Thinking about that last one brought a small grin to my face. One of the less successful VR games was shut down just a year after its launch because its skills were too realistic, and the skills it taught included criminal ones like hacking. After the game was shut down, I actually tested what I had learned, not really thinking that it would help me at all. I was a bit paranoid, to be honest, because what I hacked was the police database, to set up a link that would warn me if they listed me as a suspect in an ongoing investigation. A few weeks later, I realized how dumb that was, and went back in to remove it. Thankfully, the cops never came busting down my door. Of course, I wasn’t really sure if hacking would work the same here, since a lot of the more advanced technology is infused with magic. Maybe advanced hacking would include magical hacks?
Back to the present, I decided to test my luck and head out of town, stopping by the quest board and picking up a horned rabbit extermination quest. Unlike the ones offering directions, the actual quests had instructions to remove the quest leaf when you accepted it.
Quest Accepted!
Culling the Herd
Rank ☆ Extermination
The local horned rabbit population has started growing out of control. Hunt down at least 10 Horned Rabbits to complete this quest.
Time Limit: None
Rewards: The rabbit corpses may be sold to the town guard for a reward. Reward depends on quality and amount of rabbits.
Failure: None
I noticed the star on the quest, just like the ones that appeared for spells. However, this was an empty star, so maybe it only counted as half value? If that was the case, then this should be a very easy quest to finish.
On my way out of town, I saw other players heading in the same direction. A few of them were also holding leafs like mine, which I guessed meant that the quest was reposted for others to take. Looking through the few players, I made my way over to Jacobs. “Hey, you on the rabbit extermination?”
He looked over to me and nodded. “Yeah, and I need to find a few smaller trees. Going to try to get carpentry. Take it you’re on the same mission.”
I chuckled, nodding my head back to him. “Pretty much, but I’m looking for herbs instead of trees. I’m grabbing alchemy.”
“Feel like teaming up for a bit, then?”
Jacobs has invited you to join a party!
Accept? Y/N
I smiled, and accepted his invitation. Looking at the party window, I saw that he was already level three, which irked me a little. Likely he went out and hunted a bit before grabbing a quest. “So, since it looks like you know your way around better, any idea where the horned rabbits hang out?”
“Yeah, they usually wander around in small groups a bit to the west of town. I came across a few of them earlier when I was practicing a new spell, but I didn’t know I could have turned over their corpses for a reward. Was a bit disappointed when they didn’t drop any loot.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Remember, this is supposed to be ‘completely realistic’, so it’s not like a little bunny is going to swallow a pair of boots to hand out to whoever kills it.”
He smiled wryly at the comment, but nonetheless nodded his head. It wasn’t long before we were out of the city. “So, what kinds of spells do you have? I saw you walked off with the elemental class earlier.”
“Yeah, so far it’s just a Wind Bullet, Gust, and a hold spell. I’d say I could shoot them with my bow but… I can barely hit a target when it’s not moving, and rabbits are known to be fast. You?”
“I’ve got a repulsion spell, and a slow with damage over time.”
I tilted my head at the description. “Gravity crush?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“Couldn’t you use that spell to do weight training? Well, once you have the mana to keep it active, anyways.” I idly thought, and heard a chuckle from next to me.
“Maybe if I was aiming to be a muscular mage. I’d rather work on combat spells for now.”
After saying that, we heard a ruffling of leaves and stopped. Off in the distance, were cute little fluffy bunnies, with a long horn on their heads that was half the size of their body. In this particular group there seemed to be four of them, so we looked to each other and nodded. Neither of us were new to games, so it wasn’t that hard to know a basic plan. I’d fire my hold spell while he launched his damage over time, and he’d keep that up while I fired my attack spells.
And, for the most part, that’s actually how it went down. I felt silly thinking about the chant I had recited over and over in the tutorial, and this time merely focused on the feeling of mana I had while casting the spell. Once I had the mana ready, I shot it down into the ground, and focused on the four fluffy sacrifices. My mana sought out nearby roots and launched them from the ground, making the rabbits try to flee.
At the same time, Jacobs was focusing his own spell, and the rabbits suddenly fell to the ground, finding it hard to stand properly. My roots weren’t as badly affected, and managed to securely wrap around three of the four rabbits. The fourth managed to escape the area of his spell before it could be caught, and vanished into a bush. Still, three out of four isn’t bad right? Now that they were held, and apparently unable to break free, I fired a single Wind Bullet at each of them, which seemed to do the trick. There was a sickening crunch from the combination of pressure from the two spells before each rabbit was dead. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the last rabbit before it charged out of the bushes, its eyes glowing red. Before I could even react, it had speared my leg with its horn. The same leg that the rat had gone for in the tutorial. The same SPOT on the leg. What is it with these monsters?!
