Barry’s opened his eyes and let out a groan of discomfort. He had a jarring pain stabbing into his back, and he was instantly alert, searching for any signs of danger. Barry’s mind raced with anxious thoughts. Had he been attacked in his sleep? Had he been bitten by some alien insect? Seeing nothing, he reached one hand around his back tentatively, where he felt something sharp and hard. Fearing he had been stabbed he pulled the object out in one swift movement. Looking at the culprit he saw he was holding a large, snapped twig that he had clearly been sleeping on.
“Stupid bloody stick,” he grumbled to himself as he threw it to the side. “Damn angry rabbits have made me paranoid.”
He laid back down, wriggling to find a comfortable position before opening his stats screen. His health and mana were fully restored, and his stamina was three quarters full. Apart from the ache in his back and some subtle heaviness still in his limbs, he felt pretty good. He reached a hand up to his left shoulder and noticed the wound from the snarler had fully healed. Only a small pink scar remained as proof of his injuries. Satisfied, Barry continued to rest, pondering his new healing abilities and what he should do next.
It must have been late afternoon by now, and the sun was beginning to set. As it continued to lower in the sky to his left, Barry noticed an annoying speckled beam of light shining through the leaves and branches straight into his eyes. It seemed to be some sort of reflection of light that just happened to be aimed directly at him, like when someone’s watch catches the sun shining through a window and redirects it at your face just to be annoying. Irritated, he sat back up trying to trace the beam to its source. He squinted whilst looking up through the leaves until finally he saw what looked to be some sort of metallic box hidden within one of the taller branches of the tree.
“What is that?” Barry thought to himself, filled with intrigue.
Immediately he was up, climbing his way through the branches towards the strange metal box. Some of the branches were further spaced out than the others and at times he even had to loop his chain up around the branch above and use that to pull himself up. It took a lot of effort to lift his own body weight and he was regretting not putting a couple of points into strength to help make it easier. Regardless, he eventually made it all the way to the branch below the box and he looked at it more closely.
The box was silver in colour and had some engravings on its surface, similar to the ones that he had seen on the spire but to a lesser degree. It was around half a metre long and a foot or so wide and deep. It had two metal latches, one on either side of the front of the box but thankfully he didn’t see any padlocks or the like. As he got even closer, now within a foot of the object, he felt an odd desire well up from within that seemingly drew him towards it.
“I wonder if this is that treasure detection part of the perception stat that I’m feeling?” Barry thought to himself. “Or maybe I just like shiny things,” he smiled.
Before reaching up to grasp it, he decided to use his inspection skill.
Inspection:
Silver loot box (uncommon): A loot box containing useful or valuable items of uncommon rarity.
Barry’s smile now spread into a wide toothy grin as he plucked the surprisingly light box from the branch above. Bringing it down to his level he immediately placed his hands on the latches of the box and before he could open it a notification suddenly appeared in his mind.
As one of the first one hundred initiates to find a loot box you have been rewarded with a loot box upgrade.
Silver loot box (uncommon) upgraded to:
Gold loot box (rare)
Right in front of Barry’s eyes the box lit up with a golden hue before the engravings adorning it multiplied, becoming many times more intricate. Even the box itself changed colour to match the golden light emanating around it. Eventually, the golden hue dulled, and Barry could take in the box’s true beauty.
Inspection:
Gold loot box (rare): A loot box containing useful or valuable items of rare rarity.
Barry’s cheek muscles were beginning to hurt from all the grinning and grimacing he had done in the past few hours. Unable to resist the urge any longer he popped the latches as the golden lid swung open. Inside the box it looked like there was a pair of fingerless gloves of some sort. They were a deep, dark green colour, similar in shade to that of the leaves surrounding him. The gloves appeared to be made of some unknown, supreme leather. Across the knuckle side of the gloves were carefully inscribed symbols. He once again used his inspection skill to examine the item further.
Inspection:
Gloves of the fortress: Gloves once worn by the fortress god, Walus. They may be old and tattered but are still useful. These gloves grant 5 additional points to the vitality stat when worn.
