Chapter 8

As we get within a half mile of the town my message symbol lights up with multiple messages. Opening the first of them I see it is from Alice.

Declan, we are recalling all teams back to the town. Several of the teams heading out were attacked as well as several attacks happening around town. Spread the word to your group. This message is being sent to all team leads.

Following this message are several other messages saying the same thing. The last message finally describes the fact that messages don’t work outside of town, and upon reading this we should message back and give a status update of any attacks.

Quickly I type out our experience and about the goblin camp we found. I also mention the system warning us about not being able to mention so far away out of town. No sooner than I hit send I receive a reply back. The team leaders are having a meeting as soon as they return. All team leads should head to the area behind the dining hall where an impromptu meeting area has been set up. I tell the team and split off to head that way immediately.

Getting to the meeting area I am shocked by the amount of people there and how ragged some of them look. I see a frazzled looking Alice up front and head her way.\

“Hey Alice, my team just returned. I sent a report to you of everything that we found while out.”

“Declan it’s good that you’re back. Yes I got your report and glanced over it. You are the only team to find one of these camps, and as you can see you are one of the few here that had no trouble killing the goblin they found. Several groups have already lost members.”

“Lost members? What do you mean, this is a simulation. How did anyone die?”

“We aren’t sure yet that they are dead,” she says. “But they died while out with their teams by surprise attacks or carelessness it sounds like. We currently have the programmers trying to figure out what happened. I don’t think anyone planned on people dying while we were training. But we are hoping that they will respawn.” About this time Alice’s eyes go out of focus and her face goes white. “It appears that if we die the system is ejecting us into space to make the death permanent.”

“I thought that was locked to just murderers and the like?”

“It was,” she responds. “But the programmers say that the settings have been changed by the system. If we die in the simulation we actually die.”

The rest of the day went by in a blur as everything that was now known was told to everyone and the fallout from it. People were pissed and wanted to know what could be done about it. They also wanted to know why the programmers weren’t doing their jobs and changing things back. It came out that they couldn’t. When the system changed things it also removed all of the programmers' access to everything. They had read only rights to the programming now.

The next morning was slightly better than the day before. Breakfast was quick and simple as usual. After breakfast it was decided to get the work crews back together and that a wall was needed to be built around the town. The loggers were sent out with escorts to protect them, as were the farmers. As a building crew team lead I was brought together with the other team leads and shown the blueprint for the wall. It was to be a simple palisade. A single row of logs stood on end and latched together with rope and dowels.

After the meeting the engineers were sent out and started to mark the line to be dug that the logs were going to be set into. As they did that I met with my team and we got our tools to start digging. Half of the build teams were assigned to digging the line while the rest started at one point and assembled the palisade.

Digging was not what I had in mind for the day, but honestly it felt pretty good. By the end of the day I found out that it was possible to increase attributes now by doing hard labor. My whole crew had received stat increases. I made sure I messaged Alice when it started to happen. She sent a message back later saying that we weren't the only ones and that she would include it in the daily update. After a long eight hours of digging I increased my strength by one. After the increase I felt the muscles in my back loosen up just a slight amount and the digging became that much easier. After our day of digging I check my stats page and decide that I should check it at the end of every day so I can keep track of changes.

Name: Declan Kincaid

Age: 24 years old

Race: Human

Class: N/A

Level: 1

Experience 5/200

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Health: 120/120

Mana: 100/100

Statistics:

Strength: 8

Dexterity: 7

Constitution : 6

Intelligence: 5

Wisdom: 5

Charisma: 5

Not seeing any changes besides my strength and the new line about experience I head over to the back of the kitchen to show them the tubers I found the goblin digging at. Getting to the back of the kitchen I see the door is open and several people in aprons are standing around outside drinking water. “Hey, how can we help you,” one of them says as I get closer.

“Hello everyone, while my crew was exploring yesterday we found a goblin thing digging at a plant and wanted to see if you all could tell us what it was.” I pull one of the tubers out of my inventory and hand it over to the guy that greeted me.

He rolls it around in his hands for a second while wiping away the remaining dirt. “Inspection says it is a mana enriched potato he says.” With a small frown on his face.

