Tunnel Rat

Milo smelled something when he logged into the game. Something delicious. Something he really needed to find right now! He turned around to where his tutor, Galet, was sitting at a table having breakfast with a very small person with curly golden hair.

Milo stared at the table full of food, trying to figure out what smelled so good. He mostly ate the food cubes from the processor or, when he could get it, freeze-dried meals. But those required trading for them at the swap meets. He didn’t like going to those unless he had to.

"Come and sit, young Milo. I have a friend with me today; this is Sydney, a halfling from the golden vale."

Sydney pointed at the food. "Dig in. We've got plenty for the three of us; Galet made extra. Pancakes, eggs, bacon, and more bacon."

Milo sat down. "Is this another part of the tutorial? It does smell very good. Food in the game is so much better than...than where I live." He was putting a little of everything on his plate, tracking the smell. Was it the bacon? No, that smelled salty-tasty, but not what he was looking for. He finally found the source of the smell in a small pot. He spooned some of the yellow stuff onto his plate.

Sydney frowned. "That's uh…, that's cheese sauce; it goes well when you put down an English muffin first, then the ham, then the sauce. Want to try it?"

Milo was scooping up the cheese sauce with bacon. "No, this is fine. Really good. So much better than food cubes." He kept pausing to smell the cheese sauce. He would have to try to find this in the game. Maybe Harry knew where to get it.

"Is that what you normally eat? Food cubes?" Sydney asked him.

"Doesn't everyone? I mean, food cubes are free." Milo got more bacon, this time pouring the cheese sauce on top.

Sydney nodded. "Oh, yep, free is good. Food cubes are free...so they're good. So, how are you liking the game?"

Milo quit eating. There was no more cheese sauce. "I like it. It's nice and dark, and you can climb everywhere. I found lots of places where there aren’t any people. And it’s dangerous, which makes it more fun.”

Sydney was determined to keep him talking. He didn’t seem nervous at all, just preoccupied with the food. “What was the most fun?”

He thought for a moment. “Probably my fight with a big mushroom. It took a long time to get rid of him. He gave me 20 Bonus Points and 500 Boss experience. Much better than killing all the little stuff, and now I can buy some enhancement skills. Thanks for breakfast; I need to get to work; lots to do in the game." He disappeared as he entered the game, leaving Sydney without an answer to her next question.

"Wait, you killed a boss?! How?"

Taking off her helmet, she stormed into her boss’s office. "Dammit, Steven. He's hacking the system somehow. He sat there laughing at me, slurping down cheese sauce and bragging about killing a boss."

Steven was looking at a picture of yellowish, glistening cubes in a bowl. "Here, I found a picture for you. And I hope I'm never desperate enough to eat one. They are used to meet the daily nutrition requirements in some of the habitats. It's a chicken-flavored, enriched gel that gets pumped into each home. The gel goes into a tray, gets microwaved to cook it, then sliced into squares, and presto, you have a bowl of food cubes. Cheap, nutritious, and horrible."

Sydney had her doubts. "And people actually eat this?"

"People with no choice eat this. Be glad you didn't even know what it was until now. But, if true, it's a clue about our mysterious Milo."

Milo appeared in the game and noticed a blinking icon in the lower part of his screen. Clicking on it, he got a reminder about spending his gains from yesterday.

Welcome Back!

Somehow you survived your first day in Genesis. As a reminder, you have 500 Boss Experience to allocate to skills. Boss experience ignores the penalty for Tertiary or Secondary skills. You also have 20 Enhancement points to spend if you wish. Don’t feel pressured; it’s a traditional tactic to save all of those until you’re about to die in a fight and then spend them in a panic. But that’s up to you.

In addition, you earned experience in the following skills:

Fleet of Foot: 100 experience, reduced to 30. (Secondary Skill.)

Trap Making: 100 experience.

Mechanics: 100 experience.

Climbing: 100 experience.

Identify: 50 experience.

Foraging: 150 experience.

You also gained the following experience in your stats: AGI 130, INT 200, PER 200, WIS 150.

