Day 2 - February

It was a very new feeling One experienced. Never getting tired, never feeling the need to sleep or rest. He was used to staying awake for several days, playing his game with a feeling of an everlasting need to sleep. Yet now he was wide awake as if he had stepped out of a cold shower in the morning. His condition was perfect and his concentration did not falter. This awesome feeling blew away all his sorrows. When he reached 2.000 Points on the floor repair the wood changed magically. A flash of light and the old, half destroyed and pretty ugly floor was gone and replaced with a nice dark brown layer. The whole temple suddenly looked out of place. A floor too nice to fit in this damaged old hall. There were four more things he was able to repair. The walls, the Statue of Loki, the interior decoration and the roof.

One completed the quest a second time and received his second [Token of Care]. His endless amount of energy made even the missing experience gain of the quest seem non important. Only the Mystery-Reward in form of plain apples made One clench his teeth a bit. He did not feel any hunger so it felt rather useless. He stored the apples in his inventory. He had forty slots of space free, a lot more were locked still. The repair skill was slowly picking up steam. Right now One hit a Point every ten to fifteen seconds. He would approximately need another twenty hours to complete the quest ten times. If every quest of the temple would take that long, the estimated time to complete the Sacrifice quest would be at least 12 to 14 days.

Hammering away at the walls and sometimes the various praying sites out of stone to change it up he continued grinding his Builder skill. One was curious what could be so powerful or rare that you hide it behind a two week long quest? But he could not think of anything as he just never experienced a game like this. If you would visit this place at high levels it may be much easier, someone with a developed repair skill would do this much faster and find it easy. Unsure if the quest would give something awesome for his trouble or something average simply because it was a high level quest he continued. In the end it would not matter anyway as he still was doing something useful in raising his Job Mastery. After hours of grinding a popup appeared.

[You unlocked a title. Title: [Patience I] was gained.]

[Patience I: Through performing repetitive actions your spirit got used to the hardships of hard work. Your heightened concentration allows you to learn quicker. Gain +1% up to +5% increased Job Mastery speed depending on how long you have been working on the same skill.]

Awesome! This would come in handy for sure. With all this repetitive questing he would maybe get a higher state of this title too. “Equip Patience I.” Later he would change it back to Deceiver for the actual battle stats. With hours of repairing the temple and completing the repair quest everything looked a lot better. The interior decoration was changed to comfortable praying places and neat looking tables, the walls and roof were significantly improved. But the real impressive thing was the statue. It had changed every 500 Points.

From scrappy plain old wood to beautiful dark brown hardwood. Then followed by bronze and silver. Lastly the Statue of the Bound God Loki stood proudly in full gold with a black metal on the edges to bring out the shape better. Now the temple really seemed inviting. Had it looked like this when he came here he would have been really hyped up. His Job Mastery had reached 84%. One did not have any real eye for it though. The last quest gave him his tenth [Token of Care] and more importantly: FINALLY. NOT. A. FUCKING. APPLE!!! He actually received a building scroll! Immediately he opened it. Full of excitement he read it.

[Temple Plan: Roof]

[Teaches the user how to correctly build a roof for a [Temple]. Durability, Defenses and BP are greatly impacted by the materials used and the Builder's Mastery. Requires Builder III.]

[BP = Building points. The amount of damage a building can take. Basically Health Points but effected differently.]

One stared at it. Then he stared some more.

Wow.

WHERE ARE MY FUCKING APPLES? I WANT THEM BACK!

Useless stuff all over the place! He could not even build a roof since he had no Temple Blueprints for Walls or anything else! Nevermind him being too low anyway. Grinding Beginner 3 would most likely take several days maybe even one or two weeks! He stored it in his inventory. This damn quests better be worthwhile at the end!

Enraged he searched a priest. The closest one next to him was Eric. Again that guy. At least he was easy to fool. With a smile he accepted his next mission. Hopefully [Deceiver II] could be generated at some point.

Quest: Dedication.

“Through hard work we show the gods that they mean something to us. Through prayers we communicate to them and dedicate them our time. As time is the most valuable thing, this is a heavy burden that only the most dedicated can achieve.” - Eric, the High Priest.

[Objective: Pray for two hours in the secret chamber beneath the Statue of Loki.]

Reward: [Token of Dedication]; [Unknown]

Declining will grant “Dedicated Atheist” for 30 days.

[Dedicated Atheist: +65% Attack Speed; +30% Movement Speed; +20 Strength; +100 Toughness; +50% Experience gained. Also destroys all relations to the Order of Loki and their Faith.]

One looked at the popup for a long time. Declining was getting more and more tempting. Maybe he should do it? Getting out of here and doing some fighting and leveling would maybe be the better choice here after all? And praying for 2hours ten times was a lot of time too.

But after a while he accepted the quest. If it was a bust, he could still catch up to the higher level players once he found out how they advanced more than him. Time was always on his side. Where others slept he could play without a break. Where others had real life he had 24/7 grinding. Where others had a girlfriend he had gaming! So he spent the last six hours of the day with praying and continuously lying to the priest how exciting it was while dying inside of boredom. He could not wait for the next quest.

