The 'food' had been horrible. It was void of any taste, unworthy to be eaten by anyone. Plain, dull and disgusting. How did potatoes even become a thing? KimZor wasn't pleased with the baconless menu. Dish of the day: boiled potatoes. Asterschmick, or whatever the potato-minion had insisted on calling it.

The minions started whining about the fire scroll again.

"Please do not make me repeat myself, magic is beyond what new travelers should be concerned about. Meddling with such grand things could end in eternal regret," KimZor explained to his botherer. His words had truth to them, at least they might have had, not that it mattered, but if it did, he was doing the overly curious followers a great service. Kim always had a weak part for people; he was too kind to others. One day he'd make them thank him for the risks he took in their stead.

He silently slank away to take cover, crunching on the shrine side opposite to the one of the camp. Time to continue with the good stuff.

Laying on the uneven mat of grass, was a crude piece of bright paper. Two small stones lied on each of its ends to prevent it from reverting into a bolt. Beneath the only understandable part of it -"Magic: Fire rune", was a clusterfuck of doodles, or a collection of them...six, to be precise. Their weirdness made them a clusterfuck anyhow.

There was one big doodle connected to another, smaller doodle. To the smaller doodle there was a third doodle connected to a fourth, connected to a fifth. The last one in the main clusterfuck was anyhow drawn inside a depiction an open hand palm.

Finally some clear clues! He put his hand to the obvious hand mark. Immediately the doodle next to it began glowing in a indigo hue, as did the next doodle in the chain of five. Not only the scroll was affected by the magic at display; the entire world seemed to turn more dark, blurry and vigorous. The grass whipped violently, as wind blew faster. Small clouds of insects and grass swirled towards different directions every time he blinked. Nothing was granted pardon by the natural powers, dancing around him. Holy shit! This was intense!

Few things passed KimZor’s mind before the world turned back to normalcy. The last two runes shone. The biggest doodle blazed in red orange. Above it, an illusion of liquid air blew by the wind. KimZor’s reflexes withdrew his hand from the wave of heat. The scroll caught fire, but was soon quenched as the whole paper momentarily flashed blue . A stunned KimZor smiled vividly, eyes wide open.

He rolled up the scroll, keeping it tight to his chest. What happened couldn’t possibly have gone unnoticed by the others. A careful glance convinced him otherwise. 'Inattentive poor fuckers.' He exhaled two lungfulls of air. Back to the good stuff.

No message appeared earlier, so he wasn’t sure if he had absorbed the secrets of the scroll or not. He tried to channel mana, but he didn't feel a concrete response. He analyzed the scroll. Something as off with the doodles. The scroll was just as weird, but the sixth, super complicated doodle in the corner was missing.

'Well, time for a second try,' he put his hand to the paper again. The doodle turned bright, and the vivid world from before revealed itself again. His surroundings were pretty much as before he touched the scroll, yet it was clearly different. Energy danced around him in great passion. The biggest doodle once again shone brightly, like ember on a pile of white ash. The air shook near it, visibly to the eye, then the paper took fire. The scroll evaporated, soon followed by the flaming, big doodle, briefly hovering on its own.

He had done it!He had done it! And damn, had, it, been, cool! The story of the just and mighty Warlock, Kim, was about to unfold! Now it was time to replicate feeling.

***

“Plopp”,”Plapp”,”Ploftt”, “Crack”, Ploff”,”Crack”…

The rabbit fanatic had taken a break from making ‘ropes’, and was now throwing stones around.

“Could you please stop doing that? There aren’t even any rabbits around” Jess remarked to Ben.

Well, you’re the one obsessing about silence, you could just read them at another place you know,” Ben answered, notting the the instruction scrolls. He picked up some stones, spread out around a small boulder.

“Yeah, I could, but I’m don’t see any point for you even doing what you’re doing. If there was a stone throwing skill, you would have been beyond novice level of it by now.” Her eyes met with Ben’s, but he quickly stared at the grass instead, then the sky to his side. “Well, yeah… I’ve figure that much, but, you know, maybe something good will come out of it.”

