Thane emptied his sixty-second sack of Gold Ore into the Hall’s storage chest. Crystals shone a blinding golden-white for twice as long, a wonderful sign. He checked the contents and found 2104 Gold. Ten more trips to the Mine, one trip saved.

He kneaded sore muscles in his arms and back, regaining fourteen stamina points, then headed back out. And let’s see how that Quarry is coming along…

Progress: 403/415

Coming slow and steadily.

Within a perpetually billowing dust cloud, stone shingles fixed themselves onto a long single-story building’s roof—an office, a place for workers to slack off. Or for someone with the Overseer profession to keep watch over the steep, terraced mining pit. Two magical stone cranes towered over the hundred-feet-deep pit, both lifting Stone Blocks to the stockpile. The great advantage of Quarries was their effective zero construction cost minus Gold and crystals; all that excavated stone had been plenty for the office and cranes.

Larac sat on a Block and put hammer to chisel against another, rapidly shaving off a shingle as though the stone were soft as wet clay. He threw the shingle over his shoulder, and it floated to the office’s roof. After throwing two more shingles, Larac put down his tools as the Fiend Stonecutter climbed out of the pit with a face of menace.

They exchanged a dozen words. Dust and poor lighting hid their faces, their lips, but Thane caught a few words. Hunt. Dangerous. Blood. They were both close to 70% hunger—four hours had passed.

Plenty of time left.

Apparently the Fiend didn’t think so. It pushed Larac aside, jogged toward Thane. Out of breath, it said, “Need blood, Master. Let’s hunt.”

“You’re at sixty-eight percent hunger,” Thane tactfully said. “That’s eight hours before you starve”

Frustration hissed through its fangs. “Need blood!” Its nails slashed, three marks on a stalagmite.

Thane glanced at the stockpile, examining.

Open Stockpile

137 Stone Chunks

29 Stone Blocks

Each Chunk should split into two Blocks at base magical efficiency, and it appeared that Larac was now also a Stonecutter. The Builder’s Hut could be started in the next hour.

“Construct the Hut next!” Thane yelled to Larac, then placed a hand on the Fiend’s shoulder. “I’ll be back with a big bloody corpse. You stay here. Keep cutting stone.”

The Fiend seemed mull it over, wanting to go as well. It growled, “Yes, master.”

Thane fetched his Mana Lamp from the Gold Mine, left the sack there, and ran to the cave entrance. A piece of the Kobolds’ Barricade was equipable as an improvised, statless shield. He shone light up the crude stairs and didn’t see that wooden board at the top. Worry tingled in his nerves. He unsheathed his Darksteel Wand, silently climbing step by step. Nearing the top, he sniffed… but no new scents were in the air. The board had been strewn ajar—not flipped.

Claw marks dug into one edge.

A beast had visited, too fat for the stairwell though skinnier than a cave tunnel four yards in diameter. Maybe a lion, but it was still dark out, so it had to be their bobcat cousins. A mutated bobcat; the marks were a bit too wide. And a number of large, nocturnal reptiles roamed the Seidrac desert, many of which grew claws. Also overgrown birds.

Thane weighed the risks. At worst, his corpse would be something’s dinner, and he would respawn with his items. A smarter beast may loot him, but this was a low-level region. Relatively low. Once again, that Human settlement was radiating influence. If Kobolds had spawned, then chances were that something else also had.

Nodding to himself, Thane exited the cave and stowed his Lamp. A light drizzle had dampened the ground. The dark clouds had passed on to the left horizon. On the right horizon, under the moon, light tinted the sky, the sun less than an hour from rising. He double-checked his character sheet, rereading Vampire’s race description. As he remembered, sunlight merely weakened him.

Not seeing any beast tracks, he began climbing.

* * *

There, three and a half miles down the dry river by a small Spring, antelopes slept, a sad group of eight or nine, a dozen at most. They must’ve strayed from the main herd; that, or they were new-spawns. Killing them may wreak havoc on the ecosystem, and the overworld AI was known to be especially punishing in this regard. Or especially annoying. The last thing anyone wanted was a tumbleweed storm.

But snagging one for breakfast was fine.

Thane was about to hop down a ledge as dawn broke. Sharply he inhaled in stinging pain, his vision blotching. Strength drained from his limbs. His body felt thirty percent heavier. He summoned his shield, covered his face. He started climbing down with one hand while his head swam in sleepy fatigue. He pressed on nevertheless. A hundred feet above ground, he almost slipped and fell. He hoped his health regeneration rate was also gimped by thirty percent, but he suspected worse. Landing on two feet, his joints ached, and a scratch on his finger partly confirmed his suspicion; Vampires healed at less than a tenth of their normal rate in sunlight.

