This world is weird. Dreaming about daily tasks and leveling up. But the weirdest part is waking up to a bunch of slimy creepy crawlies all over her. Earthworms, slugs, and snails.
“I may be a demigoddess prancing about the woods naked but that doesn’t mean I’m a goddess of nature.” She says as she calmly picks off the slimy visitors and puts them into her inventory. She supposes she should act more feminine and scream or dance around but the bugs only mildly annoy her. Besides she can guess where they came from.
The giggling ball only confirms her suspicions. “Aww, I was hoping for more of a reaction.”
Valoria says nothing and merely stares at the fire pit for 10 seconds till some unburned wood ignites. Then looking directly at Oriana says in a monotone voice, “All enemies of mine shall be burned alive and devoured whole.” As she slowly one by one puts the insects on the fire to cook.
“Ummm, I guess I’ll go over that way as you have breakfast.” Oriana bumps into a tree then quickly floats away.
After breakfast Valoria takes in a deep breath before the beginning of her day. Hmm trudging around in the woods all day yesterday has left her smelling less than pleasant. Combined with her long twig tangled hair and slime trail tribal art on her skin she needs a bath.
Time for more life magic. This spell was original used with falling water like a waterfall or sea spray but any puddle of water will do. She walks over to the brook and sits in a lotus position. Originally used to clear the mind and body of outside influences before casting difficult magic it is now mostly used as a way to quickly begin the day looking ones best.
At the end of meditating for ten minutes the water quickly covers her and then splashes away. Leaving her hair untangled and skin completely clean. It even washed her teeth and made her breath smell minty fresh. She also braids her hair in a loose braid and ties a bow at the end with some of the thread she created yesterday.
First thing she decides to do today is figure out why her movement seemed off yesterday. At first she thought it might be due to no shoes but that doesn’t seem to be a problem. With the leaf litter she doesn’t need to worry about cuts or blisters on her feet from walking around. It feels like walking on a plush carpet really.
Maybe if she does her normal other world morning exercise routine she might understand what is wrong with her movements. She starts stretching. She needs to get back in the habit of daily exercise anyway. Sure while out in the wilderness she hardly needs even more physical exertion but always good to maintain a habit least you lose it when needed.
As she is moving her body she realizes what is wrong with her movements. She is trying to move like a man in a woman’s body. This seems like an obvious thing but muscle memory and not thinking about it hide the problem.
For starters the center of gravity is lower on women. Men’s mass is in the upper torso with broader shoulders and larger upper body muscles. While woman have their muscles more concentrated in their lower body. Her large bust also adds an additional sway as she walks. But the real problem is with her much wider hips.
As a man her hips barley moved as she walked. Most of the motion was in an upper torso swagger. However as a woman this causes her to always be off balance. Trying out a few motions she finds slightly rolling her hips is the most efficient way to move. Finding this new way of moving kind of fun she starts to sashay around with a very exaggerated hip sway.
“I found a slime nest and figured you could use it to level up your combat skills. Besides as the local slimy things already like you I figured it’d be a win-win for everyone. And… gahaha seriously?” Oriana starts to laugh when she sees Valoria.
“What? I’m a woman now I can walk how I want.” Valoria pouts.
“The walking thing is funny but I’m laughing due to your makeup. Where did you find it out here anyway?” Oriana continues to giggle.
“What makeup?”
Oriana just keeps giggling. So Valoria goes back to the stream to see her reflection. She is indeed wearing subtle makeup. All she did was eat some bugs, exercised and cast a life magic spell with the description “…begin the day looking ones best.” That must be it.
She cast the spell from memory so didn’t really look at the spell information. Opening up her spell list she looks more closely at the spell description. The spell’s name is Meditative Cleanse cast under falling water. However it has a variant called Full Body Cleanse and Makeup which is cast in the present of any non-falling water like a bath.
Variant spells are two spells that are cast the same but on different materials. A tornado spell cast on water becomes a waterspout or when cast on fire becomes a fire whirl for instance. Generally the base spell remains unchanged but has added attributes. So Full Body Cleanse and Makeup still removed minor outside magical energies from her but also untangled her hair and applied makeup.