Barry’s jaw dropped when he saw the description. These gloves had just increased his total vitality by fifty percent. They provided as many stat points to vitality as he would get from over two levels of point distribution. Without any further hesitation he slipped the gloves on and found they seemed to adjust automatically to his hand size. They felt smooth and comfortable, and Barry also thought they made him look kind of badass. Although when you combined the fingerless leather gloves, with the open backed, blood-spattered hospital gown, he probably looked more like a murderous mental health patient.
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Barry opened his status screen and scanned down to the soul stats section to confirm the gloves had indeed boosted his vitality numbers.
Soul stats:
Physical stats:
Vitality: 10 + 5 = 15
With that Barry closed his status screen, extremely satisfied with himself. As he stood up, high above the ground, he found something else catch his attention. But this time it wasn’t a hidden treasure or a pack of vicious beasts, it was in fact his hunger. His stomach growled with desire as Barry realised he hadn’t eaten anything in hours. In fact, he hadn’t eaten anything since entering this strange new world. He longed to eat something, actually eat something, not have it pumped into his belly through some tube. But he didn’t have any idea what was safe to eat, or how to cook, or even how to make a fire. Consuming the snarlers raw was one option, but he feared it would just make him sick. He needed something else to fill the void in his stomach.
Barry looked toward the setting sun as more of it disappeared behind the tree line. The orange sky was gradually darkening, and the growing shadows were stretching out further around him. There must have only been another thirty minutes or so remaining before all light disappeared. Something in Barry’s mind triggered as he reflected on his panicked run through the shrubbery. He was sure he’d seen some specks of blue and black within the green bushes.
“Berries!” he exclaimed as he realised what those dots of colour were, and he was filled with the hope that he might still be able to fill his belly before the night arrived.
Straight away, Barry began his descent through the tree and soon his feet landed back on solid ground. Immediately, he retracted his steps as best as he could recall, and he soon found himself within the winding trail between the shrubs. Sure enough, lodged between the leaves of some of the bushes were a collection of black and blue berries. Given there was no one else around, Barry took off his gown, the only piece of clothing he had on him, and used it as a makeshift sack where he stored the berries. He felt equal parts uncomfortable and empowered as he plucked off the plump berries one by one, stark naked. As soon as he had a full gowns worth of berries he tied it up to his chain and slung it over his shoulder like a knapsack. He then began to make his way back to his branch home, past the fluffy massacre, just as the sun finally faded.
Barry tipped out the berries onto the large branch he sat on and salivated as he looked down at his impressive stash. Thankfully, he had the common sense not to simply gorge himself immediately. He was in a new world after all, and there was a reasonable chance these juicy fruits were poisonous. The only thing more embarrassing and shameful then dying to a bunch of rabbits would be to die from eating poisonous berries.
“Now, how exactly do I work out if they are safe to eat,” Barry thought as he studied the shape and feel of the berries.
Not being able to come up with any better idea, Barry decided to poke his tongue out and take a small taste of one of the blue berries. Afterwards, he patiently waited thirty minutes, searching for any sign of tingling, numbness, or sickness to develop. After thirty minutes of nothing he allowed himself to eat one of the blue berries before waiting another thirty minutes just to be sure that he felt fine. Once this plan went off without issue, he then repeated the process with the black berries.
Barry passed the time in between tests by summoning his illusionary chain and getting more familiar with the use of his solitary item skill, item duplication. He tried summoning it for only brief moments and quickly dispelling it to conserve mana. He played around with summoning it mid swing of his fist, figuring it might be a useful trick for confusing or distracting future opponents. When his mana did run out, he simply swapped to training with his aura chain, trying to improve his accuracy and ability to hook objects rather than just bash them. Thankfully, although it was now well and truly night time, the moons in the sky, three in total, provided some light, and it didn’t take long for Barry’s eyes to adjust.
During one of his illusion chain training sessions whilst still waiting the final thirty minutes after consuming his tester black berry, Barry was pleasantly interrupted by a message in his mind.
Soul magic: has reached level 2.
