Chris watched apprehensively as the door to the capsule beside her opened. She felt her face heat up as her heartbeat drummed in her ears. Clenching her fists, she experienced a moment of fear-driven paralysis. A tall and skinny woman stepped out. She had her flat, brown hair in a ponytail and pushed the rim of her glasses quite forcefully up her nose.

It wasn’t Yaz.

The woman caught Chris staring but simply looked away. She lifted her right hand and motioned another inmate to her. It was another woman Chris hadn’t noticed before. She was of medium height and from across the room, the only thing that stood out about her was the perfect French braid running down the back of her head. It reminded Chris of the braids Rin had always asked of her before their parents died. Looking back, she only now realized how much their relationship had changed after the accident. Somehow she’d chosen to ignore all the signs that pointed to a growing rift between them.

The French Braid carried a tray to Glasses, she said something to her that made the harshness she had displayed vanish with a smile. It came so easily to her, Chris wondered if she had imagined the expression it replaced. A short exchange followed and Glasses took one of the stacked packages on the tray. She quickly unscrewed the lid off the rectangular plastic package, it looked like a sealed bag, the liquid filled it to a slightly conical shape that had a little nozzle with a lid on top. Taking her glasses off with one hand, Glasses tipped her head back and chugged the entire pink contents of the clear package.

After screwing the lid back on and putting the empty package back on the tray, Glasses shook her head slightly like she was dispelling the unpleasant feeling of a cold shower. Shoving her glasses back on, she said something that made the French Braid laugh. Chris could hear the leftovers of her lilting laugh from across the room. French Braid then smiled and waved Glasses off playfully as she got back into the capsule. The doors closed behind her. Chris was still standing there, watching, when she felt a

tap on her left shoulder.

Turning around, she came face to face with French Braid herself. She had flawless creamy skin and bright, honeyed brown eyes. Up close, Chris could tell that a couple strands of hair had gotten loose from her braid and were swirling around her face. She clutched the tray to herself with one hand, while the other hung guiltily in the air between them.

Rearranging herself so that she could use both arms to hold the tray she said, “You must be one of the new ones. I’m Sid, I’d shake your hand, but mine is otherwise occupied.”

She gestured her head at the tray.

“Ugh… what is that?” Chris asked, making a face of disgust. “Oh, I’m Chris, by the way.”

“Ahhh. Little Barbie, right?”

“... I take it you know Tiny?”

Sid laughed, “Who doesn’t?”

“Oh great… does that mean everyone is going to call me Little Barbie from now on?”

“Depends.” She smiled knowingly.

“On what?”

“This is Goldilocks. What do you think?”

“... Era?”

“Of course, Era. What did you think?” Sid rolled her eyes playfully. Chris smiled, grateful she didn’t feel like strangling the woman for the gesture like she did Donovan.

“Alright. Enough chit chat. You should take one.” She held the tray a little closer to Chris.

Chris couldn’t help wrinkling her nose. The pinkish packages hadn’t seemed so bad from far away, but up close she could tell that the liquid inside looked like vomit, with little chunks and particles floating in it. Sid smiled at Chris’ hesitation and added.

“They look repulsive I know. And I’m not gonna lie to you, they say they taste worse than they look. I believe them. But unless you want to spend an hour getting lunch, nutri-packs are the only way to get right back into the game.”

Chris looked back at the tall woman’s capsule, the one she thought belonged to Yaz. Past it, there were only a couple more and Yaz was bound to come out of one of them. It was in her best interest to do exactly as the woman before her had done.

Reluctantly she picked up one of the nutri-packs that could only be likened to vomit bags. The comparison was only exacerbated by the scent released when she opened it.

“Woah. That’s foul.”

“Isn’t it just?” Sid asked, gleeful smile plastered across her face.

When Chris didn’t immediately chug the stuff like the woman before her had, Sid said, “Come on now. Drink up. The longer you wait, the harder it gets.”

