She needed a better skill… there’s one. Being a skill of her Innate Ability, she didn’t need to buy this new one. She used the skill HP Leech. Obviously not taking the time to read the specs, she put her hand out as a deer passed. Particles of deep red flowed off of the elk and into her hand. Her HP came up a bit as well.
The elk brute was pummeling towards her again and she shot it, trying to drain again.
She narrowly missed getting a good scratch from an antler, -6 HP. All that HP Leech work gone.
The other three deer were down, but crying in pain. Her next plan was to get a few more HP before another scratch took her out.
She ran around, narrowly dodging some other barrages and used Leech on three lame and whimpering Elk, ending their lives and giving her another 18 HP.
Her mana was down now and she could only save it for Focus, using it when she needed.
Now for the Brute Elk. She shot, but only heard that unfortunately familiar sound of no ammo.
The Brute turned and faced her. She threw the gun down and wielded the knife.
A prompt appeared as she flicked the knife. She ignored it and locked eyes with the Brute Elk.
The Brute scraped it’s hooves on the ground, preparing for a full throttle pummeling.
The Brute Elk sped, but way too fast this time! It must have some skills of it’s own. KillPrinsX used Focus and Evade, while stabbing the Elk with a critical hit. She did some good damage.
The elk skidded to a stop and turned.
KillPrinsX ran up to it’s side, put everything into Focus while she aimed for another critical hit with her knife. Time slowed just enough for her to jump up, push by the swinging antlers and get a real critical hit straight through the ribs.
The elk spasmed and hit her on her escape, taking a good 10 points off of her HP.
She rolled and got up again, waiting for the next move of this Brute Elk, if there would be one.
The Brute teetered but still had something inside. It’s eyes were red with rage, it’s mouth frothing, blood was spattered around its bulky frame. At ten feet at the shoulder it was a nightmare, and only to compound that picture, it bellowed at the top of its lungs.
KillPrinsX was ready.
The Brute charged again and came in just as before.
KillPrinsX dodged, used Focus, and lunged in once more with the knife. She did another critical hit in the neck.
The Brute Elk bellowed a yell of pain and suffered, collapsing onto the ground, one HP remaining.
She walked up to it, looking at the fear in its eyes, the plea of mercy, and took that last dark red drop of HP for her own.
She breathed.
Coins flew up from the elk and her XP bar jumped up…
Congratulations!
You have reached level 6!
You have 2 skill points for your use.
Achievement unlocked: Kill a herd of Elk. “Just like grandpa”
She took the compliment and went off to find some more fun. Craving some HP drain from squirrels.
But before she could get much further she heard a yell, a yell of wonder.
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She looked around and saw a guy in camouflage walking towards her. “Wow nice show!”
She squinted at him, worrying if she should be trusting a random guy in a forest, who looks like he probably lives here.
She used Analyze, but found no useful information besides his name and level.
Jason - Level 23 - Commoner
So she poured in some more mana, getting her to the tier 2 skill. A little ding made her aware that she had just opened her next skill, Deep Analyze.
She began see his thoughts, not very clearly but there was something going on like a nice handshake and chat next to a campfire.
Now she decided to respond, “What’s up? Jason.”
He looked slightly taken aback. “You know my name...?” He palm his face. “Let me guess you’re a Psychic?”
“You guessed right.” She walked closer and they shook hands.
He smiled and looked her up and down, “Let’s go get you warmed up and something to eat. You look like you’ve been through quite a fight. I’m sure you need to get your stats back up.”
Sure enough he led the way to a little hut and they sat by the campfire chatting and eating the venison he had gathered after the fight.
“So what brings you out here all alone?” Jason asked. “The rest of your party died?”
“No,” she said, but she thought about what to say and just gave him the easy answer. “I just respawned and decided to get a few fight and levels in all on my own.”
“You don’t like people?” He replied.
“Ha. Not like that. My first ‘spawning’ brought me to a house with a bunch of assholes. But I managed to level up after cleaning the basement.” She showed him the badge.
