I stopped and turned slowly. Hovering above and a bit to the side of the wooden treasure chest was a faerie. She had pale blue skin and a wild mane of blonde ringlets streaked with reds and oranges. Her outfit wasn’t much, though; she wore a skin-tight leotard of some clingy, misty silver fabric that covered modest curves but did next to nothing to conceal. I was forcibly reminded that ECHO wasn’t a game intended for children or even young teens.
Keeping my eyes slightly averted from her inadequately-clothed form, I glanced down at the treasure chest I had ransacked when selecting my starting equipment. “Um, sorry, but I already looked through that and took the weapons I felt I needed and could carry. Also, who are you?”
She pouted when I didn’t return to the platform. “No, not those, these!” She pointed and did an aerial dive. Following the path of her flight, I saw a small silvery chest tucked behind the larger wooden one. “Hey, over here! Don’t forget these!”
Sighing, I climbed the few steps back up to the platform and approached, “Alright, alright. Thank you. I didn’t see it before. Also, you didn’t answer my question: who are you?”
She pirouetted and followed that with some mid-air maneuvers that looked like a cross between a figure skating performance and a rhythmic gymnastics routine, mixing dance and flight in a way impressive enough that I forgot that I was trying to avoid looking at her too closely. “Sunrise Sparkle,” she proclaimed, as if a name, “and I’m the Tutorial Experience And Starting Expert assigned to you. Sorry for the delay, but the last guy just couldn’t make a decision on which area to transition to after completing the tutorial.”
While she was speaking, I knelt and opened the little silver chest. Really, if they had wanted it to be noticed, it should have been put somewhere other than immediately behind the bigger wooden chest. Off to the side somewhere, a pace or two away, perhaps. But it contained a small leather bag and shiny bit of brass shaped like a stylized fist. “An AI assistant? But I have one….”
She shook her head as I stood up with the extra loot. “No, no,” she said dismissively. “Your assistant in the home instance is a generalist. I, however, am a specialist. Your assistant in the home instance will be with you for your entire journey throughout the world of Elemental Chrysanthemum Homeland Online, but I’m only here to shepherd you through the tutorial. Then I’ll go help some other new Traveller.”
The little bag was heavier than it looked, for it contained a large number of silver coins. When added to my inventory, the currency counter jumped from 5 to 105, and the bag gave me another four inventory spots. This time, I noticed something I hadn’t with the last bag. A little pink pip lit up at the top of the inventory border—for a total of two lit and three unlit. Apparently, there was a limit to how many bags could expand the inventory storage, so I might have to look for larger bags before too long. The bit of brass turned out to be an accessory, so it and the coins were probably the remainder of what I had been awarded for being character number fifty thousand.
Heroine’s Basic Brass Brooch of Defense: [Accessory/Other] +3 Defense
I added it to my ensemble, using it to help reinforce the little clasp holding the top of my dress closed, and the accessory showed in my status page as equipped in the “Other 1” location.
“Thank you, Specialist Sparkle. I would have missed these. And while three defense doesn’t seem like a lot, a whole hundred silver coins sure does. I think I have everything I need from here, now? What should I do next?”
What I thought that I should do next was find a monster to kill, preferably something easy so I could learn how weapons work in the game, but the faerie suggested something better.
“Yep! You can leave the platform now and go northwest a hundred paces or so. Well, you’re short. A hundred and fifty paces or so. You’ll find a practice range and training ground. You should familiarize yourself with how your weapons work before you start doing anything serious!”
The little blue faerie was smaller than even my hivatar, so how does she get away with calling me short? But I didn’t let her know my exasperation. After all, it wasn’t her fault that I was a short little Beastkin girl. I nodded my thanks and stepped back off the platform, and then realized a minor difficulty. I didn’t know which was northwest was. The sun was in the sky, but was it morning or afternoon in the game? And the UI wasn’t much of a help, either, since there was no little compass rose pointing north nor quest tracker arrows pointing me in the direction I needed to go. “Ummm, which way is northwest from here?”
