[Wave 2 begins in: 5:18:42:07]
The morning after the first wave, my front gate was a pile of sawdust, and Brick Layer was sitting in it.
He'd been there since sunrise, according to the chat logs. Not working. Not talking. Just sitting cross-legged in the middle of the gap with his stone arms folded, glaring at the forest like he could make it apologize.
I walked over with my mug. Nana Jo had filled it with something she called "tea," which was hot water with a leaf in it. It was honestly better than pond water.
"Morning," I said.
"It should have been stone," Brick Layer said, without looking up. "I knew it should have been stone. I said it should be stone. Then I let people talk me into wood because wood was faster."
"We didn't have enough stone."
"We have a whole hill of stone." He finally looked at me. "We just didn't have enough people hauling it."
He was right. And I had something those people didn't have, which was the ability to make them want to haul it.
[New Mission: Stone, Stone, It Has to Be Stone
Brick Layer refuses to move until the settlement has a real gate. Gather 500 stone and help him build one that won't be eaten.
Rewards: GC, XP, +2 Reputation with Day, +5 Reputation with Brick Layer (???)]
I didn't even know players could have reputation with each other until the system added that last part on its own. Brick Layer read it, stood up so fast he almost fell over, and started yelling for haulers.
The question marks did more work than the GC did. By lunch, half the server was walking back and forth between the hill and the gate like ants, and every single one of them was trying to figure out what reputation with Brick Layer unlocked.
I wasn't going to tell them I didn't know either.
The gate wasn't the only thing on my list.
Last night, sitting on my stump with an empty mug, I'd made myself a promise: nobody in this town was going to get eaten by something I could have seen coming. Wave 1 had come out of the north, and the only warning we'd had was Peaches running back from the trees with a grin on his face. That wasn't good enough.
So I made a new quest, and I made it permanent.
[New Repeatable Mission: Eyes of Day
Scout beyond the fog of war and report what you find to Day. Bonus rewards for sketches, tracks, and anything that looks hungry.
Rewards: GC and XP based on fog cleared. Map access for the whole settlement.]
Lil Bean was the first one to take it, obviously. Then Peaches and his rogues. Then a handful of players from the second batch who I didn't know yet, but who liked the idea of getting paid to walk around in the woods.
I sat in my workshop and watched the fog peel back on my map in little thin lines, like someone scratching paint off a window.
[Cool Spoon]
Cool Spoon had been staring at a Gnawling tooth for three hours.
It was about as long as his hand, orange, and slightly curved. Appraisal had given him one line when he first picked it up: harder than iron, if you can find a way to work it. Now, after he'd hit it with every hammer he owned, it gave him two.
Gnawling Incisor. Harder than iron, if you can find a way to work it.
Gnawlings soften their teeth in river water before gnawing stone. Smart Gnawlings, anyway.
"River water," Spoon muttered. "River water. What's in the river…"
Thousands of slimes. That's what was in the river.
He walked down to True Elixir's little alchemy shack, which was really just a lean-to with a table and a lot of jars, and dropped the tooth on the table.
"I need you to make me something that melts teeth."
Elixir looked at the tooth. Then at Spoon. Then at the jar of blue slime gel on the shelf.
"I'll need a red one," Elixir said slowly. "Blue gel is glue. Red slimes leave a burn when they hit you. I bet their gel is acid."
They looked at each other.
"Peaches!" they both yelled.
[Day]
Around noon, a notification popped up that I hadn't seen before.
[Land Purchase is now available. Players may purchase plots within the settlement walls using GC.]
The house quest from day one had promised it, and I'd forgotten. The players hadn't. Within ten minutes, there was a line in front of my house. An actual line. They'd figured out that land had to be bought "through Day," which apparently meant standing in front of me while a screen popped up between us.
Eat Dirt was first. He bought the plot right next to Nana Jo's cooking pot.
"Strategic," he said.
"It's next to the soup," I said.
"Like I said. Strategic."
Cool Spoon bought the plot closest to the mine. Gummies bought one near the healers' tent. Valefor bought a plot on the walkway side so he could "get to the wall in under ten seconds," which was the most mage thing anyone had said to me all day.
Hammerhead bought a plot, stood in the middle of it, and said, "Mine." Then he didn't build anything on it. He just stood there for a while. I think he was happy.
I watched them spend their GC, and I did some math in my head. Every coin they spent on land went back into the system. The system also ran a whole website on their side. I had no idea what that meant, and I decided not to think about it too hard.
Old Swordsman came by in the afternoon. He didn't want land. He sat down on the edge of my porch, which nobody ever did, and looked out at the half-built gate.
"Can I ask you something, Day?"
"Sure."
"When we die. Does it bother you?"
I had a sip of Nana Jo's leaf water so I wouldn't answer too fast.
This was the kind of question gamers asked NPCs to test them. I knew that. I'd done it myself, back when games were just games. You poke the NPC with something philosophical to see if the writing holds up. If I said nothing, he'd shrug and go back to work. If I said too much, he'd post about it, and five hundred people on the other side would start poking.
But he'd jumped off the wall for the others. Twice.
"Yes," I said. "Every time."
He was quiet for a second. Then he nodded, like that was the answer he wanted.
"Good writing," he said, and got up. "I'm gonna go haul some rocks."
I watched him go and didn't correct him.
By sunset, the gate was finished. It was ugly, square, and made of stone blocks so heavy that it took Brick Layer, Hammerhead, and Rustbucket together to swing it open. Brick Layer cried a little. Stone golems can't actually cry, so it was more of a grinding noise, but everybody knew what it meant.
[Mission Complete: Stone, Stone, It Has to Be Stone]
[Reputation with Brick Layer: Friendly. Brick Layer will now repair stone structures at half cost for you.]
So that's what that did. Forty-nine people suddenly realized they wanted to be Brick Layer's friend.
Then, right as the sun went down, Lil Bean came back from the east.
He was holding a sketch, and he wasn't smiling. That was the first time I'd ever seen him not smiling.
"Day," he said. "I found something on the trees. About two miles out."
He handed me the sketch. It was a tree trunk, drawn pretty well for someone using charcoal on bark paper, and on it were four long, deep lines, way up high. Higher than my head. Higher than Hammerhead's.
"Claw marks," Lil Bean said. "Fresh, I think. And there were tracks. Big ones. Like a dog, if a dog was the size of a horse."
I looked at the sketch. Then at the timer.
[Wave 2 begins in: 5:06:11:52]
"Good work," I said, and I meant it more than he'd ever know. "Don't go back out there alone."