He stayed still for several minutes, reading and puzzling through the message while hiding and listening for the sound of anything moving around him. Hearing nothing, he padded back towards Cronk's body. The big guy was rapidly drying out and shriveling up. It was easy to pick out the shiny bits of ore from his corpse. Over two-thirds of the contents of the cart had been rocks and gravel, but the rest seemed a mixture of rich ores, chunks heavy with metal. He piled it all off to the side. Maybe he could take some back and see what it was worth. His Identify skill showed it to be a mixture of metals but mostly copper.

The pick surprised him. It didn't look like much but Identify told him more. So maybe this was an old dwarven mine? Or maybe dwarves just made good picks, and other miners used them?

Dwarven Mining Pick

Tier 2

A solid Dark Steel head on a sturdy hickory shaft. This pick will easily mine Tier one rocks and ore and mine normally through Tier 2 strata.

He'd keep this tool and get rid of the rusty rock hammer. Next, he took a look at the dense, shiny ball that had been inside Cronk.

Earthen Heartshroom (consumable).

This immense Heartshroom comes from a large cave guardian. It can be used in alchemy to make a large number of potions using Earth magics and has many other uses.

A brave individual may also consume Heartshrooms. Effects will vary.

Milo was quite sure he did not want to eat this thing. He put it back in his pack. Maybe Harry would know where to sell it. He sat down to look at the list of choices he had for spending the enhancement points.

He had spent time on the game forums. There was a lot of information, but it was scattered, and he suspected it was different for different classes and races. He had set up a system for sorting the information by topic, and already he was finding inconsistencies. Not everyone had the same options beyond the Generic list. All of the abilities any player had reported were for the first tier, levels zero to five. There was much discussion on whether it was better to grind away, killing the same type of mobs to gain levels or to hunt bosses for enhancement points.

Neither strategy appealed to Milo; what was the goal? Just to get stronger? That was the point in many video games, but this was different! There were places to explore!

He focused on spending his 20 enhancement points. If he understood them, they were used to gain special skills and abilities that increase a character’s power and versatility. Killing bosses was the main way to earn them, either solo or in a group. But crafters could also earn them by making an exceptional item. And harvesters could get them from elementals. These were weak bosses that could spawn while a person was gathering raw materials. He'd seen mention of a sentient tree in a forest, an earth elemental, and a monster made out of left-over bits of meat from a butcher. These usually gave only a couple of points.

Elementals were Named Bosses, the lowest category. After Named were Elites and then Monstrous bosses. Elites were considered something groups would fight. Monstrous was usually a raid boss in a dungeon. If Cronk had gotten one hit on Milo, he was sure it would have killed him. But the score was Monsters 0, Milo 1, and he had points to spend.

The generic list let him increase his health, stamina, and mana. Each level increased the bonus and the cost. Next was a list of ways to increase his stats. It cost three enhancement points to raise a stat by +1. He could do this three times for each stat while he was in Tier 1. Stats were good and gave bonuses to combat, but he was earning those by raising his skills. It was something to keep in mind, but he liked the more specific skills for his race and class. Second wind was like a healing spell, but very limited. It could be used once a day to restore his Health, Stamina, and Mana all at once. A few levels of that might be helpful in a battle. He’d skip for now; he didn’t have enough information on how combat worked. Finally, there was a skill for holding his breath longer. As someone who had more than once swam through large water conduits searching for leaks to patch, Milo could appreciate that skill. Not as good as a rebreather, but close.

Generic Bonus Skills:

Increased Health 1: Gain +50 Health for the cost of 2 enhancement points.

Increased Health 2: Gain +100 Health for the cost of 5 enhancement points.

Increased Health 3: Gain +250 Health for the cost of 10 enhancement points.

Increased Stamina 1: Gain +50 Stamina for the cost of 2 enhancement points.

Increased Stamina 2: Gain +100 Stamina for the cost of 5 enhancement points.

Increased Stamina 3: Gain +250 Stamina for the cost of 10 enhancement points.

Increased Mana 1: Gain +50 Mana for the cost of 2 enhancement points.

