Hollow Henry

He watched on in anticipation as the guard known as Tillie cautiously tasted the roasted dogleg. The harvest was good thanks to his overgrowth power. If it tasted alright to the group, they would be set for food for the rest of the journey. Tillie chewed carefully, eventually coming to a decision.

“It could use some salt,” she said casually. “But it's better than the rations we brought with us.”

“That's good enough for me,” he declared, tossing her a small rock of salt he summoned from his Temple. “I'll let the cook know we're eating dog tonight.”

“That's never going to be funny,” she called to him as he left her tent.

He'd made friends with a few of the guards over the last few weeks. He was expecting there to be 1 or 2 guards other than Lee on their journey, but it stood to reason it was a larger troop. There were a total of 15 people in their slow crawling caravan. It made for a much more interesting trip he supposed.

He didn't mind the days they stayed at camp. None of the players in the troop were in too big a hurry, they were just happy to be moving in the right direction. Henry spent a lot of time in his Temple while they camped, and he'd been remarkably productive. The information the innkeeper had given him was still proving useful. He had written it down verbatim, so he was learning things he'd missed or forgotten when she told him. Applying the techniques of building Temple defences that he learned on Player-Net before they left, he constructed ethereal books to hold the knowledge in different volumes. It wasn’t quite the same as making defences, but the techniques were intuitive enough to be adapted to just about anything he could think of. They also had some level of tangibility, but he still wanted to find a way to make completely physical copies of the texts.

He dropped a box of dogleg off to the cook and bid him a quick farewell to avoid small talk. The journey had been smooth so far. The only hiccup had been when a wolf tracked one of the guards back to camp after a hunt. Henry had been indispensable in that situation. The original plan was for him to take a support role on the team, given his lack of combat experience. With his combination of skills and his higher tier however, he was able to dispatch the wolf before it had a chance to get one of the guards at the fire. There were rumours about his strength and speed being spread around the troop after that, and he wasn't mad about it.

Popping into his Temple wasn't a very secretive affair. The guards couldn't see things like his level or age, so they just assumed he had been around long enough to become a temple master. Some of the rumours he heard pertained to his hiding of his true power, so he made sure to feed those particular curiosities. If they thought he was hiding his true power, people would be less inclined to ask questions.

His Temple twisted into view around him. It was vibrant with plant life, and the wind blew gently on his face. Things had been changing in the land of Henry. His first project was organising all of the light to originate from a single spot, and then he taught that spot to orbit his lands at a distance far away. It wasn’t quite like a star, but it was close enough. It even radiated heat once all of the photons came together. It was an intense heat close up, but at the right distance it was only pleasant. For half of its 48hr orbital cycle, he had it reduced its output, essentially dimming to near invisible. It was a crude system, but it gave his plants a sun. Galileo would be rolling in his grave at the earth centric model Henry was building.

The wind came from a few giant fans hiding away in the distance. They were constructed with the ethereal building techniques, and he managed to make them near invisible. None of them pointed directly at his islands, the turbulence they created in the air was his objective instead. It worked better than he could have hoped, creating a constant and unpredictable gentle breeze. The air felt less stagnant, and the world felt more natural.

Hamish was busy chopping down a tree on one of the now 5 islands. His core’s island had remained mostly the same, aside from a large maple tree with vibrant red leaves that he had encouraged to grow around his core. It felt right to protect it from the elements, even if the elements weren't really there.

The other 4 islands were similar in size. One was reserved for farming, another for growing and harvesting trees, another for training and experiments, and the last had his house. The islands were roughly the same size, aside from his core island. They still looked like natural landmasses, or as close to natural as a floating island could be anyway. He was proud of the land he built. It had cost him a fair amount of essence to pull off, but it was all worth it. Since he got to tier 2, his essence and DiHexan went 4 times as far. It significantly lessened the cost of anything he wanted to do with his Temple, and using his skills was hardly a concern anymore. Hamish and Andy had been bunking in his Temple in small shelters of their own, and it cost him hardly anything to bring them back and forth. It only cost him between 60DiH and 70DiH to take them both at once, depending on what they had with them. On top of it all, he'd finally developed the passive skill he needed to avoid spirit shock. It didn't make for a 1 to 1 conversion or anything special like that, it just took away the spirit shock when he did spend his essence as magic.

