GeorgeDoshington: dig straight down

JamieWasTaken3: build a dirt house

Jeofffff: oh shit, interactive event

“Very funny! No, I’m serious, chat! What do I do?! I’m a streamer, not a wilderness survivalist!” I drew my sword and looked around in a hurry, mildly surprised that nothing had snuck up on me while I’d been sitting under the tree.

Although, to be fair, I still had yet to run into any living creature, if you ignored the killer robot.

GonguuH: find shelter!

DecadentLawyer: you need to find a shelter

JamieWasTaken3: climb a tree

Jeofffff: maybe one of the skills will help?

DecadentLawyer: a hollow tree or cavern will do but make sure there aren’t any animals inside first

I whipped up the skill shop I’d subconsciously closed at some point and quickly skimmed through all of the available skills’ descriptions. Unfortunately, most of the skills were for fighting. Some provided a bit of utility, but none of them were immediately useful for finding a safe hiding place in a hurry.

Jeofffff: wtfff don’t panic buy skills!

GeorgeDoshington: why panik? there arent even any monsters

GonguuH: maybe go back to the cave where your egg is?

“I’m not panic buying skills Jeoff, I’m just skimming through them…” I murmured, trying to split my attention between reading the skills’ descriptions, reading the chat, and looking around for any monsters that might want to jump me. Luckily, I had a lot of experience with paying attention to multiple things at once, what with being a streamer.

“And I’m panicking because I don’t know if the night changes anything! What if there wasn’t anything because all the monsters spawn at night…? Good idea, Gong, but where was my egg? I don’t remember which way I went!”

JamieWasTaken3: so its like a survival video game?

GonguuH: gimme a sec, gonna rewatch

GeorgeDoshington: meh shitty ARG if she already knows whats up

With all the stress and panic I was feeling, I couldn’t help but bristle and yell, “This is not an ARG! Screw you, George!”

DecadentLawyer: calm down, if there’s monsters, yelling will attract them

JamieWasTaken3: yeah shut up geogre

I took a deep breath once more.

Seriously. My emotions were all over the place. Every little thing set me on edge. But considering I’d been reincarnated, nearly killed again by a robot, and then reunited with my chat, It was a wonder that I wasn’t having a total mental breakdown.

Still, stupid George Doshington. I should get the admin rights upgrade just to ban him. Or rather, I should have banned him ages ago.

sunnysideways: yeah GE ogre, shut up

Irid123: GE-ogre? lol

GeorgeDoshington: who tf you callin ogre

JamieWasTaken3: lol typo

PrestoFive55: Grubbily Evolved ogre

Jeofffff: shut up ogre

I frowned at the chat, who was now calling George an ogre for some reason.

GonguuH: ok Nana, I’ll guide you back to the cave, follow my instructions

I blinked.

“O-Okay! I’m counting on you! Don’t you dare prank me!”

GonguuH: ok, look to your left and find the tree with the low-hanging C-shaped branch that’s near a bush

GeorgeDoshington: fuck u guys

JamieWasTaken3: greatly embarrassed ogre

GonguuH: what? no I’m watching the stream back

I shook my head, opting to ignore the ogre discussion, and focused on what Gong was typing.

“Okay, gotcha. Tree with a C-shaped branch…” I looked to my left and quickly found what he was talking about.

GonguuH: now go right from there, between the two smaller trees

I muttered an affirmation and kept following his instructions. The chat, in the meantime, continued to come up with creative abbreviations for GE ogre.

I couldn’t help it. I giggled a little despite my situation.

After my near death experience and all the tension I had been feeling, a bit of light-hearted teasing really helped my mind relax.

But not too much, obviously. I still didn’t know whether there were any night-time monsters waiting for me to drop my guard.

Either way, the fact that I wasn’t completely alone here made me feel just a bit lighter. It was like I had a faithful companion helping me, giving me advice, and cheering me up when I needed it. Just that the companion wasn’t an annoying fairy but my chat.

I… could live with that. It could have been much worse, to be honest.

After a good while of following directions, I actually made it back to the cave where I’d hatched just as the skies began to darken. I approached it carefully, unsure whether the supposed phoenix who’d reincarnated me had returned.

But there was nobody. I snuck a peek at the remains of my egg, finding that it seemed to have gone untouched since I’d left it there.

I breathed out a sigh.

