20 Taking It Easy

I spent my day of rest after a portal playing games in the living room while surrounded by my collection. There was a large ape-like skull on either couch cushion beside me holding sternums that were half the size of dinner plates. Around either wrist was a loose bracelet of braided cordage made by stripping the younger limbs of my alien bonsai tree and the bracelets were braided around the roots of two pairs of trollkin tusks.

Three shrub and container were to big to move casually from my bedside, but it was perfectly fine beside where I spent an estimated third of my life. Either skull and breast bone had Mp ratings around between one-thirty and one-fifty but one of the tusks actually had a rating of one-seventy. If all of the tusks were smelted into a single object, the object would likely have an upper E rating of about one-sixty.

I had the upper portion and roots of the bush measured individually and three different times over the course of an hour. The roots always maintained higher ratings than the top at over two-fifty but the top's lowest rating was in the two-twenties. If the plant, which had already been logged and registered as a non-invasive species, actually stayed alive it would be my current most valuable source of MP exposure.

The random metals and wood I brought back, which were currently wrapped in a village sheet and in my lap, were all measured between E and just under D grades with the lowest being the sheet at one-oh-three MP. However, the spearhead and its broken length of shaft were both in the lower end of C grade. This made me wish I had been greedy when looking at the second troll's messed up spears, three broken shafts and heads could have made a poleax or something!

Sadly, though, not only the wood, metals, and spearhead would be picked up to be worked with tomorrow but so, too, would the sternums and teeth.

Even though I was ready to burst into tears at the loss of natural exposure items, my guy told me over the phone that troll and related bone structures were so large and thick that they could be broken down and printed into high density ivory alongside my tusks.

My first thoughts had originally been about the quality of the materials, the tusks and sternums alone could make a decent weapon or armor plate but the foreheads on even the trollkin were huge. Sadly, I settled on having the teeth and detachable jaws broken down together with the tusks and sternums. One pair of tusks could make a small skinning knife, both pairs could make a decent stiletto. Both sets of tusks and both sternums had enough weight behind them to make two large but solid ivory knives.

Throw in the teeth and lower mandibles and you had small swords! Considering the low quality of the materials, he even said he could probably throw in some bone fragments from bigger game to help me out. If he helped just to get the weapons a more solid position in D grade, I would be ecstatic.

For now, I could only spend all the time that I could in the natural mana ambiance of dead monster pieces. I was even wearing my stained coat with the spider plate in the back because Lucinda was not around to make me clean it. For now, all I had to worry about was waiting on cash orders and contribution points that Lucinda SHOULD never see.

To pass the time, I was playing a simply crafting and survival game on my console while listening to the random group of kids I got placed with were fighting with each other. They were not bad at the game, though, that had their minimal resources and equipment and when it came to the early combat they immediately started complaining. Obviously, they were pros at this game.

When things got harder a couple of days, or half an hour, into the game because real monsters started showing up these kids were already finding the last pieces to advanced or modded weaponry. I was still working on making a proper metal sword to match my tool set, one guy who said he was nine was working two parts away from making a chain ax- an ax with a spinning circular blade between two sheer-sharpened faces of metal.

The fucking motor of all things was done first, he just needed the 'high grade scrap' and 'small wiring' pieces to make the blade.

I had iron piping to use for the barrels of a makeshift double-barrel.

Being outclassed by children who were starting to talk shit about my developing character build was depressing, but I stuck it out. By two hours into the game, I not only had 'high grade' tools to match my sword but I also had a proper pump-action shotgun and mid-game level armor made from scrapping large truck tire treads and rims together. The others were all working on alien tech from the meteor-like spaceships that ruined Earth in the game, but I was satisfied.

While they worked on tech and home base in an area of distantly scattered ship parts, I working on gathering living supplies and general materials like food, wood, metals, beat hides and parts. I even took the time to start building an aqueduct for more permanent residence. Sadly, the difference in our play styles came into affect.

This game based around a cluster of unconfirmed conspiracy theories was mostly just a survival game to try and last one hundred and fifty days with how many safe locations with how much stock and what level of security they have. However, there were alternate endings that took longer or ended the game fast. Early endings besides death came with a variety of bonuses as well as the 'Time Trial' achievement that rewards more profile experience and benefits than normal endings.

The reverse side of this with endings that extended the game were usually the 'Happy Camper' achievements.

These guys were going for either-or that involved alien conflict and gathering survivors to build a small space station for survival in the uncontested orbit. This could be completed early or long after the prerequisite one-fifty days. Once they activated this or that machine while picking parts for weapons and armor, a beacon would be sent out through the server or country you were in and alert all active aliens or alien-allied parties in your server.

This event usually ended with becoming an enemy to the aliens and automatically a part of the Native Earth Alliance or allied with the aliens as enemies of Earth. I had no idea what these guys wanted to pick for this temporary server because either side offered its own brands of Alliance and Tribunal craftables or NPC tradeables. I personally preferred Earth because I was a Protector in reality but I did not talk about work during pleasure times.

Even though I initially did not care, I was soon content to follow these kids to the end. While these areas usually only contained enough space parts to make a couple decent suits and weapons, these kids pooled all supplies everyone had and made some of the generic craftable armor for everyone.

Usually, I would still be wearing my modded tire suit during the fighting that takes place next because I focused on basic survival recipes. Thankfully, these kids broke the usual creed of greed and everybody got an 'enhancement suit'. With our currents weapons, none of us would really have any trouble after having our basic armor slots upgraded.

