Hollow Henry

Day 4 notifications.

ALERT:

You have died! Respawn timer now set to [(30s + 5) × 2]. Respawn set back in [35d.14hr.37m.15s].

ALERT:

You have stopped gaining essence from the atmosphere. You gained a total of *632[E].

ACHIEVEMENT:

You have “saved” a woman from an uncertain death even though she expressly asked you not to. Congratulations! You're a white knight. I hope it felt nice to play the hero.

REWARD:

Title unlock: “misogynist” - makes it +40% harder to get a date.

~~

Day 15.

Henry stood with his hand on his hips and smiled proudly at his Temple. The last 2 weeks had been spent just hanging around the town. It had given him the opportunity to get a grip on what kind of a world he'd landed in, as well as the chance to grow his understanding of his Temple. At that moment, he stood on the flat roof of a stone house he'd made from nothing but essence and will. He'd also spent a considerable amount of essence to extend his island, and also constructed another much smaller island just for his floating core. The smaller island was accessible by a path of floating stones.

His house was rather simple, but he was still excited about it. It was only 2 rooms, since he felt strange having a toilet in the same room he intended to sleep in. He had a fire pit in the centre of the main room for cooking, allowing the smoke to escape through a hole in the roof. There was no plumbing, since he still barely understood how the magical plumbing worked, and he felt strange about bringing a stranger along to install it. His solution to the water issue was to have a large barrel that he kept filling up from the outside world. The bathroom was just a stone toilet with a hole that came out of the bottom of his island, and a large stone basin to wash himself in.

He had also started a small garden, since he didn't know how to summon plants out of nothing. He was growing tired of looking at a wash of brown and grey. A touch of green wouldn't go astray. He thought if he could grow some trees and grass, he might be able to learn to make them out of essence along the way. The more he used his Temple, the more it made sense. He'd even figured out how to summon things from the place without having to retrieve it himself. With enough time and focus he could occasionally send an item to a particular desired place in his Realm, and it was getting easier to do every time he tried it. It was significantly easier to do from within his Temple, which is how he was able to build and arrange his shelter. Not that he needed shelter while he was there. He also wanted to figure out if he could make it rain.

If his experiments with the garden worked out, he had big plans for the future.

He had also managed to put together a stockpile of supplies after taking a bunch of quick odd jobs. His Temple was packed with canned goods and cheap blankets, enough to keep him out of trouble for a while if he found himself lost again. He even had a small bed. His friends reminded him nearly daily how lucky he'd gotten with his power. Every coin he earned went towards food and supplies. He never had to worry about shelter or safety again, at least he hoped. He really wasn't hurting for essence either. With his haul from the Goblin Raid, and all the coins and items he'd fed to his essence, he could start his journey towards tier 2 if he wanted to.

Essence: 126,345[E].

He could level up if he felt like it too, but he didn’t see the need just yet. While ever he was in town, his essence was more well spent on his Temple, and it cost a lot to modify it. His house alone had cost around 100,000[E]. He gained essence at an unprecedented rate thanks to a deal he'd made with a local slaughterhouse, but there was still a limit to how many resources he had available.

He had managed to find some information on Temples, emphasis on ‘some’. The Player-Net was a fantastic resource for information. Getting it was one of the first things he did after respawning. It cost him some essence to buy the device, but after the last 2 weeks, the cost of 5,000[E] was chump change. It was like a mix between Wikipedia and social media at its core, but players had the ability to create sites under unique addresses. There was no search engine outside of whatever was posted to WikiHollow, so it was closer to a dark web he thought. The wiki post about Temples mainly stressed the importance of building a defence around your core. It was enlightening to learn that his Temple could be invaded by other practitioners of the discipline. Everyone had their own Temple Realm, it was just usually a lot more work to get in touch with it. Henry had a shortcut to an understanding of his realm that others would spend lifetimes trying to accomplish.

The techniques it described came naturally to him, but they only constructed ethereal representations of the simple structures he was trying to build. He got the sense that encasing his core in solid stone would work a lot better. He did manage to dig up an address to a blog where a player talked about his experiences travelling with someone that claimed to be a ‘Temple Forger’, so he sent that player a message to ask more questions. He was still waiting for a reply, but that was standard apparently.

The Player-Net device was just a small black box. It was attuned to the player that purchased it, and worked while ever they were in close proximity to it. It could only connect to the Player-Net if it was also within range of an official Tavern. If a player was between cities, or spending time somewhere without a ‘Tavern-League’ Tavern, they wouldn't be able to see any updates to Player-Net.

He partied up with Hamish and Andy on the social side of the Net. It allowed him to see their stats and skills, as well as their names and levels. Both of them were level 14, and they were getting close to pushing up to tier 2. A big downside to the social aspect of Player-Net was the public profiles. It showed basic information for any player you looked up, including their level, tier and accumulated titles and achievements. To any player that looked him up, he would immediately stand out as a fragile and racist misogynist. If the HUD system was making jokes, he wasn't finding them very funny.