Leg Vs. Rabbit
-20 HP
Biting back the pain, I swung my dagger down at the rabbit which was thankfully stuck trying to pull itself out of my leg. Stop twitching! God, that hurts! I was able to feel every tiny movement of its horn as my dagger seemed to fall down unnaturally slow. Why does pain always make things seem to take longer? After what felt like an agonizing minute, the dagger finally finished its descent, completely severing the rabbit’s head from its neck. “God, oww, fuck that hurts.”
Jacobs, just now becoming aware of what had happened over here, looks down and goes wide eyed at the rabbit head now stuck to my leg. “Fuck, they can be vicious. Remind me to practice that repulsion spell me…”
“Yes, yes, later. Can you help me get the fucking horn out of my leg first?!” I almost growled out. In my opinion, I was handling this fairly well. I was stabbed through the leg, with the full sensation of pain, and not screaming bloody murder. What did I get myself into? Even deaths in other games had never hurt this much!
After pulling out the rabbit’s horn, I paled because another window also appeared.
There is a hole in your leg.
-5 Bleed
That hole doesn’t look too good..
-5 Bleed
Hey numbskull, you’re bleeding!
-5 Bleed
I was at a loss for what to do, neither of us had any healing spells. And this was taking away five health a second! Another eleven seconds, and I die just from bleeding out. Did that thing spear an artery or something?
That thing speared an artery or something.
-5 Bleed
Fuck you game! I did the only thing I could honestly think of, and cast my Nature’s Grasp spell again, this time on my own leg. It always works in movies, right? Cut off circulation to the injured area, and you won’t bleed out!
Thankfully, this seemed to work, because the bleeding messages stopped appearing and my natural health regeneration took over. Altogether, I had lost 40 points of health, which took four minutes of sitting on the ground to get back. I wasn’t just doing nothing though, because I was happy to receive another window when the bleeding had stopped.
I quickly opened up my character information to see what rewards I had received from leveling, before the game had a chance to find some excuse to rob me of it again. A new section had been created at the bottom telling me I had five points to spend. After debating on it for a few seconds, I dumped three points into my agility, and the last two into my wisdom, giving me…
Name
Falenel
Race
Half-Elf(Woodland)
Titles
N/A
Fame
0
Level 2
90.00%
Class
Novice
Health
90/90
Health Regen
0.15
Mana
180/180
Mana Regen
0.05
Strength
12
Wisdom
16
Agility
16
Intelligence
18
Dexterity
14
Charisma
9
Vitality
9
Luck
14
Points Remaining
0
Chapter 6: Fluffy Income
After waiting for my health to recover, I discovered something that had left me a bit speechless. Rather than the normal scenario where my wound would fully recover as my health rose, the wound didn’t fully heal after closing. Likewise, my health had stopped recovering at 87, meaning that I would probably need actual healing to recover the last bit of damage. It would probably also mean I could be more easily damaged if I aggravated the injury.
“Really need to find those herbs…” I groaned to myself, knowing that I couldn’t use any healing spells until I first learned how to brew the potion. Scanning around, I noticed some of the familiar red weed in small bundles growing nearby. A few of the stalks were damaged, likely from the rabbits eating them.
I used my dagger to cut off the root that was holding my leg, leaving the body of the root wrapped around it for now. If nothing else, it’d make me feel better knowing that I wouldn’t randomly start bleeding out. When I finally stood up, I let out a hiss of pain, being forced to acknowledge that the wound really hadn’t fully healed.
Walking over, I carefully retrieved the weeds, digging the roots out with my dagger. While I wasn’t notably skilled at herbalism, I had dabbled with it in other games enough to know how not to damage most plants.
New Skill Acquired!
Herbology – Beginner Level 1
Exp: 2%
This skill measures your knowledge regarding the various plants throughout the universe, and their possible effects.
New Sub-Skill Acquired!
Gathering – Beginner Level 5
Exp: 20%
This is the basic skill that allows you to gather various ingredients from nature.
Current applicable skills: Herbology
Two skills, huh? Guess Herbology must be because I know that blood weed was used in healing potions. Still, 2%? Why do I feel like it’s just teasing me… I shook my head and dismissed the windows while gathering the rest of the blood weed in the area. Thankfully they all stacked in my inventory, so that wasn’t an issue. When I got back to Jacobs, he told me that I could have this set of rabbits, since I was the only one actually injured by them.
After thanking him, we again set out to find more rabbits. Our mana had recovered enough that we were confident taking on another group of the same size, but this time we knew to be more careful of them. The next group we came across was likewise another set of four, which were nibbling away at more blood weed. They really like that stuff, huh?