Sunrise Sparkle laughed, pointed, and flitted off on angle to the right. I followed, and as I did so, I noticed the minimap in the corner of my vision start updating, with the field of black starting to dissipate in one direction. If north is up on the map, then the direction I’m headed is northwest. With the sun behind me, either it was morning in the instance or the way the world was set up was much different than the real world. Either was possible, but I chose—for now—to believe the first.
The ground was a gently rising slope and the wind across the meadow was likewise gentle, not pulling my hair in all directions, but strong enough to sway the grasses and flowers, and to even occasionally flutter a few petals past me.
I stopped to pick a particularly pretty pink flower, with a dozen or so vaguely heart-shaped petals shading to white in the center. And with that I noticed something that had been hovering at the edges of my awareness since I first loaded into the tutorial. The flower had thickness—not just its petals, but also its stem and leaves—and indeed, so did the grass around it. They weren’t just textures loaded in and cycling. As I looked around, I couldn’t determine a repeating pattern, either. This wasn’t like a rendered game environment with texture maps and clipping problems, but rather it was as real, if not more so, than any mountain meadow of flowers I’ve seen in the past.
And the whole game world was supposed to be like this. Not flowers, obviously, but realistic to a degree that close examination couldn’t reveal the building blocks. It was far beyond the capabilities of any game I had ever seen or heard of, and the processing power necessary to create and animate just my character, with realistic cloth and hair movement, much less the power necessary to render this environment was mind-boggling. It would be very easy to forget that this was just a game, just virtual reality and not actual reality itself.
Then a brief gust of wind caused the hem of my dress to twist and writhe and caused my two little poofy ponytails to bounce and sway, and I was reminded just how different this virtual reality was from actual reality. The flower I had picked was pulled from my hand and carried off on the breeze, twirling and spinning in an aerobatic dance much like the little blue faerie’s moves.
Another minute or so of walking up the gentle slope, and my attention was directed back to the user interface and away from the flowers and the hint of trees in the distance. There was another little bouncing box in the bottom left, symbolizing an unviewed system message. Focusing on it, it expanded:
Do you wish to learn the skill Gathering (B/L)? [Learn as Primary. (2 open slots)] [Learn as Secondary. (2 open slots)] [Do not learn.]
Why was the system asking me that? Oh, picking the flower earlier, maybe? I guess I had been spending too much of my mental power on marvelling at the terrain that I hadn’t noticed it when the box popped up. Curious as to what the skill offered—I mean, I was able to pick the flower without the skill—I focused on the skill name, and up popped another pale seafoam box.
Gathering: Based on and raises Brilliance and Luck, the Gathering skill allows you to recognize certain gathering locations (plants, fungi, etc.) in the wild and aids in successfully collecting the resources in said locations. Gain access to an additional tier of resources every 10 skill levels. Some resources may require specialized tools. Resources collected via Gathering may be useful for other trade skills such as Weaving, Cooking, or Alchemy. Contrast with the Farming skill which allows growing and harvesting in domesticated locations such as fields and orchards.
Well, that sounded interesting, especially as it related to cooking, which was potentially a trade skill I might be interested in taking sometime down the road. Probably not as a primary skill, but as secondary skill slots opened up, that might be something fun to play around with. As such, I dismissed the explanatory window and confirmed learning Gathering as a secondary skill. I looked around, but nothing caught my eye as a potential gathering spot, and besides … I was supposed to be headed to a practice range to work on my weapon skills. After all, I’d need them to protect myself if I was attacked while hunting for stuff to gather.
Finally, a half-minute or so further northwest, the slope of the ground stopped rising. Indeed, it turned into an almost precipitous drop of close to twelve feet, and at the bottom of the slope was the practice grounds.
From my vantage point, admittedly not all that high, I could see a heptagonal clearing. A basic arena, perhaps, with the plants cleared back and the ground covered with gravel. At each of the seven corners was a rough, humanoid figure mounted on a pole. A closer examination showed the figures to made of cloth stuffed with straw—practice dummies. To the right of the arena was a target range with several red-and-white bullseye targets lined up about a hundred, a hundred fifty yards downrange, away from the arena. To the left of the arena was a rough fountain that bubbled up into a wooden basin and overflowed into a rivulet running to the stream just beyond.
