Brad the Impaler: A LitRPG Adventure, page 11
“Shhh.” I bobbed Slash. “We don’t want to draw that thing’s attention.”
“Are bats supposed to be out during the day?” Slash said, shivering in my arms.
“Only when they’re hungry, I think. That’s why I don’t want it to know we’re here.” I looked behind me toward the pines. “Let’s go collect tinder and firewood. Hopefully, it didn’t notice us and will move on by the time we’re done.”
We stepped into the line of trees that I think were spruces. Five feet into cover, the air smelled even cleaner than it did in the open. So far, the only complimentary thing I could say about being forced to play for my life in a video game was that the designers created a beautiful world.
The deeper we went into the trees, the thicker their growth. The spruces grew taller, broader, and fuller. An old growth area.
“Should be easy to find older trees,” I said, waving at the ground. “We can collect needles for tinder. Shouldn’t be too hard to get a fire going.”
“How are we going to collect?” Slash asked. “It’s not like we have something to carry them with.”
He was right. The game hadn’t given me anything but my loincloth, so we’d have to lug everything by hand.
“Let’s see if we can find a clearing. We’ll use an Inventory slot. Or whatever. We’ll worry about it then.” The trees were too full, so thick in some spots they made an impenetrable wall of green.
“Are you planning on staying?” Slash said, his voice pitched. “In here?”
“The woods will cut the wind down as the day gets colder. Also, it’ll keep us hidden from that bat. We need a fire, and if we can find a clearing, we’ll have the most comfortable night possible under the circumstances.”
“But there isn’t room for you to build the house.”
“We’ll keep looking. We’ve been here for a day. Not even. It’ll take time to do this correctly.”
“But Fortune told us we had to build a shelter and start working on a settlement.”
I squatted, checking our surroundings. I scratched his butt. Nothing calmed a savage seven-pound beast like butt rubbings. He stood stiff, turning his backside so I could reach it more easily. “Shhh. I promise I’ll get to work on a shelter as soon as I get a fire started.”
“A house, not a shelter.”
“Yes, a house.” I gave him one more butt rub and stood. I pointed in the general direction of the open field, making sure I kept myself and my pooch orientated. “If anything happens, if we get separated for any reason, head back to that field. We’ll watch for each other there. Got it?”
“Why would we separate? You need me around to protect you. Plus, I have the Sleuth Ability, remember?”
“I don’t want us separating, but if we do, we have to have a plan. Why don’t you put that nose to good use and find us dead wood that’ll be easy to burn? Start with small branches, but don’t pass up thick ones or even logs if you find them. We can worry about transport when we have better options.”
“Hi, Fortune,” Slash said instead of responding to me, catching me off-guard.
She wasn’t in my vision. “Fortune?”
As soon as I spoke her name, she popped up in the corner of my eye, sans menu box. I got a full look at her. Her green linen dress was long and fell out of view, cut off from my mindscreen just below her knees. Her corset looked tightly cinched to show off her shape. I couldn’t help but imagine that was an attribute many female NPCs would suffer in Darkworld because some virgin programmer got off on seeing suffocated female forms, even digital ones. “Hi, Brad.”
“Is everything alright?”
“Yes. Slash called me.”
I turned to my pup. “Why? How?”
Slash shook his head. “You really need to learn to use your menu. Stubbornness will get you nowhere. And I called her to ask for help. I don’t want to search these woods all night long just to get a fire going.”
“Good point.”
“Do we have a way to see more of the forest?” Slash asked our guide. “Some games Brad has played have maps. Do we have something like that?”
“Yes. Your Conjurer Cane allows you to open your game options. If you call on those, scroll down and turn on the option for a hovering map.”
I felt a flush of frustration. “That would have been nice to know before.”
“No one asked,” she said. “I apologize.”
“My fault. Not yours.” The list of options was long and tedious. If there was anything in video games that I despised more than tedium, I hadn’t uncovered it yet. “Can you give me a hint of where it is? The option?”
“Third from the bottom.”
