha…? Why do you say that?”

“I guess… I dunno. It just works like that in the games I’ve played. By the way, how much longer have we got to go?”

“A few hours, at least.” Kyle said.

“Look at the sun, though,” said Jacob, “It’ll be night before then. Do we want to find a place to hide?”

“Even if monsters do come out, why hide? Why not get loot and XP?” Mia asked.

“First off, you level by touching crystals, remember? No XP.” Kyle said. “Second off, we don’t know what the gameplay is like. Jacob could be right. Like, all these lizard things might turn hostile when the sun goes down and swarm us.”

“You think the designers would do that?” Mia asked. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

“This place is supposed to be a competition. It might not be designed to be fair,” Kyle brought up. “For all we know, vampires are gonna come out the moment the sun goes down and murder us all unless we find shelter. This thing’s supposed to last a year; if that’s the case, putting us out for 24 hours is like a slap on the wrist. ‘Too bad guys, you should have found shelter. Try again tomorrow.’”

As they spoke, they pulled into a clearing. Kyle stopped moving forward and turned to face Mia, trying to hint he wasn’t interested in continuing until this issue had been discussed. Mason folded his arms and stared off towards the beacon. Jacob nodded for some reason and started rooting through his menus.

“Look, I get what you’re saying,” Mia said. “But we don’t know night is dangerous. We do know that people are heading to that crystal, and we want to get there first. I want that level-up. Heck, imagine if we were first to reach the crystal and all got to level two.”

“Level one,” Kyle corrected. “We’re level zero right now.”

Mia rolled her eyes and huffed in frustration. “Whatever. You know what I mean. But anyway, other parties would try to get to the crystal too, right? With a level advantage, we could ambush them, kill them, and take their stuff. It’d be like a lightbulb attracting newbs like moths. After farming scrubs for a while, we could go for the other crystals with all the gear we could want. We’d have such a leg up!”

“Yeah, maybe if this were a two-team game,” Mason said, “But that’s not how it works. What if a bunch of pods all group together? If we try to keep everyone else from getting to the crystal, we’ll be one party against who knows how many others. And what defensive options do we really have? Are we going to need to keep watches?”

“Yep,” said Kyle. “Fatigue is a thing in this game. After 16 hours awake, your fatigue bar’s going to start draining, and you suffer stat penalties the lower you get.”

“Yeah, see?” Mason said, motioning at Kyle. “I vote we get pretty close, then get a good night’s rest. We scope the place out, and if there’s some people guarding it, like Mia’s planning to, then we wait for a third team to try and take it and then finish off the weakened victor.”

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Suddenly, a loud “thock” sound echoed through the clearing. Kyle jumped and looked towards the source, and saw Jacob holding the hatchet. The tree he was staring at had a large gash in it. He pulled the axe back again and struck the tree once more.

“Are you… chopping trees?” Mia asked.

“I figured somebody would have to.” Jacob replied.

“Does that work?” Kyle asked.

“I used ‘examine’ on it, and its HP is going down, so yeah, I think.”

“What happens if you kill a tree?” Mia asked.

“You get wood?” Mason suggested.

“That’s the hope,” Jacob said. He struck the tree again, and it started to tilt with an exaggerated creaking sound. Jacob screwed up his face. “Huh. In real life that takes way more time.”

The tree fell into the clearing, and Jacob put his left hand on the trunk. He shook his head, then started chopping at the log.

“Aaaanyway…” Mia drawled, “about that crystal. I get where you’re coming from Mason, but even then, I still think we should get to the crystal as soon as possible. What if we touch the crystal before anybody else gets there, then leave it for other randos to fight over while we grind forest mobs instead? Who knows what we’d pick up?”

“Speaking of grinding, what I think would be useful,” Kyle said, “is being the first to find a town. We’ve got goblin swords to sell and maybe we could pick up quests that’ll get us something other than a hand-axe. I’m not sure whether levels or gear does more for your overall power under these mechanics, but maybe we’d end up more powerful if we let them all fight over crystals while we buy better stuff.”

“Yeah,” said Mia, in thought. “We should sell the goblin’s leather armor, too, and I bet we’d find something good to spend our silver on. We’ve got what, forty between us?”