Going up a tier was a real game changer. He had to remind himself to be grateful to some extent, since it'd been so easy for him to get there. His friends still worked hard to gain the essence they needed to reach tier 2. Both level 9 players were close, but Hamish was closest. He planned to hold off until they could tier up together though. The Scotsmen had been with each other since their first day in The Hollows, so they did everything together by that point. Henry wondered what kind of friendships he'd make for himself after 100 years.

He looked forward to the next tier already. Without access to Player-Net, he couldn't look up any information on what to expect at tier 3. According to Andy though, it was an even larger multiplication to his capabilities than before. He supposed it wasn’t a pressing concern to learn more about it just yet. It would take 500 million essence to go from tier 2 to tier 3, and that was a number still far out of his reach.

“Are you winning?” Henry asked as he floated down to meet with Hamish.

“They didn't even see me coming,” the big man replied, wiping sweat from his forehead. He was making a dent in the field of small pine and maple trees Henry had rapidly grown. It was going to be the first harvest of the timber, and Hamish wanted to be the one to do it. He was constantly trying to train either his skills or stats, and swinging an axe all day is a good way to increase your strength.

“They’re not very tough though,” he admitted. “It's like they're less dense than normal trees.”

Henry scratched his chin. He was worried about something like that. His overgrowth power was fantastic. He couldn't just make a tree grow to its full size in an instant, but when he used it to alter a plant it only took a week or 2 to mature. There had to be some drawbacks he supposed. He hadn't used any fertiliser on the plants, counting on the power of magic and good intentions to do all the work, but they probably still needed food to grow properly.

“Looks like I need to start collecting poop,” he said, manifesting a stone tank nearby to hold his planned loot.

“I'm not here to yuck your yum, so I'll let you know when I've got to go,” Hamish laughed.

“It might be time to start thinking about the plumbing,” Henry admitted.

“I've just been pissing off the side. That works just fine if you ask me,” The big man offered.

“You know, this wasn't the conversion I came over here to have,” Henry said, shaking his head at the warrior.

“Nature will always take its course,” Hamish laughed. “I was starting to think you forgot about me. It's quiet here, it feels like time moves slower.”

Henry nodded. He knew what the big man meant. The peaceful nature of his realm had a way of making things feel less important. It was like the feeling of floating on a quiet river. He and Andy had measured the time on their clocks and found that there was no difference between there and The Hollows. Still, it felt as if they had more time to spend when they were in his world. Andy had taken to calling his realm ‘Henhole’ in a less than cute attempt to shorten ‘Henry's Hollows’. Much to Henry's dismay, the name had caught on with Hamish as well. Lee had heard them teasing him about it, so she was ready to join in on his torment too. She actually visited his Temple at one point. When he suggested the troop could eat his dogleg harvest, she wanted to ensure he was getting the food from a reliable place. In her defence, the last time she'd seen the place it was a lot smaller and less organised. She took a guard along with her on the visit, which stung his ego a little. After everything that had happened, she still had no trust for him.

“I wish time moved slower here. There are things out there I'd like to avoid,” he declared.

Hamish raised an eyebrow. “As if,” he scoffed. “I know I sure as hell want to spend some time with princess Leyela,” he said with a wink.

“I'll tell her you said that,” Henry said through a smirk.

“Oh no… I'd much rather you didn't,” the big man admitted.

They talked for a while, and looked over the wood that Hamish had harvested. They both had big plans for Henhole. The wood was going to be milled down into planks, and then they were going to get to building everything their party might need to grow. The 3 of them were considering making a guild through the Tavern. One of the hurdles to starting a guild was owning the land for a guild-hall. The Tavern required them to have at least one property before they could register. They had no real need for a guild, since they could do the same things by just having a party. The main advantage of a guild was the community and the guild work. They were their own community, so they weren't concerned about other guild members. The guild work however, was incredibly tempting. Big clients didn't often hire a party to get a job done. The truly wealthy would approach guilds, since a guild came with a certain level of prestige. There were plenty of bad guilds according to the Scotsmen, but they were still taken more seriously than a party. If the Tavern would accept them using Henhole as their guild-hall, they would be able to take more jobs like the one they were on.

It was a big plan for an uncertain future. The 3 of them were all fast friends, so they were confident in going into business together. If it didn't work out, they could always just disband. Henry's only condition was that they don't use the same name for the guild that they did for the party. His friends agreed to his condition, but he didn’t really believe them.