“Thanks, Gong… Can’t believe you actually tracked this place backwards. Seriously, thanks.”

GonguuH: no prob, it was pretty fun tbh

I smiled wryly.

That guy found the weirdest things fun.

“Also, you guys… You can stop making fun of George now. You’re going a bit overboard,” I said as I entered the cave, still wary of anything that could jump out at me.

GeorgeDoshington: yeah get out of my swamp jerks

JamieWasTaken3: lmao

I burst into laughter before I could stop myself before quickly covering my mouth to muffle the noise.

Right. That was the reason why I’d never banned George. Even if he was an ass, he was just too much fun to have around. Like an annoying brother you couldn’t help but like.

As I tried to get my giggling under control, I glanced out of the cave to quickly check for any predators my outburst might have attracted. There was still absolutely nothing around, though. All I could see were trees and bushes, and all I could hear was the wind and faint rustling of leaves.

It was honestly creepier that way. How come there was absolutely nothing? At least a little squirrel or something…

I pursed my lips and made my way to the eggshell that still lay inside the cave untouched. There were no signs of anything else in the cave. It seemed to be safe.

I let out a sigh in relief, finally sheathed my sword, and sat behind the egg, just to be a bit better hidden from the outside.

…

What now?

Frankly speaking, I didn’t really have a plan. I wanted to find civilization, but considering I’d found a crashed spaceship – which was apparently a dungeon? – before any people, my chances weren’t looking great. If there were no people near that spaceship, even though it should, by all means, be a massive point of interest, then I had to be pretty far from civilization.

I let out another sigh. This one, in mental exhaustion.

“Okay… I should… What should I do? Chat, what do you think I should do now?”

GeorgeDoshington: go punch the robot

SpoOo0oOon: you could sleep and rest?

Jeofffff: buy fire breath and heat vision

JamieWasTaken3: yea use the skill shop

I blinked.

Right, the skill shop.

I opened the interface back up and looked at the available skills again. Listening to Jeoff’s suggestion, I opened up the descriptions for Heat vision and Fire breath and properly took my time reading them rather than skimming over them in panic.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Heat vision:

Tune your vision to the infrared spectrum and see how hot things around you are. This can be toggled on and off. Uses a small amount of Intra.

Upgrade: Zoom (3SP)

Upgrade: Cold stare (3SP)

“Hey, wait! That sounds super useful!”

Now that I was properly processing what the skill did, I realized that this was the perfect skill to help me see monsters trying to ambush me. Well, unless they were cold-hearted killer robots, at least…

As for the other skill…

Fire breath:

Spew fire from your mouth using a small amount of Ether. Related body parts of yours will temporarily gain enough fire resistance to prevent damage to them.

Upgrade: Flame bullet (3SP)

Upgrade: Extreme temperature (5SP)

Upgrade: Mega lungs (9SP)

Upgrade: Phoenix breath (80SP)

“I can be a friggin’ dragon, guys! Well, a phoenix! Also holy cow, that one upgrade is expensive! Why is it so expensive? What does it even do?”

Phoenix breath - Breathe Phoenix fire instead of normal fire. Phoenix fire can ignite, burn, melt, vaporize, or completely erase selected objects and living beings, while leaving everything else untouched. Uses a large amount of Intra in addition to quadrupling the Ether use. You can switch between different breaths as you please.

Jeofffff: holy shit that’s so strong

JamieWasTaken3: really expensive tho

Irid123: is it? we don’t even know how you get skill points

I blinked.

I could pick what it burned? That could be incredibly useful in some situations… but the price still seemed way too high for it.

“Yeah, guess we don’t really know how hard it is to get one skill point…” I absent-mindedly replied to Irid. “But considering nearly dying was worth five, it’s probably not easy to get eighty… It doesn’t even seem all that good anyway.”

Jeofffff: no listen, you can DELETE ANYTHING! that’s incredibly op

GeorgeDoshington: wtf why do you get broken shit right away?

Irid123: oh yeah, I bet you need to use it to break into a secret room somewhere

Oh… Jeoff was right. It did say ‘erase’ selected objects and living beings. In other words, as long as I could hit a monster with it, I would win. No matter what kind of monster it was.

Why was such a powerful upgrade on a tier one skill?

“Okay, I might try to save up for that… If I go with Fire breath. Anyway, what the heck is Intra and Ether?”

