Thankfully, the cloud’s landing was a lot more gradual than it’s take off; I’d spent most of the flight dreading being pancaked against the ceiling when the cloud finally dropped, but the gentle descent was uneventful. This time a door opened in the side of the cloud, allowing me to step out.

Here the ground was level and barren, and the sun was setting off in the distance, the sky a deep purple. Speaking of purple: there was another translucent wall here—four of them, actually—and the cloud had touched down between all of them. I was completely boxed in on every side, and I didn’t have to touch the walls to know they were solid.

When I’d read that I’d been awarded a tiny plot of land, I’d assumed something along the lines of a plot of dirt, the kind you could squeeze a few vegetables into if you could actually manage to find some non-irradiated seeds. But the walls were pretty far off, boxing a rectangle of space that was maybe forty foot by thirty.

Ezzie said.

invasion isn’t the sort of word you can just throw out there then immediately change topic.>

I looked around, taking stock of my personal estate. The plot was totally bare—no grass, no trees, not even a rock to be seen. Just impossibly smooth dirt all the way across. I said.

A little icon brightened on a bar in the bottom-right corner of my vision. I thought open and a submenu popped up.

Welcome to the Estate Builder Client!

You have 1,200 {Building Coins} to spend.

You have 1 {Building Token} to redeem.

Ezzie said.

I swiped through the menus. Kept swiping, kept swiping. The icons seemed endless, though the great majority of them were grayed out; it seemed like I had a lot of content to unlock.

Ezzie said.

The prospect of building something out of such a massive menu was pretty overwhelming; I couldn’t help but feel like the moment I built something, I’d realized that I’d somehow screwed up.

Ezzie said.

she continued,

My own space. It seemed unreal. It seemed impossible. It seemed—honestly, despite everything that had happened in the last couple of days—too good to be true.

I’d never been able to stay in the same place for more than a few weeks, not once in my entire life. And even then, every single minute of each of those weeks was spent looking over my shoulder. But this? The idea of being safe, of being allowed to build, of making a place mine? Truly, utterly mine? It was intoxicating.

Ezzie said.

I said.

The telepathic link went taut, then snapped. I could feel Ezzie’s absence in my chest, a hollowness that felt worryingly close to heartbreak, but I tried to message her just in case I was wrong.

I wasn’t.

It was bizarre, how alone I felt without her, how stranded I seemed. I hadn’t realized just how physical her presence had been.

I was even concerned about what was happening over on her end, and that was a strange realization, but it probably had something to do with that collar she’d mentioned.

So I just sat there a while, waiting for her voice to filter back through the link and reassure me that everything was fine, but after ten minutes or so I gave up and started scrolling through the menus, trying to glean as much information as I could before I committed to using any of my resources.

And, more importantly, to distract myself from the truth of the matter—that I was honestly afraid that Ezzie might not be coming back.

I started with the prefab structures, and quickly settled on a lean-to to begin with, as the clouds were building in the distance and I really didn’t feel like being rained on. The structure provided a buff as well:

{Well-rested I}

Description: A good night’s sleep has prepared you for the day to come (you must sleep for at least six hours to receive this buff).

All Experience gains increased by 5%.

Duration: 24 hours

There were other options that looked much more comfortable, but all of those were more expensive despite providing the same buff, so I didn’t see the point in investing more coins in them.

I selected the lean-to icon, which brought up a little overlay: a blue, translucent outline of what the lean-to would look like when construction was finished. I could move the outline wherever I pleased, so long as I stayed within the bright walls that bordered my estate.

I dropped the lean-to in one of the corners, the opening oriented to the east so that I’d be able to watch the sunrise in the morning. Four massive Constructors zoomed down out of the clouds overhead and went to work.

After fifteen minutes and a ridiculous amount of lasering, I stood in front of a freshly printed wooden structure with three walls and a sloped ceiling. The lean-to cost three hundred coins in all, which didn’t seem so bad.

I printed a bedroll next, which cost one hundred coins, then dropped a pond nearby, which was a bit more expensive at two hundred. But the water was cold and clean and it was a real struggle to keep myself from guzzling it down.

I knew from past miseries that drinking any substantial amount of untested water was a terrible idea—clean-looking or otherwise—so I took a few sips and cut myself off, waiting to see how my body would react to it.

