章 21: CHAPTER 21 [ In and out of the forest]
Their exact location, of course, wasn't shown, but the blinking zone wasn't that big five hundred meters or so in diameter. It was much better than in other games, where you were supposed to get a horn from some hairy, seven-legged creature, but they didn't tell you where the thing was or show it on the map. So, you were left wandering around the whole game hoping you'd come across it. Here they gave you a marker.
The closest blinking area was very close, just a few steps away. And, by all appearances, it was the goblin arrowheads. Probably with goblins to go with them. I left the path and moved stealthily (I thought) between the birches and pines.
"Human!" a squeaky voice rang out. "Goblins see human! Goblins love to eat human! Human is delicious! Goblins love to crunch human!"
Suddenly, I took 20 damage, so that must have come from somewhere... About five meters away, stood a short, green, round-eyed thing, and he was again pulling back his bow.
"Goblins will eat human. Human and frog eggs—together more fun and tastier!"
I leaped toward him, leaning away from the arrow he loosed at me from almost point-blank range, and laid into him with my mace. The goblin apparently wasn't that strong, as his health turned immediately red. My next blow drew a long wail and finished him off!
He yielded a few copper coins, a piece of dirty cloth, and three arrowheads.
You have 17 more arrowheads left to collect before you can complete the quest.
"That was Khryk yelling. He said there's good food
around, but it's still kicking." I heard a voice say, and a group of five goblins jumped at me from the surrounding trees.
"Yeah, good food!" they gibbered as they rushed me.
"Juicy, tasty food! Khryk not lie!"
"It kill Khryk!"
"Okay, then we eat it longer than with Khryk! And then we eat Khryk! Kill him!"
Three of them ran at me waving axes. Two began quickly unslinging bows.
"Phew, boy! They're easy to kill, but there are five of them. Better hurry!"
I met the first goblin with a blow from my mace that took off half his health. Dodging his rusty sword, my next strike found the second goblin for a similar result. The no less rusted saber of the third clanged off my breastplate, and my return swing took his health into the critical zone. Apparently, my item bonuses kicked in.
The first arrows smacked into me, but I wasn't worried anymore. It looked like I wouldn't have a problem finishing off the five goblins. A few more blows took care of the first three gluttons, freeing me to charge the archers.
"Not bad. Not terribly strong, and not terribly smart," I mused as I stripped the dead goblins. My collection of arrowheads (12 of 20) and swords (three of 10) was growing.
"Hey, goblins!" I thundered. "Good food here! Come on!"
Somewhere, in the bushes, I heard a rustling. "Food-food-food." The goblins were hurrying to feed.
The next half hour was spent polishing off one short
bugger after another. They ran up in groups of three to five, saying, "M-m-m! Juicy food! Goblins love swallow human!" Their headlong charge was broken only by my friendly smile and welcoming mace.
In the space of that 30 minutes, I finished the blacksmith's quest as well as my class ability quest,
watched my pile of copper coins grow, collected an enormous amount of goblin trash (rags, buttons, buckles, half a window shutter...), and even got some things for archery. I would have stopped killing goblins there, but I was close to the next level. A bit longer and there it was.
As soon as I levelled-up, I jumped behind a tree and
headed for the path to the village.
The goblins were eternally hungry, but they had no desire to stray very far, so none of them ran after me. I heard them poking around the area, "Khrym not alive! Gryk, too! Where food that kill them?"
I quietly walked out into the clearing and headed for the forest to finish the blacksmith's quest. No point in waiting. After that, I would go see what I should do about that monster. Oh, and I wanted to check out the graveyard and the castle. I was curious, and maybe I'd find something interesting.
The blacksmith was surprised.
"That was fast! You're obviously quite the warrior. And the arrowheads are perfect! Here's your reward."
You completed a quest: Disarm the Goblins.
Reward:
800 experience
35 silver coins
20% discount on smithy services in Tocbridge
+8% friendship shown toward you by the residents of
Tocbridge
"Wow!" I was excited. "So much right away."
"Just like we agreed," the blacksmith reasonably observed.
"By the way," I addressed him once more as he looked over the arrowheads I'd brought, "who can I sell things to around here? I have some stuff I got from the goblins, and I don't feel like carrying it around."
