While she was at it, Sandrine also opened the rewards for the offroad event. She had ranked 8th, and the rewards were nothing impressive, the usual supplies and upgrade materials, as well as hay and dog food. The only remarkable thing was an umbrella blueprint.
"That's great ! If I'm really right and the first season involves rain, I can sell umbrellas for a high price !"
Happy, Sandrine went back to her evening routine. Setting up camp, feeding the pets, starting a fire, cooking… Dinner was pesto pasta. She had already found a jar of pesto previously and had earned a few pasta packs in her rewards for leveling up Paquerette. She couldn't have fresh food for now, but this was close enough.
Sandrine put a few pieces of pasta in her mouth and smiled happily. She could taste the basil and the olive oil caress her tastebuds, with the garlic and parmesan leaving a satisfying aftertaste even after all the pasta had disappeared.
She almost felt like she was back to civilization.
After eating and making sure the colorless gang had also eaten, she did a few medical checks thanks to her tamer job. Gribouille was alright, he was growing very fast and had lost all his baby teeth, now there were new ones piercing his gums and making him uncomfortable. He needed something to bite in order to offer some relief, his worm plushy wouldn't do much.
Sandrine took a few pieces of rope, aligned them next to each other, and tied them at the end on both sides, creating a simple toy. Thankfully, the little guy loved it.
She then turned to Paquerette. The new horseshoes had done their job, the mare no longer had swollen joints, and her feet no longer felt sore and warm. This had really been a great idea to take care of her hooves.
Nothing was wrong and everything was great ! Sandrine looked at the time and, seeing that she had some time left before sleeping, spent it brushing Paquerette's coat, untying the braids in her mane, combing it, and tying new ones.
Another brushing session with Gribouille and the family finally fell asleep.
New day, nothing different, just the usual morning routine. At 6am, Sandrine was on top of Paquerette with Gribouille in her arms, ready to see what the game would bring them.
[Players who didn't reach the required mileage will disappear]
[6,759 players enter the 8th day]
[Congratulations on entering the 8th day]
[The obstacle course event has concluded ! Rankings will be determined based on the mileage covered]
[Rankings :
1st : 84jojo84 - 196km
2nd : AlphaWolf - 106km
3rd : Jackalope65 - 97km
4th : AnaïsDu33 - 96km
5th : BigBelly123 - 82km
6th : Destructor - 82km
7th : RollingRolling - 76km
8th : ILoveSocks - 74km
9th : Gargantua - 73km
10th : Croissaaant - 71km
[...]]
[You have ranked 1st in the obstacle course event, congratulations ! Rewards have been sent to your inbox]
[First mileage event completed, opening the mileage rankings]
[Required mileage for today : 90km]
[Time left for the newbie protection period : 7 days]
Sandrine was actually first in the event ? This was incredible ! She wanted to open the rewards right away, praying that she would find something useful for her survival, but she managed to stop herself. The day was made to go forward on the infinite road, trying to gain as much as possible. She couldn't get distracted.
There was no event today, but Sandrine still kept her guard up, letting Paquerette do the navigating while she looked at the game screen. A new tab just appeared, the rankings.
This was the overall rankings for an entire season, and at the end of each season, the players would get rewards based on their rankings. Those rewards were guaranteed to be incredible. After all, it wasn't based on a single event, but on an entire season ! As of now, the rankings were representative of the newbie period, and would be rounded up in a week when the first season would start.
Those rankings were very revealing. In the top 10, she could find quite a few familiar faces. First of all, AlphaWolf was on it. 8th place, not exactly great, but still enough to be impressive. Sandrine remembered that the guy had a big truck that consumed a lot of fuel. However, most of the fuel Sandrine found in chests was going to him, so he had everything needed to drive everyday. It was just a bit surprising that he could cover so much distance everyday, she wouldn't have thought that he was the type to drive a lot, he seemed to prefer hunting and curing meat. Then again, to produce meat he needed a lot of animals, and he could only find them in chests. It made sense somewhat that he would try to drive as much as possible to find a lot of chests.
Other familiar faces were the top 2 in the offroad event. Jackalope65 and AnaïsDu33 were first and second. If Sandrine and AlphaWolf weren't here, they probably would also have ranked 1st and 2nd in the obstacle course event. But if they didn't have vehicles useful to push the ramble out of the road, this was a predictable outcome. Sandrine used Paquerette to jump above the obstacles and AlphaWolf, with his personality, probably just drove forward with his big truck and only cleared by hand what he couldn't drive through.
Those guys seemed like big shots, always following each other and fighting for first place. Jackalope65 seemed to have an advantage for now, but who could tell if this would last ?