I spun down the list, visually commanding a swell of options to pass by in a blur. The game had far more than I cared to scan through. Part of me wondered if there was a search capability in the menu for future needs. Something I was going to have to explore. Right now, I just wanted to find the map.
Reaching the bottom of the list, I focused. The rectangle around the MAP option highlighted and expanded, showing me a slider button. I clicked. It slid to the right, turning the button from gray to blue.
“Once you have turned it on, you can close the Options,” Fortune said. “Once that menu closes, you will see your map at the bottom of your screen. There, it will remain until you turn it off.”
I followed her directions. Just as she said, I now had a new feature on my screen and understood why it was set to ‘off’ by default. The size of the map was ridiculous. A broad rectangular shape, it covered a third of my view. At least it was only fractionally opaque. Still, having what was essentially a cloudy box obscuring everything in the bottom third of my vision was far from ideal, and pretty dangerous.
“How’s this supposed to help?” I asked as I examined the map, most of which was covered in what looked like swirling black clouds. Only a narrow area around two dots in the center was exposed with definition. The line of detail cut from right to left through the middle of the swirling blackness. When I turned to my side, the world around the little dots turned with me. “The dots? That’s me and Slash?”
“Yes, sir.” She shook her head. “Yes, Brad.”
I gave her a smile that I was unsure she could see. “Okay. This map isn’t of much use. I think the green swirls are supposed to represent the forest, correct?”
“Yes. What you see as clouds is simply there to cover areas unexplored. As such, it will remain so until you begin your exploration.”
Ah, a fog of war-type feature of the map. “Got it. Looks like we need to do some walking anyway, buddy. It was a good idea.”
Slash’s two small, tan dots above his eyes slid closer together. “Well, that’s stupid.”
“Welcome to gameplay,” I said. Looking up, I activated my Conjurer’s Cane and commanded, “Close map. Ah, much better,” I said, now that my vision was clear again. “Let’s find a clearing and get this fire going. Thank you for your help, Fortune.”
She put a hand to her mouth. “You are most welcome.” Then she blipped out of my mindscreen, back to wherever digitally re-created people went when they weren’t needed.
“I’m keeping my map up,” my pup said as we started off.
“Might not be a bad idea with your Sleuth Ability. Do you think you want to use it now? Finding firewood is a harmless way to test it instead of waiting until we’re in a timed quest to get out of a trap or being chased by zombies or something.”
“Good idea!” His thin tail rocked back and forth. He narrowed his eyes, taking in our surroundings.
“What are you doing?”
His little doggie snout pursed. “Shhh. Give me a minute.”
I stood by while he inspected the nearby trees. He sniffed at most, stopped at half again more to lift his leg and pee, and kept his nose to the ground the rest of the time. Without looking up, he raced along a line of spruces. “Follow me.”
I did. The pup was onto something.
He scurried along the trees so quickly I had to jog to keep up. With his nose pressed down, his sniffing was clear, even from behind. Obviously, he wasn’t letting go of a scent. My job was to look out for him. With this speed and level of focus, he was about to run straight off the hill’s cliff if he wasn’t careful.
I warned him as he investigated, continuing to jog to keep up. The floor of tree needles didn’t feel great on my bare feet. I pushed away the discomfort and annoyance and focused on protecting Slash and not breaking a toe, or worse, on a decayed stump.
The trail he’d found turned out not to be a trap, or anything nefarious. Instead, the little guy found a clearing, free of tree stumps and carpeted with grass. With a diameter of over three hundred feet, the open sky fed the grass a healthy dose of sunlight that warmed, and rain that nourished it to thrive this deep in.
BOOM!
DO YOU SMELL WHAT THE PUP IS COOKING?
YOUR MASCOT USED ITS ABILITY TO FIND A MUCH-NEEDED RESOURCE. GOOD THING, TOO, BECAUSE IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE YOU COULD FIND A DATE IF YOU WERE THE ONLY SWINGING DICK LEFT IN THE WORLD… WHICH YOU MIGHT BE. WE’RE NOT TELLING.