The cave’s darkness beckoned with a refreshing air current. He muttered incoherently, turned, and ran down the valley. By the hundredth yard, his stamina bar was missing ten percent, more than twice the usual drain. He hadn’t ever played a character so physically weak in any virtual reality game. In any game, period. No wonder Synaptic wanted him to beta test Vampires—they were too damned lazy to properly balance the game themselves.

After two miles of misery, Thane’s knees folded. He crawled under a rock arch. A pocket of shade helped, the sting on his skin fading, slightly. His stamina regenerated close to normal rate, but the instant his face left shade, regeneration slowed to a slug’s pace. The sting returned with a vengeance.

I’m crippled under the sun!

And it was going to be worse midday. Eastern hills buried most of the dawn sun, only slivers of eye-gouging light stabbing through. Weakened was a criminal understatement. He was going to be roasted to a char. He roared through gritted teeth, breaking into a sprint toward the next shade pocket.

He made it with twenty-three points of stamina left, his neck on fire, sunlight abruptly brightening. The world heaved. He gripped his knees, his untrimmed fingernails digging into his skin. Hope retreated into a cowardly region in his mind. The suffocating feeling of claustrophobia clamped his throat even though he was standing in a wide open space. He couldn’t move an inch from this receding shadow.

Desperation forced him to his friend list.

[Offline] GM_Cade

“You asswipe!” he bellowed and sprinted to a tall spoon-shaped rock with an oval hole at the top.

Something roared back at him. A lion. It roared again, declaring this was its turf and hunting ground.

Lion (Level 3)

Sentience: 18

Health: 89

Stamina: 132

Mana: 32

“Come get some!” Thane hissed, throwing a stone, missing by miles.

Wind carried a peachy scent as the lion roared a third time, louder—final warning. It took a step forward, its tail swinging back and forth. It was starving for a bite of Vampire meat.

Thane raised his wand.

The lion charged. Powerful muscles flexed. Fur rippled in the wind. What a majestic beast, a mount fit for a raid leader, a type of familiar that only extremely stubborn players were bonded to. Ferocity on four legs.

A max-power Mana Bolt broke the lion’s teeth. Flesh and blood vaporized. A pained cry vibrated in Thane’s bones, and the lion lunged with everything it had.

Thane stepped into sunlight and was blinded—stunned in a million degree sear. Two hundred pounds of virtual mass pinned him to the ground. Claws tore into his ribs and gut. The pain, although reduced in this world, was truly humbling. And for the first time he bled, just a dribble, for his heart did not beat.

As the lion sank broken teeth into Thane’s shoulder, he shot a Bolt through its heart.

Darkness eclipsed the sun.

You have died! Since you are under level 10, you have not lost any experience points. Respawning in 89 seconds…

He savored every second of unlit soothing peace. Like all good things, the respawn timer ended too soon, so he stayed inside his coffin until he was mentally prepared for the burning light. He breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth, telling himself that none of this could really hurt him. He was safe inside his artificial brain, his metal body.

He was ready.

The coffin lid opened with a protesting groan, as though it wanted to keep him safe. Soil fell inside, followed by the cursed light. He hauled himself to his feet, ignored the sting, fixed the camouflage, then sprinted down the dry river while making stops at every spot of shade. Sheer willpower fueled him.

And before he knew it, his skin was cooked to a fine crisp and he was panting over the lion’s corpse. The peachy fumes were heavenly, ten times better than Kobold coconut. The lion had lost gallons of blood, but for a corpse of this size, there was plenty left to feed three Vampires. He refilled his Enchanted Flask six times over, guzzled each ten ounce serving.

No surprise, fresh blood in his stomach fended off the sun’s holy magics exceedingly well. He dragged the corpse all the way to the cave with only minor discomfort. As the cave’s maw swallowed him, something moved at the top of his sight. Circling vultures.

At the stairwell, he hollered, “Get up here, you two! Breakfast is getting stale!”

Larac was here first. A feral grin exposed sharp teeth. He dug in, sucking blood from a hind leg.

