Hey Guys! Tests are over and another chapter is out! Still got finals next week though so not out of the park yet! Hope you enjoy and let me know what you think
Chapter 5
Looking around the foyer of the building Onyx was surprised by how much bigger it looked on the inside. About 100 feet long the floor was made of some kind of black marble. All along the walls were plants and tapestries. There was a deep green carpet taking up the middle of the room with golden trimmings. About 20 feet straight across from the door was a desk with an elf sitting at it.
But what caught his eye wasn’t the desk, it wasn’t the giant painting behind it (though it did catch his eye when he first looked, the thing was the size of a giant plasma TV!) No what caught (and kept) his eye was that the elf seemed to be glowing! Swirling all around her was a faint shimmering mist. Onyx blinked and rubbed his eyes but the swirling mist stayed clinging to the elf. Cautiously he went up to the desk.
“Hello sir, may I help you?” Turning towards him Onyx realized his mistake. The elf was a guy!
‘God I almost fell into a trap!’ “I think so. A guard told me that this is where I could go to find jobs for the city? I’m new in town and am looking for employment.”
“One moment sir.” Looking around his desk, the elf grabbed a few scrolls. Briefly glancing at each eventually he found to what seemed to be the right one. “Here you go sir.”
“Thank you.” Taking the scroll I started to read what was on it.
Quest received!
Because of the influx of wanderers, the local alchemy shop is running low on herbs for potions and poultices. Bring Alchemist Burdo 10 of both wild blood clovers and manabloom flowers.
3 copper per bundle (max 50 bundles)
Quest received!
Because of the influx of wanderers, several stores are looking for sales associates to mind their stores. Shop owners Belewin, Samantha, Vincent, Burksor, Johnathan, Violet, and Cerci are currently hiring.
Duration 3 months
Pay: 4 copper a day, chance of learning merchant’s class
Quest received!
Due to the influx of wanderers, the head librarian has asked for someone to come and help restock the library shelves and resort the books that are left on the tables.
Duration 1 month
Pay: 2 copper and 2 free meals a day
Looking over the list I wasn’t really all that excited by what I saw. I was only able to get 3 of the jobs from the scroll. Either because I didn’t meet the level requirement or have the right class. Frowning I turned back to the elf. “Is this all there is?”
“Yes sir. That scroll holds all the jobs that are available for your level grade.” The elf responded. “However those are only the jobs that are given to the town hall. There are still …” Just as he was about to tell Onyx where else he could go, one of the back doors opened and a human came out.
Man -“Celebren I need those… oh I didn’t know you were helping someone.”
Celebrin “It’s alright sir. I know why you are here. I gave the scouts report to Donna this morning. I also gave Samuel in accounting the theorized budget for the guards for the next 6 months.”
Man- “Oh thank you. What about the rumor of bandits setting themselves up on the road?”
Celebrin-“I talked to Galvin about it yesterday I think he sent out several guards to look into it.”
As they were talking Onyx noticed that the man didn’t even flinch at the glowing mist. It was almost like…. ‘God I’m stupid! He must be one of the GMs! Samuel told me he made it so I could tell who they were, but I didn’t expect it to be this flashy.’ After several more minutes of conversation the man turned to Onyx and apologized for taking up his time. After he left Onyx turned to Celebrin and said “You’re a GM aren’t you.”
Startled he turned to me and said “I’m sorry sir but I do not know what GM means. Are you perhaps a traveler? If so could you tell me what those….”
Onyx-“Cut the crap. Samuel Cooper already did something to my avatar so I can see who’s a GM and whose not. Honestly though I never expected to meet one so quickly, especially out in a starter city. I figured you guys would be in the bigger towns near the capitals.”
Celebrin sighing says “Damn it Mr. Cooper. Look there aren’t a lot of GMs around and all of us want to STAY HIDDEN. Mr. Cooper told us of you as soon as he came out of the pod. There was even a memo sent out about you. So I know who you are, and I’m sorry for your loss. However we are NOT here to cater to your every whim. We can help you out a little from time to time but we are not at your beck and call, so don’t start using us for your own advantage. It will be unfair to other players and could cause MAJOR blowback to the company if it got out.”