+15 XP
+1 INSIGHT
+1 INVESTIGATION
“I’ve got more XP than you!” Slash barked and raced toward the grass. I chased, yelling for him to stop. He didn’t. Upon reaching it, he did the one thing all dogs inexhaustibly do. He lifted his leg and dribbled a few drops of urine on the grass.
“Mine,” he said proudly, and bounded off, racing in circles and zig-zags with no rhyme or reason.
I was careful to avoid Slash’s marked spot and gloried in the richness of the grass on my feet. This was the most comfortable they’d felt since this entire debacle kicked off. Until I found or made footwear, or developed serious callouses, I’d never want to leave this spot.
Off to one side, the ground was raw and open. Though I didn’t want to leave this wonderful carpet of green, I moved to inspect it. My hopes were fulfilled finding a fifteen-foot-wide circle of loose dirt. No grass. No spruce needles. Just bare, gorgeous dirt.
“This is where we’ll set our fire pit.”
Slash continued racing around and rolling on the grass. I think I could have told him I’d found Pussy and still not gotten his attention.
I searched until I found something to dig with. Even though the dirt was loose, there was no reason to go at it with my hands if I could make the job easier on myself. Every conserved resource was vital in games like this. Plus, I’d been watching my Health bar and saw how it continually inched to the left as we jogged through the forest, following Slash’s trail. Not something to panic about. But it gave me insight into how doing even the simplest things might put a player in a precarious position if they tripped across an enemy at the wrong time.
I found a branch that should do the job, and kept searching until I found a perfect rock. At a point in its history, it’d split. One side was round, but something sheered the bottom off, forming a sharp edge.
BOOM!
WOOD. DO I REALLY NEED TO SAY MORE?
+1 XP
BOOM!
ROCK. YEAH. SAME. SORRY, WE JUST CAN’T GET EXCITED ABOUT STUFF LIKE THIS.
+1 XP
XP for finding a thick branch and a rock? Was it because they were tools, or simply from a resource collection standpoint?
Bringing both new tools back to the site, I appreciated Slash’s determination to play in the grass, ignorant of the fact I’d walked away from camp. He deserved a break. I let him keep at it as I got to work in the dirt.
I don’t know how much time passed, but I was sweating and my Health bar had dipped a quarter of its fullness by the time the pit was dug.
BOOM!
YOU DID A MANLY THING. NOW YOU HAVE A WHOLE HOLE TO YOUR NAME. WE’RE SURE THAT’LL HELP YOU SURVIVE THE CHALLENGES AHEAD, YOU GLOBAL DOMINATOR, YOU.
+1 XP
Did the AI’s taunts really work? I imagined for some players it would. Maybe it’d get them to question their priorities and send them off chasing down the closest beast, NPC, or player to fight. Not me. Shit-talking never affected me in competitive sports. Never bothered me when the Army grunts tried to belittle the fact I was Air Force. Verbal chest beating never spurred me to outdo someone in a staff meeting. Probably why no one categorized my military career as sparkling, and why my post-military job was hardly one to envy.
Ignoring the taunt, I gladly accepted the single XP and asked my pooch if he wanted to go rock hunting.
Slash rolled over, jogged to the edge of the grass, looked at the pit like he was unimpressed, and then up at me. “Are you staying close?”
“Yes.” I pointed off to where I’d found my rock shovel. “There’s a small field of rocks over there. I won’t be far. If I need to gather more from somewhere else, I’ll call.”
“Okay, I’ll stay here then.” His eye-spots drew together. “All that playing really did a number on my Health. It’s down halfway. I’m going to take a nap.”
“Your Health bar is at half?” Concern slipped through my comment. Because he was my mascot, I could see it on my mindscreen if I looked to the corner where my bar was.
“Yes. I just said that,” he said with a sniff. “You know, Tess was right. You need to listen better or you’ll never get another girlfriend.”
I wagged my finger at him, pulling it back once I recognized what I was doing. When he couldn’t speak, at least in the human tongue, it felt right to admonish him for misbehaving. But now, doing that felt wrong in every way possible, like I was acting like some jackass abusive spouse. “Just… Please be careful with your Health. We’re only at level two. There’s no numerical value assigned to it, so we can’t be sure how much we have.”
