Mined Games chapter 1

Without further ado, chapter one of Mined Games. I'm EXTREMELY proud of the title lol.

The world is not fair. This is not a new concept. It isn’t even a particularly interesting concept. But, much like every other eighteen year old in the kingdom aside from possibly the current crown prince, I found myself stewing on this unfortunate truth for the large portion of my day.

To be fair, my days tended to lend themselves to stewing. My job was boring, as well as being fairly important, which let me tell you, is a terrible combination. Stuck behind the counter in my family’s shop all day, I had literally nothing to do except pretend to be busy and lament the absolute hell of boredom I found myself in.

Well, that wasn’t true. I could do inventory, like I was supposed to be doing. I waffled over putting it off longer, but I was pretty sure if my dad came in and I hadn’t at least started he would have me unloading the next delivery of mana tainted ore myself while he and the delivery guys lounged to one side and made comments on my form. He’d done that before and I could swear my back still didn’t sit right.

Standing up with a sigh I grabbed the ledger he kept behind the counter and walked to the back corner, beginning the laborious process of counting a bunch of shit that I’d counted yesterday, on the off chance someone came into our broken down shithole of a store and had the misfortune to steal one of the pieces of junk my dad somehow convinced people was worth the gold they worked actual jobs for.

First was the statuary, useless carvings of animals made from sandalwood and other good smelling materials the old man told people ‘calmed the mind’ and increased mana regeneration rate. Seventeen in total, six dragons, eight bears, and three eagles. I made a note in the ledger that eagles were selling well this week and moved onto the next shelf.

Talismans were one of our most lucrative products. Dad had a deal with an amateur talisman crafter who sold us his sloppier products at cost, and people would flock to the store to buy them whenever we restocked on the off chance one actually worked. Mostly they didn’t and we had a small selection of extremely poor quality samples that were so obviously damaged even my father couldn’t convince anyone they were worth something. He insisted we keep them out in case they sold, because throwing them out would be a waste of money.

I was broken from my monotonous task by the sound of the bell on the shop door, and I almost groaned in relief as I tossed the ledger across the room, landing it directly in the basket behind the counter from about twenty feet away as I eagerly turned to greet the customer.

Any possible reprieve from my daily grind would have been nice, but I swallowed extra hard when I saw who had come in. Rala. Her father owned the printing house down the road and Rala came in once a week to buy mana tainted ores for ink. I smiled at her weakly hurrying over to the counter to meet her there.

“Evening Rala.” I said as pleasantly as I could. Which wasn’t very because I was trying hard not to stutter. “The usual?”

She nodded, dark curly hair bouncing as she smiled politely back. “Caleb. And yes, fifteen pounds of the cinnabar.” She looked around clinically, bottle green eyes roving over the store in the same way they did every time she came in here. “Anything interesting on the shelves?”

I snorted at that. “Yeah, I found a legendary magic sword in some guy’s scrap bin. That’s why I’m so clearly enthused about how my day is going.”

Her lips quirked a bit at that, eyes landing on me as she raised a brow. I flushed, having momentarily forgotten to be nervous out of sheer belligerence. Gods how I wished that had lasted. Seeing me clam up, she lost interest and went back to looking anywhere but at me, which I honestly didn’t blame her for.

I wasn’t what you would call conventionally attractive. I wasn’t ugly, but I was too thin, my hair was a mop of nearly black curls the same color as my dark eyes, and I was much too pale. The result made me look like a scarecrow.

Rala, in contrast, was the princess of the Ardane clan. One of the local mage families. Tan and pretty, she had the kind of athleticism you usually saw from mages, who could enhance their bodies with mana. Rala was one of the highest ranked Acoloytes in the city, whereas I had barely breached the first circle at nearly twenty years old, which made me the social equivalent of a particularly rancid fish.

I packed up the mana-touched cinnabar without bothering to say anything else and passed her the box, which she lifted much more easily than I did, and got another perfunctory nod as she placed a small bag of gold coins on the counter and turned to leave. Before she did, she stopped, turning back to me with a small sigh.

“I have something else I can sell if you want.” She said uncertainly. “I’m not sure what it’s worth. I picked it up in the forest in the nest of a rock falcon.” She held the box of cinnabar with one hand as she fished around in a pocket and passed me a small wooden box. Inside it was…something. A square object made of some material I had never seen with a pane of glass over the front.