Startled at the outburst Onyx snapped back “Look all I was ask if you were a GM since to me you’re surrounded by some kind of strange mist and I wanted to know what it was. You don’t need to bite my head off. I plan to do this game on my own, I just wanted to know if you knew somewhere I could go to get paid and if you knew somewhere other than the scroll you gave me. If you didn’t or couldn’t tell me then I was going to leave and try to find something else.”
Looking a little ashamed, Celebrin stated “Sorry. I didn’t know what kind of person you were. I thought you were one of those gamers who would EXPECT free handouts because of the situation you are in. I’ve already got people coming in trying to get me to let them do higher level jobs than what they can do or expecting me to have something that’s beneficial to them personally. They seem to forget that this is a virtual REALITY and in reality you don’t always get what you want or what’s most beneficial to you.”
Onyx-“It’s fine I just don’t like being snapped at for just asking questions. Honestly I’ve always been the type who didn’t really like to ask for help but since this is literally life or death for me I just had to ask. If you can’t help that’s fine.”
As he was turning away, Celebrin called him back. “Look I can’t help you but I can send you to another GM who could. We try to have a wide variety of jobs so we can get information from a larger pool of people. The guys name in game is Butch and he’s a miner in the nearby hills. I can send him a message that you’re coming so he can help you. However you’re going to need at least a 25 in strength to do any mining.”
Onyx smiled. “That’s ok I already have a 28. Just let him know I’m coming and where he is.” After sending a message to Butch, Celebrin gives Onyx direction to the mining ground. Thanking him again Onyx leaves for the mines.
After buying 2 more water skins for 50 copper, Onyx heads to the starter fountain to fill them up. Once that was done he went out the west gate to the hills that are nearby where the mining post was suppose to be. Along the way he saw a large amount of other players killing wildlife. Rabbits, squirrels, the occasional bird, it seems that Anarchy Online didn’t have just one kind of beginner animal.
After walking about a half hour on the worn out road Onyx came to the split that would lead him either to another nearby town or to the mining complex. Taking the appropriate road he walked for another hour before spotting the mine shaft.
Looking around he saw a small variety of races. Dwarves, Human, Beastfold, and even the occasional Oread were bringing up carts of rocks and sorting them at a large table off to the sides. About 50 feet from the entrance stood a large wooden building with smoke coming out of the chimney. Onyx assumed it was the grub hall or barracks for the miners.
Scanning the crowd he spotted someone covered in the same swirling mist as Celebrin. The man was a beastfolk wolfman with black shoulder length hair standing about 5 10’ in height. He seemed to be yelling at a human at the table sorting the rocks. Walking up to him Onyx said “Hello sir, I believe Celebrin told you to expect me.”
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
Turning around the wolfman saw how large Onyx was and stopped yelling. Sizing him up, the wolf man simply said “Come with me.” He led Onyx into a smaller building that Onyx hadn’t noticed before. After closing the door, the wolfman turned to him and said “So you’re the ghost in the machine huh. I got to expect you caused quite the stir in the office. No one thought that the pods could do what they did to you.”
Bowing his head Onyx apologized. “Sorry for any inconvenience on my part but I am rather glad it did what it did. At least I’m still alive…kinda.”
Snorting the wolfman waved his hand. “It’s fine. The company is getting a lot of good data from monitoring you. So we can call it even. Anyway the names Butch and as you can tell I’m one of the GMs for this area. Cel already filled me in on you wanting to work so I’m guessing you’ll want me to teach you mining right.”
Onyx-“Well I was just going to learn it the hard way, but I won’t say no to someone teaching it to me. However I don’t understand what the difference from being taught a skill or finding it out on your own are.”
Butch-“Well I guess I could tell you. Teaching a skill is obviously a lot quicker than learning it on your own but it usually costs quite a bit of money. However there are some other differences as well. If a NPC teaches you the skill you get a set amount of bonuses every time you rank it up. However if you learn it on your own there is a good chance that the skill will actually be weaker than if someone teaches you. On the reverse though, skills that were taught cannot combine while skills that were self-taught can. For instance if someone learns all the crafting skills manually then they will all combine into the skill Craftsmanship, where as they would not if you got NPCs to teach you them all one by one. This is beneficial since Craftsmanship will gain experience from any crafting done instead of just the craft that you are currently making.”