“All that training is paying off,” thought Barry as he gleefully pondered where to invest his free stat points.
An argument could be made for nearly any of the stats, which was the tricky thing. The only stat Barry ruled out for sure was vitality, as he already had plenty with the addition of his gloves. He knew at some point he should start investing in something like strength to increase his damage output, but for now he felt his chain was doing enough damage, especially as his accuracy was improving through training alone. The most annoying thing about his training was how quickly his mana was running out. He wasn’t exactly sure what higher levels of magic would mean for his illusion abilities, but he definitely wanted to find out, and his current scarce mana stores were simply insufficient to allow maximal progress. So, with that, he proceeded to open his stat screen and place two points into mana, bringing it up to level four.
Once again, the incessant grumbling of Barry’s stomach pulled him out of his smug daydreaming and he finally gave in and started to devour the berries, figuring if he was going to get sick it would have happened by now. As he ate, he found that it wasn’t just his hunger that was subsiding, but also a bit of his fatigue. He quickly looked at his stat screen once more and realised a little bit of his stamina and mana had recovered. Confused, he decided to inspect the berries properly.
Inspection:
Blue mana berries: Edible berries commonly found on a variety of small shrubs. They restore a small amount of mana to a cap when consumed in large quantities. Can be used in crafting to create mana potions.
Barry smacked himself in the face when he read the description.
“Edible berries,” he muttered to himself, “You idiot, why didn’t you just use your inspection skill like a normal person.”
Inspection:
Black stamina berries: Edible berries commonly found on a variety of small shrubs. They restore a small amount of stamina to a cap when consumed in large quantities. Can be used in crafting to create stamina potions.
Slapping himself again Barry got back to eating the berries until his hunger abated.
“It’s not so bad I guess, I probably wouldn’t have done all that soul magic training and might not have got the level if I wasn’t such a moron,” he thought.
He found that although the berries were tasty, their effect on restoring mana or stamina was relatively insignificant, and not something he would be able to depend on in a pinch. A full meal worth of them had only restored about ten percent of his mana and five percent of his stamina. But if this world was truly like a video game, and he could work out how to make them into potions or something like that, then it was likely their effectiveness would skyrocket. For now, however, satiating his hunger would be enough.
Barry spent the next hour or so continuing his training. He didn’t progress any further in levels, but he did gain a good understanding of his mana usage. Now that his mana level had reached four, he found he could maintain the illusion chain for around one minute non-stop. If he intermittently summoned and dispelled the chain, he could stretch that out to around two minutes. He also practised swinging his aura chain with his non-dominant left hand to add a level unpredictability to his offensive strikes. He figured he could regularly swap hands with his real chain to confuse opponents.
Just as Barry was about to turn in for the night his attention was suddenly drawn to the sound of something moving nearby. Unlike the relatively subtle sounds of the leaping snarlers bounding through the undergrowth from earlier, this noise was louder and far more concerning. Heavy footsteps and trampled shrubs could be heard from below as something very big was making its way towards his tree. This was followed by some deep sniffing and snorting and finally the chilling sound of bones crunching as some beast below feasted on the dead snarlers. Barry peered over the edge of the branch, careful not to make any noise for fear of drawing the creatures attention. His heart skipped a beat as he was able to make out the outline of a giant, dark, rotund figure. But what really caught his attention were the long, glistening white fangs that reflected the moonlight.
Inspection:
Beast: Hulking ratbear
Level: 4
Stat: Vitality
Inspecting the beast Barry allowed his attention to be momentarily distracted by the words in his mind. When he refocused his eyes, he looked down at the so called hulking ratbear as it stared straight back at him. Frozen with fear, Barry refused to move, refused to breathe.
“Maybe it hasn’t really seen me,” he optimistically allowed himself to think.
As if it could read his thoughts the ratbear replied with a snarl in his direction.
“Well maybe it can’t climb,” he thought as sweat began to drip down his forehead.
In another figurative fuck you in reply the ratbear unsheathed it’s claws and began climbing upwards as Barry cursed at himself.