HC: Handyman | Ch. 2 - Tutor Ezekiel (Patreon)

Jack carefully entered the house and removed his shoes. After being scolded by his father earlier today, the last thing he needed was to be told off for being out this late at night.

He climbed up the stairs on his tiptoes and gently turned the doorknob of his room, careful not to make it creak. He stepped into his room and shut the door behind him.

Relieved to have accomplished his stealth mission, Jack opened the box he had brought. He picked up the VRX helmet, causing little styrofoam pieces to fall all over. It was an older model with dents and scratches, but the clerk assured him it was in perfect working order. The only one available at the store was pink, which was far from Jack's favorite color, but he didn't care. He just wanted to try this money-making method that worked so well for his cousin.

As he put on the helmet, his first impression was how heavy it was. No wonder people played with these while lying in bed; otherwise, they would sprain their necks. He looked for a button on the side of the helmet and, finding it, pressed it.

“Wow!”

A blue window appeared in front of him.

This is your first time wearing this helmet. The system will now synchronize with your nervous system.

Please look up.

He obeyed.

Please look down.

He followed each command the machine gave him. He raised his arms one at a time, then his legs. He walked around the room, and finally, the synchronization was complete. He created a username, but the helmet didn’t ask for a password. It would probably scan his retina or something.

Just by willing it, he could operate the system in the helmet. He opened the VRX store and immediately found what he was looking for. The logo for New Earth, with the image from the ads of a warrior in shiny armor battling a dinosaur, was the first thing to appear in the store.

He took his phone out of his pocket, checked the message Rob had sent him earlier that night, and read it aloud.

“J-N-R-H-1-2-7-1.”

We’ve activated the referral code you’ve received from Roberto Sousa.

Congratulations! You can play New Earth on trial mode for the next 30 days. The game is now installed.

A progress bar started loading. The internet at his parent’s house wasn’t the fastest, but it had a decent download speed. Even so, the game download and installation would last several minutes. He wished the bar would finish loading already, but he decided to use the time and check some things his cousin had told him about earlier.

He set the helmet aside and started looking up information about the game. The very first thing he checked was the auction site.

A series of colorful flashing windows competed for his attention. Seeing some of the prices being asked for in-game items, he couldn’t help but gasp. At the center of the website, there was a picture of a sword. The pommel was made of dark metal, and the blade was green. It seemed to be dripping acid, which sizzled as it fell off the sword and hit the border of the window.

“Sword of the Slime King,” he read aloud, “2000 credits? What?!”

This was four months of rent! Five, if his mom’s help turned out to be an every-month thing. He scrolled down and saw many other items sold for equally exorbitant prices. He found a section with gems and remembered the story his cousin Robert had told him. Sure enough, some were for sale at 900 credits, and some even more.

Why weren't people talking more about this? This was a fantastic opportunity to become rich. Visiting Roberto was the best thing he could have done today. Maybe this was his ticket out of his predicament. He could win Lydia back and pay his father his cursed rent if he could make good money.

He peeked into the helmet and found that the progress bar was still loading.

“How to make money on New Earth,” he wrote on the search engine, and thousands of results popped up. He scrolled down, looking through the different guides, but quickly lost patience and randomly selected one.

New Earth, Money Making Guide

I’m DoomBringer, and I’m a level 38 warrior. Today, I’ll tell you how I quit my day job to become a full-time gamer. I used to work at the court as a clerk and hated it there. Then, I found New Earth and discovered that many people bought in-game currency in exchange for real money. As I researched, I discovered a whole economy attached to the game and started to explore and experiment. Three months after I started the game, I quit my job at the court, and I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.

“Blah, blah, blah,” yammered Jack. It was getting late, and he didn’t have time for these cheesy stories. He couldn’t believe that he felt this tired, even after taking a nap. He felt as if he had taken a beating. Thinking of Lydia and his dad, maybe, in a sense, he had.

He forced himself to refocus on the guide, scrolled down and found a question and answers section that summarized the main points.

Q: How much money do you make a month?

A: These days, I can obtain 4000 credits a month easily.

Jack let out a whistle. Now, he was getting somewhere.

Q: How do you make money in the game?

A: I might disappoint some of you here because I won’t reveal how I make money. If I told you what I do, many of you would try the same method, saturate the market, and force me to find something else to do.

Q: OK. But really. How?

A: In a nutshell, you have to find your niche. It all boils down to focusing on something that gets you items other people want to buy. Some people focus on hunting, others on exploring, and others on gathering or crafting. Those are all great ways to get good items.

Q: Which is best?

A: The wealthiest players in the game are all craftsmen. However…”

“Bla, bla, bla. We get it. Crafting’s the best.” Jack was eager to get the helmet on, go to bed, and start sleeping, while playing the game. Hopefully, he would know how to make money in New Earth when he woke up.

Ding!

The game had finally finished installing. He put on his pajamas, lay in bed, and put the helmet on.

Synchronization complete. Would you like to start New Earth? [Y/N]

“Yes.”

Warning!

While inside the game, all your nervous commands will be intercepted, and you’ll be only able to move your avatar in the game. Make sure you’re in a safe, comfortable environment.

Warning!

Don’t spend more than 10 hours at a time in full dive. Pause the game frequently to hydrate and stretch.

Full dive in 3, 2, 1…

The room around Jack disappeared, replaced by never-ending whiteness.

“Welcome to New Earth!” he heard someone say. It was a masculine, deep voice.

Choose your avatar’s name.

“JackOfSpades,” he said.

Error, JackOfSpades has been taken.

“What? It’s taken?” He deleted spades and, after some thought, wrote something else.

