Vance knew he was lucky as hell the giant chicken didn’t notice him as it barreled towards the direction the giant hen had flown. He crawled out of the bushes and noticed the sun starting to lower from being directly above and knew shelter was going to be his number one priority if he was going to survive the next few days and get an understanding of the local land.
He went over to his giant slab and decided to pull it a bit closer to the forest. Looking around after a few heavy sighs, he noticed some of the same plant the chicken was eating earlier and uprooted it.
A few seconds later he had it free from the ground and pulled off a bud. You have harvested a chicken ditch weed bud. Properties will be revealed when the relevant level is unlocked played in his head. Immediately played a trumpeting melody familiar to a leveling up sound played and the sound of congratulations you have leveled up.
Name: Vance
Class: unknown
Strength:10
Agility:10
Intelligence:10
Luck:10
You have 1 ability point to spend! You have unlocked the player’s user interface!
Looking at the translucent pop-up menu, he noticed a status, spell, and storage page. Spells and storage were locked. His stat page was not, however, and showed his attributes and his health showing 100/100. He put the one point into luck and closed the user interface with just his thought and a new sound played.
Congratulations you unlocked farming level one. 10/100 XP
Vance yelled out, “ai, moderator, admin, and help!” with no luck. ‘Well, what the shit, he wasn’t sure if he had gone mad but felt pretty confident all this was coming as a thought and not an actual sound in his head. 'What the hell’, spoke Vance in a disappointed tone. He threw the bud in his pocket and picked nine more until the plant was bare of buds. Sure enough, after recovering nine more prompts in his head, a tenth prompt blared with the same tune.
It still didn’t show any properties so he went back to his table with five more plants and laid them all down and went to town stripping them of all their buds. He seemed to get 100 experience a plant and his third level cost him 250 experience points to achieve. He quickly stripped all fifty buds and noticed he was sitting at 250/500 experience points and was level three in farming after completion. His stone was stacked with buds now, scattered till it covered the top. His hands were sticky from peeling the buds, and it stank pretty horribly, almost like a skunk.
He wasn’t sure if he could eat it and didn’t want to take the risk; he did however know a bit about plants and knew the buds may contain seeds, so started focusing on one after a second of inspecting it he heard that same monotone voice tell him it was chicken ditch weed and that he wasn’t high enough level to see its properties. Vance started pulling the bud in half and a single seed popped out. As he focused on the seed, it gave a description of chicken ditch weed seed.
"Interesting", thought Vance as he poked a hole in the grassy soil by his feet and set the seed inside, grabbing some nearby dirt and covering it. To his surprise, he did not hear any kind of alert. “Oh well,” Vance mumbled as he walked back over to the bud filled table. Looking around, he grabbed his stone with the edge and walked over to the edge of the woods as quietly as he could. He peered around and noticed a birch tree, he knew birch bark was one of the more flammable substances you could find in the woods so he used his stone to cut a square and then pried the corner free and tore it off in a nice shingle.
Bringing it back to his camp, he tore it into fine strips with the use of his stone and some ripping. He had a nice little pile of birch bark strands and piled on the five budless branches. Now if only he could get it lit, he wanted a fire, he didn’t know how cold the night was going to get but there was a pretty strong breeze. He just hoped it didn’t rain. The clouds overhead were mostly white and scattered in groups, blocking the sun as they floated by. He heard a few birds start chirping as he looked for some more stones that may help in his fire-making mission.
He noticed a solid red stone that almost resonated a glow just beneath the water a few feet in as he walked the shoreline as he grabbed it the monotone voice let him know he had just found a spicy stone and his farming went up 50 points leaving him at 300/500. It also informed him his level was too low to see any properties. Wondering what use this stone could have, and seeing how none of the other stones had a description, he brought it over to his camp and struck it against the signpost. It crumbled like sandstone. "well damn", spoke Vance.
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He had really hoped it would have caused sparks or fire. Licking his finger, he picked up a little of the rock and tasted it. Yup, it was spicy as fuck. He ran over to the water and threw his face in, grabbing a drink. A few minutes and a couple of sips later, he decided to never ever harvest one of those rocks again. He liked a little spice, but damn, that had cleaned his system of snot and made his eyes run. Leaving him with a headache and a tingling, still spicy feeling mouth.
