We had a lot of gathering to do.

We decided to split up. The cleanse spell was in a spider nest closer to the border of the beach zone. Mei went after that. Man sized spiders wouldn’t give her many problems and it would give her a chance to charge up her dagger.

The fireproof spell was in a temple in the snow zone up north. Michael went after that. I was concerned that he was going to have trouble with the temple guardians. According to the book it was full of Yetis. Michael showed me in his stat book where he had taken out a dozen Yetis before. It made me feel a little better, but still uneasy. He was holding back on just how good he was. I wondered what else he was hiding.

With my other two party members off on their quests, it left me with gathering the supplies to buy a shield and a spell book. While I was out looking for ore in the mountains, I would also be looking for more tunnels that led to the dragon.

Mei bought me a pickaxe before she left. It was heavy, but it was the best thing to use to farm in this zone. She also paid for the room at the inn for three days. That was all they would need to get their items and get back.

I walked the roads around the Mount Terra. Most of the players had moved on to higher zones, or prettier ones. I didn’t blame them. Most of the ore deposits were copper, there weren’t any gems and everything else was rocks. It wasn’t a place that I would want to spend most of my time.

The first place that I checked was the cave that the dragon had come out of. I didn’t bother going very far into the cave. I didn’t have to. The low growl of the dragon sleeping echoed up to the mouth of the cave.

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I did find the PKs that the dragon had killed. Their ‘friends’ hadn’t bothered to pick up their bodies. None of the scavenger animals had found them yet. I knelt down net to the archer. His head was missing, but the rest of him was intact. I wondered if he was one of the lucky ones. Only a few of the players had been able to wake up before their body died in the real world.

I took his quiver and the eleven arrows it held and put them in my bag. Michael could use the arrows, and the quiver we could sell. I thought about taking his armor, but the thought of undressing a dead man turned my stomach.

I patted him down. None of the PKs had brought any bags, just their weapons. There weren’t any gold or other items. They had prepared to kill a newbie, they must not have thought I’d put up much of a fight.

I got two swords, a dagger, and a big axe. The axe wouldn’t fit in my bag, so I carried it over my shoulder. I found the archer’s bow up the trail. The dragon had snapped it in half.

I took the draw string and walked around the base of the hill. It took me a few hours, but I marked all the openings that I could find.

It would have gone faster if I hadn’t been carrying all the weapons and if I hadn’t stopped every time I thought I saw a copper deposit.

It was helpful that the game would outline where to hit the veins to break off the copper ore. The downside was that I was really bad at telling what was copper and what wasn’t. It got to the point where I wouldn’t take the pickaxe out unless the blue light outlined the rock.

With my map marked up and the bottom of my pack lined with chunks of copper ore, I trudged back to Mount Terra. I had hoped that I could find a shield with the bodies, but I hadn’t really expected it. PKs didn’t need defensive weapons. They focused more on all out attacks.

Now I just had to sell what I’d collected and buy the last of what we would need.