Increased Mana 2: Gain +100 Mana for the cost of 5 enhancement points.

Increased Mana 3: Gain +250 Mana for the cost of 10 enhancement points.

Spirit of the Ox: Gain +1 STR for a cost of 3 enhancement points.

Spirit of the Bear: Gain +1 CON for a cost of 3 enhancement points.

Spirit of the Monkey: Gain +1 Dex for a cost of 3 enhancement points.

Spirit of the Owl: Gain +1 INT for a cost of 3 enhancement points.

Spirit of the Cheeta: Gain +1 AGI for a cost of 3 enhancement points.

Spirit of the Pig: Gain +1 WIS for a cost of 3 enhancement points.

Spirit of the Hawk: Gain +1 PER for a cost of 3 enhancement points.

Spirit of the Swan: Gain +1 CHA for a cost of 3 enhancement points.

Second Wind 1: Once per day, regain 20 Health/Mana/Stamina. Cost = One enhancement point.

Second Wind 1: Once per day, regain 50 Health/Mana/Stamina. Cost = Three enhancement points.

Second Wind 1: Once per day, regain 100 Health/Mana/Stamina. Cost = Five enhancement points.

Breathless 1: You may hold your breath for 3x as long. (3 minutes.) Cost = 1 Enhancement Point

Breathless 2: You may hold your breath for 10x as long. (10 minutes.) Cost = 1 Enhancement Point.

Your statistics have a soft cap of rank 5. You may Increase the soft cap on a stat by one rank for the cost of two enhancement points. You must still earn the experience to earn the ranks. The hard cap on stats per Tier is 10. This does not include racial bonuses, bonuses from magical items, or stat increases purchased with enhancement points.

That last ability he had read about on the forums. There was much debate over it. A player who wished to earn the maximum number of stat points per level would need to earn significantly more experience than someone who moved to Level 6 and Tier 2 after earning 5 points in their stats. And it used up enhancement points. Milo worked at least twelve hours a day in the real world, and often more. He wondered why someone would not want to earn the most they could in a game world. Or was there an advantage in gaining levels quickly? He didn’t have enough data to have an opinion.

Stolen novel; please report.

His Scout enhancement skills were very interesting, especially the storage skill. He had been disappointed to see that he started with no inventory skills, a staple of most of the RPG-type video games he had played. (Except Diablo 17, but everyone hated that one.) But after reading the forums, he found out that no one had an inventory skill. You could wear a backpack, of course, but this wasn’t a world where you could magically store hundreds of pounds of gear. Except that he now could now! He was lucky to have the skill, very few classes had anything like it, and this skill wasn’t mentioned anywhere. There were hints that special backpacks, bags, and rings could be gained that lightened your load, but while people liked to brag on the forums, few people gave details.

Scout Enhancement Skills:

Smugglers Stash

Storage Skill. Summons/Dispels a magical chest. Size increases with rank. (3 cubic feet, nine cubic feet, 27 cubic feet.) Cost is three enhancement points for the first level, five additional for the second level, and 7 points for the third level.

Skilled Provider

Your gathering skills have an increased chance of finding better quality items. The cost is three points per level for up to three levels.

Abundance

Your gathering skills return more resources than normally expected.

(+10%/+25%/+50%/+75%/+100%) The cost is 1/2/3/4/5 for the five levels.

Unnoticed 1

Stealth ability. You blend in with the background and are less likely to be noticed by Tier 1 creatures. Combines well with Skulk. The cost is two enhancement points.

Silent Step 1

When trying to not be noticed, your steps make only 40% as much noise as normal. Combines well with Skulk. The cost is two enhancement points.

Unlimited Dark Vision

You see in Darkness and Magical Darkness as if it were a cloudy day but in shades of gray. No limitations on distance.

Jumping Jack

You may leap twice as far as normal. The cost is two enhancement points.

Never Lost

You gain a better memory of the routes you take, giving you maps to track where you have been. 10 points.

Wererat Enhancement Skills:

Strong Claws

Increased Claw Damage. The amount increases with rank.