Jason laughed and she put it away. “So how’d you die?”
“Well,” she didn’t know if she could tell him, but she went ahead and did so anyways, “My special is Nap Time and it seems that it lets me see through someone else’s point of view. So I ended up ‘dreaming’ about someone running into a poison dart trap and getting killed. And then when I woke up I had no health and poison damage!”
It didn’t take him long to respond, “Shit! That sounds like the worst way to die.”
“Yeah, it was. So I woke up in another house, stats back to zero. The only thing I got to keep was that lame badge.”
“Hey, it’s not lame. It’s hilarious.”
They laughed and ate together until her stats leveled out. She told him about her casual hunt in the forest turning into a boss fight.
He told her about his routine in the forest. He didn’t have much love for other people, especially assholes, and had basically done the same thing she had, run out into the forest and try to make living of level up slowly until it gets dreadfully boring. He had only died once, coming into contact with a mama bear. So he carefully marked it on his map until he might be strong enough, and courageous enough to go back and try to fight her.
KillPrinsX was curious, Jason was a commoner, which meant that he had no innate abilities, so she asked, “how do commoners survive if they don’t have any specials?”
“We do have specials. The one and only, is called fast learner. But you have to choose the skill set and you get 50% faster learning.”
“And you chose to chop wood as your profession.”
He gave an insecure look, “If there was a snake strangling skill set, I would have taken that, but there aren’t too many snakes in this game, as far as I’ve seen. And actually I’m a lumberjack, but on this game it’s just called woodsman or wood chopper or whatever it is.”
“So why did you choose wood chopping? Beside your love for the woods.”
“I just thought it would be a good all around skill to have, cut wood, build a log cabin, and when I’m in danger I can use an axe. I’d have to say my Stamina has skyrocketed. While I cook and have a lot of leisure time, my HP is pretty high too. Not to mention Strength and Endurance.”
KillPrinsX though that she had her head around the system of leveling up and stats, but, “Wait, your Attributes change as well? Like Strength and Endurance.”
“Yeah,” Jason said, happy to give information. “Skills will obviously level up and give you boosts to HP, Stamina, and Mana. But once they level up even more you end up with a good boost in Attributes. So my attack is higher with Strength and my Stamina regenerates faster as well.”
KillPrinsX was amazed. She couldn’t believe that her mana would only regenerate 1/sec forever. “So that means I should have a boost in Wisdom or even Agility.”
“Yeah, but you don’t really know until you’ve gotten it.”
KillPrinsX rolled that though her thoughts for a while and began to look through her stats. They had gotten pretty good now, for a first day. She still had two points to allocate to skills so she went ahead and put one in Focus, as that came in handy, and the other went to Mana drain, opening up a new skill.
Jason was busy staring off into the trees but found that he might as well do something else, “You look pretty tired. You want to rest while you recover? I have a nice cot inside, just one. But I’d be fine if you sleep while I just go and chop some wood around the corner.”
“You mean I can actually sleep? I thought you couldn’t sleep in this game.”
“You can out here. Somehow in the suburbs you can’t, probably all that pop up ads and buy mini games shit. Plus when you’re out of the safe zone, rules and restitutions are lifted. Which means sleeping is fine, makes you vulnerable and susceptible to ambush.”
KillPrinsX had a second thought, maybe he is a psycho and would want to kill me once I’m sleeping. Or maybe there’s a trap in this hut… she used Predict and looked at his thoughts once more. She had looked closely and found that he was a sincere guy, she would wake up and they would go hunting later on when the sun was up.
So she took his advice and went to sleep. A screen popped up asking if she wanted to take a nap and use Nap Time.
She thought it over. She still was a low level noob. And there wasn’t much of a future in the forest until she could stock up a bit more and get some new weapons, maybe find a market somewhere. She actually had got over 500 gold from this trip to the forest. But she wouldn’t be a match for any team that comes out here, even with Jason. So she took the option and with to sleep with Nap Time.
Jason went to to his favorite pastime of chopping wood, even better after having a nice chat with a girl.