The Fiend Worker was right behind, expressionless, mesmerized in the sweet smell. He went straight for the neck and promptly discovered little blood was left in that area. He shifted to the lower back, left teeth marks in the neck. Where they bit, flesh wasn’t dissolving. No venom, surprisingly.

Eh, it makes hardly any difference. Thane inwardly shrugged and headed back out.

Larac asked, “Master, where are you going?”

“I have to clean up a blood trail.”

“Apologies, I wasn’t thinking.”

Thane didn’t blame him. This was their first drink.

At the cave’s mouth, he ducked behind a stalagmite. By atrocious luck, two short humanoids with greenish-brown complexions were on the trail. More Kobolds. These were the scaled variant, hardier and smarter—but less agile. They were equipped in crude animal skin armor. Antelope skin.

Kobold Swordsman (level 3)

Sentience: 89

Health: 132

Stamina: 88

Mana: 102

—————————————

Kobold Ranger (level 4)

Sentience: 87

Health: 135

Stamina: 90

Mana: 102

Thane gripped his wand so hard that it would’ve snapped if it were crafted from wood. This may be the end of his settlement.

But, thank the gods, the Kobolds decided not to follow the trail—wisely leaving for backup. They marched downhill. They slipped behind a cluster of rock formations a thousand yards away. Their base was under the mountain which he had climbed on the treasure hunt. This was Kobold valley.

An infestation.

Thane dashed back down the cave tunnel, wind tossing his hair about. “Hurry up,” he said in a measured voice, “there are Kobolds on our tail.”

The Fiend Worker looked up with vacant eyes and bloodied lips. “We have no tail.”

Ignoring him, Thane gently pulled Larac to his feet. “Listen carefully. We need to plug this stairwell with Stone Chunks. Make it look natural, like a mound of rocks. Get rid of the first five steps and widen the top. Leave the lion corpse here, and rip some meat off. Now.”

“Yes, Master,” they said in tandem. With winks of gray light, pickaxes appeared in their hands.

Thane started with the corpse, using his wand’s sharp point to rip off strips of lean meat, removing teeth marks that looked fairly Human. Blood had been sucked dry, a million times more suspicious, but that was weakly explainable by the two mile trail. He worked in silence while the Fiends caused a clinking ruckus behind.

All done in five minutes, he retreated into the cavern before the stairwell was completely sealed, artfully disguised to look like a small cave-in at the end of the tunnel.

“Should we start digging a new tunnel now?” Larac asked.

A back door had many pros and cons; in this case, the advantages were worth the risk. Thane nodded. “Just a hole in the wall where you can hide. We’ll dig a full tunnel later. Go, get to work.”

The Fiend Worker ran off, but Larac stayed and asked, “What happens if they break through? Will you fight?”

“Of course I’ll fight, but it might be game over.”

Larac’s hand tightly seized Thane’s wrist. “This is not a game, Master.”

Thane put on a confident face. “Relax, it’s an expression from one of my past lives. And I wouldn’t risk losing our only Builder, Larac.”

“Then why did we not run?” Larac grumbled, his grip loosening. “We’ve been discovered. Now we’re trapped. We have no fresh blood source. Our Gold Mine is running out. We should have ran.”

Thane gave a warning glare. “You don’t know what it’s like to be under sunlight. You’ll be roasted to death within hours before you find a another Mine. This cavern is perfect for a main base. We’re not leaving. When we’re in the clear, you’ll build a Hut, Workshop, Smithy, and Graveyard—in that order.”

After a moment, Larac said, “You are not telling me something.”

“Just trust me,” Thane almost hissed, unable to come up with a reason for how he knew another Vampire Elite was going to spawn here in this valley. He couldn’t say he was in fact a player because of the NDA. Because these Fiends wouldn’t believe him; his character lacked a Traveler tag. And, most of all, because gut instinct was squeezing him; he was very aware that he was trying to find reasons to keep this a secret—his advantage over unknowing players who would assume him to be just another other Elite. His new computerized mind was somehow both irrational and highly logical.

Larac kept staring.

Thane maintained eye contact, challenging. “You don’t need to know everything. It is my job to worry about our plans. You will simply do as I order until you’ve prove yourself worthy to know.”

Like a good, powerless worker, Larac’s gaze fell in submission. His nostrils flared. “Yes, Master.”

Done with that distraction, Thane refocused his ears up the stairwell. If they were to dig through with a balanced raid party, then it was game over for this settlement, but he knew from experience that chances were slim. One, Kobolds rarely cooperated even among the same variant, and two, these scaled Kobolds behaved like their furry cousins—overly cautious. They wouldn’t dig against unstable rock.

