You have died. Loss of all levels and XP back to the last threshold past. Beast Faction: -50
Zero levels and zero XP lost- you return as a level 1: 0/1000 XP. Maybe you should try gaining some XP or something. Integration: +.2% (24.4% currently) You have gained XP. Only Monsters may gain XP in death because this is your purpose. Gain 10% of the XP that would have been gained for slaying the jungle cat alpha variant. XP Gained: 52 XP Available: 2,291 Do you wish to absorb available XP upon completion of respawn?
I realize I shouldn’t make a decision under stress, but dying sucked. So, I accepted the option.
I shot up to level three. My body felt instantly stronger. The two points I gained in both Strength and Constitution were less than 10% but I could still feel the impact. Not so much with the four points gained in Will. I knew it increased my mana regeneration, but beyond that I couldn’t say exactly. Time would tell.
Beyond that, of course, I got the four free stat points, but since I was feeling guilty about leveling up on impulse; I held off on spending them for now. It was just like player leveling. Unlike many games, you didn’t gain skill points or HP by leveling. All you gained was the stats. Mana and HP were determined purely by stats, gear, and a few class bonuses.
If I wanted to gain more skill levels, I would have to put in the work on those skills. Well, or apparently as a monster, I could use XP to buy skills once I met certain pre-requisites. It was actually a far more expansive system than players had. When I was a wizard, I was allotted a certain number of skills to choose at character creation from a set list. Other skills, particularly crafting skills, could only be added after reaching certain levels. Yet other skills were automatically added upon reaching a particular level, but those were a specific minority. It dawned on me that this was probably one of the purposes for HI’s. I was being used to test variable systems to see how well they might work for players.
It clicked with me then. Maybe there were ways for me to regain some of the skills I had possessed as a wizard. I had to think about those. Heck, why stop there. There might not be any information on the net about Legends of Selmia since it was in a closed beta when I had been playing it. And of course, there were those non-disclosure agreements in effect, but that didn’t mean that me and some friends I made in the game hadn’t discussed skills, at least on a limited basis.
I didn’t even have to stop with the wizard skills I had possessed. I could also try to add the skills other players had. Fun. Now, I just needed to remember what those skills were. There was a stabbing pain in my head that only increased as I began to focus on the specific abilities different player classes had.
The knowledge was right there, yet somehow out of reach. The more it hurt, the more I found myself becoming agitated by it. In a weird way, I was coming to terms with the fact; I had been murdered for the benefit of a gaming company. Yet, I’d be a monkey’s uncle if they thought I wasn’t going to try to utilize any edge I could get. That included all that I could remember from my time as a player.
There was finally a breakthrough. The pain in my head eased up for just a second and it was like I pulled something out of a deep, dark barrel. I suddenly remembered the last skill I had gained as a wizard. It was known as Quick Meditation.
Just like the name implied, it allowed me to enter a meditative state within seconds. The perk being that my mana regeneration increased significantly during the duration of the meditation. The downside, of course, was that I was essentially sitting there in a trance as I would be unable to defend myself. Fine with a team, less so when trying to solo.
I also got another notification.
Integration forcibly reduced to 23.9. Warning attempts to alter your base bio-digital coding are prohibited. Steps shall be taken to moderate intrusive behavior. The first thought that popped into my head was how freaky that was. I felt like I was pulling the curtain back and seeing that the Great Oz was just a man. Except suddenly, I was tired. I didn’t know what I was worried about. I needed to figure out this meditation skill. That was the important thing now.
At least, I thought it was. I felt odd, but figured that was the effects of being respawned. I was in the exact same spot I had been when I first appeared near the village. This time there was no Shemi waiting to meet me, but a pair of other outcasts were there. I knew they were outcasts because their build was slighter than the warrior type ogres and they had only the crudest of weapons and clothing on them.
They greeted him in typical ogre fashion, “New onez dumb. Followz uz. Wez show outcast howz not get smashed by chief.”
“Thanks, guys. But I’m Shemi’s apprentice. I already know my way around,” I replied. There really wasn’t time to mess around with these guys and I didn’t care to get involved in village politics. My only goal was to level up enough to get out of here. Although now I also needed to earn enough XP to buy the Quick Meditation skill.
Once I had realized it was there, I got a notification.
Quick Meditation- Activation time: 10 seconds. Once active mana regenerations at 3x+.5/skill level times faster than normal. Cool down on skill is 10 minutes - 1 minute per level. Cost to purchase: 525 XP. You do not currently have sufficient XP to purchase. Strangely, I felt there was something else I should be focused on, but for some reason, I couldn’t seem to think of what it was. Oh well, I was gonna be busy enough just cooking food to keep in the chief’s good graces and finding ways to gain XP.
I discovered one positive side effect to respawn, though. I wasn’t the least bit tired. It was dawn, but I felt like I had just woken up from eight hours of sleep. Not that I was going to go around killing myself just to avoid sleep.
When I pushed past the greeting committee, they didn’t make a move to stop me. I figured the best thing I could do was get started cooking. I was gonna need some meat and any other supplies that I could find, so I headed for the hut where I had found captured material. It was going to require more time than I wanted to spend this morning to perform a proper inventory, but I figured I could have a look around.
I had jungle cat, rage badger, and bat meat. I rejected the cat meat, not just in memory of my buddy but because of too many bad Chinese restaurant jokes. Although, if I could somehow manage to get strong enough to kill that shadow variant alpha, it had some interesting abilities. Experimentation would be necessary to find out if the traits of animals or plants could be passed on with magical cooking. The bat meat I also rejected just because of old holo programs I had seen talking about plagues being blamed on eating bats.
