Brent Roth - The Dragon's Wrath: A Virtual Dream

Chapter 7: A Camp Site

(Friday, January 22nd Game Day / Friday, January 8th Real Day)

Crossing the river at its shallowest point at four feet deep, I made my way to the other side of the bank and looked around. There was a small circular clearing near the base of the mountain just to my east that would serve as an excellent campsite, and was actually a location I had previously scouted during the Alpha phase of testing.

South of that location was a forest that extended for nearly a hundred miles along the riverbank and was teeming with creatures and monsters to boot. To the north was the tail end of the mountain, a rock wall that ended precipitously at the bank of the river and continuing again on the other bank.

I called it the breach.

The river flowed northwards into the sea a few miles from here, meaning there was an estuary rich with sea life within a few minutes' walk with an abundance of oysters, clams, crustaceans, fish, and birds ripe for the picking. There were even seals along the beach and on the small islands in the nearby area with whales and sharks abound.

This was the one location that I had found in nearly six months of searching the North that I believed had potential. Almost everything a person or trade smith could ever want or need could be found here.

Sure, it was undeveloped and completely raw, but that was the appeal.

These were raw resources ripe for the taking, with no established town, city, or kingdom to lay claim. And if I was right in my thinking, it would all be mine to claim. This was the First of the North's territory, my territory.

Having finally reached the location that I had thoroughly scouted during the Alpha phase I dropped my gear with joyous relief.

The first part of my journey was now complete.

The past week had been spent laboriously hunting in order to fulfill the hunting quests of the village elder and in an attempt to gather enough resources to continue to the next stage. That next stage was now here, the building phase. A player home that would allow me to settle the land and claim territory would be worth all of the effort.

A forward operating base from which to build upon into a flourishing town… that was my goal. Without time to spare I quickly sorted through the collection of items I had brought along.

There was a woodcutting axe that would double as my melee weapon, two small ice-picks for which to help me scale the mountain in a few weeks' time, a shovel to dig with, a drawknife to shave bark off the logs in order to build my log cabin, along with three sets of rope and an attached grappling hook.

In addition to my complete set of gear I also had fur clothing that covered me from head to toe. I now had leather & fur boots, pants, vest, coat, gloves, vambraces, cap, quiver, and a bag.

The weather could no longer hinder my plans. But, even so… it was still cold. As the sun had already started to set I decided to build a camp fire.

Starting a fire was fairly easy in the game as I had already learned how to use fire magic during the Beta phase; I was able to start practicing and built up my proficiency based off memory of how the mechanics worked. Knowing the mechanics in this game helped a lot, but to progress properly you would still need to learn from an instructor. Sadly, there were no such instructors in the far North. So, all I could manage was a small flame off my hand.

I basically mastered the magical equivalent of the lighter.

Go me.

With the fire built I now had to move on to the next part of my plan, the log cabin. I only had about six in-game weeks until the "Event," so I needed to keep things rolling. I decided to start surveying the trees first and found the majority of the pines to be between 6" and 12" thick and a minimum of around 30-35 feet tall.

For simplicity's sake I elected to go with a 30'x30' cabin, utilizing the average 8" thickness trees and cutting them down to match. Doing the math quickly in my head, I would need roughly 48 logs to make four walls at a standard 8' minimum ceiling. Then I would probably need at least 24 more logs for the roof if I just split them in half and laid them out to make a low hanging roof.

Those were doable numbers.

Walking around the area while looking for the prime location for my cabin, I decided on keeping it close to the river bank for now. Marking a thirty feet square with the help of the in-game in-laid schematic system, I could visually see grid lines on the game world and could alter them as I saw fit.

It was an essential tool, really.

Once I finished with the design, I grabbed the shovel and started to dig.

Digging was hardly the most efficient of the tasks I had set forth but I believed it would be extremely conducive to my work in the long run. By creating a dugout cabin that sat 4' below the surface I not only made it easier to get the logs of the roof up by myself without a hoist or crane, but it also served to insulate the cabin from the weather.