I went back to swiping through the icons, trying to find the actual end of the menus. Then I came across the reward tab, all of which was grayed out except for a single option: the mystery box. I selected it, and a list of what looked like professions filled my vision:

You selected {Mystery Box}!

Possible reward categories:

Armorsmith

Weaponsmith

Alchemy

Herbalism

Skinning

Carpentry

Leatherworking

I wasn’t really sure what to do with all that—I hadn’t even picked a profession and had no idea how that stuff worked—so I tried to click out of the window, but couldn’t. I noticed a new icon then, two dice with the following word superimposed:

Roll.

Well, if the prize I’d receive was random, then there was no point in waiting to loot it. And the loot I received might better inform the profession choices I made going forward.

So I thought roll, and a green field of light jumped between the options, highlighting each of them in turn. The bar of light picked up speed until it was blurring through the professions and they all seemed lit at once, then the bar jerked to a stop.

You have been awarded an Armorsmithing package!

Several Armorsmithing items have been added to the Coffers of your Personal Estate!

Hm, all right then. After a quick search, I found the items that had been added to the Coffers tab:

{Copper Bar} x72

{Weak Flux} x99

{Leather Scrap} x36

I wasn’t sure if I’d lucked out or not—Weaponsmithing seemed like it would have been more useful—but if the wild had taught me anything, it was never to let a windfall go wasted.

So I brought the menu back up and scanned through it until I found a basic armorsmithing workshop in the prefab section, which was pretty pricey at six hundred coins.

The building was odd, too—from the outside it looked like a storage container, the sort you’d always find rusting around the larger shipwrecks. I selected the workshop and moved the outline across from my shelter, then dropped the outline in place to confirm my choice.

This time, though, the Constructors were nowhere to be seen. A weird roaring sounded from off in the distance, and I almost chalked it up to thunder until I realized the noise was growing closer. Two huge drones arced out of the clouds, a twenty-foot long storage container dangling on thick cords between them. I guess that explained the look.

They set it down gently in the exact spot I’d selected, then hovered back up and out of sight, their long blades cutting a steady rhythm into the air.

One end of the container was open, so I walked around its length and poked my head in, goggling at the complicated machinery within. I’d been expecting something simple—like, an actual forge—but what sat in front of me more closely resembled a fully-automated assembly line.

A series of conveyor belts snaked through the packed room, all of which were flanked to either side by delicate, robotic arms. I stepped inside and earned another prompt:

Would you like to select Armorsmithing as your first profession?

It seemed a waste not to, really, given the haul that the mystery box had provided me with. I mentally agreed.

Congratulations, you learned the Armorsmithing Profession!

Reach level 10 to select an Armorsmithing specialization!

Reach level 20 to select a second Profession!

I opened the new tab I’d been awarded and the resulting flood of information was just too much to handle: shields, bracers, breastplates, tabs upon tabs of potential equipment. I had plenty of raw materials, sure, but not near enough that I dared to risk wasting even a single ore.

And it seemed pretty likely that spending the materials poorly would be almost as bad as having received no mystery box at all. I needed more information.

So I opened my character sheet next, deciding to take a look at the different class modifiers that I’d unlocked.

Reminder: Class Modifiers will heavily influence the Tier I class change quest that you are given at level 10. Class Modifiers cannot be changed.

{Reckless Assault I}

All damage dealt increased by 10%.

All damage taken increased by 15%.

Next level: All damage dealt increased by 13%.

All damage taken increased by 17%

{Quick Feet I}

All damage dealt reduced by 8%.

All damage taken increased by 20%.

Movement speed increased by 12%.

Next level: All damage dealt reduced by 7%.

All damage taken increased by 24%.

Movement speed increased by 15%.

{Immovable Object I}

Description: All damage dealt decreased by 25%.

All damage taken reduced by 15% (prior to mitigation).

Next level: All damage dealt decreased by 28%.

All damage taken reduced by 20% (prior to mitigation).

{Bladed Armor I}

10% of your physical mitigation rate is converted into a damage reflect that occurs prior to mitigation. For example, at 30% physical damage mitigation, you will reflect 3% of any physical attack, and the leftover damage will be reduced at your normal mitigation rate (30%).

Next level: 15% of your physical mitigation rate is converted into a damage reflect that occurs prior to mitigation.