Day 5 - 13:57

After receiving his next token quest One went to the “Flask of Olaf”. Flask was a little bit of an understatement. A better name would have been “Barrel of Olaf”. It was actually bigger than One's child body. And the fat cook should give him a fill in this barrel just to disinfect a scratch? The drunk bastard was really insane. When One took the flask another quest came up.

[Received: Quest: Disinfection is important.]

Your help is urgently needed to help Olaf the Woodcutter. He might die from a serious wound if you cannot bring him some liquor for disinfection.

Objective: Get the [Flask of Olaf] filled with liquor by Snorri.

Reward: [???]

Declining will anger Olaf. That would not be too good for you.

Time limit: 6 hours.

Oh damn. A time limit quest. One knew that this would not go well. Time limit quests were often tricky. They usually seemed very easy to fulfill, yet something always would come up. Something that prolonged the quest and made it more difficult. Well, better get going. One still needed the quest giver to be in good mood for the duration of the Token quests.

He hurried back to the temple and approached Snorri, the fat cook. With some yes sir, absolutely sir, attitude he approached. His emotions very serious. “Snorri, i have very bad news.” The cook looked concerned. “What is it boy? Did something happen?” One nodded, feigning concern. “Your friend, Olaf. He… He..”, One made a sad face and continued. “He is dying. He has a huge wound and nothing to disinfect the wound.” Snorri looked shocked now. “Oh my, do you have a bottle or something? I will give you some alkohol. That should help.” One handed him the huge barrel casually, like it was nothing special. “Here you go. But tell him not to drink too much of it. He might go blind. I know he likes to drink too much.”

Well that quest went surprisingly well. Maybe the lying had helped? After faking his gratitude One headed straight back to the hut. “Olaf, i have your Flask. Filled.” Olaf got up more quickly than anyone would have expected. “Thank youuuuuuuu mah dear friend.” He took a huge sip of the barrel and sunk back to his resting place. “That really helped. Here take this.

[Received: Receipt of Approval: Woodcutter Beginner I]

[A receipt given to those that exceeded the boundaries of the early Woodcutter skill. Without it's knowledge you may never advance towards Beginner II.]

Wow. Jackpot. Normally you would need to fulfill a difficult quest for a master to advance in the skill mastery. This fool of a drunkard gave it to him basically for free. Maybe since he actually asked very skilled for it? Maybe if you ask normally without any care you would receive a complicated quest? One was proud of himself. He was the smartest player of them all! He laughed loudly as he walked outside, ready to test the woodcutter job.

He immediately went towards a huge tree and gave it a good beating with the axe. After a couple of hits the usual happened.

[Woodcutter: Beginner I learned.]

[The art of knocking down trees and prying the earth of their wooden resources. Once you are well versed you may grow entire forests and cut them down on your whim.]

Sounded interesting. He also noticed that two skills were created as well. With the Hunter-Mastery it was creating traps and in the Builder departement it was the repair skill. Here there were two skills available.

[Foresting I] - Plants a seedling of a tree. Depending on which branch of tree or seed you plant with different wood can be produced. With advanced skill level you may plant and grow trees faster in cooperation with other woodcutter skills.

[Chopping Wood I] - Allows you to to chop trees that give [Wood] in any variation of rarity. Depending on the age and size of the tree, the time needed to cut down a tree can differ.

Nothing really special here. Pretty basic skills for the start. It seemed like you would have to master the skill of Chopping Wood, before you could advance to any other type of trees while you can level up as a woodcutter by using the Foresting skill alone. But where could you get without swinging the axe around? One was pretty sure that he just had to go and hit away at the trees in order to advance this skill and gather enough wood to finish the quests for the [Token of Hard Work].

Good that hard work never made him back out of anything. Fired up he swung his beginner axe onto a rather big tree a couple feet in. This one should give him enough wood to finish the quest. The tree looked very realistic down to the smallest details a true work of art. The game designers really did a number on the graphics here. A normal pc could never handle this amount of detail. PC Master Race? What a joke this suddenly was!

He continued to hit the big pine tree again and again. A small bar that showed the percentage of its HP appeared. When he used the inspect order another, bigger window appeared.

[100%/100%]

[Large Pine Tree]

Age: 1272 Days.

A skilled woodcutter may find [Pinewood] aside from:

[Common Wood] 80.32%

[Normal Wood] 12.47 %

[Rare Wood] 3.47 %

[Legendary Wood] 0.74 %

[Seed: Pine-Cone] 3.00%

Grown by: -nature-.

One was curious what he might be able to do with some pinewood? And he could clearly use a [Seed: Pine-Cone] to raise his foresting skill. He calculated the numbers in his head. 100%. Most likely it did not indicate the Pinewood, since his skill level was too low for that anyway? To gather a legendary grade piece of wood he would have to be very lucky. Considering his current level of luck, one could say it was a safe bet to not get too excited. At least a 12.47% chance to gather normal wood. Getting a couple of these would speed up the questing a lot. After all he needed only one normal grade piece and 25 common pieces to complete the quest.

Motivated about the easy of the quest he hit away on the tree. After twenty minutes he noticed a change.