The low hanging roofline would also be aesthetically pleasing once I tossed some dirt on top and had grass growing. Yeah, I was convinced it would look pretty awesome in the end.

Something I could be proud of.

Well, there is a saying that sentiment only goes so far and I had just about reached that point as I yelled out to the world, "Want To Buy laborers, Please Send Tell!" …of course that was directed at no one in particular, seeing as I was the only person in what people affectionally termed the northern wastelands.

Oh well.

A funny thing about digging is how monotonous it is… digging ditches or shoveling dirt or concrete is a rough job despite the little thought it requires. It's physically demanding and just plain laborious. A man of my size can burn 600-700 calories in an hour digging or shoveling, where if I was to go swimming for the same duration I would probably burn 300-400.

Yeah, this was intensive work and the game system made it nearly identical to the real world.

I didn't sign up to do virtual manual labor.

It really wasn't funny.

Completely zoned out as I had learned to do years ago while working such jobs in real life, I found myself working through the night and into the next day. Nearly eight hours of digging later, I was almost done.

In truth, I would have never been able to move almost 3,600 cubic feet of dirt in a day or even a few days if it wasn't for my stupid level of strength and endurance in-game. I was a bit stronger and recovered incredibly quickly, meaning a short break by the fire while munching on rabbit jerky or enjoying some fire-roasted salmon plucked from the river and I was good to go without any lingering soreness.

But, it was still monotonous.

In an effort to maximize my time, I made my way through the clearing and to the closest trees in the vicinity. The tall pines, firs, and spruces were perfect for the log cabin and didn't have too many branches to clean.

The only real issue would be moving them all, thankfully the forest started but thirty feet away from my dugout. I grabbed the woodcutting axe and started hacking away, intending to fell at least 48 trees before my endurance gave out. With woodchips and splinters flying off into the distance, the first tree was felled in about two minutes.

Since they weren't too thick it went by fairly quickly.

The chirping of the birds had been disturbed as that first tree fell but as time went by they returned; some no longer with a home but that was only a temporary disruption. Squirrels were jumping between the tree tops as well in an attempt to relocate, but they seemed to be playing as they watched me work.

Perhaps this was the first time these squirrels had seen a person, and their curiosity got the better of them. As I made it to the tenth tree my axe had started to dull a bit, so I took a small break to sharpen it with a whetstone and then continued on.

Halfway through I had gotten used to the swinging and chopping, and was actually receiving proficiency points in lumberjacking. Needless to say I was felling trees in about a minute now and was able to finish the forty eight in about two hours.

I still had plenty of stamina left so I decided to start dragging all of the trees closer to the dig site. The dragging of the logs actually burned my stamina pretty quickly, despite my high Strength and Endurance attribute, dragging or carrying around 200-400 pound trees wasn't easy when they were over 30' in length. So I switched to rolling them in the end.

I had to keep things rolling, after all.

In a furious rush to finish as soon as possible, I started the process to debark the trees with a draw knife and was surprised to find that the game had auto-corrected the logs so they were smoother than I had actually cut them.

If I had to even them all out individually it would have taken far too long. I spent nearly four hours stripping all of the trees and gained even more proficiency in wood working.

Having finished all of the prep work that was necessary to start assembling the log cabin I fell back on my ass and stared at what I had accomplished.

I had been working with small breaks for the past sixteen or so hours… it was time to call it a day. Logging out of the game I quickly found myself starving and dehydrated, though it wasn't like it had taken me by surprise. The game had a warning system in place that was flashing in the corner of my screen for a while but I had been ignoring it.

Once I set my mind to something and decide to finish, I tend to go until the work is done. Even though the work was physically demanding, since the game's concept of fatigue was reset after a short rest or nap, I was able to continue on with my work until my virtual body had developed a severe fatigue penalty.

Basically, in the short term you could ignore fatigue… but sixteen hours straight and you would be penalized heavily. I figure it was the developer's way to prevent kids from playing for a few days straight and killing themselves in the process.

I didn't mind it.