He grabbed his hammer stone and sharp rock and chipped a few more pieces off, making it sharper. Grabbing one of the branches, he tested the new edge and was happy to see it slice off a nice sized piece of the stick. He quickly cut off the branches until it was a somewhat straight stick. He wondered if he could make arrow shafts out of these at a later time as he examined his 2-foot stick. If he could get a fire going, it could be his fire poker, or if he could catch one of these animals like a fish, a nice skewer for something to eat. He was hungry as fuck.
He sighed as he wished he was back in his apartment cooking hot pockets in his all-in-one computer and drinking his favorite beverage. Faygo root beer. Noticing a purple glow as he glanced towards the water’s edge, it was a stone that revealed itself as he grabbed it. It wasn’t a huge stone looking like it would be fit for a necklace in a triangle shape.
You have found a moonstone size epic! +50 to farming Played the voice that he was becoming used to faster than he liked.
He brought the moonstone over to the fire, grabbing the sign, and decided to see if he could make a spark with this stone. Vance struck the moonstone and a bright white shower of sparks flew downward and set the whole pile of kindling below his strike point ablaze in seconds.
Success! You have gained the skill fire-starter level 1
10/100 XP
He quickly piled on a few dead branches he found near the forest and had a raging bonfire going. He piled a few more dead branches and pulled some grass to let it dry out as well and placed it in a
Disarray a dozen feet away from the bonfire. This was more like it, he thought as the bit of chill that had seemed to come in with the wind faded with a nice hot tan from the fire. If only he had s’mores, he wouldn’t mind this at all! A nice little bench stone. A roaring fire. Water just a couple of feet away. That didn’t seem to make him sick!
The sun was fading as two choices crossed Vance’s mind. Fishing or fort building. On the one hand, he was hungry, and sharpening a stick and spearing the water would probably at least get him a minnow, on the other, he probably should figure out some kind of shelter that hid him while he slept. He wasn’t quite ready to sleep next to the fire and hoped nothing was out there knowing there were chickens the size of small cars out there. What else could there be? He just then felt a sense of unease being so close to the lake, having a giant fire basically making him a beacon. What if there were hostile people or creatures? He knew nothing about the place beside it resembled Earth. Vance grabbed a stick and let it sit in the fire for a bit, then carried its flaming end towards the forest.
He was looking for a good natural spot with flat ground and came upon a fallen tree, crossing over and catching on a branch of another tree. This would be a good spot, he thought as he cleared out some grass, as he grabbed his first handful, though he spotted an oversized black egg. When he went closer and touched it. The artificial voice played into his mind that he had found a Murklurker egg. After spending a second looking at it, a bar came up showing its hatching timer. 80 clicked down to 79 as he went to go grab the egg when something else caught his attention. It was a green plant with a single flower wilting downward, revealing a diamond looking bud. He moved closer, and a pop up displayed.
Terminal flower properties: harvested for their single seed, should be planted with the entire bud to grow a player's terminal.
Vance pried the bud free with a smile of ignorance as he pocketed the bud, and turned around to collect his egg. He didn’t however notice the Murklurker, lurking right behind him.
“Mrgllll glrrm gl!”
That was all Vance heard as he felt a spear pierce his kidney, he looked down at the spear being thrust back out of him as he watched his life bar fall to a quarter, feeling time slow down yet being unable to take action as he watched two amphibious looking creatures; one yellow, the other dark purple as the latter threw a net on him. All while the darker purple and neon green accented fishlike creature thrust its spear forward and stabbed him through his heart.
His vision went black, and calming, ebbing darkness surrounded him as a voice echoed in his head.
Two lives left. Continue?
Yes, Vance thought hesitatingly as he was abruptly thrown back onto the same beach he built his fire on. It seemed to be morning as the sun was rising and he had on the same clothes, free from any rips or puncture holes just like when he arrived here. He checked his body, realizing he didn’t have any scars from any of his previous wounds and sighing. The fire must have died long ago. He noticed no more of those horror frog-fish men near him as he glanced around. His buds were all gone from the stone he had laid them on. Nothing around him seemed to move as he realized he was dehydrated and hungry. He knew this naturally, but he also noticed the debuffs portrayed under his health bar. Dehydrated gave him a negative one to his intelligence, and hungry gave him a negative one to strength. He quickly got rid of the dehydration problem with a handful of lake water. Vance felt good, all things considered. He glanced nervously over to where he had died and decided to go check for that seed that seemed to be missing from his pocket. As he got there, he noticed all the blood from earlier was missing along with the egg. He did however to his relief find the diamond-like bud laying right where he thought he had died. Picking it up, he looked around nervously and crept back to his dead fire.