Guess she’ll always look like a Hollywood action girl now. With flawless hair and makeup with just a smudge of dirt after hours of action.
“You can bimbofy yourself later. Let’s go play with the gooey xp bags.”
“I can understand raising my combat skills but how will killing slimes help with my job experience? It doesn’t seem like something a villager would do.”
“This is a game world. So of course it needs places for people to have some fun and let off steam. World created creature nests are scattered about just for that.” Oriana explains.
“That still doesn’t explain about the job experience though.”
“Well non-people creatures, NPC’s for short, are generated and controlled by the world rule system. To encourage people to challenge themselves killing NPC’s gives at least 1 xp and sometimes a valuable loot drop. An outdoor nest is the place they spawn in to. There are also dungeons for more skilled people. Dungeons give better experience and drops but are also much more difficult.”
“I don’t know, I really kind of want to hunt animals for pelts right now.” Valoria hesitates.
“Pfft you can spend hours trying to track down an animal to kill then miss your shot or you can train your aim on easy to hit slimes. Who knows you might get lucky and get some clothing from them.”
“They can drop clothes?”
“Well some NPC can. Loot drops are either raw materials for crafting or dropped adventure gear they picked up. Some of the high end NPC’s can make equipment and it can drop sometimes as well. Slimes are the lowest of the low so they mostly just drop whatever they happened to move across like grass and rocks.”
Seeing Oriana bouncing up and down in excitement Valoria says, “Sigh, I guess I can practice my hunting and combat skills on the slimes then.”
“Yey, let’s go!” Oriana zips off.
Valoria runs to follow, “Why are you so excited about this?”
“Since I’m stuck with this hero guide class I’m almost powerless. But there is one good thing about it. When you level up I level up. If I level up enough I might get my divine powers back. At the very least I can get some abilities I can use. Also nothing is more boring than watching someone else have fun and not being able to participate.”
“I’m having fun surviving in the wilderness?”
“I’d shake my booty in imitation of you if I wasn’t a bodiless spirit.”
Somewhat embarrassed Valoria quickly changing the subject, “So what can you tell me about slimes?”
“They are easy to defeat, come in many colors, and are slimy. The blues are the weakest. Might be some reds which are just tougher blues and maybe a green which has status effects. The other colors are much harder to kill but are in dungeons only. The only sense they have is touch and really only attack if attacked first.”
They quickly arrive at the slime nest. Valoria sees many a blue slime slowly moving around. Pulling out one of her crude spears she moves up to a slime and pokes at it tentatively. Just before the spear hits a green bar appears and deflects the spear.
“Put more effort into it! Those halfhearted pokes aren’t going to get through its hp bar!” Oriana encourages.
“What is with this game like logic!” Valoria focuses and stabs the slime forcefully. This time the hp bar decreases to half what it was and turns yellow but the spear is still stopped.
“It’d be poor game world design if a high level hero could be taken out with a random arrow hit or by a level 1 assassin in one blow wouldn’t it? Anyone with an overpower also has hp that has to be decreased to zero before they take any physical damage.”
The slime shrinks before it jumps to attack Valoria. She easily dodges its well telegraphed attack and stabs it again. The attack was only somewhat aimed as Valoria was focused on dodging and the slime hp only decreases by another quarter and changes red.
“That means I have an hp bar as well? Let’s see how this works.” The slime attacks again this time hitting Valoria solidly in the abdomen as she stands still to receive the attack. A green hp bar appears and decreases by 3 hp before defecting the slime attack. However she still felt the pain of the blow. It felt like someone punched her in the stomach.
She stabs at the slime again and this time the hp bar shatters before the spear stops several inches in the slime. She turns around to ask Oriana a question. Before she can ask feels another blow hits her in the back. “What the hell?”
The slime she stabbed is still alive and attacking. Although now it seems to be leaking blue goo. She stabs it as hard as she can and skewers it to the ground. A few twitches more and the slime stops moving before dissolving from the top down into one blue light. The blue light swirls around before entering Valoria.
Valoria turns toward Oriana, “Explain.”
“HP bar just prevents damage until it’s gone. You still have to hurt the slime enough to kill it. The blue light was experience and you should check the ground it might have dropped an item.”