Most of the others that had made the top 10 in both events were also on the rankings for now, with few unfamiliar faces. But Sandrine just took a casual look and didn't pay much attention. Now that the players knew that there was a mileage ranking, they would push themselves and rush forward, trying to make it into the rankings to earn more rewards. The current top 10 was guaranteed to change.
The only ones Sandrine was sure would remain were Jackalope65 and AnaïsDu33.
As for Sandrine ? Well, she wasn't in the top 10. Not even in the top 100. But this wasn't surprising. A car could do 100km in an hour, but Sandrine needed an entire day. Well, it had been the case at first, now Paquerette had leveled up and had new horseshoes, but the result was the same : She couldn't beat cars.
Anyway, after exploring the rankings, she focused back on the road and on fighting the dangers coming out of the chests. Maybe it was because she was growing stronger, but she felt that the animals appearing were getting more troublesome. She rarely spawned rats and rabbits anymore, she saw a lot more jackals, bobcats, dogs, venomous snakes, and even an extremely quick ferret that almost got her with its terrifying speed.
It seemed like the game was getting serious.
As the day was progressing normally, everything changed at noon.
[Sudden event : Popularity contest !]
[Post a picture of your meal]
[Every player can vote for their favorite]
[Rankings announced at 2pm]
At that moment, Sandrine had dismounted and was preparing Paquerette's feed. When she saw the message, she gritted her teeth.
This was bad. Horrifyingly bad.
Don't take Sandrine's situation for granted, she lives in comfort because 90% of things she finds in chests are useless for her and she trades away for things she needs. Also, she relies on her pets to perform well in events and gain rewards, but this doesn't mean that all the players have the same level of comfort.
Far from it.
There is still a huge famine. As the game progresses, dangers become more terrifying, more and more people get injured, and without doctors, medication, or healing items, being injured can be a death sentence. When they are injured, in order to protect their lives, players don't participate in events or open their chests. That's already a huge portion of them, a week into the game. Then, there are those who still persevere, but don't find food in their chests because their luck makes them find something else, just like AlphaWolf. If the guy didn't know how to butcher meat and hunt, he would be starving right now.
The last people were those who actually found food, like Sandrine. But how would those few be enough to feed the entire server ? And also, would they be willing ? Of course not. Seeing that there was a famine and afraid of starving themselves, they kept most of it to themselves, stockpiling as much as they could. A very small amount of food was traded, and even a little piece went for sky high prices. If you were a player that couldn't open chests or if you had bad luck and only found useless things, you couldn't afford it. To be honest, at this point in the game, most of the deaths on the server were because of starvation.
Thankfully, Sandrine was still trading a lot of things for bread, since she was tired of it and didn't need that much. Also, all the bread she found everyday would one day go bad, it served no purpose to keep it. But she was only one person. She could only trade so much. Especially since right now she was in a slump, had everything she needed and didn't have a vehicle to upgrade, her needs were very small and she didn't trade a lot. But at least when she did, she prevented someone from dying of hunger.
But what was it right now ? A popularity contest based on meal pictures ? This was stirring the pot on purpose !
First, have a quick race event, make the top 10 gain a lot of rewards including a lot of food, then create this popularity event, make them take pictures of their food and post them in front of all the starving ones… This was just rendering people mad, making them go crazy, nurturing resentment for the top players.
If the connected road appeared… If players had the capacity to actually meet…
If someone identified the top 10, posted pictures of their faces on the server chat, and told everyone that those people had ample food, then everytime the connected roads appeared, those people would be targeted.
The game was directly encouraging players to fight, kill, and plunder. This couldn't be a coincidence.
"Fuck, this is crazy !"
She was already seeing people innocently post their meals. Most were simple, a piece of bread, an open can not even heated up, eating flour directly from the pack, eating a jar of pickles with nothing else to go with… But some had a more lavish meal. A sandwich made of an open bread loaf with pickles and pâté inside. A plate of heated cassoulet from a can. Barbecued meat in an open bread loaf with salad cheese to make a rudimentary burger. Those were not overly luxurious meals, but Sandrine could already feel the malice of jealous people in the chat.
And then, the big shots started to appear. At this point, the meals were no different from before the death game, including entry, main course, dessert, some from cans or jars, some looking like they made them themselves.
There was an outrage in the chat. Why could they eat like kings, stuffing themselves with several dishes, when only one of those could last them for two days ? This wasn't fair, wasn't fair at all !
Sandrine observed all of this, with shivers running down her spine. She didn't believe that the top players didn't get what was going on. So, why would they still participate ? Wasn't it dangerous to be targeted ?