"Talk to Shindlik Torgash," he responded quickly.
"He's a complete goon, and he'll squeeze you for every copper coin he can, but he pays in real coin, and he pays right away. His stand is right behind that house over there. If you have anything metal, like swords or armor, I might be willing to take it off your hands."
I unloaded everything I had onto the counter.
"Pick what you want, well, if there even is anything you want, obviously."
The blacksmith quickly dug through the pile of goblin junk, picking out a few items and placing them on the side.
"I'll take all of this," he said five minutes later. His finger jabbed toward a small pile of sword fragments, buttons, and some other metal goods. "I'll give you 40 silver coins."
"You'd only give me 40 coins for this pile of art-house treasure and vintage finery?" My grandmother's voice rang in my head, "You have to haggle. Always haggle. Otherwise, they won't respect you."
"For this assembly of rare goblin goods—only 40 silver coins? No-o-o-o, my friend. I'm better off hanging onto it if—"
"I hope you get cholera," the blacksmith interrupted. "Fifty, and that's it. And no more haggling."
"Fifty it is then," I agreed, sweeping the rest of the pile back into my bag. I pocketed my 50 silver coins and went off to find Shindlik—to haggle some more.
My purse was in pretty decent shape. On the one hand, having more than 100 gold wasn't bad for someone who'd been playing the game for less than a week. On the other, that still wasn't enough to buy anything nice. It was enough for some potions, food, or maybe the plainest equipment out there, though I'd have to find a vendor; I still didn't have enough to go shopping at the auction. Then again, I wasn't too concerned about money. I could always spend real cash at the auction if I had to (though I couldn't think of what could possibly prompt me to do that).
Oh, and the monetary system in Elysium was as simple as it gets:
One gold was worth 100 silver coins.
One silver coin was worth 100 copper coins.
One copper coin, well, was one copper coin. They didn't have any half-coins or anything like that. And money was converted automatically, so the pile of copper I collected from the ravenous goblins turned into a pair of good-looking silver coins.
And the line between real and virtual money was fine, if clearly felt. Each player could support himself using real money, though there was a limit—$5000 for each
account—or the local equivalent, of course. You could invest that amount in your player at once, later, or gradually. You could buy armor, weapons, scrolls. But as soon as you hit that amount, you couldn't add any more. All further extravagance had to be financed by in-game money—the kind you earned in the game. And if you deleted your character and started a new one, the only money you could spend on it was what you had left under the cap. The only thing you could do if you didn't want to put in the work was open a new account. Lots of people, incidentally, did just that.
The only exception was spending money on decorations. For example, you could pay to make your sword look like Conan the Barbarian's. It would look impressive and imposing, but the attributes wouldn't change in the least. Or, alternatively, you could decorate the hell out of your hotel room, hanging works of art all over the walls. That didn't get you anything, but it looked nice. The company
made that compromise to please their more aesthetically minded gamers, though there were special conditions, and you had to sign an additional agreement.
Sure, there were attempts to scam people on the black market or poke holes in the code, but none of them ended well for the people involved. The developers turned a blind eye to people selling in-game items for real money and transferring that money to outside accounts, as they might have even had a hand in that pot as well. But attempts to bring unauthorised money into the game were too much for them given the serious problems they could face under money laundering laws. And that could have implications for their gaming licence. So anyone operating in the shadows knew Elysium was a one-way street.
Really, I was surprised by how counter-intuitive the whole thing was. Usually, everything was the other way around—game developers wanted you to pour money into their games. It would have been interesting to sit down with the Elysium developers and ask them what their reasoning was.
Shindlik turned out to be an unusually stingy and shrewd little halfling who bargained for every copper coin he could get. And when, on the verge of righteous wrath, he pulled a healthy chunk of hair out of his scalp and accused me of wanting to see his family starve, it became crystal clear that he wasn't going to give in. I gave him the rest of my junk, pocketed his 25 silver coins, and headed for the village gate. I still had a cow to find and a graveyard to visit. Oh, and the woods… What was it? Right, there was a monster by the swamp that I needed to kill.
~ ~ ~
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