Sadly, there was no path down the slope, not even a ladder or rough staircase, so I had to turn and carefully make my way down. Fortunately, there were handholds and footholds, and I made it down without incident. Granted, in most games, that would be a height that players could easily jump down without significant injury, maybe not even a hit to their health bar, but since this game was a virtual world, I was rather less inclined to put it to the test. Especially with “pain tolerance” being a thing.
At the very least, a fall would have been embarrassing, even if no one was around to see it besides the tutorial faerie. And speaking of embarrassing, I was going to have to get a different outfit. Such clambering around in a group would definitely be a problem for someone wearing a dress. Even if I considered the black bandeau and bikini bottom a swimsuit rather than underwear, it was still embarrassing. Shorts, at least, were called for.
The trials I had to face because I accidentally logged in with a female avatar instead of a male one. No guy would have to worry about upskirts while adventuring in the wilds.
Well … maybe that’s not entirely true. In fantasy worlds like this, mages and other spell-casters tended to wear robes, so shorts would probably still be useful for them, too.
ANYWAY, enough dwelling on things I cannot realistically change. I’ll just have to cope. And update my wardrobe. If I had known I was going to be playing as Madelyn Alexis, I could have given her a more practical and less “cute” outfit, but I could shop for one, maybe find one as loot, or possibly craft or have crafted one later. Of course, “practical” doesn’t mean it can’t also be cute. For now, though, it’s time to practice with my selected weapons so that I can eventually hunt monsters, learn what’s needed in the tutorial, make it to the full game world, and … go to bed.
Because like it or not, I was starting to get a bit tired. If that achievement message was accurate, I had spent over six hours in character creation (whether that counted the time before I could create a character, I don’t know), and I’d since spent a bit more time in the tutorial, looking through all the options that the luck of the draw had given me. It has probably been seven hours or so since I had first climbed into the FIVR pod in my room, making it around four in the morning—after what had already been a bit of a long day. By the time I finished everything in the tutorial, however long that would end up taking, I wouldn’t have the energy to keep going and start questing, socializing, crafting, or exploring in my starting settlement.
It was a little disappointing, but there was nothing I could do about it. Even rushing through the tutorial at this point wouldn’t get me to bed until long past the time I should have already been asleep. And it wasn’t like I was in a race with anyone to level up or find rare achievements. Besides, with a wry smile I had to admit that I had already earned some things that no one else could get.
When I reach the bottom of the little cliff, the tutorial faerie flew over to me again. “Took you long enough, slowpoke!” While it could have been rude, her tone was definitely teasing.
“Sorry, but you had an advantage by flying and knowing exactly where to go. But now that I’m here, I guess I start with the archery range?” I inclined my head to the right, one non-human ear twitching as I did so.
“Sure. Practice your shooty-shooty and your stabby-stabby. Hey, don’t forget to equip your weapon first, though! You can’t use it from your inventory!”
With a slight sigh, I pulled the bow from my inventory and wielded it, holding it in my right hand, a little below the middle. It was then shown on my status screen as my off-hand equipment. Equipping the arrows was a bit different. The quiver rested on my back, with a strap over my left shoulder and down to my right hip, but showed in the status screen as my main-hand equipment. I guess I would be holding the arrows with my main hand while pulling back and shooting. Wait a minute, I’m left-handed? I didn’t remember that being an option during character creation, but maybe I was paying too much attention to appearance to notice an option for that. And there was already enough odd about my body—even if it felt perfectly normal—that I hadn’t noticed when sending the message about the ring or with putting things into or out of inventory. But if I had missed that in the character creation, was there something else that I had overlooked as well?
As an experiment, I tried holding the bow with my left hand and miming drawing an arrow back with my right. It felt weird and uncomfortable. I switched back to a right-handed bow and left-handed arrow, and the draw felt much more natural. Well, what’s a minor difference like handedness when the body and outfit is so completely different?