“These seem pretty tough and they are the weakest of NPC’s? How do villagers take one out?”
“Well normal people don’t solo them without training and barely functional weapons. After a couple years of training they form a party of 5 people and attack a single slime all at once. Slime hits just crack a rib or two at most so not much danger of dying.”
Valoria goes over to check what the slime dropped. As she walks over she watches the goo that leaked out of the slime pulls together into a small mass. She appraises it and gets back it’s a lump of goo of unknown monster and color.
Her skill must still be low as she knows it came from a blue slime and well looks blue. With that thought the appraise window updates and now says blue slime goo. The quality, market price and usages are still listed as ???. Must be the skill level gives a certain amount of information but as she learns about items her own knowledge will be applied.
Appraising the rest of the loot she finds A couple of small rocks, a large lump of grass which apparently has a usage, grass + drying = straw. Sigh this skill is not terribly useful so far. But she’ll keep leveling it as she has read too many web stories where it is incredibly useful.
She decides to try appraise on a slime to see if she’ll learn all of its secrets. The appraise window appears but just displays the message “Use the observe skill instead.” Reading the observe skill description she finds it’s used the same way as appraise. Which is just to look at an object intently for a couple seconds and thinking about its properties.
What’s the difference she thinks. Maybe its intent? She tries again only this time is thinking about the observe skill instead of appraise. A window with some basic information appears. The window has it’s picture, name, lv, basic stats, where it can be found, items dropped, weakness and basic description.
Blue slime, lv1, drops grass, rocks, and the basic description is “They are easy to defeat, come in many colors, and are slimy.” Did Oriana know that or is it that description because that’s what Valoria heard from Oriana? There are a ton of ??? everywhere. Maybe if she kills some more it will fill out.
She throws a few rocks at the slime to level the skill. They do less damage then a spear thrust which is interesting as the rocks have a higher base damage then the shoddily crafted pointy stick. Maybe her base stats or skills gets added to the damage she wonders.
After an hour of grinding slimes she decides to take a break. She already broke all 6 of her spears and the last few slimes she decided to just punch and kick to death. She also leveled her healing magic a bit, not that she needed to but being more skilled seems like a good idea.
Looking at the observe window again she sees much more slime information. Several stats are now listed and weakness listed are fire and pointy objects. Also more drops are listed with how often they drop. From experience she can say rocks and punches only took off 1 hp. She never used fire on them though so that must be from killing a lot of them or perhaps observe skill leveling.
She wonders if she can one shot them if she had a sword? She remembers seeing kendo practitioners using wooden swords so she tries to make one of those. However after several attempts all she produced was 3 shoddily crafted long clubs. Deciding to go back to the tried and true method she produces another 8 poor quality pointy sticks.
Another two hours of grinding and all her weapons are broken again. Although the poor quality lasted longer it still broke quickly. The grinding of NPC’s is giving decent experience but its real benefit is the incredible skill gains. Still this is tedious without a quest and just killing the same NPC’s over and over.
To break up the monotony she tried to talk to Oriana but after a few minutes Oriana left to take a nap. Even picking up the drops is getting boring. Other than the rocks for throwing and a few interesting herbs she has left the rest of it to rot. The piles of grass and sticks everywhere sometimes make moving difficult but mostly she has been moving towards the center of the slime nest so she hasn’t had many problems with it.
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The amount of slimes has noticeably decreased in the area but there are still more around than the number she has defeated. Creating another 11 pointed sticks she figures that should be enough to finish off all the slimes. She even made 2 normal spears instead of the pointy sticks which have slightly higher damage and much higher durability.
Now that she knows the slime attack pattern fairly well she decides to try out a few different spear moves. First dual-wielding spears. She attacks the nearest slime with many rapid attacks and predictably most miss or are deflected doing no damage. The few that hit only do a point of damage. She has better luck attacking with one spear and using the other as a guard but really there is no point as slimes are easy to dodge.
Next she equips one of the normal spears and charges at top speed at a slime. Its hp bar shatters and is still slightly hit by the spear. Another stab finishes it off. Now this is fun. She charges several more slimes in quick succession with much the same results. The last one she misses and breaks the normal spear when she hit the ground with it. The slime gets in a few attacks as she stumbles to regain her balance.