“Seriously, you’re throwing small stones at a big stones. How's that ever gonna help with anything? We have no idea for how long we're gonna be stuck in this mess. Why don't we at least try to make ourselves a bit comfortable here. I don't think we were got that quest reward for no reason ”

“You’re not wrong, but actually I’m… “

“ I don’t get why you’re bitching about it, we already had an agreement; I do the pottery, YOU do the ropes, . I don’t know for how long we’ll be stuck here, but if we’ll be stuck here together, we should act like it. Don’t go full noobtard on me!”

Ben took his time preparing an answer. His vacant gaze flew into even more directions than before. His lips moved, but hesitated to form words.

“Do not neglect to enhance your potato prowess either; great culinary skills can vastly enhance ones vigor,” the NPC filled in, awkwardly late. Kim did have point on the potato cocking though.

“… I’m sorry, you’re right, just… It’s not that I wanna waste any time, pulling fibers from grass got pretty tedious, and I had an idea…of sorts. Sorry for losing focus.”

“Well… Sorry for being a bit harsh... pretty tough day.”

*Silence*

Ben headed towards the piggy home and crunched down. Jess did the same. Checking out on the cute little piglets was just as important as getting the infra structure going.

Ben and she both sighted in relief. At least some of the mashed potatoes had been eaten. The two bigger piglets were eating while the other two slept serenely, like little angels of fur. She stroked the back of her hand to one of the sleeping piglets. She had carried this one for quite a walk.

"They're awfully cute"

"Yeah"

“ What was your idea about?”

“My what? Oh... well, you know that we don’t have any real skills yet. We’ve kind of got some manual melee abilities, for whatever that’s worth.” He looked down again. “ But we don’t have shits for ranged attacks, so I though that until then, maybe manually throwing stuff could fill a void, and maybe...”

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe throwing stones could be a bit useful later on; a skill besides your skills kinda, and maybe...”

“Yes”

“What”

“Maybe what”

“Err… Maybe a skill like that could snowball us, always keep us a bit ahead of our levels you know, and maybe...”

Jess stared at him with a skeptical face.

“Maybe we could hunt down some rabbits with them. You know, We sneak up on them, maybe make some traps, if we get good at throwing I think we could hit a few of them too. I think… Maybe.”

“Well, Maybe you’re obsessing about early game rabbits.”

“To achieve excellence in ones craft, doing, not speaking is usually of favor to young travelers,” the NPC said, finally getting Ben back to work. Jess, somewhat satisfied, left the piglets and continued to think of ways to get and prepare clay. Hardening stuff probably wouldn’t be as easy as heating potato water either.

“Why do we even need pottery anyways?”

“I guess we kinda need to store stuff, water maybe. Damn, I wish we just had some Item slots.” She really wished she had some.

“Item slots?”

“Older game thing, that stuff would’ve been the shit right now”

“Maybe we should take a look at the Items part form the stone menu thingey,” Jerry suggested.

“You already had a look a second ago, and since then, It’s not as if you’ve suddenly grinded some ‘g’... Damn, you don’t even know how to make money in this game”

“Well, maybe if we could get some rabbits...”

*Sight*

Jess ignored the rabbit fanatic and got back into her deep thinking.

***

It soon got dark, darker than most games Jerry usually played. Besides the fire, and the things it lit, nothing could be seen. The last pieces of wood were barely glowing. They had tried to put some grass onto the fire, but it hadn’t burned too well, probably too moist. The grass that did burn didn’t burn for long either.

They, well, Jessica mostly, had decided that it was time to shut up and sleep. It had been a pretty exhausting day. Laying down felt great; His legs were sore. Not moving them felt satisfying in a way. He had made a bed of long straws of grass. It was pretty comfy, a lot more comfy than getting up to make a better one. He lied down content, letting pleasant sleep slowly overwhelm him.

***

Digging, forming, kilning. Digging, forming kilning. Maybe make a flat spinning thing…

Digging, forming, kilning. Maybe it was a waste of time. Maybe she’d be a potter forever. No, no, no, no, NO. She couldn’t log out.

Jess woke up. She didn’t know why, but it ought to be due to either the cold or her need to pee.