Standing at the end of the practice range facing the targets, I knew there was no way I could hit them, not even if my Archery skill was much higher. The targets appeared terribly small at that range; moreover, the bow listed two distances: a maximum range of 40 meters and an effective range of 25 meters. Both of those were well beyond the half-way mark, so bow in hand, I started down the range toward the targets. Every thirty feet or so, the packed dirt of the ground was marked with a line of white stones.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
I stopped when I was at the fourth line back from the targets, which still seemed a goodly distance away. Dubious, I nocked an arrow, raised the bow, drew back, took a deep breath and halfway exhaled, aimed the arrow’s point dead on the center of the target, and released the string, letting the arrow fly. The arrow hit the ground maybe halfway to the target—not an auspicious beginning. I tried again, aiming higher, and got a little bit closer. But I still hit the ground somewhere between the first and second line from the target.
Apparently, I wasn’t yet good enough to hit anything at maximum range, or to even get the arrow to fly the full maximum distance. So … I walked further downrange, picking up my two errant arrows, and stopping where the second had landed. From time to time when I was at college, I had played darts, mostly at the urging of friends who wanted someone to win against—even when I was sober and they were not. With darts, I was never really more than about eight to ten feet back from the target. While this archery target was larger than a dart board, I was still more than four times further back than I would have been for a dart board.
It still seemed a goodly distance away, but too much closer and I’d have to start wondering about the usefulness of a ranged weapon that I couldn’t use at any real range. I nocked another arrow and started to draw back, focusing on the target and aiming the arrow’s point straight at the middle. Another deep breath, another half-exhalation, another rechecking the aim, and … another miss.
This time I hit the target, sorta. The red-and-white bullseye targets were mounted on wooden tripods like an easel, and I had hit—nicked, really—the front left leg just a little bit above the ground. In other words, several feet low and a foot or so to the left of where I had been aiming. If I had been shooting at a bandit, he might have lost the end of a shoelace.
“Hey!” The tiny faerie’s voice sounded loudly in my ear as she landed gracefully on my right shoulder. “You need to aim higher and consider the wind. Why don’t you try using the skill guides to help you? Here, let me turn them on for you!”
I jumped slightly at her unexpected arrival, and then hid my annoyance when she gestured and the icon bar of my user interface expanded. The settings menu opened and automatically switched to a new tab where an option suddenly toggled on.
☑ Skill Guides: Enable faint overlays to assist in use of skills [exclusions…]. Skill experience gain is slightly reduced for skills that are guided.
“You know, you could have told me about that before,” I admonished.
But she shook her head, “Nope! It’s policy: ‘Let Travellers try three times before interfering.’” She gestured, and the UI elements collapsed back down to the little triangle in the corner of my vision. “Hey! Now, look at your bow. You see? You’re holding it wrong. Grab it where the little glowy-glowy is, and give it another try. The skill guides should help you!”
I glanced at the bow in my right hand, and there was a faint, blue glow like the ghostly outline of a hand a little less than a full hand’s width lower than the positioning of my own hand. I adjusted my grip and drew another arrow, “Why is it policy to wait three times before helping?”
Still lightly standing on my right shoulder, even as I nocked and sighted an arrow, she gestured expansively and answered. “Because it is possible, if maybe unlikely, for new Travellers to already know how to use their skills.” Sensing my doubt, she continued, “Hey! Some people do hunt with bows instead of guns or participate in fencing or kendo competitions! So they might have a good idea how to use their skills here, right?”
“If they already have the ability, why take the skill?” I pulled back the arrow and aimed. This time, rather than aiming the point of the arrow at the target or aiming high on a guess, I looked for a ghostly outline. There wasn’t an aimpoint on the target, but rather there was a glow between the top two fingers on my right hand. I lined up that glow with the center of the target, and then remembering how the last arrow went left of where I had aimed, I scooched my aim just a bit rightward.