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That left me with the rage badger meat. It might be tough and stringy from my initial observations, but I was curious if I could come up with a recipe that would capture the ferocity of the creatures. The hut wasn’t that useful because I had taken the only spices to be found the night before. At least I had a better frying pan now.
Well, nothing for it but to ask Shemi if she could help me find some vegetables or berries that would be safe to cook. Then I realized it would be better if I could find Kittikork. Wandering around the village didn’t get me anywhere, but it did cause a few of the ogre warriors to swing a weapon at me. Apparently, the divide between outcasts vs brutes and maulers was greater than I had initially realized. They didn’t like seeing an outcast not busy at work.
Eventually, I gave in and went to Shemi’s hut. I should have just done that in the first place, though, because that was where I found Kittikork. She was tending the little garden of odd flowers outside of the shaman’s hut. I assumed those were alchemical ingredients, as they didn’t look like anything edible.
Before I could say anything, Shemi came out of the hut. “Wherez youz go? Chief be looking fer youz. Youz to cook for himz and warriorz before hunt today.”
I groaned. “I thought I only needed to cook for the chief.”
“Himz decided food make stronger goodz for all warriorz.”
“I thought I was your apprentice now. Can’t you keep him from wasting too much of my time?”
She stared at me for a minute with her head cocked at an odd angle. Then said, “Youz went hunting?”
“Yes.”
“Howz that working for youz?” She asked with that tone I’d heard from my mother many years ago when she asked me how trying to use some machinery at the local industrial park as a ramp to jump my bike had worked.
“I was sent for respawn but I hadn’t applied my XP yet so now that I have, I’m up to level three.”
“Mez be seeing youz level. Just not seeing much brainz. No needz for stupid prentice. Come see mez once youz past first threshold.” As soon as she finished speaking, she walked back into her hut while shaking her head.
She did, however, pause long enough to tell me that Kittikork could show me where to find roots and berries that I could use for cooking. I found the younger ogress ready to work with me. From the look she was giving me, she was still fixated on that legend of the Oni business. She must really see me as some kind of savior for ogre kind. Sadly, she was going to be very disappointed.
The good news was that she showed me how to find various root vegetables that the ogres ate as a mainstay. They were called twisty roots by the ogres, but they looked like spindly potatoes, so that is how I thought of them. We also found some blueberries which excited Kittikork. She implied they were rare and mostly only the warriors got to eat them.
The biggest find for me, though, was a large bird’s nest. The eggs were the same size as ostrich eggs. I had noticed a few of these in the hut the night before, but the ones I grabbed had been destroyed when Tulbat interrupted my cooking.
Once I knew what to look for, I managed to find a dozen of the nests. They were all on the ground, which reinforced the ostrich image in my head. None of them were very well hidden, but Kittikork marveled at how quickly I was able to find them. I wanted to make a smart alec comment about not really being a stupid ogre, but thought better of it.
Not all the nests had eggs in them, but I still managed to collect nearly two dozen of the huge eggs. By that point, the gathering bags which Kittikork had brought along were full, so it was time to head back. I definitely needed a bag of holding, but those were expensive even for early players and the basic inventory I got only had 12 slots. At the time, it didn’t even occur to me to wonder if there was a way to increase that inventory.
Any such thoughts were driven out of my head as a pair of squawking, feathered monsters appeared on the far side of the clearing we were in. I didn’t know if it was their nest I was raiding, but they were rather upset immediately. Both were scratching the ground and staring at us. An attack was inevitable, but I knew they were working up their courage to attack creatures who were so much larger than they were.
It gave me a second to Assess them.
Charging Bird Level: 3 HP: 110
Both of them appeared to me with a green aura, meaning they were capable of hurting me but presented very little threat. Interestingly enough, my scan showed me that one was male, and the other was female. I didn’t know if these birds were the type that only had one mate or were like chickens, where one male could fertilize numerous females.
The meaning of their name, though, wasn’t a mystery for long as the male lowered its head and charged at me. The thing went from zero to the speed of a robotaxi in two seconds. I did get a chance to notice the horns on top of its head. They were only about four inches long, but I could imagine them making serious wounds.
Rather than damage it with a Flameburst, I shifted my weight to take its charge with my spear. That turned out to be a mistake. Sure, my spear caught it dead center on its body, but the long ostrich-like neck meant that its horns also caught me. The spear tore through it, but its horns cut up my gut. The deep gashes were painful and as I used the spear to hold the thrashing bird at bay, all I could think of was that I needed to get some armor.
It eventually died, and the female seemed to be working herself up into a frenzy to repeat the attack. Rather than casting regeneration, I gritted my teeth and sucked up the pain long enough to focus. “Flameburst.” As I said the command word, the spell triggered and flew from my hands to the spot I had targeted. This time it was the ground at the feet of the oversized chicken.
The flames at her feet must have scared the mother bird enough that it sent her running off into the woods. I cast a quick regeneration on myself and then started hauling the three-hundred-pound bird through the forest behind me. I wanted to get away from the nests in case more of them came back. I didn’t mind the 25 XP, but it wasn’t worth being gored again. I had cooking to do.
The trip back to Shemi’s hut gave me time to think about it my plans for the future. I decided that 25% of my XP would be saved for buying skills but that the rest of it would go into hitting the first threshold. There were obviously stronger beasts in the forest, so I could probably hit at least level 10 here. I needed to reach that threshold in order to get Shemi to teach me anything. For now, though, I just got down to cooking.