Survival Quest (The Way of the Shaman: Book #1) (23 page)

"Excellent; now show us what you have," Eric began to get his money out, "We need rings with Strength. Do you have some with Stamina too?"

"I have everything, since I can change the stats on the rings."

"WHAT?" Eric stopped in his tracks. "How? I heard about this - in my old clan the guys who did Jewelcraft said that there was a feature allowing you to change stat bonuses by decreasing the ring's durability, but to get it you had to go through a ton of quests, go somewhere and study something. How is a prisoner able to do all this - especially with a level 7 character? A short name, such abilities in Jewelcraft... There's something you're not being straight about, Mahan - you're holding something back. Well, to hell with it, pass those rings here.”

I moved to give Eric the rings and was surprised by a message popping up in front of me. From Eric's expression I guessed he was seeing the same thing.

Attention! You cannot transfer items or money to players from parallel Pryke Mines.

So they really were from the Pryke Mine, but from some parallel version of it. I couldn't give them the rings, remaining the only cheater in this mine. So that's how things can play out!

I turned to the other group members and saw that we now had a few problems. It was clear enough what to do with the Malachite, but we had never discussed how the loot from the Rats and Copper Ore should be split. What if something unusual dropped from a Rat? Who would get those bonuses? Such matters should be settled from the outset, in good time.

The Rat dropped standard loot: a Rat pelt and a couple of pieces of meat. All of this lay unclaimed on the ground as we stood around it, looking at each other in silence. No-one wanted to lose out on the loot, but neither did anyone want to look like the bastard who'd just grab everything for himself. Everyone was silently waiting for proposals from the others. Well, since I was given the honorable title of raid-leader, I should be the one to get the ball rolling.

"Right, I see that we've found ourselves in a bit of a pickle with the loot distribution, yes? I propose a simple solution: I take what drops from the first Rat. The second Rat is Eric's, third - Clutzer's, fourth - Karachun's and fifth - Leite's. If a Rat drops something unique, this bonus belongs to whoever gets lucky with his turn. The others have no claims against him. Otherwise we'll argue until we're blue in the face about who should be getting what."

"Eric's already got his from that first Rat. If you two swap places, the second Rat is yours, the next one will go to Clutzer and so on," replied Karachun. "I like this approach. If someone gets lucky, he gets lucky. I won't have a problem with that."

When all agreed that they were happy with this loot distribution method, I picked up the loot from the Rat and put it in my bag. Just a bunch of cheap stuff, but if there's a lot, it'll be enough to live on.

"Mahan, what's with the miming? Do you think this is a talent show or something?" asked Leite. Everyone continued to look at the place where the loot had just been.

"I don't get it. What are you on about?" I asked, surprised.

"You bent down, didn't take anything and then pretended to put something in your bag. And the loot's still on the ground, exactly where it was. Don't ask us to pay for the mime performance, we just can’t put a price on talent like that. You're faking it pretty badly, man."

I really didn't get it. I again opened up my bag and looked at what I put there. Well, yes, there's the pelt and the meat. I didn't have any meat at all before, so there was no mistaking it.

"Looks like you're the ones playing jokes. I already took my things and put them in the bag. The spot you're looking so intently at is empty, as it happens. So if anyone's seeing anything there, go ahead and take it all, I'm fine with that."

"Don't be a smartass, Mahan. You better not be pissing about with us," said Clutzer and pretended to pick something up from the ground and put it in his bag. "An extra pelt's not gonna rip me pockets."

Without saying a word, Leite and Karachun repeated Clutzer's silly movements. Are they trying to start an aerobics class here? Or did they actually get their loot? Eric continued to stand there, gazing at the spot where the loot fell.