He casually stepped off the edge of his roof for his foot to fall on a floating stone he'd manifested in a near instant. His other foot followed with a stone of its own, and he gently drifted down into his garden. He was getting good at creating things quickly, it was nearly a reflex at that point. Rubbing his hands together, he picked a nice place at the edge of his island to extend. He was planning on starting a small farm to try his hand at growing food there. It was familiar work, so he was confident he'd pull it off. When he worked his farm on earth, he had a lot more to manage too, so it would be nice to just focus on just growing the food.

With a wave of his hand for nothing more than dramatic flare, the island rumbled. Stone and soil rolled over themselves as they crept outwards. Within half a minute an area around 50² metres.

ALERT:

You have spent *75,612[E].

Essence: 50,733[E].

The best part about his new land was the fact that it was already ploughed and ready to be sowed. He had a bag of what the merchant had claimed were ‘dogleg’ seeds. He'd tried dogleg at the Tavern. It was a vegetable that was nearly a foot long on average, and it looked a lot like a dog's leg, furr and all. He didn't know if it was fair to call it a vegetable though, since it was more like bloodless meat. He was hesitant to try it at first, but it tasted a lot like lamb, only sweeter. If he could grow it, he'd have a great source of protein on hand all the time. After planting the dogleg, he planted some more maple saplings around the perimeter. He would need to figure out a way to make the plants think it was night time sometimes, but he had a few ideas for that. There was no obvious light source in his Temple. It was just coming from every direction like an overcast day. He had a few ideas about that too, but he was going to need more essence for a lot of his plans.

For the time being though, he was late for training. He'd trained his HUD to have a clock and calendar thanks to tips on the wiki, so he really had no excuse to leave Hamish waiting. He slipped on his armour, and twisted out of his Temple.

He popped back into existence behind the Tavern. It had become a habit to hide himself away before he entered his realm. The locals seemed a bit put off when he just appeared in front of them, and it also made his friends really nervous. They insisted it could bring the wrong kind of attention, and that was a dangerous thing no matter how strong he thought he was. As soon as he entered The Hollows, his Player-Net messages made themselves known.

‘Unstoppable’ Hamish:

I'm at the pyre, where are you?

The boat is leaving soon, you better hurry up

This is why you don't have other friends

I'm going out of range. I'll meet you there

Wanker

He chuckled at the texts. The three of them had grown close pretty fast. They'd known each other for years, but they welcomed Henry to their group with open arms. He felt like he'd known them a lot longer than 2 weeks. He felt lucky to have made friends so fast after seeing some of the blog posts on Player-Net. A lot of his generation of players were still under level 5, and the older generations weren't afraid to take advantage of that fact. They boasted publicly about their robberies and other even less tasteful crimes, receiving just as much praise as hate. The new players were the punching bags, and they were at a massive disadvantage. Hamish and Andy only treated him with kindness, and they helped him grow faster than he would have otherwise.

He knew the way to the pyre, and had enough coin to pay for someone to take him out to the forest for training. Andy knew their training area, and he would get them later. It was at the very edge of the forest, so chartering a small boat to get there was easy enough.

His money was starting to run out though. He had 3 gold slabs, 4 silver chips and 3 bronze slips. They were the last crystal coins to his name. The coins themselves held a charge of DiHexan relative to their value, and they were shaped differently depending on their capacity. He couldn't feed the DiHexan to his own pool, which was disappointing, but it was useful for other things. He could cast 5 shots of his screeching force spell with the power from 1 bronze slip. The essence he got from the coins was the biggest draw though. The amount he got was dependent on exactly how much charge the coin had. If the coin had less than 20% charge it would lose its glow and colour as well, so he could pick and choose which would give him more essence. If he carried the depleted coins around in his pocket for long enough, they would accumulate more charge over time. The downside was that the time it took was a long one. It would take him 400 years to fill a gold slab from 0%. He still couldn't wrap his head around the idea of living for 400 years in the first place, but that was apparently his reality now.

He was thinking about the implications of it all when the boat touched down and dropped him off. He found a very cross looking Hamish standing in a cleared out area at the base of a colossal oak tree.

“Oh Hamish, could you teach me to make a skill,” the big man mocked Henry with his poor impression of an Australian accent. “I promise I won't waste your time.”

“I never said I wouldn't waste your time,” Henry defended through a smirk.

“Where have you even been anyway?” Hamish asked with a bit of annoyance. “Were you out looking for your copper girlfriend again,” he said, rolling his eyes.

Henry had been looking around the city on some of his down time in the hopes of finding Lee. He wanted to make sure she had made it back alive, but none of the guards he talked to had heard her name in their ranks. He was concerned that he'd left her for dead, and a part of him just wanted to prove his last achievement wrong.

“I was building that farm in my Temple that we talked about.”

“Not good enough,” the big man replied, waving his hand. “But you should still show me later.”

He pointed towards a scorched stump at the opposite side of the clearing. “You've got some catching up to do. Hurry up and empty your DiH.”