SWOOSH—the arrow leapt from the bow and slammed into the target. It was a little left and a little under the center mark, but it did hit basically where I was aiming. More importantly, it hit the target itself and didn’t fall short or fly by either side.
Sunrise Sparkle applauded, “Hey! You hit the target! Good job! And Travellers who already know how to use a weapon might still take the skill because the skill gives things as it levels up; it doesn’t just affect your attributes. For instance, there’s a slight damage correction based on the skill’s level, so arrows shot by someone with the Archery skill will tend to hurt more than those by someone without. The skill often also grants abilities as it levels up. When your Archery skill reaches level 5, you can choose between the Long Shot active ability or the Arrow Regeneration passive ability. Someone who doesn’t take the skill but just uses a bow based off earlier knowledge won’t get those.”
“Huh, I see. So that is for everything, not just weapons? If I wanted to cook, I’d need to take the Cooking skill?” While we were talking, I shot two more arrows to make sure I had the system down and to make sure that the first that hit wasn’t a fluke. The other two arrows hit the target near the first—a cluster, if not a tight cluster—so I was starting to feel a little more confident about the bow. Nevertheless, this was still well within the effective range, so next would be to try from further away now that I knew what I was supposed to do.
“Hey! Good job! And Cooking doesn’t grant extra damage, of course, but someone with the Cooking skill will be able to add extra effects, such as increased health regeneration, as their skill level increases.”
I backed up to the line behind me, putting me at about twenty yards distant from the target I had been shooting at, still within the effective range of the weapon but closer to the upper end of the range. This time, when I drew the arrow back and started to aim, the sighting glow was a little further down my right hand, about even with the middle of the middle finger. I took a deep breath, half-exhaled, checked my aim, and let loose my seventh arrow. It, too, hit the target—but only just barely. It was on the outermost ring, a fair bit to the left, and just a little bit low.
I put the bow back in my inventory and went to gather my arrows, rolling my shoulders and stretching my arms as I walked toward the target. Shooting was hard work! My arm was a bit sore from holding the bow out, and the muscles felt like they would start really complaining after another arrow or two. The skill may be based off Agility and Reflexes, but I could see that Endurance and Strength were probably also highly favored attributes for a dedicated archer. Letting my eyes focus on the flickering bars next to the character portrait in the upper left of my vision, I saw that my Stamina bar was about a third depleted, but rising now that I had stopped shooting.
Honestly, the bow was probably too large for me with the height I had now. The bow wasn’t that much taller than I, but I felt that I wasn’t quite able to draw it back as far as I should due to my size. And even the draw I did have on it was difficult; my Strength just wasn’t adequate, yet. I felt that I might need to go back and swap the longbow for the shortbow, but I wasn’t ready to make that decision yet. Perhaps as my Archery skill increased, my ability to use the longbow would advance as well.
As I was walking back from retrieving my arrows from the target, still slightly marveling that with the aid the skill guide I had indeed been able to hit the target despite my difficulties, I “heard” a soft ping out of the corner of my eye—a most unusual experience—and in that same corner of my sight, a small envelope-shaped icon was bouncing, not enough to be distracting in a moment of focus, but enough to get my attention now. It expanded, and proved to be a response about my bug report slash feedback.
[Message from GM Nazahai]
Hello, Madelyn Alexis!
Thank you for your feedback regarding the Ring of Limited Wishes item received as compensation for the delay you encountered in character creation. The ring is indeed a standard item approved to be given out in such and similar situations, though I did customize its appearance and activation for your benefit.
Regarding your queries, the potential for the ring’s charges being saved to be used at a later date were considered. The eventual consensus was to treat it as an investment by the player, forgoing immediate gratification for long-term reward. However, I forwarded your concerns to my colleagues for another review on the item. In the interim, your ring and any others that may be given out have been slightly tweaked pending such a review. The ring can, for now, only raise a class level or skill level to twenty, a milestone that is likely weeks in the future for anyone.
