Everything is going well… so far.

The walk to the boulders bearing the telltale shine of a resource node took more time than you had anticipated, even with the knowledge that you are slow. You’d never gone on a purposeful journey before, either staying in your cave or wandering around aimlessly. The experience highlights your speed problem, and you are glad that you did not choose to flee. You wouldn’t have gone anywhere far at that pace.

You look around suspiciously as you approach the boulders, and with two sets of eyes on the task, it takes little time. In fact, with two heads you may even be able to survey your surroundings as you harvest. Hesitantly you bring up your club, the process seems fairly straightforward but you have no idea what to expect from it.

You bring down your weapon and the rock and are immediately startled by the apparition of a pop-up and a progress bar.

Harvesting: Skill Penalty, Improvised Tool Penalty

About a quarter of the progress bar is filled. Tentatively you strike the boulder again, bringing it to the midpoint. Two more blows later a piece of stone appears in front of you and you pick it up, weighing it in your hand to assess if it’ll serve your purposes. It fits nicely between your fingers, it’s pretty regular and it’s neither too heavy nor too light. If all the stones you get are like that your plan will surely work! Hopefully.

You carefully put the stone in what little inventory space you have and attack the boulder with renewed vigor, soon causing it to drop another stone. But you do not stop there, filling the progress bar again, and again. Until the boulder just cracks open a pop up turning up to announce that the resource node is depleted. You’re disappointed to have only gotten a few stones from it, but there are more nodes.

Quickly gathering the resources spilled on the ground you get to work, until all of the boulders are cracked open. Sometimes among the stones, you find another material labeled as Scrap Ore. It’s not as smooth as the stones, and it’s heavier but you decide to pick it up anyway. You have enough inventory space for it after all, and you would not want to leave them there only to regret not picking up more projectiles latter.

Your harvest is done and it’s time to make your way back. Slowly. And you can’t help but feel trepidation the whole way. Would it be enough? Would you manage to kill an adventurer? If you were lucky they would trickle in slowly, and with low levels. But you’re too cautious to be optimistic about that.

And indeed as you make your final approach through the trees you can clearly hear some argument taking place in the clearing in front of your cave. Your speed slows to a crawl as you do your best to sneak closer and catch a glimpse at the adventurers. You make a face as you see four figures standing right in front of your home. That’s a lot more than you’d hoped. Most adventurers only move in pairs and trios.

For now, they haven’t noticed you, you’re still some distance away and you decide to use the opportunity to observe them, examining each one in turn as they speak to each other.

“C’mon sis, we’ve been waiting for like, an hour! Can’t we do something interesting?” Says a young man in rugged leather armor lined with furs and carrying a bow. You squint a bit to read the tag above his head.

SwagReaperX, Level 3 Ranger
Hero, Human, Active

“Yeah, can’t we do anything interesting Vaeri? When you asked me if I wanted to go do some quests I wasn’t expecting having to babysit your kid brothers.” Says a hooded figure wearing plain brown robes.

Iviras Firebrand, Level 6 Mage
Hero, Human, Active, Explicit

“Hey, *bleep* you man.” Said SawgReaperX in response. You wince a little bit. After seeing that the first one what underleveled you’d hoped that the whole group would be, but it seems like this is a more experienced party helping a couple of noobs.

“Both of you shut up, we’ve been here for barely ten minutes. If somebody has killed the ogre it’ll respawn soon and you two only need to kill it a couple of times before we can move on to Calvaca. This is the best grinding spot for now.” Said the probable leader of the group. A tall elf wearing half-plate armor and a sword at her side. She cut an impressive and beautiful figure despite the fact that most of her body was covered in rigid armor.

Vaeri Rosatra, Level 6 Paladin of Evad
Hero, Elf, Active, Explicit

You tear your eyes away from her luxurious mane of blond hair to look at the last member of the group. Another young man with a shaven head, clad in a simple white robe and wearing a heavy pendant which he nervously fiddles with.

Sunny Day, Level 3 Cleric of Evad
Hero, Human, Active

Two level three adventurers and two level six adventurers. You cautiously weigh your odds of success. You know that you are strong. You could probably take the paladin in melee and be done with her quick enough that the level three adventurers wouldn’t be able to damage you enough. But the mage makes things difficult. The cleric too in a way, because he would probably be able to buff the others. Maybe if you could take out the mage first and then damage the cleric enough he would prioritize healing himself?

“And if the ogre is wandering around Ross will find it and tell us. Just be patient.”

Wait, what was that? You try to pay more attention to the conversation but the adventurers are apparently done talking, each of them just standing around.

You do notice something else though. There is a shadow creeping behind you.

You do your best to stay still as it gets closer. If you still had only one head you’d never see it coming, but right now you’re able to see the man approaching at the periphery of your field of view.

Phantom Ross, Level 7 Thief
Hero, Human, Active, Explicit

An adventurer two levels above you. He isn’t even really bothering to hide, only moving silently as he gets closer, a dagger held in front of him. He probably had all sorts of nasty tricks up his sleeves. That’s what thieves do, they don’t fight fair. They wait for an opportunity to stab you in the back with poisoned blades.

They’re not well suited for a direct fight. And you can see him approaching, creeping closer. Your grip tightens on the handle of your club. It’s the moment of truth, now or never. You allow the thief to get within reach, closer, almost close enough for him to strike you. Only to turn around at the last second, swinging your crude weapon with **** might.

CRITICAL HIT!

You’re so tense that the pop-up startles you. But your attention quickly goes back to the adventurer. You blow was strong enough to send him flying into a nearby tree, the impact knocking him to the ground. Above his head, the labels “In critical condition” and “Dazed” blink under his name and class. You step forward and unceremoniously pummel the thief into the ground.

The adventurer’s body goes still, then disappears, leaving only a lootbag behind. You’ve done it. You killed a hero! It’s been so long since you’ve done it. You don’t even remember the last time! But your euphoria is cut short when you hear the ranger say:

“Did you guys hear something?”

The others answer negatively, but you cannot forget that they’re here and you still need to deal with them.