Henry was one step ahead of him. He'd drained his pool to 0 on the trip over. He didn't mind using Hyper Focus in that way, since it gave him more time to think, and to appreciate the world around him.

They were both trying to train the same skill, and Hamish knew some things about training skills. Their goal was to develop a skill that allowed them to cleanly channel essence into their DiHexan pool without getting spirit shock. It was definitely possible, since plenty of other players had figured it out. There were guides to developing the skill that all basically said the same thing. You had to keep getting spirit shock and pushing through until you figured out the conversion yourself. The sensation wasn't something that could be explained properly in words. Everyone had a different analogy, most involving water and stones, but none of them quite did it justice.

Henry was getting close. He could reduce his essence loss by at least half every time, only losing 5% extra points. A few times he'd managed to pull off a direct conversion, but he still hadn't gotten the skill. Hamish insisted that passive skills were a lot harder to develop, so he wasn't getting down on himself. The main downside to the whole experience was the headache.

While they trained, Hamish spent his time throwing fireballs and nearly crying at the pain of spirit shock. While Henry spent his time sitting and concentrating while he used Hyper Focus. The increased perception gave him another advantage when trying to figure out the smooth conversion.

At the end of their session, Hamish had spent 562[E], and Henry had gotten away with spending only 300[E]. Henry summoned them some water for the cost of a little more essence, and they both rested in the warmth of the sun. The Goblin Shop sold potions that regenerated a portion of their DiHexan, but all of the guides said it would slow the development of the skill if they replenished their magic too fast. The rest was nice and necessary, since by that point they were both too dizzy to do much else.

He liked those moments the most. It reminded him of afternoons after long days of work as a teenager. He couldn't miss those days, but it was as if he could feel those afternoons in those moments if he let his mind wander far enough.

He watched a speck slowly grow in the sky. Andy must have finished his work early. It wouldn't be bad to get back to the city before the end of the day. His favourite restaurant closed not long after sun-out, when the local star dimmed to near invisible.

He had learned a bit more about how the world worked. The stars he saw above him weren't even stars. They were shining lights representing a huge mass of souls. Some larger empires had a stone at their heart that gave off the light. The more people around it, the brighter it shone. The light could only be seen from far away, and when the ‘heart stones’ were on the other side of the world, they looked a lot like stars. He supposed some of the lights might be actual stars, since apparently they were still a thing in a hollow world. He tried to read up on the topic on the Player-Net, though he barely understood a lot of it. Apparently some players were once astronomers, who knew.

As the boat got closer, it became apparent that it wasn't Andy. The vessel flew Therveinia's banner, and was at least twice the size of Andy's little boat. When it landed and 3 guards got off, his excitement for dinner started to turn into mourning.

One of the guards checked something on a parchment before looking back at him, apparently confirming something with himself.

“Henry the Fragile?” The guard asked, sounding less than enthused.

“Who's asking?” Hamish said before Henry could get a chance to speak.

“The kingdom of Therveinia is asking,” the guard groaned. He gave off the impression that he'd been having a long day.

“I'm The Henry,” Henry offered, dragging himself to his feet. “What's this about?” He really had no clue what he could have done to get their attention.

“You've been summoned to an audience with the captain of the city guard,” the guard declared, thrusting the rolled up paper towards him.

Sure enough, there was an official looking document detailing that he was to meet with one Captain Maraque Tane-Firrmonwey. The name took up half a line on its own. The page was completed with a stamped wax seal at the bottom with Therveinia's crest and the captain's initials. If these men were lying about who they were, they'd put a lot of effort into it.

“Is this mandatory?” He asked curiously.

“No,” the guard sighed. “But it is recommended if you want to keep favour with the city guard.” The last part sounded vaguely like a threat.

Henry and Hamish shared a look with each other. And spoke between themselves in chat.

‘Unstoppable’ Hamish:

This seems a little fishy

The ‘Fragile’ Henry:

They look pretty legit to me

‘Unstoppable’ Hamish:

Why on earth would the guard captain want to meet with you?

The ‘Fragile’ Henry:

Rude

Maybe it's because of my great hair

‘Unstoppable’ Hamish:

You're a Demai

We all have great hair

Did you do something to get in trouble?

The ‘Fragile’ Henry:

Not yet

Not that I know of at least

I think we should go with him

‘Unstoppable’ Hamish:

Can't hurt I suppose

We could always just try and bail if things go wrong

I'll ride you and your armour down like a really ugly flying horse

The ‘Fragile’ Henry:

You speak like a poet

The guards watched them blankly while they texted. When Henry turned back to them, the lead guard gestured with his head towards their ship.

“So what will it be? We don't have all day to fly people around.”

The guard was clearly annoyed about something, and Henry didn't think it was related to him at all.

“I'll come along if I can bring my associate,” he decided.

“I couldn't care either way,” the guard sighed again. “Daylight is burning. Let's get moving.”

Henry looked at his friend, and the big man just shrugged. They were only just talking about what they would do with their afternoon. It looked like something to do found them instead.