As for your third concern, the combat potential of the ring is also known and has been discussed. The consensus was that usefulness of the full heal and restoration as a downtime eliminator (and thus a time-saver that directly addresses the issue of lost time) outweighed the potential for the ring to negatively influence combat mechanics. And, in the long run, a player beating from one to three encounters too tough to solo at their current development is not significant. However, as a compromise, the activation for the ring was made comparable in time to keystone spells and abilities, so that its in-combat potential is somewhat mitigated. Finally, thank you for your suggestion about limiting the full heal and restoration to out-of-combat use only. At this time, however, we do not have any plans to significantly limit player actions based on combat status due to the inherent subjectivity on what exactly counts as combat, when exactly combat starts, and when exactly combat ends.
Thank you again for raising your concerns, but rest assured that you may use or save the charges of the Ring of Limited Wishes at your discretion. Welcome again to the world of Elemental Chrysanthemum Homeland Online, and may your time here be enjoyable and fulfilling.
GM Nazhai
(P.S. If you’re ever in the town of Kystari in Ma’akala Valley, look up the Three Kittens Inn. It’s got the best food around! The NPC that owns it recently retired from royal service and is one of the most skilled chefs I have ever seen.)
Well. Well, that was helpful to know. I suppose I should have guessed that the developers would have already considered the possible fringe cases where the ring would go from a minor time-saver to something more significant. But, it’s always better to be safe than sorry, and I certainly didn’t want to get in trouble right from the start by potentially being seen as exploiting—well, not a bug … say possibly faulty design.
With that cleared up, I took the ring from my inventory and examined it. The GM had said she had customized its appearance, but its icon in the inventory didn’t look like anything other than a plain silver band. Outside the inventory, however, it was very apparent just what she had meant. The ring was fashioned like a little silver mermaid, with arched back and curved tail. Or, more precisely, it was fashioned like my hivatar with her fin-like wings flared out to either side of the ring. The detailing on the scales, bandeau, and face was exquisite.The band itself wasn’t complete, tail tip didn’t meet flowing ponytail, but it would encircle enough of a finger to not fall off.
I slipped it on a finger on my left hand. Not the ring finger; I may not know much about ring symbolism, but even I knew that that finger was reserved for far more significant things: promise rings, engagement rings, wedding rings. Instead, the ring adorned my left little finger. A little flashy, but I was pleased with its design. Enough so that I could mostly overlook the reminder that I was now a girl in not just one, but two, of three worlds (the game world, the home instance, and the real world).
Fortunately, I had something else to distract me because by the time I had read the message and equipped the ring, I had finished my trek to the seven-sided, rough arena with its practice dummies ready and waiting for me to stab and slash them with the dagger I had selected. Here, I felt more confident. After all, instead of the target being forty or more feet away, I would be right beside it. Close enough to touch. Which was, of course, the point. Even the dummies on the other side of the arena weren’t more than twelve or fifteen feet away.
The rusty dagger felt unnatural in my right hand, so I shifted it to my left hand and again confirmed that I was apparently left-handed in ECHO. I made a mental note to ask Jasmine about it later and then focused on how I was holding the dagger. Unlike the longbow, where I was apparently holding it at the wrong location, it wasn’t that hard to hold the dagger correctly. The handle—hilt, I suppose—fit my little hand perfectly, with the bottom of the leather-wrapped hilt being just below the bottom of my hand and the blade extending a little more than six inches from the crossguard. The biggest difficulty would be keeping my thumb wrapped around the hilt and not extended and resting along the flat of the blade.
There was only one other way I knew to hold a dagger, unless considering throwing it, and that was reversed, with the bottom of the hilt by the thumb and the blade extending downward. In movies, this was how the blade was held by assassins and thieves, stabbing downward into people’s backs or into unaware sleepers.
Reversing the dagger by no move fancier than taking it with my other hand, turning it about, and returning it to my left hand, I tried holding the dagger in such a nefarious fashion. I couldn’t imagine it being useful for any manner of slashing, but if I was fighting something shorter than I was now, like the ubiquitous rats in just about every newbie quest, it might be useful for downward stabs.