Irid123: dude no, get appraisal first

Irid123: it’s a classic

Jeofffff: probably fancy names for mana?

SpoOo0oOon: what about flame guard?

I hummed in agreement.

“Yeah, probably mana. I guess there’s two types of mana? No, wait. Three. Didn’t something mention another weird word?” I murmured. “Let me check the other skills…”

Going by the suggestions, I opened the description for Appraisal. I also just realized that I’ve gotten pretty good at mentally controlling the interface already. Neat.

Appraisal:

Glean information about a target item. Uses a minor amount of Intra.

Upgrade: Assess (1SP)

Upgrade: Inspiration (3SP)

Upgrade: Psychometry (9SP)

“Huh… Well, that’s… simple. Wait, psychometry? Isn’t that…”

Psychometry - You can now glean the rough history of the appraised object. Uses a moderate to large amount of Intra based on how old the object is.

GeorgeDoshington: archiology time boisss

SpoOo0oOon: that’s cool!

Irid123: and there’s the lore mcguffin

“That… is cool, yeah. Probably not immediately useful, though.” I shook my head. “Okay, I should stop getting distracted. Can’t even afford these upgrades, I should look at the ones I can actually buy.”

Assess - You can now use appraisal on living beings.

Inspiration - Appraising an item will now tell you about its possible uses. Uses more Intra.

GonguuH: inspiration sounds really nice

Jeofffff: meh you can’t even use it on monsters until you upgrade it…

JamieWasTaken3: inspiration is like a bootleg wiki search lol

GonguuH: you can use it on the slime bottle and maybe make something useful

I blinked and then pulled up the bottle of weird liquid that had healed me back when I’d been hiding from the robot. I still wasn’t quite sure whether the fire it had created when touching my blood had healing properties of its own or if my Phoenix blessing was what had caused it to heal me, but maybe I could make something out of it. Either actual healing potions or… molotov cocktails?

I shook my head and took a look at the skill Spoon had suggested.

Flameguard:

Ignite parts of your body, burning anything that gets close to you. Your entire body temporarily gets half the necessary fire resistance to withstand this skill.

Upgrade: Channel fire (3SP)

Upgrade: Living torch (5SP)

Upgrade: Eternal flames (9SP)

Upgrade: Self-destruct (11SP)

I grimaced.

“Yeah, probably not this one. Only half the resistance I would need… Not even gonna look at the upgrades right now. Can’t afford them.” I shook my head, took one more look at the window, noticed the last upgrade’s name, grimaced again, and then closed the window.

Jeofffff: no wait, that’s actually good

SpoOo0oOon: oh I thought it would make a shield or something

Jeofffff: you take half the damage, and heal the other half because of blessing

GonguuH: more than half, blessing gives some resist too

Jeofffff: yeah true

I frowned, briefly opening the window again.

“You’re right… but I would still get burnt by it, wouldn’t I?”

JamieWasTaken3: yea probably

Jeofffff: it would hurt yeah, but it’s good synergy

GeorgeDoshington: do it you chicken

I rolled my eyes.

“Guys, this is not a game! I am not gonna constantly burn and heal myself like some masochist! That sounds more like a divine punishment than a way to fight killer robots!”

Jeofffff: maybe when you get more resist then

GeorgeDoshington: cmon I wanna see you firehugging poeple

DecadentLawyer: persistence could be good too, since you have a kid body

I opened up the description for persistence again, ignoring George.

Persistence:

Doubles your health, stamina, and Ether regeneration.

“Hmm… Wait, isn’t that really good? It’s just one skill point!”

Jeofffff: no upgrades and takes up a skill slot tho

Jeofffff: you already have health regen with the blessing, don’t have a use for Ether yet, and stamina hasn’t been an issue so far

I frowned in thought. “That’s true… Huh…” The more I thought about it, the less amazing the skill seemed. “Is this skill a beginner’s trap…?”

JamieWasTaken3: yea its shit tier skill unless Ether regen is secretly super good

GeorgeDoshington: your cheating with the phoenix stuff lol

RetconRanger: It was probably meant to be an early game skill for normal humans. It’s worth it if you don’t yet have that many skills.

Jeofffff: much less useful with phoenix blessing

“I guess so,” I said before letting out a big yawn.

I blinked tears out of my eyes and looked outside, to see the dark sky completely devoid of the sun now.

