Gabe
Sweat is pouring off my face. I quickly realize that having zeroes in dexterity means that I have zero ability to maneuver anything with any amount of skill. The first three pieces of fruit I try to harvest using the "fruit picker" - a tool similar to one I've used in real life many times - end up being hopelessly gored. Adding insult to injury, they don't even come off the tree. Attempting to climb a tree leads to inevitable defeat and a loss of HP.
I think about just picking the low-hanging fruit - stuff that I can reach without difficulty - but this is a job. Not just a gathering thing for myself. If I pick fruit from a tree I should do the job well.
Shaking the tree doesn't seem like a good idea either. I shake fruit trees at home, but the fruit almost always ends up getting bruised. And it's obvious by the point system that the farmer wants his fruit to be undamaged most of all.
After searching through the barn, I find an a-frame ladder. Knowing my luck, a straight ladder would fall with me on it and kill me dead. An a-frame should be sturdy enough to keep me safe. I grab the ladder and slowly head to the nearest short tree. I jog back to the barn and grab a handful of gathering baskets, along with some cloth bags. I chose this tree because it looks like I should be able to reach all the fruit without stepping on the top (unlucky) step of the ladder. I loop a cloth bag around my arm, climb the ladder, and get up near the fruit.
As I get closer to the fruit, I notice a familiar sight. All the fruit on the tree is shimmering. Which means it all can be gathered, right? I pick a red fruit and it comes off cleanly. I carefully place it in my cloth bag.
This is going to take a while.
I decide that the best way to save time will be to minimize my trips to and from the barn. The fruit bins in the barn are on wheels. Each bin is full of trays - the trays are deep enough that a single layer of fruit won't be damaged by the tray that stacks on top.
There might be a reason why he didn't tell me to use the bins... but maybe not?
I pull out one of the red bins and place it next to the trees where I'm picking. I gather fruit and fill the cloth sacks, then hang them on the ladder when they are halfway full. When the ladder has a handful of bags on it, I carefully take them down and transfer the fruit to trays I've laid out on the ground. When a tray is full, I put it in the bin.
I fill a bin with red fruit. Now it's time to try green... then finally spend the rest of the day on yellow?
The green fruit is more difficult to harvest. It also seems more sturdy. That said, I have no idea how easy it is to damage, so I'm being as careful as I can be with a DEX of 0. Time passes and I fill a bin with green fruit.
The yellow fruit is a mess. The fruit is extremely difficult to remove from the tree, and it is covered with spines with barbed edges. Altogether, it means that wearing gloves to pick the fruit is pointless. I have to pull on the fruit hard enough that the thorns get stuck in the gloves... which means that I then have to pull the fruit off the gloves - with enough force that I'm pretty sure it's damaging this "extremely delicate" atrocity. Picking a fruit by hand leaves me with one less HP, and the fruit a bloody mess.
Hmmmmmmmmmm...
Delicate fruit that damages anything it touches, and gets damaged when it touches anything.
Maybe I could pick it using cloth? But then the cloth would have to stay on the fruit all the way to the point of sale. That would look weird. Picking it with anything else would damage the fruit's skin.
I head back to the barn and look around for inspiration.
I see the fruit pickers - long-handled baskets with sharp edges to cut the fruit.
Maybe... the stems need to be cut?
I can't find a pair of gardening shears, so I take the nearest fruit picker and carefully take the machine apart.
As long as I put it back together I should be fine, right?
I'm able to pull it apart until I have just the basket with the cutting edge. I take the tool outside, try it on a red fruit, and it works. But red fruit I could pick by hand. Green fruit also works. I head back to my ladder and use it on the spined yellow wonder. The stem slices neatly and the fruit drops gently into the basket. I take it down the ladder and place it directly into the tray inside the bin.
1 down. Who knows how many to go. If each of these is 1 point, I need 5000 pieces to make $50. If they're 10, I need 500.
The breeze is great, the sun is shining, birds are singing. Maybe it's not a great job, but for now this totally works.
---
Koji
A kokoko moves around the speed of a walking human. But unlike a walking human, they literally never stop moving. Get in their way, and they just keep going, pushing you with them, eating anything green along the way. I run into the first kokoko as it approaches the orchard from the south on my 4th lap. I immediately start firing spark. I don't know if it has a weak point, but it seems to make no difference at all. Not even an acknowledgement that someone is shooting a magic spell at it. I can't see enemy HP (is that a skill? Maybe something on equipment? You can usually see that in games), so I have no idea if it's even working.