I entertained a brief notion of trying to tame one of the rabbits with the aid of the herb, but the pain in my leg seemed to demand vengeance against the fluffy race. This time, I decided to use my bow to try and shoot one, with my dagger kept strapped to my waist. Going through the motions, I shot out a Lesser Spiral Arrow. Thanks to my complete inability to hit what I aimed for, I purposely aimed for the spot between the four rabbits, hoping it would go off course enough to hit one of them.
Lucky Shot
Fatal Blow dealt, Wild Luck skill increased.
The body of the rabbit practically exploded as the arrow tore through it, making me wince at the loss of profit. It was bad enough that we couldn’t shove all the rabbit corpses into our inventory due to a lack of spaces available, but now I had utterly destroyed one of the bodies.
Jacobs didn’t miss this fact either, and let out a tired sigh while quickly activating his gravity spell. This time, he had aimed it a bit more carefully, so none of the remaining three rabbits had a chance to escape the field before it was set. Again, I finished the battle with a series of Wind Bullets. This time, we would really have to take a break for a while to recover mana, so we decided to head back to town after gathering the dead rabbits. The three in tact bodies were added to Jacobs’ catch, while the head of the fourth was mine, as it was all we could recover of it…
You have leveled up!
I quickly added another three points to agility, and two to wisdom. After we had the bodies, and I went around gathering more of the blood weed, we decided to head back to town for a little while. Staying out in the open while smelling of blood, without the means to defend ourselves was just asking for a wolf or something to attack.
Once we got back, we found a guard to sell our seven(and a third) corpses to. He didn’t seem at all bothered by the bodies of the fluffy race, and paid a price of ten copper for each full body, only managing to earn three for the lone head. With this, if I could manage to find some fireflower, I would already meet the requirements to learn alchemy!
“So… how long will you have to wait for your mana to get back?” Jacobs asked after we left the guard.
I looked at my mana, and saw that it was missing around seventy points. Doing a quick bit of math in my head I came to a conclusion. “Almost fifteen minutes. You?”
He smirked a bit, seemingly proud of himself. “Only ten for me. But I’m building a full caster build.”
I let out a sigh, not at all wanting to spend the next fifteen minutes just walking around. “I’m going to log out for a few minutes, check on the house.”
He nodded to me, and I looked through the menu for the logout button. It.. .wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Typically, the logout button was at the very bottom of the menu, and I almost panicked when I didn’t find it. It’d been ages since an accidental virtualization happened, but it was always that distant possibility. Then, I noticed that the option was just hidden a few slots higher, and grumbled under my breath.
Soon, my world turned black. I was no longer Falenel, the failure half-elf, but John Hulett, the NEET human. With a thought, the Seed opened up, allowing me to exit, and light to pour in. I pulled off the mask and stood up, giving a light stretch. There was still a pain in my leg from where the rabbit had speared me, but I chalked it up to phantom pains. After all, there wasn’t a visible wound over the spot, just a feeling of deep soreness.
The next thing I noticed was an ever-so-slight reduction in my gamer gut. If nothing else, that made me happy, since it meant that the Seed really was worth the money spent on it. Walking to the nearby door, I got a rather annoying jolt of static when I gripped the handle, but was otherwise unimpeded as I put on some clothes and went downstairs. I wasn’t very hungry, but decided it would be best to grab a small snack and a drink before heading back.
On my way back to my room, I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror, and for a moment I thought something was off. I just couldn’t quite place it, so I just attributed it to losing a bit of weight. I only needed to spend three minutes out of the game, thanks to the time differences, so I quickly made my way back to the Seed, and logged in once I had satisfied my stomach.
To my surprise, this satisfaction actually carried over to the game, and I didn’t feel the need to stuff my face with stale bread anymore. I was, however, lying sprawled out on the ground, with a rather annoyed looking Jacobs standing next to my body.
“Note for the future, logging out does not make the character disappear.” He explained simply, making me understand what had happened. I must have fallen to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. Then, to make sure I wasn’t robbed or killed, Jacobs had to stand watch over me while I was gone.
“Sorry about that. Good news is, it seems like eating in the real world will also help here.” He raised an eyebrow at that curiously. People who had been virtualized never really felt the need to eat unless it was simulated in the game they played, so that wasn’t likely too big of a deal for him.
By now, both of our mana pools had recovered, so we once again headed back out to hunt. Since we knew the general area where the rabbits lived, it didn’t take long for us to find them. We would hunt two groups between each break, gathering the blood weed and bodies after each fight. Jacobs and I both hit level 4 by the time we were ready for our second break, and he hit level 5 just after we got hunting again.
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