“Crap… I got caught up in browsing skills…” I murmured. “Chat, what should I do? Do you think I’m safe here…?”

I felt reasonably safe, but if any bear or wolf decided to wander into my hiding spot while I slept, I would be toast.

Jeofffff: buy fire breath and heat vision

Jeofffff: it’s the best combo you can get rn

GonguuH: agreed

GeorgeDoshington: flameguaaaaaard

SpoOo0oOon: maybe you can make a door with craftsman?

Jeofffff: heat vision to spot enemies, fire breath to fight if you need to

Irid123: no time for that

I thought about my options for a bit, browsing and rereading the skill descriptions some more, before finally deciding to go with Jeoff’s suggestion.

“Alright, let’s get these then… How does this work? Do I just think about buying the skills?”

Purchase the skill [Heat vision] for 2 skill points?

Y/N

“Oh, there we go.” I nodded to myself and sent the mental command to confirm the purchase.

‘Heat vision’ skill unlocked!

And the other one…

Purchase the skill [Fire breath] for 3 skill points?

Y/N

“Yes,” I murmured even if I didn’t need to.

‘Fire breath’ skill unlocked!

“Okay, let’s see…”

I opened up my main status window and looked into the skills, but to my confusion, the skills I’d just bought weren’t there, even though skill points were at zero now.

“The heck? Where are my skills?!”

GeorgeDoshington: lmao scammed

Jeofffff: probably need to equip them first

I tried to give a mental command to equip both skills and show me a list of skills I had and it actually worked. The skills both appeared in my ‘Other skills’ while a new window popped up.

Name: Nana Aoto

Title: Fire blessed

Race: Human

Skill Points: 0

Racial skill:

Streamer

Other skills(2/3):

Phoenix blessing [CURSED] [FREE] [TEMPORARY]

Heat vision

Fire breath

Empty (+)

“There we go!” I skimmed over my new status screen but frowned when I glanced over to the available skills window.

Available skills:

Tier 0:

Phoenix blessing [CURSED] [FREE] [TEMPORARY] (EQUIPPED)

Tier 1:

Fire breath (EQUIPPED)

Heat vision (EQUIPPED)

“Tier zero? The heck? I guess the blessing is a special case…?” I muttered before letting out another huge yawn.

Honestly, why was I so tired? As far as I could tell, I’d hatched mid-day, so I should still have plenty of energy…

Jeofffff: tier 0 is probably skills you can’t normally buy

Irid123: yeah it’s a special case

JamieWasTaken3: cute lil phoenix yawn lol

RetconRanger: You are technically a baby, right? You need your sleep.

I blushed, but luckily, chat couldn’t see that.

“Yeah, you might be right, Ranger…” I glanced outside of the cave one more time, still anxious about being eaten by something in my sleep.

JamieWasTaken3: dw well yell at you if we hear something sneaking into the cave

GeorgeDoshington: gotta prepare my airhorns

I rolled my eyes.

“Not like I can hear you, chat.” I pursed my lips. “It still feels too dangerous to sleep.”

GonguuH: you could try setting up traps around the entrance

SpoOo0oOon: you could camouflage the entrance?

RetconRanger: I think it’s fine. I mean, nothing attacked your egg while you hatched. The phoenix probably put your egg in a safe spot.

I considered the suggestions, but I didn’t trust myself to stay awake long enough to fortify the entrance in any way, and dozing off while in the middle of it would be even worse.

I let out a weary sigh.

“I hope you’re right, Ranger,” I muttered and looked around for a good spot to sleep.

Obviously, there weren’t any. The hard ground would probably be terrible and I didn’t even have anything to cover myself with.

Then I glanced at the remains of my egg and had a weird thought.

I had called it my bed, hadn’t I? And I remembered it being nice and soft inside… Even with the hole, it would probably still be more comfortable than the cold stone of the cavern.

Hmm…

“Alright, I’m just gonna go to sleep… G’night chat…”

Irid123: good night, Nana!

SpoOo0oOon: good night! sleep well!

JamieWasTaken3: good n- wait wtf

GeorgeDoshington: lmao reverse chicken

I placed the sheathed sword next to the egg and climbed inside it, ignoring the chat’s amused reaction.

As soon as I found a comfortable position, I closed my eyes and quickly drifted off.