Kyle furrowed his brow. “You stripped the goblin?”

“Well duh,” Mia said. “Did you not?”

“You literally spent the time to take off a dead goblin’s clothes?”

“No, you just grab a fold of cloth with your left hand, then the crystal turns green and you can put it in your inventory, like any other item you hold. Seriously. You think a game would force players to strip dead bodies? Think, Kyle!”

“And the silver?”

“It was in the pouch around his neck. Guess you missed that too? Mason? Did you think to…” she trailed off as Mason shook his head. “…Bunch of newbs,” she finished under her breath, loud enough to be audible but quiet enough to be deniable.

“So yeah,” Kyle continued. “Silver, I guess.” Kyle glanced over towards Jacob to see how things were going.

Half the log was gone.

“Uh, Jacob?” Kyle asked, turning away from the conversation. “Where’d the log go?”

“I harvested it,” Jacob said, still hacking at the remains of the fallen log.

“How?”

“Chop it up into pieces that are small enough, and you can put it in your inventory.”

“So, is carrying logs any good?” Mia asked.

“Actually, it might be. Can you pass me a chunk of that wood?” Kyle asked.

“How much?” Jacob asked. “I’ve got a few thousand.”

“Huh?” Kyle asked. “A few thousand what?”

“I dunno,” Jacob said. “Blocks? Units? Decagrams? In my inventory it looks like a little cube.”

“Oh no,” whispered Mia.

“Just toss me one, then,” Kyle said. “I want to see if it unlocks anything in my help menu.”

Jacob nodded, then slowly punched buttons in his menu. A small, smooth wooden cube appeared in his hand, and he tossed it to Kyle.

“Oh god, no…” groaned Mia.

Kyle put it in his inventory, and then opened his help menu. Sure enough, there was a new entry. Looks like he finally got to study up on the crafting system. He scrolled through it by flicking it with his finger. “Yup. Crafting system here. Looks like with raw materials we can make our own equipment.” He started skimming over sub-menus. “Structures, too, which give mechanical buffs of some kind to the owners. Like, if we built an arena, it’d let us-”

“Of all the games I had to get trapped in, you’re telling me I’m stuck in ——- Minecraft!” Mia shouted, “What the —-! Are we gonna have to build walls to keep out ——- creepers? Do we win by having the best house? Are we gonna have to mess around with autist ——- redstone, for —-‘s sake?”

Kyle raised an eyebrow. He could tell what Mia meant, of course, but the word itself was concealed by a soft buzzing sound. “Was that…”

“Hah,” Jacob said laughing. “There’s a chat filter! This game gets better and better!”

“—- it all! Mia shouted, turning away and throwing up her hands.

Jacob smiled, and turned to the others. “I played a lot of Minecraft with my boys. I finally feel like I might know what’s going on.”

“As I was saying,” Kyle said, hoping to cut Mia off, “If we build different buildings, we can get different benefits. Like, an arena would let us practice fighting, but if you die in an arena you respawn in five minutes instead of twenty-four hours. We could use that to have Mason teach us martial arts or whatever, and we wouldn’t actually be in any danger. This isn’t Minecraft. It just has… Minecraft like elements.” He glanced towards Mia, hoping she would be somewhat mollified.

“Good. Then let him do it,” Mia said, pointing violently at Jacob. “Because crafting is for people who don’t play real games.”

“A real game is one I can play with my son,” Jacob said, grinning. “You can keep your goblins to yourself.” Jacob waved his finger through the air, scrolling across an interface invisible to Kyle. He pressed something, and a crudely carved wooden horse figurine appeared in his left hand. “Look! Woodcarving!”

Mia turned back to face Kyle and Mason. “So about this crystal…”

“I want to stop for the night,” Kyle said. “We’ve got plenty to do without traipsing through the woods in the dark. Seriously, we won’t make it by nightfall, and I bet this place gets too dark to walk right. We might not even be able to reach the crystal if we try.”

“Can’t we, like, craft torches or something?” Mia asked, glancing at Jason hopefully.

“That’d just give our position away if we approach,” Mason said. “Sorry, Mia. We’re not going. Go yourself, if you want it that bad.”

Mia huffed. “Fine. We’ll sit, I guess.”