Reluctantly inching the package toward her mouth, she took a tentative sip. The liquid was like slime and stuck to the top of her mouth, making it hard to swallow, but the taste made it even harder to stomach, impossible actually. She couldn’t stop herself from gagging, her stomach was revolting and she had barely gotten a sip down. Her eyes were watering at the acidic aftertaste it gave.

There wasn’t any water handy, so she gulped down air, trying to make the taste go away, but it didn’t.

“Pretty tasty, huh?”

Chris was bent over, trying not to lose the contents of her stomach. Looking up through teary eyes, she saw Sid’s cheerful face.

“No. Not realy. Not at all. Ugh. I can’t believe you can drink that.” Her stomach was convulsing just at the thought of it. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to bring herself to finish the whole thing. She hadn’t even finished off a tenth of it.

Sid shrugged.

"I'd drink up if I were you. You have about six hours of game time before dinner."

Steeling herself Chris chugged down as much of the slime as she could before she couldn't take it anymore.

"You're just making it harder on yourself. Most new arrivals don't realize how huge an advantage these are."

While Chris made another attempt at the vomit bag, Sid's eyes focused on another player who had just come out of their capsule.

"Alright," She said. "I'm out." But on her turn to leave, she added, "Oh. Make sure you make it to at least level seven by the end of today. No one has ever gone full-time by the end of the week who didn’t at least reach level seven by the end of day one. To give you an idea... Nika made it to level 15 on day one."

She grinned at Chris' expression.

"I guess good luck is in order.... Toodles."

Chris was left, staring after the woman. After completing the quest, she hadn't even made it to level four yet. She had fallen just a couple hundred experience points short. There was no way she was going to be able to follow Donovan's strict leveling routine, not if she wanted a shot at making level seven by the end of the day.

The jump in difficulty from level two to level three had already been intense; she could only imagine what the consecutive jumps would be like. Focusing on the flimsy plastic in her hand, she steeled her resolve and swallowed. Taking a deep breath and quickly releasing it she tried to fool her taste buds by lifting the package to her mouth and tightly squeezing it so the slime hit the back of her throat on the way down. Keeping her attention on her right toe, she tried to ignore any sensations coming from her upper body.

She had bigger things to worry about than the awful taste of a synthetic meal package. The biggest debate she had going in her head was the question of whether she was just an extremely bad player as Donovan had said or whether he was full of shit and the stat points didn't matter as much as he claimed.

Package drained, she headed towards her capsule and waited for the guard to key her in. Sid silently came by and collected her empty container, winking at her during the process. The capsule closed around her, following the same process as before. Knowing what to expect, she wasn't nearly as bothered as before, especially when her whole plan would have to be rethought. She obviously couldn't keep doing what she was doing, not if she wanted to be chosen by the end of the week.

The moment Chris's capsule closed, another one two doors down opened, but by then, Yaz was the least of her worries.

---

The lights around her brightened and Chris felt her body being pulled through a tunnel of light as she morphed into her body as Aya. Her limbs shrinked, her hair shortened and her clothes changed. This all happened in a span of a couple of seconds, until Aya was promptly deposited in the exact spot she had logged out from.

Players were milling all about, talking to various NPCs, trading goods and forming parties exactly the same as when she had left. Suddenly Donovan appeared before her. He looked her up and down, as if ascertaining that she hadn’t destroyed her avatar in the time he had left.

"I have to log out soon,” he said as he walked away from her. “I will be gone for up to twenty Era hours."

She unthinkingly fell in step behind him.

"I do not know of any other players that are willing to inefficiently allot time to you as I have. Thus, I suggest you use this time to work on a profession based skill."

"Actually, Donovan­— "

"The question then, is... What profession do you wish to pursue?"

"Wait Donovan, I have to tell y— ... Profession?"

"Job."

"... Yea, I get that much," she said, fighting not to roll her eyes. "I just mean, how do professions work in Era? Like... What options do I have?"