She needed to what!? Most of her sleepiness was washed away by her confusion. She sat up. This was weird…

She got back to her straw bed. It had taken a couple of tries, but she eventually kicked a large tuft of grass. Sadly, the flattened grass no longer provided any muffling for her back on the rough terrain. It had served a well as it could, but had lost to her weight. The weird cold wetness from the morning had begun sticking to the straws again. She wanted to sleep, but the cold made it hard. She turned to her side, waiting for the new dew to evaporate, or at least get heated somewhat. Maybe the cold could just be forgotten. She waited for the cold to disappear. She waited and waited. What was she waiting for again?

***

“Plopp”,”Plapp”,”Ploftt”, “Crack”, Ploff”,”Crack”…

The lightly sleeping KimZor awoke. He wanted to get back to sleep, but noises didn’t allow him to.

“Ey, you, the fuck you doing, he yelled to the ground. He hit the surface next to his stomach with a sleepy, closed fist. He felt unreal, things were weird and the world around him was weirder. The irritating sound was no more; what ever that had bothered him had passed. “Pussies,” he muttered, and went back to sleep.

“Plopp”,”Plapp”,”Ploftt”, “Crack”, Ploff”,”Crack”…

KimZor squinted his eyes, confused. The world was blurry and bright, way too bright. He burrowed his face into a turf of grass and tried to go back to sleep.

“Plopp”,”Crack”,”Ploftt”, “Crack”, Ploff”,”Crack”…

“Bloody fucking motherfuck-fuck shit-fuck fuck!” He sat, in dual sense, firmly erected; eyes red and wide open. He looked in the direction of the annoying sound, waiting for a blurry curtain to be raised. He tightened his fists as hard as he could, but they were still weak from sleeping. He didn’t know where he was, he didn’t care much either. Something important had happened during the night, and whatever made that disturbing sound deserved death.

***

“Crack”,”Crack”,”Ploff”, “Crack”, Ploff”,”Ploff”…

Jerry was sniping the boulder pretty often now.

It got easier when he relaxed, but relaxing hadn’t been easy; throwing stones at full power felt soothing when upset. Boy had he been upset when he woke up. Relieving himself from the cold induced bladder tingling had given his turd bath paranoia a severe relapse. His current situation and all its implications made him nervous and restless.

The others were still sleeping when he went up, so he figured he wouldn’t be breaking their deal if he delayed the rope prototyping a bit. Experimenting with stones sure was more fun than experimenting with grass, and the more he hit, the more fun it got. He was starting to consistently hit the target boulder three out of ten throws now. If he could just keep these results with a target one tenth the size of the boulder, like … a rabbit!

He envisioned himself averaging three rabbits an hour; In his mind, the NPC gave him some awesome rewards, and the control obsessed girl realized how he, being the pro gamer he was, was too capable to be put into any plans. Grandpa would’ve been proud of him. Gotta powerlevel the little he had.

He was at the boulder now, picking up stones spread around ut. Four out of ten this time! Damn, he was making improvement. Maybe he should get some more stones to throw... but then he’d need to walk twice instead of one to fetch them after throwing. Sticking to his ten stones had his progress easy to follow, which was neat too.

When he started throwing another volley, a rusty, angry, voice disrupted him.

“The fuck you doing you stone tossing dipshit!!?!” an NPC with barely open eyes yelled at him.

“Good morning Kim, any new quests for us today?” Jerry asked the weirdly behaving NPC. Whatever script that was running didn’t really make Kim feel more real. He was a bit too out of character.

The NPC stopped waving his hand for a moment and closed his eyes a bit more.

“You…, thou, should’t, … shan’t throw stones!”

“What’s up then?”

“Do… the thing! Eeeeh, youknow,” the NPC sighted demandingly.

“So, Practicing potato cooking? Continuing to twine fibers? Checking for low level grinding areas? Collect stuff?¨

The NPC took a few seconds to simulate thinking.

“Check for… eh, yeah, area things, do that!

“Alrightie, time to see how far these will get,” Jerry burst out with a smile, grabbing his staff with his right hand and pocketing stones with his left. He hoped to run into something easy, like giant snails, but whatever happened, he wouldn’t disappoint his grandpa’s legacy. Grinding time was grinding time!