[99.9%/100%]

He had expected to get towards 99% and that his mastery points would rise a lot. Sadly he did neither gain a single point in [Chopping Wood I], nor in [Woodcutter: Beginner I]. 0% at both. Something was not right. Did he get trolled by the game again? After looking up to the quite huge pine tree that was 1272 days old.

He decided that the tree must be too sturdy for his current skillset. One Thousand And Seventy Two days ingame time. That would be more than a hundred years in real life time. Clearly he was not fit to cut down such a huge tree yet. Time to search for something small.

Quickly he came to the conclusion that to level his skill he would have to be satisfied with small trees, that were one or two years old. So he had to find some that were at least below 24 days of age. Quite the difficult task in a forest that was this old. Mainly big trees filled it aside from some bushes. Interesting though. After hitting a bush for a couple of minutes a popup appeared.

[Thornbush was destroyed.]

Sadly nothing else happened. So cutting down bushes was nothing that would gain him resources. Surely there were some quests that said something like “Go, cut down 15x [Thornbush]” or similar tasks. It did not raise his masteries either. Maybe you could receive something from cutting them down, but One would not waste any time finding it out.

After searching for a half an hour more he finally found a small tree, barely a bit bigger than his childlike character. He immediately inspected it.

[100%/100%]

[Young English Oak]

Age: 4 Days.

A skilled woodcutter may find [Common Wood] aside from:

[Seed: Oakbranch] 27.25%

[Seed: Acorn] 72.75 %

Grown by: -nature-.

Well that was a bit of a downer. After searching for such a long time, he will only receive seeds on this small tree. One decided that it was too early to give up and to start smacking a much bigger tree for a couple of days. First he would cut this one down and plant more with the seeds for later. Maybe this would level his foresting and the overall woodcutter abilities.

After he whacked it for a couple times the tree was already at [42.67%/100%]. Very satisfying to see it go down so smoothly. Half a minute later a popup appeared.

[You successfully cut down: Young English Oak. 4 Days.]

When he wanted to loot he realised that the tree only fell over. It was not “dead”, so it could not be looted. One inspected it again.

[0%/100%]

[A cut down [Young English Oak]. To receive its resources you need to be [Woodcutter: Beginner I] or higher and use the skill [Chopping Wood I] or higher.]

Phew. For a second he thought he had to be beginner level two or something similar. At least the game did not troll him this time around. Gladly he hit the fallen oak again and again. After a while it disappeared.

[You received 13x [Seed: Acorn]]

[You received 2x [Seed: English Oak Branch]]

One checked his mastery level. [Chopping Wood I] did increase by 7%. If it went up so much from a single small tree it would most likely level up instantly if he cut down a huge tree. The job mastery itself increased by only a mere 2%. Progress was progress. Fine for One. He took out a seedling that he just received and used his [Foresting I] skill.

The game took over his body automatically. Unlike the chopping and mining this seemed to be a automated skill. He buried into the soft, dark brown soil. A hole that was a couple of centimeters thick. Then he took the tree branch and stuck it into the hole. Right after he filled the hole up again, so that only two thirds remained above ground.

Shortly after One got up and the influence of the game ended. The tree was planted. One inspected it.

[100%/100%]

[English Oak Seedling]

Age: <1 Day.

Nothing can be gained from cutting it down.

Grown by: -One-.

One felt kind of proud. Maybe at some point someone would look to cut down his tree in this woods. Better said his trees. Immediately he went to plant the next branch and all the small acorns in his possession. His [Foresting I] went up to 16% alongside his overall job mastery which increased to 5%. Satisfied with the result One immediately went on to search for a middle class tree. Something around 100 to 120 days.

After checking a good seventy trees he finally found one.

[100%/100%]

[Small Pine Tree]

Age: 97 Days.

A skilled woodcutter may find [Pinewood] aside from:

[Common Wood] 78.32%

[Normal Wood] 13.47 %

[Rare Wood] 4.47 %

[Legendary Wood] 0.74 %

[Seed: Pine-Cone] 3.00%

Grown by: -nature-.

One immediately started hitting the tree. After thirty hits it reached 99.9%. That was about two minutes for 0.1 percent. With this it would take about thirty to thirtyfive hours of playtime. Right now it was Day 5- May 17:43. With this he would get towards day 7 at least. And then some more time to harvest the tree afterwards. Which should take a lot of time again. One sighted. Well at least leveling his job mastery was something usefull.

After whacking the tree for a good ten minutes something fell out of the tree. A small, very agile and brown creature. Upon landing the whole ground shook. The entire area was rumoring and behaving like the center of an earthquake. The small squirrel that had landed right next to One looked at him aggressively. Bolts of lightning drew black cuts on the ground and the ground caught fire around it.

It also had a name.

[Ratatosk´s Messenger]

[???. ???. ???. ???. ???]

Wow. A lot of question marks. One was able to feel the power surging from it. He also felt like it would be pointless to run. If he did he would die instantly from being chased. Slowly it approached. The earthquake died down. So did the fire and the thunderbolts. The overwhelming feeling of power stayed. The messenger tilted its head. Then it raised a paw and made a dismissive movement with it. Immediately One´s body flew through the air and hit a huge tree behind him.

[You took 114 Damage.]