"Professions work pretty much like they would in the real world. You can be a cook, a brewer, a miller, a hunter, a trapper, a fisher, a leatherworker, a tailor, a smith, a miner, a weaponsmith, a bowyer, a mapmaker, a scribe, an artist, a sculptor, a jew—"

"Okay. A bunch of options," she said cutting him off before he ran out of breath. "But how is that going to help me? Does it give me EXP or something?"

Aya was thinking of her need to level up and prove that she could be a worthy player if given the chance.

"Obviously not.” He kept walking. “That is the whole point why you should be pursuing this course of action until I return. All of your actions have the chance of giving you stat points, so if you jump up and down long enough…” He jumped up and down in the air a couple of times as if to illustrate the point. “It is bound to give you something.” He continued walking. “But we both know that is not a very efficient or productive use of anyone's time. Thus…”

He reached an intersection in the road and turned to face her. “I suggest you work on accomplishing something else until I get back. Just keep following the same pattern we have been using so far. Work on getting stats until you have gained 99% of the possible ones for that level, then go do your precious quests or kill mobs until you level up and are back to 0%. Follow the same—"

"Yeah. Got it the first time."

“That is very good.” She felt like she had just been praised for the capacity of basic human logic. “So now you must choose your profession.”

“What is your profession?”

“I am skilled at various. I suggest you pick either leatherworking or weaponsmithing.”

“Well. Actually, I don’t think I… Hm, why those specifically?”

“The basic leatherworking training requires you to catch various low-level mobs without harming them in any way. That means no traps or weapons of any kind… It will give you plenty of speed stats.” He positioned his hands behind him, poised for a lecture. “Weaponsmithing, on the other hand, will train your strength and endurance, which you will need to finish kills. Speed is good and all, but you need basic strength so your opponent does not heal faster than you can hurt him.”

“That makes sense. Sometimes when I was fighting the goblins I really wanted to be stron… Wait, I— ”

“Excellent, I will introduce you to Xavier,” he said. “I have a good reputation with him.”

He turned on his heels and started walking east. Aya tripped on the cobbled road as she tried to catch up with his longer legs.

“Actually Donovan… I wanted to ask you about something.”

“You do not require my permission to pose a question.”

“... Right. Well, you see,” Aya said. “I’m not sure this is the best way for me to show results. You see… at my prison, it really matters how well we do in game.”

“It should matter to everyone. Failure equals ineptitude.”

“So you see how it is important that I level up, right?”

“No. I do not. If you level without focusing on your stats, eventually you will be beaten by someone ten levels below you. Not in the immediate future, but it will happen. It is a mere eventuality. Anyone that worries only about levels is incompetent and short-sighted. The low-level game is a gateway into the actual game. It has to be done right.”

“...” All he said sounded true and made sense and she started questioning Sid’s words. But in the end, they also had merit. She needed to show that she was progressing somehow and she didn’t see how hammering away at a piece of metal would prove to anyone that she was a good player.

Donovan stopped and studied her.

“Does your silence indicate you do not understand me?”

“No, Donovan. I understand, but I need to show results. If I don’t by the end of the week… they’ll cut me.”

“The week in Era or the real world?”

“The real world. Why?”

“Then you are being as short-sighted as the rest of them. There is a saying, I believe: Rome was not built in a day. Do you want to be Rome or a forgotten city of no name?”

“...”

“That was a metaphor. It is sometimes used in speech to help put unfamiliar things into perspective.” He said when she didn’t immediately reply to his surprisingly good advice. “If the intentional message was not clear enough, I can explain further. I thought Rome was common knowledge.”

Aya looked at his face then, and saw for the first time that there was no condescension. The kid seriously just wanted to know if she had understood him or not. She felt her lips slip into a grin, thinking she was lucky to have run into him. It was time she stopped worrying about which path to take and focus the one she was on.

She smiled at Donovan and reached up to ruffle his unkempt hair.