Charging must decrease durability quickly she thinks dodging the lucky slimes attacks. Also it’s tiring sprinting around constantly. Pulling out a poorly crafted pointy stick she jumps six feet in the air and lands with a loud cracking sound and breaks her weapon next to the slime. Again the slime attacks twice as she stands back up. Let’s try that again, this time without missing.
The next dive attack hits and does similar damage to a charge. However her weapon again shatters and leaves her unbalanced. A few more attacks by the slime and she decides to heal herself. “With compassion let thyself feel the comfort of healing. Minor heal!” She calls out an aria. Her hp goes from almost full to full. She could’ve skipped the aria but that reduces the power to 1/10th its original effect only healing by 3-5hps with minor heal. With the aria she healed 27hp to full.
“You must be the boss slime, I shall hit you with my ultimate musou attack!” Pulling out another poorly made spear she starts spinning around like a certain antenna headgear wearing video game character. After several misses she connects with the slime as it jumps up to attack. Crack! The slime goes flying and splatters against a nearby tree.
“Okay enough playing around or I’m going to run out of weapons again.” She tells herself.
She throws rocks at 5 of the slimes. As a fake demon lord to be she needs to be ready to take on multiple opponents she thinks to herself. She attacks one of the slimes getting in a good hit. A few dodges and she tries to attack again but has to abort to dodge. Even though the slimes attacks are simple and easily predicted keeping track of five at once is difficult. Every time she tries to attack a slime she has to abandon the attack to dodge. After several of these aborted attacks she gets frustrated.
Ignoring defense she attacks again and hits a slime. This leaves her open to a slime’s attack and one jumps at her legs. It hits causes her to lose her balance and she falls to her knees. She tries to stand up but can’t. Looking down she sees the slime has enveloped her legs.
“The hell is this?” inverting her spear she attacks the slime on her legs. However the angle is bad and she doesn’t do much damage. As she is focused on the attached slime two more attack and envelop her hips and right side.
“Hey I’m not that type of girl get your sticky pseudopods off me!” She attacks again breaking the pointy stick. The other slimes also attack and attach to her naked body. She is now fully engulfed by slimes. She saw the attacks coming and took a deep breath before they happened. She tries to pull out another pointy stick to attack with.
But with the slimes covering her she can’t grip it. She tries to punch the slimes but it’s like punching water they just flow around her taking no damage. Even worse she starts feeling a slight burning sensation and notices her hp slowly dropping.
Several more attempts at damaging the slime with weapons or kicks also fail. She stops and thinks what she can do. Being digested alive is not something she wants to experience but she is far more concerned about not being able to breathe as she has plenty of hp.
She tries casting minor healing. Although the burning sensation makes saying the aria in her mind difficult she is able to successfully cast magic. Next she casts her strongest barrier magic she hopes this will do something to the slimes. The barrier appears as a circle around her and the slimes but doesn’t do anything.
At her skill level it would only slow physical monsters movement as they try to cross anyway. As the slimes are already within it there is no effect. She rolls herself and the slimes through the barrier and the slimes shift somewhat but are still attached.
Her lungs are starting to burn with the need for air and the burning sensation on her skin is getting stronger. Casting a barrier spell again this time she tries to imagine a skin tight barrier. Along with adjusting the aria she chants she tries to come up with a new spell. Her hope is to make a barrier close to her and then expand it.
The first attempt uses up some mp but fails to do anything. The next causes a slight blue glow around her head. Encouraged she keeps trying. She is really getting desperate to breathe. Her third attempt again fails as she can’t think about anything but getting air into her lungs.
Her fourth attempt seems to work but as she tries to expand the barrier it splinters and fades away. She starts to panic. Her hp has decreased to half and she needs to breathe. She skips the aria and tries to just make a barrier but gasps for air causing it to fail.
Gagging on the slime entering her mouth her vision starts to fade. She trashes trying to escape her fate but to no avail. Her trashing stops after a few moments and the drowning response starts. Her head tilts back and her arms gently start paddling in an attempt to find air. Her vision fades to black.