"So, now it looks like each of us got his own loot from the Rat." He began. "This means that even if we are in a group, the loot drops for each of us individually and cannot be seen by the others. Only the Malachite is shared. Or is it the same for the Copper Ore too? We have to finish off the vein and find out whether each will get his own or we'll be sharing the ore in turn, as Mahan proposed with the Rat. This approach is to my liking too. If lady luck smiles on me with some bonus, it would be just for me and no-one else." Then Eric also bent down, picked up his loot, invisible to the others, and turned to the rest of us.

"What's with the standing around? We have an unfinished vein to mine; at this rate a new Rat will spawn, while we're faffing around here. Off to work, you loafers!"

We returned to the vein and quickly finished it in 10 or so minutes. It gave 22 pieces of Copper Ore and 1 piece of Malachite. The Ore turned out to be shared, so we gave the first lot to Eric. The next one would be mine. Not bad, considering that it takes us about an hour to get through a vein this size.

Experience gained: +1 Experience, points remaining until next level: 395.

Skill increase:

+5% to Mining. Total: 61%

+1% to Stamina. Total: 58%

+1% to Strength. Total: 55%

All these floating messages brought me little joy. At the Pryke Mine a Large Copper Vein provided 5 experience points, but here it gave only 1. Did this mean that the more people in the group the less Experience and stat increase you get? Unfortunate: more people means less stuff to go around. Still it's better than working alone.

We all agreed that the mined Malachite would be kept by Karachun. It was now clear that we'd complete the quest without unduly exerting ourselves and that our exit to the main gameworld was practically guaranteed. Definitely something to be happy about, but I also wanted to solve the problem with the rings - how could there be such a savage restriction without any possible workaround?

We smashed another vein, destroyed two more Rats and headed off to the common zone. We had barely passed the threshold separating it from the section with the veins when we were surrounded by a crowd of prisoners. People awaited us impatiently for the last two hours to see for themselves that it was possible to leave the mining area in once piece. I had little desire to recount our exploits and replied to questions with vague mumblings, but this quickly turned into Clutzer's moment of glory. He wove an embellished tale of our battles with Rats, although I could barely understand a word he was saying: "The sheisty Rats, for real, like, got their cards all mixed up, and our mate Mahan's one badass shaman," and so on. I wondered if he was the only one who could understand what he was on about.

“Hold on, Mahan. I'd like to do a few experiments with transferring rings," Eric stopped me as I was about to head off and look for spot to sleep. "If we can't hand over items directly, perhaps it's possible to outwit the system. Shall we try?"

Eric seemed to have read my thoughts about the rings, so I agreed right away. It would have been interesting to find a loophole in the restrictions: after all, this was my job before I ended up here. I made a decision to follow Eric's suggestions:

"Right, so we can't transfer the rings directly, we've tried that already. Although, try and give me a ring now. Nope, it's not working. All right, moving on. Throw it on the ground. That's not working either: when you're not holding the ring, I can't see it at all. Then try throwing it away rather than throwing it down: imagine that you're getting rid of it like trash. No, that's no good. Are you sure you chucked it without regretting it? All right, what next? Let's try to give the ring to someone from a different mine, perhaps the transfer would work through intermediaries."

Using other prisoners didn't work either, nor using the dwarf trader, nor, truth be told, any other of Eric's ideas: the system totally blocked the transfer of items that were created outside Dolma. Hmm, maybe that's the problem, that the items were not made here. We have to check this out.

"Eric, hold on. It's my turn to brainstorm. I think that the ring should be made here. At first I'll make it from the materials that I have. I've made them before, actually, but we weren't grouped up then. If transferring them still won't work, we should make ingots form the ore that we mined today. Although here we have two things against us: I'm not a Smith, and can't smelt the ingots, but even if we find a Smith, there's no smithy in Dolma, so we've no way of getting the ingots made. Otherwise it's a very good idea."

"Don't you worry about a Smith and ingots. I'm a Smith and will make those ingots for you. We don't even need a smithy - I always have a smelting pot with me, same goes for ingot mold and coal. Fire isn't a problem - see those torches the guards have? So try and make it from your materials, while I go and prepare everything for smelting."