“Kid… you’re really annoying, have absolutely no social grace and are in dire need of a shower but… I think you’re alright.”

For the first time since she had met him, she saw the kid look slightly uncomfortable. Aya couldn’t help smiling. He was a big softie underneath.

“You need a lot of work. But eventually I think you will also be… alright,” he said. “Good bye.”

Two quick hand movements later, he beamed out of sight.

Shaking her head with amusement, she looked around after his departure. She was standing in front of a big stone building, weathered by cracks and smoke stains. A chimney was releasing puffs of grey, velvety smoke. A man stood at the doorway, blocking it completely with the muscular width of his chest.

“This is private property,” he said gruffly. “Get away.” He unfolded his arms, revealing a massive hammer. “Or I will make you.”

He dropped the hammer through his hand, catching it at the beginning of the hilt. It wasn’t a very amicable gesture.

It looked like Donovan’s reputation with Xavier was not going to help her after all.

---

At first, the smithy hammer had distracted Aya to the extent that she didn’t notice the lack of the NPC sign above Xavier’s head. The guy was actually a player just like her, minus of course, the convict status. Which in turn happened to be the cause of the distinct animosity she had detected from the guy. Even after she explained her relationship with Donovan, he remained vigilant with her, but took her into the smithy.

“So you want to learn the trade?” he asked, standing in front of the hot furnace.

“Yes,” she managed, the heat and light of the fire were hurting her eyes even from across the room.

“Then bring me fifty loads of ore,” he said, dumping a large, ragged sack at her feet. “Go to the mines east of here, talk to the foreman of the mine, tell him I sent you…” He looked at the maximum security convict symbol above her head. “Fill that sack up with ore and bring it back to me. If you even think of doing a half-assed job or shorting me, don’t even bother coming back.”

Xavier then turned his massive back on her, lifted a piece of metal that had been heating in the fire and hammered at it, molding the malleable metal into shape. Aya stood transfixed, watching the beautiful process of turning nothing into something. When the red hot glow of the metal faded, the mesmerizing swift strikes of the hammer stopped abruptly and the metal was carelessly shoved back into the heat.

“What are you waiting for?” he asked. “If you don’t want to learn, then leave. If you do, stop wasting my time. Either way, get out of here.”

Aya opened her mouth to say something, but decided against it, picking up the sack at her feet before tumbling out the door.

She quickly made her way out of town, taking the same western gate and going by the same shinily outfitted guards as before. Having no idea how to get to the mines- her new mentor hadn’t been very forthcoming in that, or any, regard - she almost stopped to ask for directions, but something about them was off and she decided to ask someone outside the city limits.

Every time she ran into a player she would try asking for directions. Some would dismiss her at first sight, some would start answering her innocent-looking avatar before the convict status jumped out of them and others simply didn’t care because they were convicts themselves.

As she made her way slowly towards the mines, she stopped and killed any mobs she came across that were on Will’s list of requested pelts. She still wanted the backpack, but mostly she really needed to level up before she could work on her stats. Before too long she accomplished just that and minutes later, she arrived at the mine.

The foreman was easy to spot in his red bandana, bright yellow shirt and dark red pants. The bandana was holding back a long mass of dreadlocks that hung halfway down his back. His skin was dark and shiny, reflecting the sun and torchlight at the entrance. Approaching him, she saw that his skin was actually stone, with partition lines running along his joints, like he was pieced together. The thing that really gave him away as foreman, however, was probably the banner scrolling above his head.

[FOREMAN FOREMAN FOREMAN FOREMAN]

“Hi,” she said. “My name is Aya. Xavier sent me.”

He glared at the symbol above her head. She was beginning to realize just how out of the ordinary Donovan was for accepting her so quickly.

When he didn’t say anything for a couple moments, Aya took out the sack Xavier had given her, hoping it would be proof enough. He looked at it unpleasantly. If she didn’t know any better, she would have said he had just bitten directly into a lemon. It was an amazing feat for a man with stone skin. Without a word, he turned around and headed inside.