(+10/+20/+40) Rank one has a cost of two points, five points for rank two, and ten points for rank three. Damage is additive: Taking all three ranks will add +70 to the damage you do with your claws.

The Unseen Tail

Disguise/Illusion in Were form. Gives you the appearance of a human. Walk among humans in dark places, and they suspect nothing! Works poorly in bright light; avoid getting too close to people. Don’t let dogs grab your tail. Cost = 3 Enhancement points.

The Invisible Tail

Improved Disguise/Illusion in Were form (Upgrade to the Unseen Tail.)

Even in bright light, everyone thinks you are a boring human. Stay away from mages who can see through illusions. And guards with high perception. And dogs! Cost = 5 Enhancement points.

Slashing Tail

Your tail does increased damage and can slashat your foes like a whip. Damage is increased each rank (+10/+20/+40.) Rank one has a cost of two points, five points for rank two, and ten points for rank three. Damage is additive: Taking all three ranks will add +70 to the damage you do with your tail. Cost = Two enhancement points for rank 1, five for rank 2, and 10 for rank three.

See through small Eyes

Make friends with local rats who will (maybe) do some scouting for you. Cost = Two Enhancement points.

Many Small Eyes

Increased control of your small scouts, and you are able to use their eyes instead of your own. Cost = Five Enhancement points.

Cheesemaking (Crafting Skill)

An honorable tradition! So tasty! INT crafting skill. Cost = One enhancement point.

Weak Poison Resistance (Resistance Skill)

Gain the Primary CON skill: Weak Poison Resistance. Cost = 5 enhancement points.

Weak Disease Resistance (Resistance Skill)

Gain the Primary CON skill: Weak Disease Resistance. Cost = 5 enhancement points.

Extra Stabby!

All of your attacks have an increased chance of a critical hit. The chance increases with each level of the skill. Cost = Two enhancement points for rank 1, five for rank 2, and 10 for rank three.

Extra-Clever Traps!

Your traps and machinery almost always work and in fiendish ways no one suspected. Even you are surprised at times. This Enhancement affects Mechanics, Trap-Maker, and other such skills.

Machine efficiency and Trap damage increase with rank. Cost = Three enhancement points for rank 1, six for rank 2, and nine for rank three.

Not-so-fast Regeneration

Grants increased (x2), health recovery. Slowly regenerate scar tissue and missing body parts. A steady diet of cheese speeds up the process. Cost = 5 enhancement points.

Pretty Good Regeneration

Grants increased (x4), health recovery. Regenerate scar tissue and missing body parts in less than a week. A steady diet of cheese speeds up the process. Cost = 10 enhancement points.

Mutant Regeneration

Grants increased (x12), health recovery. Regenerate scar tissue and missing body parts in less than a day. A steady diet of cheese speeds up the process. Cost = 20 enhancement points.

Warning: As with all mutations, there can be significant side effects.

Ratkin have an affinity for certain types of magic. Magical Aspects open up options to learn more mage skills. Each additional aspect has an increased cost. Each magical aspect purchased will increase the cost of further aspects. The first aspect purchased has a cost of five enhancement points, increasing to ten for the second and 15 for the third.

Chill of the Grave

You have a high affinity for Death-Aspected mana. Training will let you learn Death magic spells. Increasing cost with additional aspects. Increase your Corruption by +1. Opens more options for mage abilities. Increased ranks decrease the mana costs of casting spells.

Deeds in the Dark

You have a high affinity for Darkness-Aspected mana. Training will let you learn dark magic spells. Increasing cost with additional aspects. Increase your Corruption by +1. Opens more options for mage abilities. Increased ranks decrease the mana costs of casting spells.

Storm Born

You have a high affinity for Storm-Aspected mana. Training will let you learn Storm magic spells. Increasing cost with additional aspects. Opens more options for mage abilities. Increased ranks decrease the mana costs of casting spells.

He wanted everything, of course. The last list was especially tasty.

