Chapter 3: Money Grind

The Shop Function would almost single-handedly illuminate the path I would take going forward. After exploring its contents for a bit, I learned that I could buy anything from Skills to tangible items from pretty much any world I could think of… for the right price of course. It was a shop after all and given how dead broke I was without even clothes on my back, I currently had nothing to pay for the many, many things I wanted from the Shop.

Fortunately, along with a section for Buying, the Shop came with a section for Selling and Trading. I could sell or trade pretty much anything I could physically pick up. Yet, the only thing worth anything in my immediate vicinity were those berries I previously ate to get rid of my hunger; even then, they were barely worth anything, coming in at an abysmal 1 Shop Credit per Kilogram.

Now, a single Shop Credit had a sort of undefinable value in the sense that it didn’t line up with currency in a way that made sense to me. 1 Shop Credit could get me a Mars Bar or it could get me a Kilogram of Copper Ore. It could get me a “Basic Fishing Pole” or it could get me a copy of the smartphone I left on Earth. This proved to be both convenient and not as I looked for things that would help me out and was pleasantly surprised at times then utterly crushed moments later.

“Welp, the Sharingan might not be in the cards anytime soon, but at least aiming for a full set of clothes is feasible for today. I only had to harvest… probably all the bushes in a fifty-meter radius,” I muttered to myself before getting back to work.

[New Skill Unlocked!]
[Name: Harvest Lvl 1 | +10 Exp]
[Description: It’s a Quality of Life thing; just… not very good right now.]
[Active Cost: 5 Stamina per cubic meter]

When I tried my new Skill out, I instantly understood its initially confusing description. Harvesting allowed me to instantly pick the berries of the bush I was touching, but it only picked like 10% of the total with each use. It was a terrible waste of Stamina right now, but looked to have good potential. The decision had nothing to do with the fact that I was getting frustrated with the mindless menial work that was involved with finding and stripping off all the berries after the tenth bush.

Besides, I totally had to keep using the Skill regardless. To test the carrying capacity of the [Inventory] Function all the harvested berries went to once I used the Skill, you know? So what if I quickly figured out how to keep adding the berries I manually picked to the stack that carried all the berries in my inventory afterward? The Skill needed grinding, damn it!

Unfortunately, despite having reached my minimum goal of 25 Kilograms of “Wild Berries,” I did not make my ideal goal of clearing out all the berries I could find by the stream by the time the sunset started settling into dusk. I returned to my mountainside cave, traded 10 Kilograms of the ~16 total I had in my Inventory for enough Shop Credits to buy myself a set of wool clothes, a water filtration kit, and a set of traps which I then set — just in case — before going to sleep.

The night passed without incident and I woke the next day to a Status screen devoid of any debuffs. I spent my early morning clearing the Daily Quest which was a repeat of yesterday’s endeavor before heading off to the stream to fill up my nifty new water filtration kit with a gallon of water. After securing water away in my Inventory, I picked up where I left off yesterday and continued Harvesting berries until a thought occurred to me.

‘If this was anything like Stardew Valley, I bet I could get way more money from chopping some of these trees or trying my luck mining deeper into the cave for whatever the walls are made of.’

The dirt and grass were worthless to the Shop, but surely pieces of stone, cobble, or wood would fetch a pretty penny. Eventually. Maybe… It was something to think about as I continued to clear out berries as quickly as possible.

[Skill Level Up!]
[Name: Harvest Lvl 1 → 2 | +20 Exp]
[Description: Still pretty bad, but far more convenient regardless.]
[Active Cost: 4 Stamina per cubic meter, Max Range of 1 meter from the user.]

With the Skill leveling up, I went from having to use it 10 times on average to clear out a bush to only having to use it 4 times for the same effect. It really was much more convenient being able to use the Skill with a range of 1 Meter as I no longer had to stop and crouch down or bend over before every bush to strip them of their berries.