Used to Donovan’s behavior, his actions didn’t faze her at all and she fell into step behind him. He walked into the mine and the sunlight quickly gave way to flickering torchlight. Before she could take inventory of the area around her, the foreman went to a corner and came back with an item in each hand.

“Here,” he said, using his gravelly voice for the first time.

Aya was caught off guard by the aftertones of what sounded like stone sliding against stone, leaving her unprepared for the pick that was launched at her. She barely fended it off before it smacked her in the face. It fell to the ground with a loud clang as the foreman held the other item to the flame beside him. The flickering light showed his already sour expression turn foul.

“You break it, you pay for it,” he practically barked.

Aya refrained from commenting on the already pretty broken status of the tool and bent down to pick it up. It wasn’t easy; the thing was half her size.

“The fee is one medium copper ore an hour,” he said and shoved a torch in her hand. “The torch is a medium iron ore extra.” He smirked evilly, then evidently caught himself and glared at her before leaving without any further instructions. Watching the man make his way back to the entrance, she listened as his steps echoed off the narrow and short hallways that branched off of the main room she was in.

Holding a torch in one hand she used it to light each tunnel to see if it would give her a hint of where she needed to go. After holding the torch to the seven different tunnels, she couldn’t detect the slightest difference between them. The moment she thought she was going to have to teach herself how to mine, she heard distant clanging reverberating in one of the tunnels.

Torch in one hand and pick slung across her opposite shoulder, she made her way down the narrow, low tunnel, for once thankful of her short stature. The tunnel branched off in many directions, sometimes even up or down but those were always to the side so she was in no danger of falling down a vertical shaft, as long as she followed the main tunnel. Slowly the clanging grew louder until she was able to differentiate the sounds of metal on rock from the tumble of voices. When she got close enough to see the flickering light of flames, she could even make out a couple words here and there until she reached a dead end in the main tunnel and followed the branch from which most of the noise was coming.

Entering the slight opening, she came across five players. Two were humans, two were dwarves and one was whatever race the foreman had been. The ceiling in the area was much taller than the tunnel had been and they could all stand straight as they worked away at the stone. At first, no one acknowledged her presence, but one of the humans spotted her when he turned back to deposit a shiny fist-sized stone on top of a pile of glimmering stones of the same size. Aya watched as the glow of the stone slowly faded until it became just like the rest, sporting only a slight glimmer.

“Oi,” the human shouted. “You deaf or something? What do you want?”

Looking up, she realized the clanging had stopped and all of the players in the cave were staring at her unpleasantly. Not one of them was a convict.

“Sorry…” she said. “I was just looking for someone to teach me about mining because I hav — ”

“Not our problem,”one of the dwarves said before he got back to work.

“Get out of here,” said the original human, glaring at her until she left.

After attempting two more mining nooks, with very similar results, she was losing hope when she ran into two orcs. One of them turned out to have a cousin in max sec - wrongfully accused of course. The two had also been in many hunting and questing parties with other convicts, so they didn’t have a problem with her. At first, neither wanted to teach her how to mine, but holding the torch the foreman had given her, she had an idea.

“If you teach me,” Aya said. “I’ll give you my first copper.”

Both of them quickly turned, but one of them shouted out, “Deal!” and was already running her way when she realized she had undercut herself. What she really should have done was use them against each other to lower the price. She was already kicking herself about it, but Hathorne chose that precise moment to remind her of his existence and really stick it to her.

Your mind for commerce has been acknowledged by your gatekeeper.

+ 0.1 Contract Point

Aya was quite sure that points were usually handed out in integer, not decimal, form. She felt like flipping off the heavens, but she was in a cave… with witnesses. That would be stupid. Instead, she followed the orc, Obelisk, to an area in the cavern where there was a vein-like streak of glimmering stone on the wall.