“Okay,” I say, “and what does that mean?”

“I have no clue.” He rolls the potato around again before handing it to one of the other people. “Do you have any more of them?” I nod to his question. “Okay if you don’t mind leaving them with us we will play around with them and see what we can do with it.”

I look at him before saying, “yeah I don’t mind you having them. But can you let me know what they are and what they do? I’m Declan by the way.” I pull out all of the potatoes, there are about a dozen of them.

“I’m Julio,” the guy says. “I’m one of the head cooks for the town, and that is no problem. Just ask one of the servers for me when you come in for dinner and I will come out to talk to you about what we find out about them.”

“That sounds good,” I reply. “Also if you don’t mind sending Alice a message and letting her know about it as well. Any new information that we can find has to be helpful in some way.”

“Alright, will do man.”

“Thank you, I will see you at dinner then.” I say before heading off to clean up and figure out something to do for the rest of my day since my work shift is over.

After a good hot shower and a short nap I take some time to take care of the tools, I still haven’t returned to the tool shed. I spend the next two hours with a file and wet stone going over the hatchets and wood wedges I stored on my belt. I checked the dagger I received from the system too but it’s blade is still perfect. The two hatchets on the other hand are rather dull from use. After finishing with putting a better edge on them I move to the wood wedges. They weigh about four pounds each and are dull. It makes sense I think. These were never meant to do any cutting, just to wedge into a cut and force the wood apart. Taking the file I work a better edge on the hardened steel before taking the wet stone to make it a little finer. I don’t want a knife’s edge on them, but I do want them sharp enough to split skin on their own if I was to throw them.

After getting a finer edge on the wedges I decide to take them over to the edge of the trees and give them a try. Taking aim at a tree with a thick trunk I throw the wedge and watch as it thwacks edge first into the trunk. It hits hard enough to wedge itself in about two inches. That will do, I think to myself. I yank the wedge out and step back to try again. After another dozen throws and only two of them bouncing off at an oblique angel I unlock a new skill.

Thrown Weapons Level 0 > 1

Pulling out the wedges in the tree I step back to continue when I feel something wrong with how I am holding the wedge. Shifting my grip I throw and immediately feel the difference. The wedge easily slides from my fingers and thunks right into the tree trunk. Quickly I throw the other wedges before walking up and pulling them out one by one and checking the edge on all four of them before storing them back into the work pouch. Enough time has passed that I head over to the mess hall for dinner, and hopefully some answers about some magic spuds.

Walking into the dining hall was starting to feel familiar. Lining up with people and getting a tray of food, ah just like going back to school I think and chuckle to myself. At the end of the line I ask the server passing out drinks to let Julio know that I’m here and when he has a second to come see me. She asks for my name before saying she will tell him when it slows down. Sitting at the edge of the table I figure I will be here awhile before it slows down enough for him to come talk to me.

I was correct in thinking it would be awhile before Julio had time to come talk to me. I finished my meal about forty minutes ago, and just got to do some people watching while I waited. Finally I spotted Julio walking out of the kitchen with a bowl in hand and heading towards me. Sitting down across from me he slides the bowl over to me.

“Here is a sample of the potatoes you left for us. Take a taste and I’ll tell you what we found out about them.” Giving him a raised eyebrow, I take up the spoon and taste the mashed potatoes. The flavor of butter and garlic hits my taste buds and makes them sing. I stop mid chew and look at Julio again as he smiles. “ Yeah, we don’t know what it is about those magic spuds, but our skills tell us that they are a higher grade food product. I think it is obvious from the look on your face that you can tell what that means. Higher grade ingredients make the food absolutely delicious. We sent a message to inform the council of our findings, but I wanted to let you know as well. If you come across more stuff like this, bring it to me and I will make sure you get your fill of the stuff. It gave me some good experience cooking those spuds.”

Julio got up and walked away as I was still eating the mashed potatoes. I can say that I barely noticed because they were that good. Finishing up I took my dishes over to the bus trays and headed out in search of my bed. Thinking to myself that I might find something to read or just to play with my status page and see if there was anything else for me to learn.