Chapter 4 Dawn of the Spear

My feet thudded, hitting the ground, and I was immediately drenched. It was raining, but not in a cold, mildly irritating way it did back home. This was a torrential, prehistoric downpour. It was warm, sticky, and grounded me in this place. No, not place. Epoch.

The tutorial had told me this was the Stone Epoch. I had faced a sabretooth tiger. There could be no other answer. I was in the past, to the dawn of humankind. Now there was a gate to find, a way forwards. I grinned, I felt electric. I had purpose again. I was a hunter, and I was going to win.

[Trial commenced.]

[Main Quest – Dawn of the Spear – You have awoken in the savage beginnings of humankind, where man first bested beast. It is time before civilisation, where tribes rise and fall across countless generations, lost to time. Find the Gate, and advance.]

The quest log had flashed across my UI, stamped cleanly at the top of my quest log. The only other quest in my log was named King of the Jungle, which had kill the sabretooth king crossed through, and apparently all that remained was to turn in the quest.

I could see that the main quest could be opened, and I clicked it, immediately giving me more information. What was interesting was that it was written in such a way as to give the impression that I wrote it.

I heard a cough. Well, a mental cough, and I glanced at my character portrait, who was staring back, clearly unimpressed. ‘Oh, I see, so you write these?’ The portrait nodded vigorously. ‘Well, err, thanks,’ I said, as I read the rest of the information.

My hunt begins. I have arrived in the Stone Epoch, and I must find the Gate. As each hour passes, the epoch becomes more dangerous. The savage beasts that roam here will grow in numbers and ferocity. The tribes of men, at first passive, will begin to grow suspicious of me. That suspicion will turn to distrust and as always with the race of men, that will turn to bloody violence.

Time is against me. I must either find other avatars or else avoid them. I can only trust myself, and my instinct.

[Requirements: Level five]

‘Damn,’ I said, ‘that was really good!’ My character portrait beamed. Credit where credit is due I suppose. So that was it. I was here, I had unlimited time to find the gate, but this place operated like a roguelike, the world becoming more and more dangerous as I went on. I wondered what that meant. Was it optimal to push through, find the gate as soon as possible, or was it like in other games where you might stick around, farm mobs, find gear.

‘Meta,’ I said, feverishly, ‘there’s always a meta.’

The game was on it seemed. I felt energised. For the first time in years, I felt the thrill of real excitement. I opened my technology tree once more, having used my tech points to unlock the first row. I saw that I had almost unlocked all of the primitive tech tree, which included spear and bow, as well as the weapons I wasn’t proficient in like the club and shaman staff.

I thought about simply skipping things that were useless to me. I had no idea how precious technology points were. Who was to say that later on what now cost me a single point would later cost a hundred? But I quickly realised the system had factored that in. I needed to use a certain number of points before advancing, which made skipping things impossible.

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Okay. So what did I need? I had primitive armour equipped, salvaged from the dead avatars in the tutorial zone. I opened up my equipment screen and soon realised it was battered, with a durability of eleven out of a hundred. It needed repairing. I took a beat, my goal set.

Time to craft my first weapon.