Cora stared at the waving field of corn. It was only half-grown and the little timer that hovered over the field showed that it needed another three game hours to finish. She sighed and looked down at the gunny sacks at her feet. With the way she was going, Cora felt that she would never reach that mythical level ten on the bags.
"Are you bored?" Blue asked from her perch in the nearby oak tree. "Lacking in exercise?"
"Ha-ha," Cora retorted. A few hours of being in the leopard's presence and she'd stopped feeling any fear or tension around her. "I'm just wondering what I should do next. I guess I could try to clear up the stones in front of the City Hall, but my masonry's still in the initializing stage."
"Hmm." Blue absently licked a paw. "Well, you could go mining. That's one way to get the stone for the bricks for the steps."
"Mining?" Cora looked up at the leopard with curiosity. "There's a mine nearby?"
The leopard scoffed, leaping down from the tree branch. She landed smoothly, muscles flexing under the blue fur, rosettes gleaming in the late afternoon sun.
"We have everything!" Blue announced proudly, standing tall. Then she looked off to the side. "Well, we don't have a port, but there's a lake nearby where you can fish if you'd like. Very carefully fish, but that's to be expected," she hurriedly added, walking towards the eastern side of the town.
Cora glanced at the field and then at the City Hall. The field turned out to be behind City Hall in some weird twist of architecture she still hadn't quite figured out. She could even see an edge of the plaza if she leaned the right way which didn't make sense since the view from the Mayor's office showed the field, and the Mayor's office wasn't at the back of the building.
She dismissed her musings, swiped up the gunny sacks and trotted after Blue. Mining sounded a bit boring, but so far she hadn't found any other way to get raw materials other than to trade with the warcorns (they'd offered her unprocessed wood for the next batch of corn) or to get it herself.
They walked for a little bit, going past increasingly empty streets until they reached a winding path that stretched up into a patch of grassy green hills. Cora stopped and looked back, frowning a bit. They still hadn't reached the barrier that surrounded the town's boundaries.
"The mine's part of the town?" She asked Blue.
"Well, the front part of it is. The further you go, then no," Blue tossed over her shoulder. She was starting to pant from the exertion.
Cora hurried after her. After turning a curve of hillside, the path leveled out. A broken basin sat at the side of the road next to what looked to have been a stone picnic table. The remnants of a simple awning lay collapsed over it, moss growing over broken bits of fossilized wood. The basin held a multitude of cracks but still contained a bit of water made mossy green by algae.
"Don't drink that," Cora said as Blue lowered her head.
"A bit of green isn't going to kill me," Blue retorted, lifting her wet muzzle. "Might kill you, though."
"Why, thank you for the concern," Cora huffed, turning away to examine the table.
She carefully brushed the wood off the top, keeping a lookout for insects or small animals. Thankfully, there was only old, hard pieces of wood. After a few minutes, the broken table was revealed. It was made out of roughly hewn pieces of grey and white stone set atop a few others. The benches were the same. A large crack went through the table, breaking it into two lengthwise. The weight of the tabletop was too much for the benches, causing them to break as well.
"What did this?" Cora asked, looking at Blue who was resting beside the basin.
"It probably happened during the War before they managed to purify the barrier." Blue levered herself up to her feet. "Come on, or do you want the corn to be ready for harvest before you get anything done?"
Cora reluctantly left the resting area, her mind churning. There had been a war? She hadn't seen any information like that on the forums or in the game materials. Granted, the game materials were so scant as to be unmentionable. She'd been hard pressed to find even an official game manual, though she'd found plenty of player written guides.
The mine looked like a standard mine. Cora furrowed her brow at that. There were the standard thick wooden pillars on either side with another thick wooden plank at the top framing the entrance. Beside it were rusty looking tools leaning against the wall of a dilapidated brick lean-to. A rough square was on the back wall of the lean-to, indicating that some sort of schedule had once been there.
The little path turned into a road right before the mine entrance, paved with broken cobblestones. Cora examined them curiously. They reminded her of the ones in the main plaza but instead of being white or off-white, they were a uniform beige with striations of darker brown. The road even held a bit of a curb with deeper grooves to channel runoff. She bent down to look where the runoff was diverted to but found that it curved away into little aqueducts that disappeared into the hillside.
"Where does the water go when it rains?" Cora asked Blue who shook her head.
"It's rain. It goes wherever it wants to," Blue said. "I'm not omniscient. I'm just a gatekeeper."
Blue led her to the brick lean-to. Seen up close, the tools had the same appearance as the farm tools had once had.
"Let me guess. These are also rare and valuable tools." Cora looked at Blue who looked away. She sighed and grasped the splintery handle of a pickaxe. As expected, there was a slight shimmer as the rust fell away and the handle mended itself in her hand. "Why are these things even here? Why hasn't anyone taken them away by now?"
"They're here because this is where they were left, and who's going to argue with the gatekeeper if they could even get in?" Blue asked as she paced towards the mine entrance. "Are you coming?"
Cora shifted her grip on the pickaxe and checked that the gunny sacks were still on her hip. Then she followed after Blue.