Day 2.3

The shovel should be the simplest tool of the four, although he wondered how long it would last before he’d need to repair it. He took the length of wood he’d left aside for the shovel and then used his whetstone from earlier as a bench to keep one end off the ground.

August took his [Flint Axe] and struck the end of the stake at an angle; it bit into the wood, leaving a shallow groove. He continued to slowly chip away at it, keeping the motions weak to avoid too much vibration being sent up the handle to his hand.

His initial attempt to sharpen his [Bamboo Spear] lent him some little knowledge on how to avoid wasting too much effort, and the [Basic Spear Blueprint] itself gave him much more insight in sharpening the end of this branch into a flat plane. Once both sides of it had been shaved down, he was alerted to the fact that he’d completed his first [Wooden Shovel].

Basic Shovel Blueprint Unlocked

As far as the strange flood of knowledge was concerned, it was as good as a sharpened piece of wood could get for use as a shovel—that is to say, it would at the very least be functional. A quick check of the [Menu] showed that his [EXP] had jumped from [75/600] to [175/600]—which was more evidence towards a first time crafting reward, or at least that the basic blueprints were worth around [100 EXP].

“Shovel, Chisel, Axe, and a Spear,” August murmured, listing off his completed. “What’s next?”

Digging a large enough hole to test out [Summon] felt like something he didn’t want to deal with until his hands stopped shaking, but he also didn’t want to waste the daylight doing nothing at all. He could try to gather enough wood to make something more substantial than the [Lean-to]—spending another night surrounded by open-air and endless darkness helped shine a light on the sense of urgency growing within him.

“Come on, Ladybug,” August said, pushing himself up to his feet. “Let’s go on an adventure.”

Ladybug trilled at the name, and he hoped it was starting to resonate with the monster. August brushed some of the mess that had accumulated on his thighs from sitting in the dirt without a shred of clothing but found it was more stubborn than the effort he was willing to put in to deal with it.

August stepped into the tree line, eyes searching above for anything that might be lurking there, but found nothing at all. Ladybug’s chain spike slammed into the tree beside him, and he managed to hold back his flinch as it zipped past him up onto a branch—he hoped that in the future he would grow more accustomed to it.

He spotted a fallen tree, still young enough that it was only as wide around as his arm, and he dragged it up off the ground and inventoried it with some effort before moving on. August worked for an hour, just dumping everything he could find into his inventory to sort through later and just when he was growing tired blue words appeared before his eyes.

Gatherer Unlocked

Locate Object Learned

“Gatherer?” August read out loud.

He opened the [Menu], and sure enough, nestled inside [Role] was a new entry—[Gatherer], and within it was a new skill.

Locate Object – Level 1

Highlights categories of items within the world for ease of discovery.

Proficiency – 0/1000

Cast Type – Toggle

Cost – Reserves 50 MP

Range – 1 meter.

*

August expanded the [*] Menu to find a series of drop-down options indicating which items would be highlighted. The options present showed [Bamboo], [Wood], [Vine], [Flint], [Stone]—all of which were things he had picked up already.

Toggling [Locate Object] on, his Mana bar was cut in half but seemed to remain steady—the world lit up with white lines in an exact one-meter radius. The long grass hid far more than what he’d seen from his searching; rocks, sticks, twigs and a hundred other objects stuck out through the grass. August spent a moment fiddling with the options and found that he could turn off the individual items, so they didn’t show up alongside the others.

“That’s costly, though,” August said, frowning. “Half my bar for one meter?”

He toggled the skill off and then on again to see how his Mana reacted and was surprised that it returned to full without draining half of his bar. [Reserved Mana] didn’t seem to actually be spent in order for the skill to function; instead, it seemed to gate off a portion of his Mana.

August noticed that the [Proficiency] had increased, from [0/1000] to [1/1000] even from just that short period of time. It made him wonder what would happen once it reached the maximum—would the skill level up? That’s usually what happened in games when there was some kind of cast-for-exp type abilities.

[Burst] had that same proficiency tracker as well, but he’d never gotten around to actually using that skill—the whole shunts a user in a direct sounded like it might be a little hazardous. Still, he’d need to try it out at some point.

August looked around, wondering if he had enough space, and then toggled [Locate Object] off so that he would have enough Mana to use it.

“[Burst]—” August said before the world moved.

He sucked in a panicked breath as he skidded forward across the ground, propelled by some unseen force. The long grass and uneven ground tripped him up, and he fell to his knees, alarmed but unhurt. Ladybug trilled excitedly, its chain reeling out as it lowered itself down to land beside him as if him throwing himself around the clearing had revealed him as some kind of kindred spirit.

“Alright,” August said, eyes wide. “That was stupid.”

He pushed himself back up, wincing as his hands throbbed at the effort, and then took a moment to steady himself. ‘Shunts the user’ was a very, very literal description, it felt as if his entire body had been encompassed by something, and then he’d been directed forwards at a breakneck pace.

It had only lasted for half a second, and it had cost him his entire Mana pool, but for that brief moment, he’d moved faster than he’d even had in his entire life. He’d crossed at least two meters, and if the skill had lasted any longer, he might have actually crashed into one of the trees.

“The adventure is over, I think,” August said, pulling himself together. “Let’s go back—digging a massive hole suddenly sounds more appealing.”

The question of why exactly [Gatherer] had suddenly unlocked was a mystery; given the nature of the skill and its description, it might have been the fact that he was collecting things. Whatever it had been, he’d obviously hit some kind of invisible threshold for something.

Were there other roles that would be unlocked by similar conditions? Could he try and predict what they were in advance and aim to speed up his progress, or was that a fool’s errand? Would chasing a possibility, when there were things he could be doing right now that had concrete outcomes, be an appropriate use of his time?

August wished, more than anything else, that someone else was here with him, so he wouldn’t have to deal with the knowledge that if he fucked up, there was no one else to blame but himself.