He spent points on The Unseen Tail, Slashing Tail, Smuggler’s Stash, and Jumping Jack. Being able to move around in his wererat form would save a lot of trouble. He'd have to test it out in Shadowport and see what the limits were. If it worked, he would buy the second level later.

Slashing Tail gave him an extra weapon in combat and one that most people wouldn't suspect.

Moving over roofs and climbing tunnels often involved leaping. Best of all, having a way to transport more stuff would be great; it was a long way up to Shadowport. And with very few people having a storage item, he could hide his valuables where no one would know.

He tried to look up similar items on the forums. He found hundreds of threads complaining about a lack of storage devices and skills but very little about the skills themselves. One thread claimed there were rings that some imperial agents wore that stored messages and small items. Another hinted about an ability at Tier 2 that gave a player storage space. The only really reliable storage players seemed to have was a 'Home Chest' that was in a bank or inn near your respawn point. Why didn't he have one? He'd have to look into that.

He activated Smugglers Stash to try it out. A beat-up oak chest appeared in front of him. He couldn't move it at all, but he could open it up. It took 25 mana to summon it and nothing to send it away. The size of the chest was 3'x1'x1'.

To test it, he filled it up with the good ore pieces and some of the gears and pulleys he'd found at the top of the shaft. With plenty of room still, he made another trip up to the top and tossed down all the machine parts that he thought would fit. When the chest was full of rocks and metal, he dismissed it. It quickly faded from view. He was very tempted to take the second level of storage. He hated the thought of leaving things he might need. A life of never having enough materials warred with survival instincts that said: "being dead is bad.” There were stealth skills, regen, and extra health that he could purchase. What happened to the chest if he died? Testing and research first. He’d spent 10 points, and he’d save 10 points until he could test his abilities and do research. And as the helpful message had said, he could always spend them in an emergency.

The next chore was assigning his 500 Boss experience from killing Cronk. He could only put that into Mechanic, Fleet of Foot, Acrobatics, or Climbing. Level 1 in a skill was only 50 points, but from there, it climbed to 150 for level 2 and 300 for level 3.

Fleet of Foot had only gained 30 experience, moving up slower because it was a secondary skill. Running from things that wanted to kill him was very important to Milo. He dumped 270 points into the skill. He appreciated that, unlike regular experience, Boss experience wasn't affected by the 1/3 and 1/10th modifiers to secondary and tertiary skills. Acrobatics and Climbing were skills he would be using a lot, so he put the remaining experience into Mechanics.

As soon as he finished allocating the Boss experience, he received a message.

Congratulations! You have achieved Level 1!

You have gained +100 Health, +100 Stamina, and +50 Mana

Experience needed for Level 2 = 3000. You currently have 1425/3000 experience

Gains over Level 0:

Mechanics has reached rank 3.

Trap Making has reached rank 1.

Fleet of Foot has reached rank 3.

Dodge has reached rank 1.

Small Blades has reached rank 1.

Acrobatics has reached rank 1.

Climbing has reached rank 1.

Weak Claws has reached rank 1.

Tail Fighting has reached rank 1

AGI has reached rank 3. (+2 Racial skill for a total of 5.)

DEX has reached rank 2. (+2 Racial skill for a total of 4.)

INT has reached rank 3.

PER has reached rank 2. (+2 Racial skill for a total of 4.)

You chose the Identify skill to fill an open slot.

Identify has reached rank 1.

You have gained 20 Enhancement Points.

You have 10 Enhancement Points left to allocate.

You purchased Smugglers Stash 1.

You purchased Unseen Tail.

You purchased Jumping Jack 1.

You Purchased Slashing Tail 1.

You have encountered CHEESE! You have a minor yearning to eat more CHEESE!

As Milo read the last part, he had a sudden craving for more of the cheese sauce he had for breakfast. Maybe he should just head straight up to Shadowport? He should be able to sneak around all the shrooms now that Cronk was gone.

He looked around at the boarded-up tunnels. Where did they go? He wanted to know.

He needed supplies and some better gear. It was time to get back to Harry, get paid, and see if he could sell his ore. Then he could go hunting for a cheesy snack.

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