The quests gave him three times [Token of Dedication] and a lot of [Fresh Meat]. Maybe he should learn how to cook? And if this quests would not end up giving him something amazing he would burn this whole place to the ground. Even if it is the last thing that he would do!

Day 3 - March

Shortly after midnight the snow outside was still present. One received a status after a couple minutes outside.

[Freezing. Due to being exposed to the cold your speed is reduced by 20%. Your Health regeneration is disabled and being exposed to the cold for longer will result in further damaging you.]

Naturally that was bound to happen as he did not posses any clothing. The weather was calm and he could see the surroundings of the temple for the first time. On top of a large hill, the temple was overshadowing a larger area full of woods, empty fields covered in snow and some bigger, sharp silhouettes that most likely were some large rocks. A couple of houses down there indicated that the priests would be farming as soon as the snow was gone. One could not really say for sure as the darkness overshadowed most of the area. The moon was not shining all too brightly.

[You took 1 Damage due to the cold.]

Well, time to go back inside. Back in he continued the boring and nearly useless praying quests. After 14 hours he was finally finished. He hoped for a special reward but unlike the last quest he did not receive a building plan or something similar. But he was happy enough to finally start a new quest. 2 out of 7 were finished. From Eric he had received no more [Apples] from which he had 17 already. Only [Raw Meat]. But a whole 30 of them! Most likely cooking could create some buff food? Curious he wandered to a rather fat priest on the side. Most likely he “tasted” more while he was cooking than he should have.

One picked out a hopeful emote and approached the cook. “Can you cook me something? I am hungry.” With curious round eyes his child face looked up the the priest and handed him one of his Apples. “No. You can eat that just as is. Now scram kid. I gotta work.” Wow. What a kind hearted person. “Pleeease? I want to eat something warm?” The fat priest exhaled. “Fine.” He stood up and reached for a wooden bowl. “But just because you helped out around here.” One used a happy emote. “Yes, thank you!” The priest filled the bowl in the big pot over the fire and handed him a full bowl of cooked meat and thick soup in return.

[Speciality of the Temple of Loki]

[Raises your HP by 250. Raises your Toughness by 100. Increases Heat Immunity by 5%. Duration 2 hours.]

Damn. Not bad. If it had increased cold resistance he might have been able to go outside longer and explore. He stored the bowl in his inventory. The fat priest Snorri smiled. “Eat up, you need to grow strong.” Yea. Like hell he would waste buff food for nothing! “Yes, sir!” The fat cook seemed happy. “Anyway, would you care to help me get some [Fresh Meat]? I need quite a lot for all the people here. You can put up traps outside to get more meat. If you want i will show you how?” Perfect! Finally something went his way! He received so much Meat from the praying quest already! Immediately he took it out and gave it to the priest. “Here i have some [Fresh Meat].” The cook smiled brightly. “Thank you. Wait a second.”

He turned around and threw the meat into a huge bowl. A couple of moments later Snorri gave One a big bowl.

[Completed: Quest: Hungry]

[Received: [Cooked Meat] 30x]

[Received 400 Experience]

[Received 400 Experience]

[Received 400 Experience]

[Level-Up! You reached level 3.]

[Level-Up! You reached level 4.]

[Your Strength rose by 2]

[Your Vitality rose by 2]

[Your Toughness rose by 2]

[Your Speed rose by 2]

[Gained 10 Skillpoints]

Oh fuck. No. No. No no no no no! In that moment One knew he fucked up. There was another quest here. The quest to give the cook 10 [Fresh Meat]. Full of panic he talked to the priest again.

“Where do i get the Fresh Meat?” The NPC smiled. “Here, take those and set up a trap in the woods, something will run in eventually. But practice before you do, it is harder than it looks. And bring some smaller wood too, we ran out of thin firewood to start the fires.”

[Received: Trap Material]

[Received Quest: Hunting for food.]

Objective: Help the temple cook Snorri get 3x [Fresh Meat]. Also bring 5x [Wooden Sticks] to light the fire more easily.

Reward: [Token of Snorri]; [Unknown]

[Received Quest: Hungry.]

Objective: Bring 10x [Fresh Meat] to Snorri.

Reward: 10x [Cooked Meat]; 400 Experience

One fucked up. Just gathering some sticks would have been so easy. But no, he needed to go and throw away 30 meat just for fun. Now he had to hunt for [Fresh Meat] again. He sank to the ground and began to hit his head on the now beautiful dark wooded floor he repaired yesterday. Again and again. Harder and harder.

[You took 1 Damage]

[You took 1 Damage]

[You took 1 Damage]

[You took 1 Damage]

[You took 1 Damage]

[You took 1 Damage]

[You took 1 Damage]

[You took 1 Damage]

[You took 1 Damage]

Damn game. One was determined to burn the temple down now. No matter what he received after all those quests. So time expensive! He would fall behind other players even while playing 24/7!