Chapter 17: Daily Item Spawn

"I'm trying to think of the best way to get you a copy of my Robe," he replied as he stared at the holographic panel. "I was thinking I could dismantle this one and use the material to have Macro make two, but it seems like a waste if it can't be copied exactly. Wait a second. Didn't you say something about daily item spawns as a way for players to get copies of their real world items. If I save the scan, you'll be able to dupe it that way. Won't you?"

"Really?" Dex asked, his jaw sagging in surprise. "You want to use one of your daily spawns for that? You only get ten."

Hugh shrugged. "Why not? Actually, now I think about it, we should use the rest of today's spawns to make things easier on us. I scanned my neighbor's motorcycle when he was asleep one night. We could—wait, no, we'd run out of gas and I don't want to waste future spawns on refilling the tank. How about mountain bikes? I think I have one or two of those from when I sneaked my Handiscanner into a department store. We could get pretty far on those if Scout finds us an easy route. And they're lightweight, so I can store them in my inventory without trouble when we're not using them. So that's three spawns. We could use better weapons, too. I'm not a fan of guns and there would be the issue of ammo supply, so how about bows to start? Do I have any of those? We could reuse the arrows."

Dex's eyes had gone round with shock, but Hugh didn't think anything he was saying was particularly special. Someone smarter would probably think of a better plan. The only thing he was doing was working with what he had—a whole lot of random scans.

He'd gone a little crazy when he first got his Handiscanner and it wasn't like he knew a lot of people who'd want his spare modules and extra scanners. He'd mailed a pair of modules off to Fib and Calibration, two of his gaming friends who only intended to buy the Elite package, but Sirius and Maximus had both bought the Guild package for themselves. Meanwhile, Jerk and Rodger had been surprisingly AWOL over the last month. He never heard back from them before launch, so he'd done the natural thing and filled his overabundance of memory modules with as many scans as he could.

He'd probably spent more time out of his apartment in the past month than he had in the previous year, all for the sake of prepping for this game.

"You have six compound bows and two crossbows to choose from," Dex offered quietly.

Hugh nodded. "Let's do one of each, since I have no clue which one I'll be good at. Pick the ones that are simplest to use, but effective. We can upgrade to something fancier later once we get the hang of using them. So that makes five spawns—seven if you have to spawn the quivers of arrows separately."

"I do," he confirmed.

Hugh searched his memory for something else they could spawn to help out, but his brain kept coming up blank. They had food, shelter, and clothes for the moment. Bikes and bows covered transportation and weaponry. He felt like he was missing something important, but he couldn't think of what.

Shrugging it off, he said, "I guess that works for now. I'll think of the other three later." He saved the scan of the Robes and added it to his Book, then flipped through the Table of Contents until he found the new Appendices section entitled 'Apparel 1/10000'.

Hugh whistled at the upper limit. "That's a lot of clothes."

"A five piece suit would take up multiple slots for one outfit. It makes sense you'd need a lot."

He couldn't argue, so he focused on scanning the rest of the gear he wore, saving the scans, and adding those to his Appendices, too. The process unlocked pages for Accessories, Weapons, and Tech Essentials. Scanning the fruit, bread, and basket in his inventory unlocked the Appendices for Botany and Industry. Scanning his starter spell scrolls and courtesy roll of toilet paper unlocked the Magic Essentials and Neutral Essentials Appendices.

He made sure to re-equip everything once he was done.

While he was on the inventory page, he noticed new icons for the items he'd asked Dex to spawn. Each one demanded a confirmation of the use of a 'Daily Item Spawn'. He confirmed, then summoned the bikes, bows, and quivers of arrows so he could scan those, as well, and transfer them to his Appendices.

Feeling like he was on a roll, Hugh headed over to the campsite and scanned everything in sight. Nothing new opened until he reached the water well and unlocked Architecture on page ninety one. Scanning the hoisting mechanism unlocked Tools on page ninety two.

The rope attached to the well's bucket was completely extended, diverting Hugh's attention.