Thinking about it for a bit, Sandrine understood. They probably either were confident in their strength and didn't believe that anyone could hurt them, or they were so low key and inconspicuous that they believed even if people saw them, they wouldn't believe they were a big shot and they wouldn't be targeted.
Sandrine was part of this category too. Who would think that a girl on a horse, without even the protection of a vehicle's metal shell, could be a big shot ? Nobody would think this. Well, she would still be targeted by hungry players since a horse was meat, so it didn't really matter what she was doing now.
Thinking it through, there was no need to stop herself from participating in this event. People would get jealous of 84jojo84, but good luck finding him ! And if she ranked high, she might get more rewards, which was great !
Sandrine immediately started a fire and made water boil. Then she put pasta in the water to cook them, while she took out a can of coq au vin. This meal looked more luxurious than others since the sauce was made out of red wine and, adding to the rooster meat, there were also a few vegetables. She opened the can and heated it up over the fire. Then she took out the beautiful plates and dishes she had salvaged during the second day of the offroad event. She chose a big bowl, and filled it with a few things from her jars. Sun dried tomatoes, pickles, salad cheese, she also opened a can of tuna and put a bit of it inside as well as some corn, and pieces of ham from AlphaWolf.
Once the pasta was cooked, she put most of it on a delicate plate, with the coq au vin on the side, making sure the sauce covered part of the pasta in an aesthetic way. Then she ran the rest of the pasta through cold water to cool them down and put them in the big bowl, creating a fresh pasta salad. To finish, she took out a small bowl and opened a can of peaches in syrup, taking out the most beautiful half peaches and covering them generously in syrup.
Her meal was ready, but she still had to present it well to rank high.
She searched through the trade tab and used bread to trade for a table. It was just a foldable one, not looking great, but she could cover it with a piece of fabric to make a tablecloth. She put the dishes on it, arranging them beautifully, taking out her best cutlery, and slicing a few pieces of bread on the side.
After making sure everything looked good, she finally searched for the best angle and took a picture. She looked at it for a long time, searching for any trace of her pets, or seeing if it could reveal her identity. But thankfully nothing was here, not even a hair on the tablecloth.
Sighing in relief, Sandrine posted the picture and tried her best to ignore the insults in the chat. She had done everything she could.
The things left were to eat peacefully and wait for the results.
Now that she had a table, it would be strange not to use it. She traded more bread for a foldable chair and started to eat. Having a nice salad with vegetables felt so good. It would be even better with a bit of balsamic vinegar mixed with olive oil and a bit of wholegrain mustard to make a vinaigrette sauce, but Sandrine wasn't picky.
Well, she wasn't picky, but eating a salad followed by a warm flavorful meal and a light dessert felt incredibly comfortable. It felt as if she was treating herself right. She wasn't always careful when preparing her meals, going with what she wanted rather than what she needed, and she hadn't paid attention to the nutritional value or the balance. She hadn't eaten much vegetables, that was a fact. Thankfully she had a high constitution, or she would have had problems.
With such a high stat, to be honest, she could eat rubber and still fare well. But compared to just eating out of necessity, eating out of pleasure was a different experience.
"Maybe I should try to have full meals like this everyday ?"
It would help boost her mood as well as her body.
"Well, only in the evenings. I can't take the time to cook during the day, daytime is too important during the game."
After deciding on it, she quickly finished her meal, made sure the colorless gang was also ready, then cleaned up and jumped back on Paquerette.
They had already gone back to searching for chests when the rankings announcement came.
[Rankings :
1st : BigBelly123 - 2112 votes
2nd : AnaïsDu33 - 1632 votes
3rd : 84jojo84 - 1239 votes
4th : AlphaWolf- 543
5th : Jackalope65 - 314
[...]]
BigBelly123 felt like a big foodie, not only because of his name, but also because of the massive quantity of food he took out for a single meal. Also, most of it seemed to have been made by hand. A bit surprising considering it was only the first week of the death game, someone was already comfortable enough to cook.
AnaïsDu33 seemed to have the same strategy as Sandrine, creating a full course meal and arranging it delicately with good plating. It was just that this player also had a drink while Sandrine didn't.
AlphaWolf did get a lot of votes but it was mostly as a joke, because that cute guy created a whole meal made of meat, completely absurd.
The last one in the top 5 was Jackalope65. His meal was good but he had absolutely no sense of aesthetics, his picture was blurry and the plating a mess. Otherwise, considering what was in the meal, he could have made the top 3 easily.
The rest were really close in votes, nothing remarkable.
Sandrine finished studying the rankings, trying to have a clearer idea of who the big shots of this server were. After forming her own conclusions, she closed the tab and continued her day.