Once the armor was distributed and everybody had loaded they carrying capacities and lesser vehicles with all that we could, we set everything of value we could not take with us on fire in a deep hole and set traps everywhere before leaving. I had actually enjoyed the sharecropping settlement I was building while these nerds were busy, but we needed to MOVE.

The entire next day and night was spent moving without resting our characters. Then, after a fifteen-minute break of letting our characters sleep in a tree we got right back to it. This time we were making a scavenge pass through another space wreckage site. They knew everything they were looking for and the tasks to get it quickly.

I knew how to secure the location, handle shelter, and control the flow of supplies. The bonus for me was that we hand goner to another waterway site. Side skills like cooking, tailoring, smithing, farming, and fishing were some of the only skill levels that cross over between characters. Fishing was the hardest among them and one of the few I had yet to master.

My character spent all of its downtime by the water, but we were careful not to leave anything long-lasting in the location. At the next waterway stemming from the springs of a leveled mountain, not only did we stop for a full twenty hours of quick salvaging but we also left along the waterway. I told the kids swimming downstream the entire way with floats for our carts was to develop the physiques of our characters for when we finally fought, but it was a quick means of losing pursuers without leaving signs of how we left.

After ten hours of swimming we came to a lake and immediately headed for the nearest high-ground locations. The rippled earth surrounding the leveled mountain range a week away from our spawn point had many various levels of ground. However, there was one within agreeable reach of the water that overlooked the area with an angled rocky top.

The entire hill was one big broken slab of mountain so I was not too worried about making our shelter beside the top. It was just an issue of collecting a bunch of wood and using the available stone for construction. I might have died a lot in my early games and got next to no experience rewards, but I learned how to build some interesting landscape houses.

After letting the gang know I had had three hours left to play so they could decided their ending sooner, I set to work gathering and crafting construction supplies. Most of it was wood and young trees to build a platform and bracing after a full day of game digging.

During those two days of digging and constructing the bare platform, the kids were holed up in their portable workshops cooking up some tasty treats. Each of them had their own purpose of armor, weapons, and 'extras'. While battle suits and plasma rifles were nice, extras were the human and then some amenities and crafts made using space energy and materials.

Because they were going for an extended game, they were trying to draw out this mid-game portion as much as possible. To that end, my purpose was to literally build a hidden fortress. My main goal was to make a short walled and open structure with only a few divisions and a tall pavilion roof braces to support masonry roof.

However, the others complained they needed expansion along one side and proper defenses and division for their labs. Thick required a day of wood gathering just to make a second layer to use as the true bottom of the platform. The labs would actually be fairly light while the end of the structure was disposable for faking our deaths, giving me plenty of leeway.

Instead of some thin layers of split boulders to stack and stick randomly along the available walling, I made full wooden walls that leaned to one side for a flat sloping roof. Along the sides of the building would be placed long slabs of broken rock showing their metamorphic layers. In large dimensions for their defensive properties.

Even if a projectile weapon could eventually break through the rock layers, most energy weapons except for the really big guns that went boom had little to no physical force. They just burned shit. The slate of the ruined mountain that could not survive the impact from a giant hunk of alien space station could defend fairly well against the heat of their actual weapons.

The middle and outer sides of the roof were reinforced with timber and framing on the inside to support the eventual weight of a rocky roof. In fact, the roof already had enough master level beams and poles of hardwood to be considered waterproof, but the roof needed to be strong as hell.

Not just to resist explosions from outside the slate but also to support a roof covered in thick slabs of slate. With the shape and design, the building should look like a part of the hilltop with all of its patterned outer masonry. By the time I was ready to start moving materials, the kids came like angels bearing gifts.

Little Bro One gave me a small laser gun to cut rocks with, it required a full 24hrs to charge but worked infinitely for one hour a day. Little Bro Two gave me an armor upgrade with a mechanized combat suit I could wear over my enhancement suit, but I was mostly going to move rocks with it. Little Bro Three gave me the kind of gadget that saves lives, an equalizer belt.

That piece of jail-rigged alien hardware allowed one to levitate or simply slow-fall for thirty minutes every three hours. The equalizer belt worked based on the weight of the wearer. There would be a moment where the 'compensation was not great enough when managing heavy objects, but I could carry rocks when the mech suit was down with that belt.

Everyone got a belt because were were settling into a hilltop, but the others got different- actual- weapons and upgraded personal suits.

Three weeks after spawning we had a small mountain bunker for a home and were working on discreet gardening as well as a defense system when we finally saw the first signs of the Alliance or Tribunal. It was an, as of yet, unmarked aircraft designed for carrying personnel. But it was pretty futuristic and shit so new players would not know what ships to avoid.

This one was a human ship, but we still ceased all functions and activity as soon as somebody heard it and called out. We had already been playing this game for four hours and still needed to find a place to stash our most important shit before I logged off. There was no way we were going to risk dying here.

The very next day, both an alien and a human personnel carrier flew by a couple 'hours' apart and going in the same general directions. Both sides were still hunting for us and had run into one another. If we could survive a few more skirmishes and prove we were not valuable enough for pursuit to both sides, we could continue on with an only slightly extended game made more fun with alien cheats.

After a few days of struggling to find rarer materials like alien metals with which to make our defense systems and energy sources outside the labs, the first signs of contact between either sides started cropping up again. At first it was one ship patrolling the area, then it was another ship the next day. The day we finished installing a set of hidden turrets, inner lockdown walls, and a combat drone was the same day the second skirmish took place only a few miles away.

We enjoyed the lights and distant thunder of war as if it were fireworks with our dinner on the patio that night.

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