No sounds came through the rocks for one minute, which became two and three. Five. Ten.

Then a snappy voice muffled, “Fresh meat.”

Another said, “I told you, nothing is here.”

“Only a lion’s den,” another agreed.

A lower voice said, “Do you smell that? Rotten berries in these rocks.”

“I smell it,” a higher voice said. A female Kobold.

Thane’s face twisted in confusion until it struck him that they were smelling Vampires and not the berries from the bush outside. His brain was filtering out his own scent. He slowly backed away.

Clink, metal struck rock. Chunks tumbled.

“Stop or you’ll kill us,” the low voice barked. “I said berries, not Human droppings.”

The first voice said, “Berries under rocks. How?”

“Look, look. These rocks. Recent breaks, recent cave-in. A clever lizard must’ve been living here, eating berries, until falling rocks scared it away. Then this lion made this cave home… It fought a mightier beast becoming limping home to die. You were right, Urak, there is nothing here. Only beasts.”

Urak grunted. “You are wise, Ratum. Let’s not waste more of the day.”

The female said, “Wait, look at this lion. No blood. All drained.”

“Stupid big-nose!” Urak barked. “Blood all smeared outside!”

“But where is the mightier beast?”

A scratchier voice said, “Thirsty? Maybe went to Spring?”

“Matters not,” Ratum said in a tone of authority. “Beasts are not our pains. Humans are. We should leave. Don’t wait to hunt. We have plenty of food. We take this lion and go—much work to do.”

“Yes, Chief,” multiple said.

Catastrophe adverted. A massive breath chilled Thane’s lungs. A whiff of their pungent coconut scents was not as appetizing, unsurprisingly. Scaled Kobolds were the most hated variant ever since their Sentience values had been buffed in an unannounced patch.

Thane jogged to the Quarry, saw a square foundation for the Builder’s Hut.

Progress: 7/185

A couple of hours to go… and hopefully it wasn’t going to take long to discover plans for the Smithy. At Homestead tech, there were twenty-one buildings including the Hall, although the number may be different for Vampires. Kobolds only had nineteen, but the vast majority of races had twenty-one or twenty-two.

Thane blew a whistle with his fingers. “All clear!”

They had hid behind stalagmites along the cavern wall.

“Apparently,” Thane said, “we smell like rotten fruit to them, so they would’ve found you there.”

Larac wasn’t in the mood for small talk: “What have you not told us, Master? We must know.”

“Very well,” Thane said, now prepared with a cover story, both for NPCs and players. “While I was burning under the sun earlier, I was on the verge of madness, of giving up on this lifetime, and in my desperation, I prayed to our ancient god, who saw pity and granted me a quest. But our god is not always kind. Our god can be a cruel god. The quest I was granted has no stated reward while asking us to build a Graveyard before midnight tonight. The reward could very well be nothing, or could be riches, or this may be a curse. This is a risk.”

Larac’s head tilted. “Is this all?”

“That is all,” Thane solemnly said. “And, once again, this decision is not yours to make. I am your World Elite. I brought you into this world. You are my coven. Trust me when I say I have our best interests in mind. Now, back to work. I see only a foundation.”

The nameless Fiend Worker immediately said, “Yes, Master.”

Larac equipped his chisel, shaping and extruding a Stone Block into a curved beam. He said, “Master, I wish to be something more than a worker. Swear to me that you will make me into something greater.”

A sympathetic smirk slanted Thane’s lips. “I did say I’m expecting much from you, didn’t I? If you obey without question and don’t disappoint, then perhaps I will grant you what you desire. Is that fair?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Good.”

Thane sheathed his wand, equipped his pickaxe, and ran to the Gold Mine. He examined its pearly boulders.

Gold Mine

Ore Remaining: 11,538

—————————————

Skill Rank Up: Examine (Novice 2)

Changes: 3 maximum targets (up from 2)

A third of the Gold Ore was already depleted. With a Smithy running, this Mine was going to collapse sometime during Village Hall tech. Maybe even Hamlet Hall. Minus building costs, Thane calculated he was able to afford one Vampire Elite and a full party of Vampire Fighters. Or a few dozen Fighters by skipping an Elite. But only Elites and Travelers could respawn.

Teeth gnashing in indecision, Thane starting swinging away at the Mine’s single node. Clink. Clink. Clink. Clink.