And I still only have one spell.
In Dungeon Quest you can supposedly learn skills and spells through a million different ways. But it seems like they are harder to actually acquire than in some other games. Since the creators expect people to play the game for years, they want to stretch out progression.
I guess it wouldn't make sense if someone could learn an instant-death spell on day 1. Or even on day 100.
That said, I just have magic spark. It has an extremely short cool down and uses a small amount of mana. My starting mana + regeneration is high enough that, if I fire it constantly, I can keep going for a minute or two. If I wait a little between shots, I could probably go indefinitely.
I don't know how fast this thing regenerates tho. Except that it regains HP much faster while it's eating. Out here in the field, there isn't a ton of green. But that orchard is totally full of fruit. I'm guessing that even one kokoko would cause massive damage.
I keep following the kokoko, firing magic spark as soon as the cool down comes up. I notice an old man on the edge of the orchard. He waves to me with one hand. The other is holding a bottle of something. Juice?
The kokoko is still going strong, and I'm at half MP now. What if two spawned at the same time? I'm not in any danger... but this thing is an eating beast. I have no idea if it's totally alive or on the brink of death.
A couple seconds later the kokoko stops moving. As usually happens with monsters, it despawns in a cloud of gold dust. It drops a small piece of green - "kokoko antenna" - must be a drop item. It's unlikely that it'll be worth much, but I place it in my inventory anyway.
I look up and the old man is waving at me. I jog over to him.
"Ahoy there! I take it you're the one taking the kokoko request?"
"Yup, I am."
"How many have you seen today?"
"This is the first one."
"You fought kokoko before?"
"Nope. This was my first."
"Well, I'd say you did just fine. I didn't have to use the juice, so you earned your keep. That's one kokoko down."
"Use the juice? I don't think I understand."
"Kokoko are attracted to this orchard because it grows a certain type of magical fruit. In its raw form, it's poisonous to humans, but the kokoko love to eat the fruiting wood. In fact, they can't get enough of it - enough so that the buggers burrow underground nearby, lay eggs, and stay asleep all year long until it's harvest time.
"When it's ready, the scent of the tree (not the fruit, but the tree itself) is strong enough that it wakes them up. It can even cause some of the eggs to hatch! And then the scent causes every single kokoko to mindlessly go forward toward it, eating everything along the way. A single kokoko would destroy this orchard in less than a day.
Thankfully, their favorite food is also their fatal weakness. Take the juice of the fruit, let it sit for ten days, and the magical mixture will melt right through a kokoko's skin. One bottle of this smashed against a kokoko leaves it dead before it can do any damage."
"Every kokoko you kill saves me a bottle of juice - which means I can sell more fruit - and time. That's where you get paid."
So that's what the juice is. Must be pretty valuable if it's worth hiring an adventurer for $10 just to save a bottle.
"Great. I'm gonna keep making my rounds. Hopefully I don't miss any kokoko and you don't lose any juice."
"The kokoko only unburrow during the day, when the tree gives off its smell. Your job is finished once you've killed 5, or when dusk hits. If you've done well I'll give you some fruit to take home with you."
"Thanks! I'll get back to work."
---
Koji
The sun begins to set as I kill the seventh kokoko. The only time I had struggled was when two kokoko spawned at the same time. I was almost finished killing one when the second appeared - thankfully I was able to spam magic spark and then run over and finish off the second one just as my mana ran out completely.
The farmer thanks me as he hands me a voucher for 70 copper, and tells me I can pick 10 pieces of fruit from the orchard. "The yellow ones are poisonous, but you can still craft or cook with them." He then makes his way back through the orchard to the north.
I pick a couple of each fruit - it looks like 3 different kinds of fruit grow in this orchard. The yellow ones are the hardest to pick, so I just take 3 of those. 3 green fruit, and 4 red. I stick all ten in my inventory then log out. That was a good day's work.
