There were no fish shadows in any of the ponds or streams, though. The ponds themselves were several meters deep, and so transparent you could see all the way to the bottom with no problem. Maybe the water was too clean for fish to grow. It didn’t look like it could be dangerous to drink. With an environment with so many bodies of water, but no fish in sight, it was gonna be hard to get anything in the way of food.
I might have to give up on the hope of surviving by normal means. This seemed like one of those survival games where civilization collapsed and aimed way too hard for realism—they were so overused a setting that no one really liked them anymore.
“Throw away your dignity as a person in order to survive...”
Or so it went with those sorts of games. The only thing I learned about them was that you could postpone the time to starving if you focused on just surviving, but you’d lose something important as a human being.
To be specific, I was talking about a technique which involved cutting out the waste of nutrients by recycling and ingesting your own... Yeah. Let’s be clear here though, that was truly the last of last resorts. That feature was in a game developed with the help of professionals with real-life survival skills they had hired for reference, but I think that was the very same reason the genre didn’t really kick off to begin with.
I looked around inside the cabin in hopes of finding some kind of stash of any kind, when I found something unusual hidden in a corner.
There was a complex pattern drawn on the surface of the floor—I wondered if they were letters or something. I also found some kind of box that looked big enough to fit two people inside. And there was what seemed to be a porcelain piggy bank standing on top of it, as if it was enshrined there on purpose.
When I tried touching it, a translucent window popped up. It displayed ‘Delivery and Payment Box’ on it. The separate window that appeared looked like something out of an online catalog. The title of it said “Regional World eShop Catalog: Tundra”. I wondered if the person who made this thought the end-users would be able to read English right away.
The catalog itself was written in English and had illustrations all over. When I operated it a little bit, the display changed to “Foods > Seasonings > Salt... 1 kg Salt == 120 DL.”
—Ah, so it is an eshop catalog. This DL thing seems to be a form of currency, but I’ve never heard of it before.
But I couldn’t be called a gamer if I let something like that confuse me. The fact this catalog popped up as soon as I touched the delivery box probably meant that if I put something of value inside the box... I might be able to get some currency. And if I put in currency, I could get goods... It was a pretty typical system in games.
As typical as it may be, with the <Dungeon Management Tool> thing I had, it was kind of hard to really piece it all together properly. Plus, there was this vague “Willpower” stat thing that got consumed to make the shovel and pickaxe appear earlier. It was amazing and whatnot, but... how did all this stuff tie together?
—I really want to try it out, but what should I put inside?
The rocks and fallen leaves scattered about around here didn’t look like they held much value to them. I tried to fish something out of my suit pockets, and found a piece of mint bubble gum I normally used to keep myself awake. Now that I thought about it, it was still unopened. I put the bubble gum inside the delivery box, and a metallic sound resounded from within it, almost like the sound of coins dropping.
When I opened the box again there was no bubble gum to be seen; in its place were two metallic looking yellow-minted coins. They appeared to be worth a hundred DL and five DL respectively. They weren’t quite gold; they seemed to be made of some kind of yellow-metallic material, maybe some kind of brass? On the other side of the coins was a demon-like face motif carved out into it. Under that it read “100 DarkLord Coin.”
DarkLord... As in a big bad demon? Did this mean it was the currency of a demon lord? I didn’t really know how they appraised the value of the gum, but it was good news regardless. Now I could use the delivery box thing to get money. If only the <Dungeon Management Tool> itself was even as remotely decipherable as the delivery box was.
I opened the translucent window again and chose the ‘Natural Salt’ that was listed with a price of fifty grams for fifty-five DL. When I had confirmed the order in the eshop, a popup which said “Please Insert Fee” appeared, so I put the two coins I had inside the piggy bank. Right as I did, a fifty DL coin dropped from below the piggy bank, and at the same time a slot suddenly appeared in what was a seemingly empty gap, and burst open. An unusually heavy looking A4-sized paper envelope fell to the ground with a sonorous plop.
“Thank you for your purchase!”
A strangely high-pitched voice came out from the box, followed by another bursting sound, to which the opened slot unceremoniously closed back up. The word “Tundra” was printed on the envelope, and under it was decorated with what I assumed was their logo.
—Tundra? As in the biome?
There was also a note, which seemed to have been written with magic pen that stated the “Administrator of Labyrinth #228” as the recipient’s name.
—How can this thing be so convenient, yet the <Dungeon Management Tool> wants me to do literal manual labor?!
I needed to report this. There comes a time in a man’s life where he must report broken features.