Moreover, because the range to cast was 1 Meter from me, that meant I could apply the Skill to all the bushes in that area so long as I had the Stamina to cover the increased volume. Which I wouldn’t have an issue with since bushes were actually much less voluminous than they appeared with all the gaps between their branches. By the time I completely cleared out the stream of berries, I capped out at 8 Stamina per cast.

That left me with hundreds of Kilograms of berries, and a choice of whether I should continue looking for more or change over to chopping trees or mining rocks to hopefully find a much better source of income.

The Shop had no shortage of things I wanted, but most of all it had access to Skills that might lead me to civilization. Unfortunately, everything I wanted was expensive, so I had to keep grinding for credits right now.

I decided mining would probably pay better than tree longing off the notion that it could only go up from whatever base pay I would get from mining stone or whatever it was that the cave walls were made of. I traded 10 Kilograms of berries for a Steel Pickaxe and promptly smashed it against the wall at the end of my cave.

Aside from my pick harmlessly bouncing off and only slightly cracking off a couple tiny rocks, nothing substantial happened. I sighed and prepared myself for a rough time before lifting up my pickaxe and smashing it against the cave wall again and again until I had enough to sell off a Kilogram of Raw Limestone. Seeing that it also went for 1 Shop Credit per Kilogram, I traded the pile of rocks I currently had and a couple dozen more Shop Credits for a solar-powered smartwatch and loaded up a stopwatch app to time how long it took me to get another Kilogram.

It took five minutes. That would make it considerably less profitable than harvesting berries even before my Skill for that improved. Then again, I had access to a virtually infinite supply of Limestone from the cave wall while I would have to waste time looking for more berries. Also, there was a very high chance that I was on the cusp of getting a Mining Skill, not to mention I also had those three Stat Points from when I personally Leveled Up in reserve.

How much faster would the process for mining be after I increased my Strength by 1? What if I used all 3 instead?

There was no time like the present to find out, so I happily increased my Strength to 11 and, sure enough, my every subsequent hit with the pickaxe cracked the walls harder and loosened out bigger chunks of Limestone rock. It took me a good three minutes to work out the mental math after timing myself again, but it looked like the increase I got as around 15% since my time to gain 1 Kilogram of rock went from approximately 300 to 261 seconds.

I dropped another point into Strength and as expected I got a total of 30-ish% faster than I was originally, only needing around 227 seconds to mine a Kilogram. Luckily, I did not get tired or sore anymore as I could only imagine how harsh the constant mining I did would be on my body.

[New Skill Unlocked!]
[Name: Mining Lvl 1 | +10 Exp]
[Description: A small boost to help you turn big rocks into little rocks.]

After getting the Mining Skill, it was like I’d gotten another boost to my Strength Stat, only marginally better since it increased my proficiency by another 20% instead of the 15% intervals that each Stat Point yielded to my mining speed. It was a nice boost even if the passive effect only applied to either pickaxes or actions meant for mining.

Anyway, I focused on mining as much material as I could until it was time to go to sleep. Soon enough into my mining escapade, the lack of light became an issue, so I traded a good 600 Kilos of Limestone and Wild Berries for a “Weak Magic Generator,” an “F Grade Magic Crystal” and enough cable LEDs to fully furnish a Best Buy.

[Milestone Quest Complete!]
[Name: Shop Broker 1]
[Description: Earn or Sell 1,000 Shop Credits (Both actions count towards this Quest Line’s progress)]
[Reward: +10 Exp]

Ironically, even though I had literally just bought a smartwatch mainly for the purpose of keeping track of time inside the cave, where the sun and moon cycles couldn’t guide me, I managed to get myself into a mining trance that I only broke out of when I absentmindedly thought of checking the time once my Mining Skill reached Level 3.

[Level Up!]
[Full Recovery!]
[+3 Stat Points]
[+1 Ability Point]
[Shop Function Expanded!]

Author's Note

In the first Chapter's notes, I mentioned this story was much more "mathematically involved." Here's where you see the start of the madness I've orchestrated. Don't worry though, once actual dialogue between characters is introduced, the Gamer prompts get tampered down... somewhat. But! Before it gets better, it'll get worse. Way, way worse.