Returning the blade to a less sinister orientation, I took a stab (literally!) at hitting the nearest dummy with it. Unsurprisingly, I hit the dummy. Then I took a few experimental slashes: horizontal, vertical, diagonal, just to get the feel for the weight and momentum of the weapon.
Throughout it all, the faerie was uncharacteristically quiet even as she remained perched on my right shoulder like a little angelic or demonic inner voice. However, as I finished up a set of three slashes like a backward Z, she spoke up. “Hey! When you’re fighting, you won’t just be standing still going poke-poke or slash-slash. Even with your bow, you’ll be moving to get a better position or to avoid someone or something trying to hit back. So you should try moving while you’re attacking. Left or right, pretend dodging, hitting a different target. There’s six whole other ones, you know!”
She was both correct and incorrect. Incorrect in that some players would probably need to stand in one place for a good part of the combat—spellcasters, in games, generally are unable to cast on the move, at least their bigger, flashier, more destructive spells that tend to be needed in combat. That’s why they needed screening players, a frontline to keep the monsters from hitting them. Otherwise, if the spellcasters were forced to constantly move to avoid attacks and defend themselves, their offensive strength would be greatly diminished. But she was correct that for how I was planning on playing, movement would be necessary and, in fact, a significant part of the flow. Agility, after all, isn’t needed for just standing in one place.
So, I tried it. Just basic moves, I wasn’t going to be dashing around the arena stabbing and slicing at every dummy I passed, but a little footwork could combine a slash with a sidestep or a stabbing thrust into a lunge. The nearest two dummies to the one I was fighting were about five feet away, slightly closer since I was on the inside of the arena from the one I was fighting and the heptagonal fighting ground meant that they were angled as if to surround me. Thus I added another move to my repertoire: a sidestep into a pivot and lunge, attempting to stab at the straw-filled cloth as if to discourage it from flanking me.
Even though the moves were basic, I wasn’t having any great success. I did hit the dummies, most of the time, but the strikes felt like they were lacking force, and many of the slashes only partially struck the target, spending half their time in the air to the side I was sidestepping. Obviously, knife-fighting was harder than it looked, too.
After a few more minutes of practice fighting, I had to take a break. All the stepping and twisting and lunging was wearing me out. I was exhausted and sweaty, and in the corner of my vision, my stamina bar was flickering, showing itself to be almost completely depleted.
Leaning forward with my hands on my knees—after I had put the dagger back in my inventory—and not-quite-gasping for breath, I pulled up my status screen and looked at my skills. None of the five had advanced significantly. In fact, two of them hadn’t advanced at all, but I hadn’t been attempting to sneak or picking any flowers besides the first, so it was natural that both Stealth and Gathering had no progress. Dodge barely had a smidgen of movement, perhaps the sidesteps and lunges counted slightly toward it, and Dagger was a little higher than Archery, but neither was above twenty percent toward level one.
“Hey! Your skills aren’t going to go up very quickly if you’re fighting just dummies and shooting just targets. You need to fight against things that can fight back, you know!”
I supposed I would have got more skill experience if I had been practicing without the guides, but I needed them for Archery and found them helpful for the dagger, showing me the path my slashes and stabs should take (though I couldn’t always match them). I supposed I could also gain more experience, even against dummies and stationary targets, by working with a trainer, but of course there wasn’t one in the tutorial. Sunrise Sparkle probably didn’t count….
And I could get more experience by spending a lot more time, practicing, but Sunrise Sparkle was almost certainly correct in that I’d improve much faster against monsters. Besides, I didn’t spend oodles of money to play a VR just to stay on a practice range with no one else around.
I nodded. “You’re right, so which way should I go to find monsters?”
She laughed, “No ways right now and all ways in a moment.” She swung her arm around in an expansive and elaborate gesture and the whole world shimmered like seeing through the veil of a heat illusion. “There! Now you can find them and they can find you! We were out of phase with the rest of the instance, to keep you safe until you learned the basics of your skills, but now you can go and fight and see if what you learned is what you want to use.”