Ultimate Gamer System: Factory Must Grow!

Chapter 6 You miss all the shots you don't fire

"Come on, man, you've gotta make your damn choice."

Theo spoke out into the dirt just a few inches off his face.

He then gritted his teeth and clasped his hands into fists, staring at the two slightly contradicting prompts of his now slightly upgraded system.

[Forest Outskirts - Safe Zone - Within Range of Oilrat (level 147) patrol route!]

[Threat level - No threats detected]

'Is the outside safe from threats, or is it all just a bait, noob-trap of sorts?'

The fact that nothing came to attack Theo thus far meant nothing. The threat level of his threat detection ability meant nothing.

After all, he was but a level-one human, lacking even something as simple as the most basic weapon. And from what the other prompt told him - this whole area was well within the range of the oilrat's patrol route.

That, on its own, would make Theo slightly curious at most, if not for the number that the system conveniently displayed for him right after the potential threat's name - one hundred and forty-seven.

'I guess that explains the snicker part,' Theo thought, easily recalling all the different titles heralded by the man name-dropped by the system to describe the type of area he was in.

Games that were incredibly popular as they went against the grain of treating the players like idiots and guiding them everywhere by hand. Games... that were known to be inherently difficult and unforgiving!

And yet...

'No matter how much I cower in fear and hope for the best... it's not going to change anything,' Theo thought, balling himself down in the limited space of his hole. Yet, even squeezing down and assuming a fetal position didn't give him any sort of confidence or comfort.

On one hand, all he wanted to do was just curl up like he just did, close his eyes, and hope he would find himself right back in his comfy bed...

"Or do I actually want it?"

It struck Theo like a hammer.

Squinting his eyes as the progress bar of his digging quickly completed, Theo swung his shovel again, only to then slam its stone blade into the ground around the height of his chest as soon as the daylight filled the insides of his hole.

'Let's go!'

Daring not to waste another second, Theo quickly confirmed the threat status of the area hadn't changed, before using the handle of his shovel as a foothold as he climbed up out of the hole.

"Now, for the test..."

Rather than hugging the ground and reaching with his hand into the hole to pick up the shovel, Theo simply reached out in its direction and stood still for a moment...

[Shovel recovered]

Rather than appearing back in his hand, the shovel vanished into thin air, its presence now replaced by the system prompt appearing before Theo's eyes along with the same old miniature appearing within his inventory.

'So this works,' Theo took a note before turning around as he summoned his axe instead.

Even though wood was but the starter resource, he still needed quite a lot of it, be it to craft sticks for tools or maybe torches, planks for a crafting bench and potential furniture, or even as something to fire the furnace up with once he got his hands on it.

'Normally, you would just rush through the wooden tools to get to the stone ones, turning trees into nothing more than a source of early-game fuel and maybe building blocks,' Theo thought, recalling what he could about the game his system was quite obviously clowning on.

Still, while the task of searching for stone still hung over his head... contrary to the process of gathering wood, it didn't seem to be all that dangerous.

After all, what were the chances of encountering some insanely powerful monster near the rocky layer of the underground?

'Don't let your thoughts wander off,' Theo thought, quickly moving to the nearest tree while making sure to keep track of his hole at all times. He then gripped his axe... and took a swing.

Thump.

The dull edge of his stone tool barely made a dent in the tree's trunk. Yet, as if to prove just how magical Theo's tool was, cracks then started to appear around the area he struck... only to vanish about two seconds after he pulled the axe's blade away.

"The progress bar... Why didn't it appear?" Theo muttered to himself, puzzled by yet another discrepancy between what he expected and what he found out.

Yet, rather than wasting time thinking about it while he was out in the open, Theo clenched his hand over the handle of his axe, pulled it back... and then swung again.