She feels a gentle calm envelope her. [Is this it for me?]
[My life has just begun. I don’t want to die.]
The ground around her and the slimes begins glowing blue.
[I don’t want to die.]
A few glowing blue dust motes raise into the air.
[No. That’s not right. I want to live.]
The various piles of sticks seem to light on fire and spark with St. Elmo’s fire.
[I want to live.]
The slimes and her dying body lift into the air.
[I WILL LIVE!]
Her eyes snap open glowing a deep blue with power.
I. WILL. LIVE.
A sound so deep it shakes the very earth. So loud it can’t be heard but only felt. A scream so powerful it blasts everything around it to dust. A devastating detonation powered by magic and the will to live snaps trees at their base and smashes them into the ground in a radius of 150 yards. The top foot of soil is stripped and turned into a wall of dirt and force which removes the branches from trees for another 100 yards and strips the leaves for another 50 before dissipating.
In the center of it all a woman surrounded by a glowing golden aura floats. The aura fades and the woman drops unconscious into a perfect semi-hemisphere crater 15 feet deep.
Hidden Quest Unlocked
Gain the power of nature.
* Experience the hardships of living in nature without any tools
* Unlock Primal Scream in a life or death situation
* Defeat in one on one combat a powerful animal using only non-metal tools
2/3rds complete
Reward: Nature Overpower gained.
Hidden Quest Unlocked
Master the art of War.
* Earn lifetime achievement One Woman Army
* Defeat an enemy army commander in single combat
* Gain master skill level in one weapon
0/3 complete
Reward: Warrior Overpower gained.
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Daily Summary
Daily/Weekly Tasks Completed
Gained at least 1000 skill points, + 5 exp
Use 10 different skills, + 5 exp
Completed at least five job related activities, + 5 exp
Chatted with others, +5 social skill points
(Weekly) Fought an NPC nest, + 30 exp
(Weekly) Gained a 3 job levels, + 7 Fame
Quests Completed
(Repeatable) Helped to destroyed an NPC nest, +50 exp and + 3 fame
Solo cleared an NPC nest, +500 exp and + 10 fame
Lifetime Achievements Awarded
Warrior +5% skill gain in all martial arts skills - Defeated over 10 opponents solo in a single day
Berserker +15% skill gain in all martial arts skills - Defeated over 100 opponents solo in a single day – Replaces Warrior
Survivor +100hp – Live though a certain death situation
Titles Gained
Nudist – on equip gain +10% to charisma stat gains – your confident enough to go naked in public
Exhibitionist – on equip gain +20% to charisma stat gains – your confident enough to go naked in public and do something flashy or eye catching
Slime Squishier – on equip gain +10% damage to slimes – Killing many slimes has gained you a better understanding of how to damage them
Veteran – on equip -50% to combat fear effects used against you. Having survived many battles or a near death experience in combat you are better able to handle the psychological effects of battle.
Skill Levels Increased
Concentration (Layman->Novice) – Better able to maintain mental focus or spell casting even in difficult situations
Carving (None->Layman) Skill at creating all carved objects and art
Wood Carving(sub-Carving) (Layman->Novice) Skill at creating wood tools, objects and art
Observe (None->Layman->Novice) Understanding an location, person or enemy it’s abilities, and weaknesses. Similar to appraise which is used for the same purpose on objects.
Intimidation (None->Layman) Skill at convincing people to do as you command through fear.
Hair styling (sub-Beautician) (None->Layman) Skill at creating pretty hair styles.
Magic Theory (None->Layman->Novice) Understanding of the basic nature of magic and allows the crafting of new spells.
Evade (None->Layman->Novice->Apprentice) Skill to dodge incoming attacks
Spear (sub-Martial Arts) (None->Layman->Novice->Apprentice) Skill at using spear weapons in combat.
Throwing (sub-Martial Arts) (None->Layman->Novice) Skill at using thrown weapons in combat.
Unarmed (sub-Martial Arts) (None->Layman->Novice) Skill at using unarmed combat maneuvers.
Two Job Level Gained
Villager Lv +2
+10% base to modified stats x2
+1 ability pick