Staring at the achievement, Hannah felt completely helpless.
She didn't even get five minutes into this run and it was already over?
That's way too fast!
"Looks like beehives aren't something I should mess with early on."
Hannah quietly noted this and started a new game.
This time, she found out the game didn't only have Wilson as a playable character.
Each character seemed to have their own traits.
Of course, for now, Wilson was the only one she had unlocked.
The others required meeting special conditions, or surviving for a certain number of days in the game.
Starting again, Hannah quickly noticed a difference.
"Huh? My spawn point changed!? Is the map randomly generated, or do I just spawn at different spots?" Hannah said in surprise.
Last time, she had spawned in a forest area near the sea.
But this time, it looked more like a desert, and there were lots of ores around—something she couldn't find before.
Just like before, Hannah started by picking up junk.
Berries, hay, branches, and stones on the ground.
Then she crafted an axe and a pickaxe step by step.
After chopping down a couple of trees, Hannah turned her pickaxe on the ores.
Before long, rocks, nitrate, and other materials scattered across the ground.
At that moment, Wilson spoke up again in the game.
"Some ores don't look like the usual kind. There might be something good inside."
Seeing the line, Hannah quickly paid attention.
"Not like normal ores? Hey, there's one with a lightning mark on it!" She soon spotted something different.
The ores she mined before were just plain big rocks with no patterns.
But nearby was a slightly smaller stone with a lightning-like mark on its surface.
Seeing this, Hannah made Wilson lift his pickaxe and started smashing away at it.
With a crisp sound, the stone in front of her cracked open. Rock, nitrate, and other materials scattered on the ground, but mixed in was a piece of gold.
"So that's it! The ore with the lightning symbol drops gold when mined!" Seeing this, Hannah quickly understood part of the game's system.
She just didn't know if it was guaranteed or only a chance.
Feeling like she had discovered a new world, Hannah hoisted her pickaxe and began searching for more ores with the lightning mark.
She kept running upward on the map, collecting every resource she found along the way.
While wandering in the forest, Hannah came across a spider egg. As soon as she got close, the egg cracked open and out crawled a hideous spider, chasing her relentlessly for quite a while.
Looking at the axe in her hand, Hannah really wanted to fight the spider one-on-one.
But remembering how she had already died once to bees, and since it was still only the first day, she decided to hold back.
While moving through the forest, she also found a building called a pig house, but there were no pigs around.
She had no idea what it was for.
So she ignored it and kept exploring the map.
By then, the sky was starting to darken, and in-game, Wilson began muttering to himself as a reminder.
"It's getting dark soon. I might need to make some fire."
The game's time wheel had three parts: day, dusk, and night.
Now it was dusk, clearly meant as a transition period for players.
"Nighttime, huh? So now I need to build a campfire or a torch?"
Hannah checked her status bar, ate two berries, and restored a bit of hunger.
"But what happens in the dark? Do you just… die?" Watching the sky turn black, she was curious to see what would happen after nightfall.
But as darkness came, the screen quickly became pitch black, so Hannah decided to build a campfire.
The wind and eerie sounds coming through her headphones gave her chills.
"This fire is way too small… it barely lights anything around me."
Glancing at the clock in the corner, she saw there was still some time before sunrise, but the fire only lit up a tiny area.
Standing near the campfire, Hannah got restless and stepped further away from the firelight.
Almost immediately, she noticed her sanity meter in the corner dropping like crazy.
At the same time, an icy effect appeared on the screen.
Wilson's voice grew anxious.
"Who's there!?"
"What is that!?"
Hearing Wilson's lines gave Hannah goosebumps.
In the darkness, strange glowing eyes appeared out of nowhere. The sounds in her headphones turned even creepier, and footsteps seemed to be closing in from the shadows, scaring her back to the campfire.
"So monsters come out at night too!" Hannah's heart was still racing.
Back at the campfire, she opened her toolbar to make another fire, but she didn't have enough materials and could only craft a torch.
After thinking about it, she decided to make one.
Equipping the torch, she saw its durability in the corner dropping fast.
But compared to the whole screen, the torch's light radius was still very small.
Soon Hannah noticed something new—the torch could actually ignite other things.
Like berry bushes, trees, and grass.
"This makes things much brighter!"
She moved her mouse over to a tree and a berry bush, and instantly they caught fire, flames spreading wildly.
At first, she only wanted to light nearby trees to brighten the screen.
But as the flames spread through the forest, she realized setting fires was actually kind of fun.
After all, in real life, fire is dangerous and reckless. As the saying goes, "Set a mountain on fire and you'll end up in prison."
She even remembered as a kid, when she lit napkins with matches or lighters, her parents used to scare her by saying if she played with fire, she'd wet the bed at night.
But in the game, there were no such worries.
So while her torch still had durability, Hannah ran around setting everything ablaze.
Since the forest was all connected, the flames spread fast, turning the whole screen into a sea of fire.
Night wasn't too long, and before long the in-game time turned to morning, with the auto-save icon popping up.
At the same time, her torch burned out completely.
Looking at the forest still blazing, Hannah felt a little disappointed—she hadn't had enough fun yet!
Even though you can still light a fire in the daytime, the feeling is just not the same.
The rest could wait until later.
(End of The Chapter)
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