Are you sure you want to be called JackOfDiamonds?

He was in this game to make money. It seemed appropriate he change his tag from spades to diamonds. Today was hopefully the start of a gaming career that would make him rich and allow him to buy all those cool things he had seen at his cousin’s house. More importantly, it would allow him to settle down with Lydia if she was willing to take him back.

As he thought of Lydia, all the excitement of buying this helmet withered. Whenever Jack paused for a second, all the hurtful things she and his father said returned to haunt him and drag his mood down. He couldn’t stop. He had to move.

Please select your appearance.

Jack selected the option to randomize his appearance, and the system scrambled his looks. He studied the avatar on the screen and saw his bushy brown eyebrows were intact, but his eyes were now hazel. His hair had become even shorter, and his avatar had become clean-shaven. Satisfied with the result, he finalized the customization, and epic music started playing.

“In a world…”

“Skip!” he called.

Do you want to skip the opening cutscene? [Y/N]

“Skip!” he said again. He wanted to get this over with and start playing right away. He would look the cutscene up online later if he needed to.

The cinematic ended before it began, and the scene around him changed. He was atop a green hill with one lone old tree. He heard chatter and, looking around, found many people wearing similar clothes: a gray linen shirt and loose gray pants. He held up his hands and, catching sight of his sleeves, he noticed he was wearing the same outfit.

He experimented with moving his fingers one at a time and then took a few steps. Emboldened, he tried jumping, sprinting, and even threw a few punches in the air.

“Awesome,” he said giddily. “It feels real.”

Feeling more accustomed to the new landscape, he looked out into the distance and found a tall wall. It looked like it was far away but close at the same time. That meant that the wall was huge.

What was hidden on the other side of the wall? As he kept looking around, he saw another wall. Two opposing cities? He walked around the tree and soon discovered he was looking at it incorrectly. Wherever he looked, there was the same white tall wall. They were inside it.

Unsure of what this meant, he looked for the nearest NPC to show him the ropes. That was easy enough. He just had to find the highest concentration of players. Hidden behind a cluster of players in gray, an old man sat under the tree. He had a thick mustache, a long beard hiding his mouth, and a huge pointy hat hiding his eyes. Over him, he found a name tag identifying him as ‘Tutor Ezekiel.’

“Hello, tutor Ezekiel,” greeted Jack, following basic gaming protocol.

“Well, well, well. Looks like we have another adventurer to help out,” he said. Every word had an inflection he had only heard in famous old actors or grandfathers with a knack for storytelling.

“That’s why I’m here,” said Jack, trying to play along.

“Oh, fledgling… There’s so much to learn but so little time. The wall has served us well for eons, but the cracks are spreading, and it won’t last forever. Time is of the essence. You have to learn how to survive the dangers of this world while there’s still time. What would you like to learn?”

A series of options appeared in front of him.

The world within the wall

The world outside the wall

Fighting

Crafting & Gathering

Dungeoning

Attributes

Even though the first two options caught his interest, he still decided to start with where the money was.

“I want to learn about crafting.”

“Fine choice, young man! Crafting then. Let’s see. Where to begin?” The man paused as if this was his first time teaching someone about this topic. Jack tapped his foot.

“Shall we start with how our wall would have long fallen if our warriors had to fight bare-handed? Think about that: without craftsmen, there would be no wall to begin with, and we would all be history. Crafting. Yes. Crafting.

“The key to crafting is single-minded devotion. Absolute concentration. That’s why you are allowed to choose only one major profession and one minor profession.”

“Uh? Major? Minor?” his cousin hadn’t told him about this. Now that he thought about it, he had been in such a rush to rent a helmet that he didn’t know whether his cousin crafted, hunted, or did something else. Fortunately, tutor Ezekiel began explaining it.

“Yes. I’d encourage you to choose your major first. Find your calling. That will help you to choose the minor profession that best compliments it.”

Jack bit the inside of his cheek. That sounded complicated. “How many majors are there?”

“I can tell you about five major professions. However, I’m just an old man from a small outer town. In the wall within the wall, you may find more knowledgeable folk who know of finer crafts.”

That means that there were other major professions. “What about minors?”

“Oh, there are many! Even in my little town, there are far too many to count.”

“Can you give me some examples?” Jack pressed.

“Sure. For example, consider one of the most common and important majors: [Smithing]. Smiths can work metal and craft sturdy armor and sharp swords. Some smiths choose to mine their own ore and learn the minor: [Mining]. Others who don’t like leaving the comfort of towns take other minors, such as [Recycling]. Some particularly talented smiths have a knack for precise work and end up taking [Tinkering].”

“I see. And imagine that I wanted to take [Mining] and [Recycling]. Could I do that?”

The man paused thoughtfully. “I suppose that’s a possibility. But most choose to have a major. They open the door to more opportunities.”

“Good. In that case, I think I will go check these majors out. You were talking about smithing. Let’s go with that.”

“Don’t you want to hear more about the other majors first? To make an informed decision?”

“Nah. Pass. Where can I become a smith?”

“I’ll give you the address.”

Tutor Ezekiel has marked a location on your map.

Jack turned his back on the tutor and ran downhill, past the many other beginners. Several of them held wooden swords or quarterstaves and clumsily swung them around. It was probably part of the tutorial for fighting.

As he raced down the hill, he saw many others wielding their wooden weapons more confidently and fighting the many rabbits hopping around. Jack kept his eyes glued to the map and kept going.

He had to climb another hill with a similar lone tree and another old man sitting under it. From there, he saw where he was headed. It was a small town.

Ch. 1 - Rough Day

INDEX

Ch. 3 - Too Dusty