ALL NOVEL A Goal (1)
The rising of the sun was almost angelic to me.
I felt like I was saved by a heavenly power.
My tense body loosened and I fell on my rear. I never felt so grateful for the early morning as I did right now.
I survived.
I survived the first night.
I was tired, physically and mentally, but the sun had some sort of effect on me. It was as if its rays chased off the darkness of the shadows and like clockwork, the monsters fled.
What was surprising to me was that all of the Stalkers returned into the shadows of the forest, while the zombies and the skeletons returned to the earth.
That was correct.
They all returned to their graves.
This wasn’t an outpost.
This place was a graveyard for soldiers.
“Hah… If my luck was this bad on the first night, how much worse could it possibly get?”
I looked over the edge of the tower. There were over a hundred plots of fresh soil atop the grass. From my point of view, there were about three hundred graves or more.
Maybe perhaps my destitution caused me to think differently, or I was just crazy to begin with, but the first thing in my mind was something else aside from fleeing.
I wanted to plunder this graveyard.
I knew that if I started now, I could probably capitalize on the treasure buried within the earth.
And maybe, just maybe…
If I worked fast enough, the metals could still be salvageable. Naturally they were definitely in poor condition by now, but even a sliver of what I had seen would set me on a better path.
Against my better judgment, I left the tower and dunked my head into the freshwater stream.
I was going to dedicate the next few days to this project. “I’m really crazy.”
Maybe it was the rumbling in my stomach, but yes, I had gone crazy.
Still, I didn’t forget to scour every nook and cranny of the tower first. I already knew what was inside the rooms, but in the storage of the first floor, I did not.
There were barrels, chests, and crates all around the first floor. I numbered them as I brought them out of the tower. There were two double-chests, three barrels, and two crates.
I opened them with great difficulty and strain on my iron tools, but I managed.
I had my hopes, but I wasn’t naive.
Still, I was kind of disappointed at the lack of food items. I mean, there were some, but not as much as I wished. The food stored in the barrels were outright spoiled after all. There was only one thing among them that survived.
“A sack of grain, huh? Is it wheat or barely? I vaguely remember a mod from the list that added more crop variations.”
From a gamer’s perspective, that was good, because it meant more content. However, at the moment, it was useless to me. The days followed the twenty-four hour cycle, which meant that the four seasons being applicable isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
I had neither the infrastructure nor knowledge about content I hadn’t played with before after all. Anyways, If it cheered me up in a way, I found something I needed inside the locked chest.
Currency, precious metals minted into universally accepted mediums of trade.
It may look like a normal coin, but it was proof enough of the government or at least some form of relationship between producers and consumers.
Maps, albeit damaged and faded, books, supplies, and even hygiene items.
The skeleton did drop a pouch of coins.
In other words…
Society.
I needed to make contact with society no matter what, only then would I survive.
Maybe without the mods I had installed, I could survive the game and flourish much faster, but my concept of what is ‘true’ had been overturned.
Realistically speaking, how does a modern twenty-first century man survive in a hyper-realistic, sandbox survival game? Unlike early humans back on earth, there were no zombies or skeletons to be afraid of!
Granted, animals and larger predators, but that’s not the point…
If you look at my situation compared to theirs, it's fair to say that I have it much harder!
Anyway I looked at the coins
“It doesn't have markings or designs… It's just a simple round circle stamped out of a much larger piece of metal. And speaking of metal…”
I looked at the chest again, the same chest where I found the coins, and found ingots hidden away by a false bottom. No wonder why it was so heavy.
Gold bars, three the length of the chest with the width spanning about fifteen centimeters.
I found very valuable currency, but without food, they were meaningless to me.
It was no more than the drug Robinson Crusoe cursed when he was stranded on a tropical island.
Still, if I survive the next two weeks and make contact with civilization…
“I have a goal to drive me forward at least.”
I found a goal for myself. Make contact with an intelligent society. I won’t think of what's next until I achieve it. I won’t think about anything else besides surviving.
And food.
Growl…
I really needed to eat.