Chapter 7: A Hundred Logs a Lump

On Day 6, slime ooze hit a hundred logs a lump, exactly as it had the first time.

The chat had changed overnight.

Nobody was laughing at the gray stuff anymore.

A player: [Does ANYONE still have ooze? I'll trade my whole pile of logs]

Somebody had leaked that TinyTurnip heard me say a cold was coming, and the whole zone had done the math.

Nobody knew how I knew.

Everybody wanted to be the person who believed me first.

I stood on my patch with a hundred lumps stacked behind me and a market full of people begging.

I had not planned to be anyone's savior.

But there were too many players in the zone, and in my first life, three thousand of them had frozen on the first night.

I knew exactly how many, because the number had scrolled across the sky.

So I made a rule and posted it in public.

LaceyOrmond: [Ooze, one lump per player, a hundred logs each. No bulk orders. No resellers. If you're buying for more than one patch, I'll know.]

It was not the price I could have gotten, and I knew it.

I could have sold the whole pile to six rich players for ten times what I had in my pocket.

But a rich man who freezes in the end is still a dead man, and I wanted the zone to have more than one stove.

By noon I had sold forty-two lumps to forty-two strangers, and I kept fifty-eight for us.

[Trade complete. 4,200 logs received.]

I did not look at the number for long.

Then the private messages started.

BrettMaddox: [Two hundred logs for one lump.]

BrettMaddox: [Three hundred.]

BrettMaddox: [Lacey, don't be childish. I'll pay anything.]

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