“See that?” he asked, pointing at it with his pick. “That’s a vein. This is a copper mine but there is lots of iron in it as well. Just chip away at it. Eventually, you’ll get to it.”

“But… is iron ore not good or something?” she asked.

“Good? It’s fine. It’s just heavy for armour,” he said, slinging the pick over his shoulder like it was a feather. “And with Fangbuster… well. People are just going crazy for the copper all of a sudden. If you want to make money, that’s what your gear should be. Copper. Which you owe me by the way. Happy digging.”

He then swiveled around and went back to his side of the cavern where he went right back to clanging away at the wall. Mining introduction over.

In the end, Aya had to watch both of their movements to actually learn how to mine. Turns out the 0.1 points were really all that she deserved for that particular transaction.

---

At first, she failed completely, never being able to hit the wall right, but with time she finally got the hang of it and started producing results where she would reach a glowing ore piece or another. Half an hour later, she had fifty or so pieces of ore and was quite satisfied with the growing pile of it behind her. Stretching out her sore back for the first time since she started digging, she opened her interface and was pleased when she saw considerable progress with her stats. Strength and endurance, just like Donovan had said.

Plopping down on top of her ore pile like a dead sack of potatoes, she looked back at her two cave companions. For the first time she actually looked at their piles and her jaw dropped. She hadn’t noticed it before because the difficulty of mining wasn’t known to her, but both of them had hundreds of ore pieces behind them. Obelisk caught her staring at one point and set his pick down, leaning on it for support. He had a grave look about him.

“Look, kid,” he began. “I’ve been watching you slave away at that wall for a while now and while I admire your endurance… you’re just not cut out for this sort of work. And that pick of yours… I’m pretty sure it has no bonuses on it or anything. Without them it’s pretty hard to strike copper here. Bonuses can greatly increase the probability of striking higher value ore…”

The orc was looking at the meager pile below her, he sighed.

“What’s your average?” he asked.

“My average what?”

“Wow. You really don’t know a thing do you?” he asked. “Each ore has a percentage yield in it. Anything below 10% is considered junk ore, not even worth carting back to town.” He directed her attention to small stacks of ore piled along the side of the wall. There were a couple hundred at least.

Picking up a few of her own ores, she realized that almost all of them were below 20% and a lot were below 5%. The moment she realized all that work had not paid off like it should, she jumped up, clenched her fist around the junk ore she had just mined and threw it into the piles of others like it.

“Easy there, tiger,” he said. “Here, I can see you don’t have any copper ore, so I’ll let you pay me back with iron ore. Just make sure it’s at least of 40% yield.”

Aya felt like hurling an ore at him as well, but decided against it, while she angrily rifled through her stack until she found an ore of 38%. She hurled it at him, missing him by half a foot. He looked at her before he picked up the ore. Regretting her actions, she stepped back, relaxing the limbs she realized had tensed up during the last couple of minutes.

“Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean anything by it.” He looked at the ore’s content. “I was just— ” she tried to continue but he didn’t comment on the shortage of and went back to swinging his pick.

Closing her mouth with the unfinished sentence, Aya quietly shrank into herself and slowly stacked the ore into the sack Xavier had given her. By the time she collected all her ore, it was only about half full. She plopped against the wall and leaned her head against her knees. Listening to the rhythmic clanging of the two picks, she felt like they symbolized her in that moment. Pulling her one way and then the other.

Click. Clack. Click. Clack.

She lost herself in the rhythm, remembering her years at the checkout counter. The tension in her arms slowly rolled off of her. Her gaze unfocused, lost in her thoughts, she wasn’t aware of the world until she suddenly sprang to her feet, eyes glued to the piles of junk ore in front of her. A slow feral smile spread across her face. Aya quickly emptied the sack of its contents.

“Hey, Obelisk!” she yelled across the cavern. “You up for a trade?”

The smile had turned into a grin as she playfully lobbed a piece of mediocre ore up and down in synchrony with the other player’s pick.

Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack.