Name: N/A
Level: 3
Experience: 1/5
Health: 18/52
Stamina: 35/52
Mana: 5/5
Body: 2
Sense: 1
Mind: 1
Intuition: 1
Yin: 1
Yang: 1
Stat Total: 7
The first thing to do, after Jonathan’s gotten his breath back, is assign his new stat point. He thinks about Sense, but, ultimately puts it in Body. Even with the increase in strength and durability, he lost two-thirds of his health and a fourth of his stamina fighting the rats. If all the encounters are this difficult in Seven Gates, he can’t afford to invest in anything right now except raw power.
Then he goes to find the sack. The fight took them surprisingly far from the dead adventurer. He wanders through the trees for a few minutes before finally seeing the hollow glow of starlight on bone. But when he reaches out to touch the sack, it disappears beneath his fingers. A window appears in its place.
“Bonus Quest, Find the Adventurer’s Remains Complete!"
"Obtained Adventurer’s Sack!"
"Inventory unlocked."
"Try opening the inventory.”
No button with the word "inventory" appears. Is he supposed to ask for it?
“Uh, ok,” says Jonathan. “Open inventory?”
A window appears before him with rows of empty boxes. Only one of them is full, in the top left box sits a scrap of tattered paper. He taps on it. Touching the window is like touching a soap bubble, a membrane on the world that bends under his fingers.
The paper appears in his hand. The surface is rough, coarse grained, and something's been drawn on it in thick black ink. Hard to see what in the light. He moves, looking for a beam of starlight that makes it through the trees, and, yes, there. It’s a drawing of the castle in profile, with sections cut away to reveal chambers and passageways inside. There are little ‘x’s scattered across it. This is a map.
“Quest added: Bonus Quest; Find the Adventurer’s Tools.”
“Tools found: 2/14”
That’s a lot of items for a tutorial quest. But he already got two of them, so it must be counting the sack and the map. Maybe they won't be that hard to find. He checks the map again, squinting, and counts the ‘x’s. Yup, there are fourteen of them, so all the rewards are on the map. Two of the marks, one right on top of the other, are grayed out, so the map updates when he collects a tool. Makes sense, from a game design perspective.
But wait, there’s a third ‘x’, right under the other two. He missed one of the tools. It takes him an embarrassingly long time to find. He searches the underbrush, he checks the cracked tiles, and he walks around looking at the trees before he thinks to check the skeleton. Pushing away some of the leaves and debris that have fallen over the lower half of the body he sees something sharp gleaming in the skeletal hand.
“Quest updates: Bonus Quest; Find the Adventurer’s Tools.”
“Adventurer’s Knife. Damage +4. Useful for crafting, for starting a fire if you have flint, and for dressing game. A weapon in a pinch.”
“Tools found: 3/14”
Excellent. If there’s anything he wants right now, it’s a better weapon, but the other applications sound useful too. ‘Dressing game,” in particular, caught his attention.
First, though, he needs to practice using the inventory. Gingerly, he taps an empty box in the inventory with the map. It disappears from his hand and appears in the box. He takes it out. Puts it back in again. It’s a weird experience. The map isn’t pulled from his hand, it’s just gone. His fingers are left confused, closing in on absent parchment. He deposits and withdraws the knife a few times too, just to get the hang of it, and goes to find the rats.
Standing over the corpses, though, he's having second thoughts. On the one hand, his gamer instincts say that you should always, always, always loot your kills. It’s basic. On the other hand, the idea of cutting up this dead animal is profoundly unappealing. It’s not like Jonathan’s ever been hunting or anything, he doesn’t have any idea what he’s doing. Don't you have to, like, take out all the guts and stuff? What useful stuff could he even get from these things anyway?
He squats and pokes the body with his knife. A window appears.
“Would you like to butcher Giant Rat; Lvl 1?”
“Yes” “No”
Oh, thank God. It’s automated. He hits “Yes”. The body vanishes.
“Gained 1 Raw Rat Meat”
“Gained 1 experience”
“-5 Stamina, 36/52”
He checks his inventory and, yep, there’s the rat meat. This is big. Since the game lets him automate actions that grant resources and experience, if he figures out how to manage his stamina correctly it could be incredibly powerful.
“System,” he says, “how do I replenish my stamina?”
Wonder of wonders, he actually gets an answer.
“Stamina can be replenished by eating, certain spells, potions, and resting. To rest you must construct a shelter."
“What about my health?”
“Health can be replenished by certain spells, potions, and resting. To rest you must construct a shelter."
Resting, eh? A lot of games have a resting system and it’s always basically instantaneous from the player’s perspective, but he’s willing to bet Seven Gates is different. That would fit its style, punishing getting hurt with time out of the game. He doesn’t have any spells or potions that can heal him so the only way to regain health is to rest, but he can also regain stamina by eating. Therefore, if he can find stuff to eat and crafting projects he can potentially gain infinite experience without getting hurt and without ever leaving the game.
First things first, he butchers the second rat. Now, if he had a fire, he could cook the meat he just gained and hopefully it would give him more stamina than he's lost. Unfortunately, he has neither fire nor any idea how to make one. He's no boy scout. But there’s another option; where was that apple he found earlier?
Stolen story; please report.
He retraces his steps, heading back towards the terrace. He doesn’t remember the exact spot, but if he keeps his eyes peeled he should be able to find– there’s one, a spot of red against the ground. That wasn’t so hard. Is it just him, or is it getting lighter out? He picks up the apple and takes a bite. It’s just as tasteless as he remembers. Maybe there’s a better way.
“Can I eat this through the menu?” he asks, mouth full.
A window obligingly pops up.
“Apple. A good snack for the trail. Eat?”
“Yes” “No”
He hits “yes”. The apple disappears.
“Stamina +2, 27/54”
Not much, but there's more where that came from. Even a quick look around shows red globes hanging from the branches of the nearest tree. He circles it, plucking every fruit he can find and eating them as he goes.
“+2 Stamina, 29/54”
“+2 Stamina, 31/54”
“+2 Stamina, 33/54”
“+2 Stamina, 35/54”
“+2 Stamina, 37/54”
“+2 Stamina, 39/54”
That’s everything within easy reach and he’s replenished all the stamina he lost butchering the rats, but there’s still more of them up there and he has to remember to think like a gamer. A gamer doesn’t just loot what he needs right now. A gamer loots everything.
He grabs the lowest branch and pulls himself up. This is a huge tree, and there’s fruit everywhere. He leaves the inventory open as he goes, depositing what he picks directly into storage. It’s definitely getting lighter out, he can see much more easily now. He’ll pick the tree clean, then move on to the next task. Maybe if he can collect enough branches he can craft a shelter, maybe get some experience and even level u–
An angry chittering stops him dead in his tracks. Jonathan turns slowly from the cluster of apples he's pilfering to see a monkey squatting on the branch above him, teeth bared in an expression Jonathan has become all too familiar with.
“Bearded Monkey: Lvl 1”
Shit. The trees are the monkey’s domain, the status told him that. He forgot. He got greedy. Stupid, stupid! The first monkey he fought almost killed him, and now he only has eighteen health for this one. He’s going to get killed again.
The monkey stares at him. Jonathan stares back. He hardly dares blink or breathe as he moves his hand slowly, oh so slowly towards the inventory. The monkey chitters. His heart is about to pound out of his chest. Almost there. His eyes twitch to the inventory and he hits the knife and his fingers wrap around the hilt but by the time he looks up back the monkey is a furry blur. It hits him, teeth sinking into the flesh of his shoulder, and he’s tilting, going over.
“Health; 13/54”
No time to pull the monkey off. He grasps at the tree. His hand closes on leaves and twigs, scrapes past them to something solid. He grasps the branch for dear life. With his other hand he stabs wildly. The monkey is too close, there's fur in his face, he can’t see. The blade passes through the air. Glances off something hard, maybe wood. Lodges in flesh. The monkey grunts. He pulls the knife out, stabs again.
They're slipping. The branch he's got hold of isn't thick enough, it's bending under his weight. He twists his legs, trying to wrap them around the branch, trying to hold on. Not good enough. He's sliding, slipping, nearly prone, torso perpendicular to the tree. In another second he’ll fall. The monkey’s scratching at him, and, shit! A line of not-pain across his ribs. He just cut himself with his own knife!
8/54
He stabs again. Finally, the monkey lets go. It gurgles and falls away from him, pulling the knife from his hand.
“Defeated Bearded Monkey: Lvl 1”
“2 Experience Gained”
“Level Up!”
“Level: 4”
“Experience till next level: 0/8”
“Unspent Skill Points: 1”
No time to celebrate. Jonathan pulls himself back up, unwraps his legs from the branch, and makes like hell back down the trunk. Already he can hear other monkeys chittering in the distance. Half way down. Shit, he can actually see one, jumping over from the next tree. He scrambles down a few branches. The ground is only a few yards away. The monkey is closer. Time to jump. He’s moving though the air, ground rushing up to meet him, leaves brushing across his face. He hits the ground, hard.
5/54
He rolls, crawls to the dead monkey, pulls the knife out of it's body, and flips over. He lies there, breath coming in and out like a bellows, holding his knife up at the tree above him. Two monkeys sit in its branches. They chitter, jump around, and scream at him, but they don’t come down. Evidently, they’ve decided the ground is his territory. He made it. He’s safe.
After he's gotten his breath back, the first thing to do is assign his new stat points. Body, again, given the fact that he just about got killed by another monkey. Speaking of the monkey, the time to butcher it. At the cost of five stamina, it nets him an experience and a monkey meat. Monkey meat and rat meat. Can you imagine anything less appetizing?
Next he gathers up all the apples that got knocked off during the fight, which turns out to be quite a lot. Time to replenish his stamina. He starts eating.
“+2 Stamina, 32/54”
“+2 Stamina, 39/54”
“+2 Stamina, 39/54"
But when he pulls out the fourth apple, the option to eat it doesn't appear.
"I want to eat this," he says.
A window pops up.
"Satiation reached. Can eat again in 2:30."
Since when does a game have a satiation system? This sucks. If the stamina he can regain without resting is capped, then no matter what he does he will eventually have to rest. Seven Gates is really trying to kick him off. Also, it means he's on a timer if he wants to rest and regain any health. He has to get a shelter constructed before he runs out of stamina.
He starts gathering branches. While he's at it, he comes across a vine crawling up the castle wall which the status window tells him can serve as a rope. He hacks off every bit of it, and finds he has a new problem. He's filled up his inventory.
Jonathan curses out loud. Limited inventory space is a relic, a product of an age where game designers put players through endless tedious shit. What is this, 2005?
But there's nothing for it. He fills his arms with vines and heads to the dead adventurer, who happens to sit in the nearest thing to a clearing the courtyard has. Time to get crafting.
After a lot of trial and error, he figures out he can construct a lean-to if he piles together lots of branches and vines and taps them with his knife. It's a weird process. Seven Gates lets him see where the structure will go before he builds it, fanned out through the air kind of like a hologram. He can move it around by waving his hands. To an observer who couldn't see the interface, he'd probably look crazy. He kinda feels crazy. Once he gets it where he wants it against a tree, he hits the build button.
It takes a whopping seven stamina, grants an experience, and creates a shaky pile of sticks that falls down almost the moment it's constructed. Well, shit. Maybe it had structural problems?
He shifts to another, bigger tree, with flatter ground beneath it and tries again. It stays up this time. He squats down and sits inside it. It's not what he'd call fine living or anything, but hey, it's a start. He starts to stand up, knocks his head on the top, and the whole thing collapses.
Now Jonathan's running out of supplies and, with all the walking around finding stuff he's done, he's running out of stamina. He disassembles the two failed lean-tos for branches and vines, keeping an eye on his ever diminishing stamina bar. One more shot. This time, he chooses to prop it up between two trees. He hits the build button.
A crude triangle of sticks appears, seemingly from nothing, and his stamina bar plummets into single digits. It doesn't fall over. He walks around it. It doesn't fall over. He lays a hand, ever so gently, on top of it. It still doesn't fall over.
Jonathan laughs. He can finally rest. He hunches inside and lies down on the stone. You wouldn't think it would be that comfortable and, honestly, it's not, but this body seems pretty immune to discomfort. Maybe it's because he's lying down, but the menu pops up on its own.
"Would you like to rest?"
"Full rest 5:15"
"Partial rest"
"No"
Over five hours. That's not that much better than just dying and respawning. Still, Jonathan will take what he can get. He hits full rest.
A moment later Jonathan finds himself in his own body, in his own bed. The house is quiet and dark. He stretches and, damn, he's stiff. He must have been lying here without moving the whole time. What time is it? His phone says 10:59. When he checks his timer, he finds he still has almost half an hour left. He sets a new timer, this one for 5 hours and15 minutes. When the avatar wakes up, he'll be ready for it.
Jonathan doesn't think he'll be able to sleep. I mean, shit, after the day he's just had? So many thoughts fill his head. Questions about Seven Gates. The technology. The curious design philosophy. What lies deeper in the castle? What are the other tools of the adventurer? How long will it take time to find them all? What lies past the tutorial? Who else found the app before it vanished? Who else is playing?
And he's gone, snoring into his pillow, phone still clutched in his hand.