By the time they returned to The Hollows, the princess was nearly red in the face.

“Where the fuck have you been?” She shouted at them. “Actually, I don't care. It's about time you came back.”

“It's good to see you too,” Henry said, showing her his palms.

“You can't just hang around all day in a place I can't reach you. Our scouts are late by 2 hours and you're off somewhere glueing stones together.”

“Well that's a gross simplification of what I do, but alright,” he said with a nearly bored voice. “2 hours seems a little long,” he admitted.

“Andy was in that group,” Hamish said darkly.

“That makes it even more concerning,” Henry decided.

“I'll let the troops know you care so much,” Lee interrupted, rolling her eyes. “I'm not sending more of my men out there, it'll be dark soon. You're the brave outworlder, you need to go find them,” she ordered.

He wasn't sure if he was supposed to be following her orders or not, but she had a way of making it feel like you had to. He would have been heading out anyway with Andy missing. He was nervous though. If something was strong enough to take out 3 scouts and a level 9 player, Henry didn't want to meet it.

Hamish had already prepared his crystal pickaxe. He swung it into the dirt a few times, shimmering as he stored the momentum in his body with his core power. The dirt was barely affected, since all of the energy that would have been spent was stored instead. He was ready for a fight. Henry just nodded at the princess, and summoned his steel sword.

With just the two of them and their superior speed, they made their way along the scouts trail in just 25 minutes. They both received a notification for a player in the vicinity, so they assumed they were getting close to Andy. They both sent their friend a message as soon as the notification came up, since it meant they would be in range for them to connect to each other. When neither of them received a response, they slowed their approach. Andy may be unconscious, it would explain the lack of response. They couldn't check the player boards to see if he was still alive or in the empty, and Henry had a bad feeling. The first sign of the scouts was a scorched helmet resting in a bush. A few metres beyond that was an armoured led, and not much else.

They stalked the area, making considerable effort to remain hidden. There had clearly been a battle there recently, but there was no sign of any living souls. They were collecting the medallion of the third dead scout when the notification came.

ALERT:

You have been hit by a *T1 ping. A fellow player is aware of your location.

Hamish's eyes went wide and he quickly scurried away from the open area. Henry didn't know exactly what was going on, but he knew enough to follow the big man's lead.

‘Unstoppable’ Hamish:

We need to leave now

Andy doesn't have any ping-crystals

Henry knew exactly what he was talking about now. The ping-crystal was an item in the Goblin Shop. It cost a hefty 2500[E] for a crystal at tier 1, and that one only worked in a 200 metre radius. That meant another player was already right on them.

The realisation hit Henry along with a healthy dose of panic. He abandoned all sense of caution and took to a sprint. Hamish apparently had the same idea if the heavy thuds of a big Demai's feet next to him were anything to go by. Henry had to make sure not to leave his friend behind. His tier 2 speed couldn't be matched by the stocky Scotsman, and he didn't want to leave him to fight alone if it came to it. He considered the chance of getting away as if it was up to him at all in the first place. Without a chance for him to react, a thick vine tore from the dirt and caught his ankle. He noticed it just before it caught him, so his perception nearly helped him out. Hamish had no chance for his part. A wave of roots and vines came up in front of him, crashing down to tangle him into the dirt. Henry hit the back of his head on the ground when the vine holding his ankle rocketed upwards. He tried to swing his sword at it, activating his Hyper skills at the same time. The vine still danced away from him like a long green snake. It moved at a speed that rivalled his own. With his power still active, he desperately tried to get a sense of their surroundings. It was a little disorienting while he hung upside-down, but there was no missing what was walking towards them.

In the small clearing where the guard lay dead, a man walked casually in their direction.

He was wearing a black trench cloak and combat boots, and had glowing gauntlets on his hands. His black hair was slicked down with way too much grease, and he still somehow managed to have a pimple ridden face. The kid looked 16 at the oldest. The thing about him that gave Henry shivers, was the name and level floating above his head, complete with his player kill count.

Player: ‘Mushroom King’ XxLongJohn69xX

Level: 12

Tier: 2

PK: 36

Henry wanted to cry. When he considered the possibility of being killed by a troll in this world, this isn't what he had in mind.