“Yes, Dad,” he mocked in a teenage-pouty voice. “I will. Call loud if you need me.” Without another word, he backed into the sun and curled into a tiny ball in the grass.
I checked the open sky for any sign of the bat and hustled to collect more rocks.
It took eight trips to gather enough to build a respectable firewall in and around the pit. We’d still have to be careful, but I felt much better about building the largest fire I dared. It’d not only keep us warm throughout the night, but it’d discourage nocturnal threats from getting too close. The bonus was that I’d gained another thirty XP for collecting the rock and twenty-five for all the firewood.
Somewhere off to the west, the sun had fallen behind the distant mountain range. In my collection of rocks, we had quartz. A design flaw, pure luck, or the game’s way of helping, I didn’t know. I remembered that quartz was a flint rock from an obscure survivalist training session I half-paid attention to early in my military career. I’d grabbed a dozen during my collection excursion. Finally, a training class that paid off.
Even though it took far too long to get sparks, I finally did. The tinder took, kindling caught, and the branches I added to the nascent fire pushed it on. I felt like a rock star when it was strong enough for me to add logs without puffing the entire effort out.
BOOM!
YOU ARE THE FIREEEEESTARTER.
CONGRATS! NOW YOU WON’T FREEZE TO DEATH. AT LEAST, NOT YET.
YOU’VE MADE YOUR FIRST IN-GAME FIRE.
+50 XP
+1 SURVIVAL
My pup was going to be pissed when he found out how many XP I now had.
By the time Slash woke from his nap, the sky was dark, but we had a fire. A fat, hot fire.
“Nice work,” he said, half-cheerily, coming closer. “Though it’d be nicer in a fireplace.”
I was too tired to argue. My Health bar was at a quarter. “I need to sleep.” After a moment, I added, “For a long time. You’ve got watch.”
“Watch? What’s that? What am I watching?”
I could almost see his Health bar slide in the wrong direction with his burst of anxiety. “Calm down, wee man. Just stay awake and enjoy the fire. If you hear or see something, bark.”
Boy, that was a stupid thing to say.
15
Into the Fire
Slash’s barking woke me fifteen times before I snapped at him. I consider that an excellent record. He barked at the wind, a bat’s screech, a snapping twig, and the moaning and creaking of trees. More than a few times, I was sure he barked at the popping of logs on the fire, though I couldn’t get him to admit it.
“The more you wake me, the longer I’m going to need to sleep to refill my Health,” I yelled when I couldn’t take anymore.
He slunk into a laying position, putting his head between his front paws and sniffed, blowing up a small dirt cloud.
This wasn’t about beauty rest. A full Health was essential in gameplay, especially when you didn’t know the first thing about the game itself. I needed a full reset, and he needed to learn its importance while we were early in the game.
Hours later, I woke to a disturbing realization. My Health still wasn’t full. I asked Slash, who seemed to have forgotten that I yelled at him earlier if his wagging tail was an indication, if his was.
“No, but I’ve been up forrrrrrrreeeeeevvveeeerrr,” he whined into the sky.
“No, you haven’t. Stop howling. You’re not a wolf. And you’re sure it was full when you woke?”
He cocked his head. The one ear that was standing up straight flopped over. “Actually, now that I think about it, no, I can’t say it was.”
“Hmmmm. I don’t like that. Fortune.”
The guide popped up on my mindscreen. “Good morrow. How may I assist?”
“Why isn’t my Health full?” I asked, pointing at the bar, not sure if she could see it.
“Health refreshes to its maximum whenever you’ve taken a long rest,” the guide said, sounding like she was reverting to her script-reading mandate. “A long rest is defined as one of six hours or more in which the character does nothing but sleep. Interruptions in that sleep to eat, drink, read, or other things such as bodily functions reduce a full rest to that of a short rest. Health cannot be fully restored on a short rest, no matter how many of them you take in a row. Alas, I am afraid that is not the issue for you and Slash.”