---
Gabe
Dusk is falling, so I start cleaning up the tools in the orchard. I realize that the wind smells different at night - the thick smell of fruit and wood is somehow gone and the orchard feels much quieter. I've picked plenty of fruit, and I feel good about it. I tried really hard to keep the fruit from being damaged and even found some cool stuff. Hopefully it worked out.
The old farmer comes walking into the barn carrying a container of juice. He seems surprised to see me.
"Ahoy! You're still here! Waiting to get paid I reckon?"
"Just cleaning up actually. As soon as it started getting dark I decided to call it a day. You can check quality tomorrow and send the money to the guild."
"No no no - it only takes a few minutes! Just help me move the bins to the conveyer, and it'll be done in a jiffy!"
I help him move the bins to a conveyer in the back of the barn. He pushes the first bin into a square spot marked on the ground, and the wheels snap into place. He presses a button, and a crane reaches down into the bin and picks up the stack of trays, then unloads them on to the conveyor. The old farmer gazes at each tray and makes some quick markings on a piece of paper in his hand.
"Can you just look at them and see their quality?"
"Yup."
When he's finished looking at all the trays, he pushes a button and the conveyor turns on and the trays disappear into a black square hole in the back of the warehouse. We wheel the next bin into place and the process starts again.
We go through each bin of fruit this way. I'm getting slightly nervous, since he hasn't said anything about quality at all. Did I destroy everything? Was my 0 DEX my downfall?
The last bin only has 1 tray. I'm… not really sure what to make of it. Maybe the farmer will know what to do. The crane picks up the tray and places it in front of him.
"What is this supposed to be?"
"I didn't know what to do... some of the fruit changed color after I picked..."
"Do you take me for a fool? I don't know who you are, but get out of my barn! And don't come back!"
I'm shocked.
"I'm really sorry if I damaged the fruits..."
"I said get out!"
I hesitate for a moment, but end up walking out of the barn. I thought I had done a great job.
I tried to take care of the fruit. I spent an entire day here picking... and the old man had seemed so nice. What on earth went wrong?
---
The farmer continues to stare at the tray in front of him, long after Gabe is gone. The three fruits in front of him may not grow in his orchard, but any farmer in Fountain City knows them well. The purple spined one is explosive - even the slightest bruise would destroy his entire warehouse. The blue round one is so poisonous that a few drops of the juice will kill a grown man on contact. And the white smooth one is called "the scent of war" because the smell is so horrific that it is used as a weapon.
All three fruits are banned. Just possession of them by a commoner could translate to time in prison. Found in pristine condition on a farm, like they are here, and it would be a lifetime sentence for growing illegal merchandise.
All three fruits are also extremely valuable when sold on the black market - worth hundreds or thousands of copper each.
The rest of the fruit was incredible. He was even planning to take the boy on as an apprentice if he didn't have a home to go back to. The quality was absolutely stunning, even if a good number of the fruits were bruised by clumsy fingers. The boy wouldn't need to dress in rags anymore with a skill like that.
But these illegal fruits could destroy him.
It's not possible to overlook them... and it's not possible to dispose of them either. You can't dispose of a purple-skinned spike bomb unless you have a pit deep enough that you can run a mile before it hits the sides or bottom. Calling the guard would lead to a full investigation, and surely both I and the boy would be imprisoned.
But how?
So many questions run through his head.
Where did the beggar boy get the fruit? How did he get them? And why did he put them in the trays in this bin?
His eyes wander to the quest sheet left behind by the boy. Half a green star, a copper coin for every 100 points. He had already done the tallies to see how much the work was worth.
He remembers a friend who works at the guild. One who told him once after a mixup at the market that he could help him with any problem. "Any" problem.
---
"Karl! I have a… problem I think I could use your help on."
"Ya mate? Let me just pull up your account... Ey, it looks like you have an unfinished quest?"
"Huh? I guess..."
"Let's talk about that then, Mate."
"...I thought you said to contact you because could help me with anything..."
"That I can, mate. I'd suggest marking that quest as completed and issuing a cash payment immediately. Then I'll be obliged to come out right now and receive the payment and also help you with any other problems you may have. This helps guild business have the proper paper trail..."
---
Total number of quality points: 13273
Exquisite quality fruits (not found in orchard): 42
Illegal (alternate species) fruits: 14
Fruits with finger bruises: 1/2 of all red fruit + 215
---