—I need to calm down, come on. Look at the bright side...
I managed to regain my composure in less than a minute. There was this one time I had stayed with some university friends, and we marathoned a bunch of games that were listed on a site called “The Worst of the Worst,” which aggregated all of the worst games in the history of humanity. We played them one after another for God knows how long, so I should be able to cope in these kinds of situations.
Freezing after every battle in an RPG... Freezing while saving... Saved games disappearing just because... Final bosses that didn’t spawn in the last area because of bugged scripts... Compared to that hell, this was still pretty tame. I had been living my life for games this whole time, and it had been really useful ever since I came to this place, at least.
After opening the A4 envelope, I found about fifty grams worth of salt inside a plastic bag, which was cushioned by a material similar to cardboard.
—So I can order food from this Tundra thing, huh? So the objective is use this box to get DL coins, and use those get food to subsist...
Nevertheless, there weren’t many things around here that looked like they’d be worth much. My pickup was approximately three months out. Even if I’d sold everything I had on me, namely my suit, wallet, and shoes, I doubt I’d be able to get by more than one month at best.
“Valuable stuff, eh? Can’t I use that thing...”
I looked around the room, and my eyes went straight towards pickaxe I’d created a while ago with the <Dungeon Management Tool>.
—Depends on if I can even sell it to begin with...
I tried putting it inside the delivery box, but instead of turning into coins, a message in red letters popped up which said “Cannot Be Exchanged”.
—What a shame. It’s never that easy, is it?
It consumed a stat called Willpower, but it was also common in games to make it so you were unable to resell equipment you could create as many times as you wanted, or at the very least, make it sellable, but only for incredibly cheap.
“Let’s try with a stone next.”
I took my suit jacket off and headed out, pickaxe in hand.
You may not know this if you didn’t live in Japan, but stone was often used as a building and interior material. The prices went up and down depending on the type and rarity, but they were always quite pricey to buy.
Once, I got addicted to this one game called Moss Decoration Meister, in which putting moss on stones was considered a decoration of the highest order. I’d participated in a contest sponsored by the developer and won the silver medal in the “Free-sized Garden” category. I even wanted to make some moss decorations in real life as well, but the cheapest stone bases would go over four figures a piece. I would be hard-pressed to find a memory more bitter than that one. Even if what I could find around here wasn’t some fancy stone used for decorations, I could crush it and turn it into gravel. There was a lot of demand and uses for that as well.
I went to the closest rock to the cabin and held the pickaxe I’d created using the <Dungeon Management Tool> with both hands... And pierced the rock! It made a satisfying sound. In its wake was a clean cross-shaped crack in the stone.
“Ohhh...”
I unintentionally dropped the pickaxe. My hands went numb due to shock. I’d never taken up one of those part-time jobs that had you doing heavy manual labor, like making holes in asphalt, so it was the first time in my life I had used a pickaxe. I figured I had a knack for it, but was kind of hesitant due to the resulting muscle pain. I tried using a bit less strength and struck the rock again... and again... and again. It had slowly become easier on my hands. The cross-shaped crack expanded as I continued to strike the stone. Along with the sound of my strikes came perfectly cut square-shaped pieces of rock.
—Huh? Pickaxes don’t normally cut into stuff like that, right? Why are they all so square?
When I pulled apart the perfectly cut pieces, a heavy gray-colored stone cube covered with dark spots fell out. It was exactly ten cubic centimeters. They would be easy to pile up as building material in this shape, but the fact that they could be cut up with such precise symmetry with just a pickaxe was downright bizarre. Rocks normally were supposed to crumble apart and break down into irregular shapes when struck with a pickaxe.
—The whole ravine is littered with regular rocks. Is this related to the pickaxe I have?
What was with the mysterious pickaxe that ate up my Willpower? I wanted to try the <Appraisal> skill I first saw back on my status screen.
—This UI is really easy to use. I haven’t seen this kind of polish even in overseas games.
I was impressed by my handiwork as I maneuvered around the translucent window to enter the Skill Menu. I’d customized the UI to be like my favorite all-purpose internet browser for smartphones and touchscreen computers, “WaterRacoon.” The only thing that I didn’t seem to need to change to be more user-friendly was the simple character information screen from before. The UI screen of which displayed a player’s various information, and reflected their every action, needed to be perfect. It heavily influenced the amount of enjoyment one would derive from while playing.
Usability played a huge part, but I found the most important thing was to make it intuitive enough so one could understand everything at a glance. Something that made you go “Whoa, this is easy”. The translucent UI window was perfect from the get-go. It was easy to use, and I could manage everything without any kind of explanation. Presumably, if you could use it as a computer to send emails and browse the internet, it would be a piece of cake, too.
I registered the <Appraisal> skill to a vocal shortcut, and set the trigger keyword to “Execute Appraisal” while I pointed towards a target with my finger. In an actual game, it would be pretty difficult to set up, but in such a fine-tuned place like this, it was child’s play.
I turned my right finger towards the pickaxe and said, “Execute Appraisal.” The sound of an electronic buzzer went off in my head, and a translucent window popped up near my index finger.
Name: Novice Iron Cube Pickaxe
Creator: Aoi Kousaka
Durability: 498/500
Special Effect: Effective against inorganic matter. Turns target into cubes.
Oh, it sure looked like a real appraisal. It consumed some Willpower because it was a skill, but I would say one point was pretty reasonable, all things considered.