It looked like garbage, honestly. But she was trying to do something nice and brighten up my day, so I gave her a cheerful smile and a wildly optimistic appraisal of. “This seems unique. I’ll give you five gold for it.” Her face brightened at that, probably because it was an absurd price, but what did I care? It was my dad’s money anyway, and I was still annoyed at being left here alone every day while he went to go gamble.

I passed her back five of the coins from the bag, and she passed me the box, waving cheerfully as she bolted away, probably wanting to be gone before I realized I’d been horribly ripped off, as if I didn’t know that when I made the offer.

Still, as the door slammed shut, I looked over the object with interest. I hadn’t been lying. It was unique, and unique things were interesting. The item wasn’t exactly solid. Aside from the pane of glass, there were smaller pieces of the unknown material set into the sides in random places. Upon checking, I found that they could be pushed inward, though that didn’t seem to do much.

I pushed down on them in different orders and for different amounts of time, and suddenly, without and warning, the pane of glass changed. A word flashed across it, and the glass illuminated. I almost dropped the item, but I held onto it in case it was some volatile magical device. I didn’t want to blow up the shop.

The glass display showed the word for another minute or so, and then it changed. Going black before showing me a brightly colored image of rolling green hills against a blue sky. It was the single clearest most vibrant image I had ever seen barring what I took in with my own eyes, and it was amazing.

In front of the image was a series of smaller images. There were dozens of them, and they all seemed to represent different things. I didn’t recognize most of them, but I did see one tiny image that was familiar. A picture of a pickaxe. I reached down tentatively, holding the item far away with one hand as I used my other to slowly touch the picture of the pickaxe.

As soon as I did, something changed again. The hills and sky disappeared, replaced by the darkness, which then changed to show a large childish looking drawing of a pickaxe, with a series of words atop it. Whereas the word from before had been gibberish, probably some sort of name, these words were easily understood, though the reason for them wasn’t apparent.

“Mining Mayhem.” I read aloud. How interesting. I was familiar with mining, obviously. My father got half our stock from miners. Though I didn’t know why it would cause mayhem. Was something nefarious being mined? I’d heard about demon stones and the like, minerals tainted with blood magic, the dark mana generated from sacrifice. Was this an image of a demon stone mine?

Except there was no mine. Just the same two words and the childish pickaxe in front of a black background, at least for a minute. Then the image changed again, with the scene now depicting what looked like some sort of wooden notice board. The board had a series of planks with words on them, some of which made sense and some of which were absurd.

I knew what options were, though why there was a plank for that I had no idea. Volume made some small amount of sense, but I didn’t know what a ‘Leaderboard’ was. The one at the top was the most interesting to me though. It said ‘New Player’. That seemed like it might be the safest plank to touch. If the planks worked as the original image did poking it with my finger would do something. So I did.

The image faded to black again, and I almost screamed in shock as the device…vanished. It showed a new picture for a second and then disappeared in a flash, and the same square image appeared in front of me floating in mid air. A booming voice echoed in my head. “Welcome new player, to the magic mining town of Royston. As the new owner of the Royston magic mining company, you have a lot of work to do to get things back in order!” The voice was chipper and high pitched, and I spun about wildly searching for where it had come from, only to find absolutely nothing.

“H-hello?” I said tentatively. The voice was speaking to me in comprehensible words, so presumably it could understand what I said in return. “Who might I be speaking to?”

“No time to lose, new player! The Royston magic mining company is in bad shape. Head into your mining headquarters to look over the state of the company!” The voice said this in exactly the same tone as earlier, and I was about to repeat myself, when I noticed something else had changed.

The square image in front of me had vanished like the object had, and it had reappeared at a larger size across the room…taking up the space inside a doorway. Through the door I could see what looked like a clearing with an old broken down house in it, which was very disconcerting because that door was supposed to lead to the storeroom in the back of the shop.

I approached it slowly, carefully. I probably should have run, maybe gone to get my dad or a mage or literally anyone who would be useful here…but I didn’t want to. This was amazing. I wanted to see what happened.

As I approached the doorway I could smell the trees and grass and flowers. I heard birds chirping and leaves rustling. I stopped right in front of the changed door, reaching out a tentative hand and gaping as it passed through the empty space in the air and into the clearing on the other side. I felt the temperature and humidity change as I reached through, and I was in awe. This door was a hole in space. It led somewhere completely new.

I’d like to claim that I made a plan, that I weighed the pros and cons and tried to come up with the safest possible approach…but I didn’t. I charged right through that doorway and into the clearing. I had no clue what was on the other side, but I was almost positive I wanted to find out.