Onyx thought about that for a sec. If he got Butch to teach him, then his mining skill would be better and give him bigger bonuses. However there were a lot of gathering skills in the game. He was also of the mind that the more self-sufficient he is the better, and since resource gathering can produce a lot of gold from selling the resources he was honestly kind of stuck on choosing.
After weighing the pros and the cons for a little bit, he decided to self-learn the skill. After all if he was going to be doing a lot of gathering form different resources then it would be easier to level them all up at the same time.
After telling Butch his decision, Butch walked over to a nearby chest and pulled out a large pick axe. Walking back to Onyx, he handed the pick to him. Onyx took it and tried to identify what it was.
Giant Steel Pickaxe
Durability (500/500)
This pickaxe is far larger than a normal pickaxe. It was obviously made for those larger than normal people. Because of this the durability of the item is greater than normal, however it takes more strength to use.
Attack: 16-20
+5% mining speed, -4 agility
Restrictions: 28 Strength, 22 Vitality
After checking out his new pick, Butch told him “The pay is 4 silver a day however you have to meet your quota of 3 carts of ore. Anything you mine hear is our property, though any ores that you bring past your quota will bring you a bonus of 1 silver a cart. Breakfast is at 6AM and dinner is as 5PM. The mine will close down at around 4, so no cheating by going in after dark. We have security systems placed up so no one is stupid enough to try to make some extra cash in the dark. Since you don’t have the mining skill you only need to do a cart a day for the next 3 days, after that you have to do the same work as everyone else. Of course you’ll only be getting 1 silver a day for the first 3 days.”
Nodding Onyx lifted his pick onto his shoulder and said “Hi ho hi ho down the hole I go.” Smiling at that Butch then led him outside to the compound. He explained how the large table had special runes in it that would detect what each ore was so they could properly sort them. He also went over several rules in the mine, like if one man is working a vein then you can’t mine it without permission.
After explaining the outside, Butch brought Onyx down into the mine itself. It was a large network of tunnels going off in all directions, however they made sure to make the main shaft extra-large with hanging lanterns so the miners knew all they had to do was follow that shaft to get out. They even painted arrows on the bottom of the lanterns so the miners knew which way was which.
Butch led Onyx down one of the farther along shafts to a spot with a cart about 300ft away from the main shaft. “Here this has some basic copper, it should be relatively easy for your first time. Just keep hitting and put the ore in the cart here then roll it out to the table. I’ll send someone to check on you in a few hours.” With a pat on the back, Butch left Onyx to his own devices.
‘Well time to get started.’ Looking around he noticed that Butch forgot to leave any kind of light source for him. However he shrugged since there was still enough light to see by coming from the main shaft. Picking up his pick Onyx began to work.
At first it wasn’t all that bad. It took him a while to get into a good rhythm but once he did he was actually enjoying himself. He always did like doing things with his hand, and the work wasn’t much harder than his construction job. However as time went on Onyx could feel his muscles start to burn. After maybe 4 hours of constant picking and putting ore into the cart he got a message.
For continuously working out for a long period of time you have gained:
+4 Strength, +4 Vitality
Skill(s) Learned!
For continuously mining an ore vein in low light you have gained the following skills.
Low Light Vision
Mining
Blinking at the sudden glow from the screens. Onyx placed his pick on the ground and decided to take a break. Sitting down he took out one of his water skins and drank heavily from it. After a couple of minutes he called up his new skill windows.
low-Light Vision
Beginner
From spending a large amount of time in a low-light environment your eyes have adapted. You can now see better in areas that have little light.
You can now see 20% better and farther in areas with little light.
Mining
Beginner
Any civilization knows how important weapons and armor is. However to make those someone needs to go underground and provide the proper ores and minerals. That’s where you come in.
Ore veins will glow slightly making them easier to see
You gain a % of extra ore equal to the % of the skills rank
Satiety lost from mining will decrease
There is a 2% chance to get rare material out of certain ore veins
Smiling Onyx took another swig of water and got back to work.
Previous