I didn't spend that much time making the ring - Eric hadn't even finished heating up the coals. When I'm back in Pryke, I'll have to ask Sakas to carve a wooden mold that I can pour melted Copper into. I'll try to make a whole ring then, or all the ones made from wire will get worn out soon and break. But, what am I on about? I'll not be coming back to Pryke, there's nothing for me to do there. I changed all the stats to Strength and handed the ring to Eric. It didn't work. A pity, now there was only one chance left. I gave the ore mined in Dolma to Eric and headed off to sleep, leaving him to do the ingots. It was too late to wait for the results of the smelting and then spend time making the wire and rings. Tomorrow, all tomorrow.

In the morning I had barely opened my eyes when a pleased Eric handed me eight Copper Ingots. He did it. 'Dwarves are such bores these days', the thought flashed in my head as Eric recounted the tale of how he made the ingots. 'Do I really need to hear about all the difficulties he had to overcome or that he didn't sleep all night? Well done, I applaud you, have a pie as a reward, or something. A pie!'

The thought of food woke me up completely. There are no restrictions on food in Dolma, so I won't get a penalty if I eat what I cooked myself. With my level of Crafting the meat I cook should taste great and come with a bonus or two. I should do that right now, the rings can wait.

As I drifted away with thoughts of how I'd be frying the meat and the potential bonuses involved, I mechanically took the ingots from Eric and spent a few baffled moments looking at the message that popped up:

You received an item from a player from a parallel Pryke Mine, created by him using a shared resource. Attention! After you leave the Dolma Mine this item will be removed!

Great! So if the ore is shared, items made from it should also be shared: this means we can pass them between ourselves. A disgruntled inner hoarding hamster grumbled that now I'd have to work for free and give away rings for nothing, but I silenced him very quickly. You can't buy freedom! 'Well... Technically you can, but I don't have that kind of money' I thought with a sigh.

I didn't spend a lot of time on cooking. I used a torch as a cooking fire and very soon the meat turned into something very appetizing. I saw the hungry looks of my group and tried to share the meat with them, but it was impossible - the meat was not shared, so items made with it could not be handed over. Not the end of the world, I thought, enjoying the tasty and juicy Rat meat.

Buff gained: Strength +3, Energy loss reduced by 50%. Duration - 12 hours.

Eric told the others that we had found a way, albeit a temporary one, for transferring things, so we decided that while everyone was smashing the veins I'd be making rings and only lending a hand with the Rats.

And we got started on the grind.

Just by making the rings and without touching the vein I received experience each time it was smashed, so in terms of levelling up I didn't lose anything. One Rat - one Ring. This cycle continued for four hours until I ran out of ingots. After that I could take a rest and do some swinging with the pick. Making wire in the absence of the special instruments was a real pain in the ass, but the result in the form of four Rings with +4 to Strength was worth it. With enough ore the whole group would be covered in rings in four days' time and we'd complete our job way before the set deadline.

When a Rat gobbled up yet another player, whose scream of woe and pain echoed through the whole mining section, we had a visit from a delegation. All the other prisoners formed five groups of nine people each, but only one of these had a healer, which did not prevent it from losing three people by this point. Two more were Rat food after deeming themselves to be mighty tanks. So that's minus five already - all on the first day. The Rats here seemed to have the run of the place.

The visiting delegation proposed that Eric and I should become Ratcatchers. He'd tank and I'd heal, while the nine-strong group hit the Rat and then quickly switched to mining ore. In payment each group would give up one piece of Malachite a day. Taking a time-out we went to talk it over with the rest of our group.

"So that's how it is," I said, having described the proposal to them. "On the one hand it will take us longer to smash a vein and we'll be making eleven or even ten instead of twelve pieces a day, if Eric and I are distracted by other Rats every hour. It will take us about twenty minutes to help all five groups. Then we'll be smashing our vein for forty minutes, then our Rat respawns and it's rinse and repeat."