Morgan Mackenzie was falling through the sky in an old fashioned metal bathtub, wearing nothing but soapy bathwater and an expression of total shock and panic. The fact that she was screaming in a state of pure and abject terror should come as no surprise to anyone who might have been present to witness her sudden appearance in mid-air in a strange and alien world. As a matter of fact, her arrival was indeed noticed by several local denizens of her new environs. The first creatures to be alerted to her presence were three [Giant Eagle Hatchlings] who were quite startled when over three hundred pounds of iron bathtub, filled with over a hundred gallons of soapy water and just over a hundred pounds of screeching, naked human appeared less than ten feet above their nest. Gravity immediately remembered its job, and the newborn eagle hatchlings promptly lost any chance of ever becoming proud and mighty [Giant Eagles] like they probably hoped. The unlucky hatchlings did not even have time to squawk a hopeless protest about their unhappy fate as the tub landed on them with a crunch that Morgan did not even notice. The sudden stop of the bathtub and her follow-up splashy impact cut her screams short as she landed not in the center of the tub, but against the side. Only random luck and slippery soap suds saved her from a concussion or worse as she slid down the side, then the bottom of the tub and she was sloshed, bathwater and all, into the nest on top of scattered pieces of egg shells and scraps of rotting carrion.
Morgan pushed herself up to her knees as the sudden shock wore off in the stillness of the moment. Finally able to draw a breath, ribs aching from the impact, she immediately gagged. Her sudden coughing earned her further protests from her already bruised and tender ribs. “What the fuck!” she exclaimed as the scents of rotting meat in various stages of decay assaulted her senses, lightly seasoned with bird droppings as well as fresh blood and feather-coated viscera. She still held her loofah scrubby in one hand, and raised it to her face in a partially successful attempt to mask the stench of the nest with the familiar smells of her favorite body wash products. She looked around in confusion, battling through the sheer shock and surprise of her situation to try to make some sort of sense about where she was. Her confusion was promptly renewed though, as within moments of her landing she felt rather than heard a chiming DING! inside her head, followed immediately by two more sensations, exactly the same as the first. Just as she opened her mouth to blindly repeat her utterance, her attention was stolen by ethereal silvery text spilling itself across the center of her sight.
You have defeated [Giant Eagle Hatchling(Lvl - 1)]
For earning your victory while [Naked] and [Unequipped], experience gain doubled.
+40 experience gained.
You have defeated [Giant Eagle Hatchling(Lvl - 1)]
For earning your victory while [Naked] and [Unequipped], experience gain doubled.
+40 experience gained.
You have defeated [Giant Eagle Hatchling(Lvl - 2)]
For earning your victory while [Naked] and [Unequipped], experience gain doubled.
+70 experience gained.
As an increasingly confused Morgan gazed slack-jawed at the words superimposed over her vision, they quickly began to fade. As several extremely un-ladylike expletives exploded into the silent trees, an even more intense DING! slammed into her mind like a gold and silver starburst.
You have reached Level 2! Health and Status partially restored!
For reaching this milestone while [Naked] and [Unequipped], rewarded points doubled.
10 distributable Stat Points awarded.
10 Skill Points awarded.
Skill purchases unlocked!(Check available skills through your Status Menu)
As interesting as she found these new messages, Morgan did not have time to properly consider this information. As the last glowing message faded from her vision, the nest she had fallen into swayed sideways with a vicious lurch, spilling her once more into the detritus. Suddenly unbalanced, broken egg shells and jagged branches tore into her hands and knees as she struggled to keep from falling face first onto the muck-covered floor of the nest. A piercing screech rekindled her shortly forgotten terror. The nest shuddered once more with the sound of cracking tree branches. Morgan scrambled backwards towards the trunk of tree that held the nest in it’s branches, not even noticing the new scratches and smattering of rotten meat and filth she was crawling through in her panic. Only two important details occupied her attention at that moment. The first, and actually less frightening thing she had on her mind was that the nest was tilting further and further down away from the tree as the branches cracked and shook. The second and, to Morgan’s frantic mind, more immediately important detail was the rather gigantic eagle shoving her bathtub off of its rather ruined wing. The colossal bird of prey was easily twice the size of an SUV, and it jerked its head to turn a baleful eye in the direction of the one who had slain its young and so grievously wounded it. The angry bird then drew in a massive breath and gave vent to its rage with a screech far louder than Morgan was capable of comprehending. The sound hit her like a solid wave of force, for indeed that was the effect of the oversized avian’s skill, [Thunderous Screech]. Not that Morgan was in any state to realize any of this, or care even if she did have the information. The pressure of the cry slammed her out of the nest and into the trunk of the tree, shattering her eardrums. The bathtub came to rest almost on top of her previous position against the wall of the nest itself. Stunned, deafened, and feeling sharp jagged lances of pain through her whole body, she fell forward onto the tree branch and almost didn’t manage to latch onto it in time.
Her vision blurry and ears hearing nothing but a painful silent ringing, Morgan held onto the branch of the tree with the last vestiges of effort left in her broken and exhausted body. A different kind of message pulsed in her awareness with a dull throbbing cadence.
You have taken critical damage!
Status afflicted: [Deafened]! Your eardrums have ruptured!
Status afflicted: [Internal Bleeding]! You are bleeding internally!
She felt her precarious perch shift and crack more than she heard it, and looked on with a sudden blank detachment as the bird that had just killed her flapped its remaining wing and flopped itself right over the side of its own nest and fell out of her sight. The big eagle’s last lurching movement was the final bit of stress the tortured branch could handle, and less than a foot from Morgan’s face the groaning limb finally gave out. Looking down, she saw the eagle hit the ground in a puff of oversized feathers like the world’s largest pillow exploded, followed by the nest and forked tree branch. As the broken bird tried to fight its way free from the debris, Morgan’s big metal bathtub landed right on its head with a crunchy GONG! that Morgan might have found rather humorous in better circumstances. And if her eardrums weren’t ruptured rendering her deaf. Eardrums or not, she most certainly did hear two back to back notices as more blocks of text appeared in her vision one after the other, and she suddenly felt much better. She felt better than she would have thought someone in her situation should be feeling.
DING! rolled through her mind with a bright silver flair.
You have defeated [Giant Wildlands Eagle(Lvl - 9)]
For earning your victory while [Naked] and [Unequipped], experience gain doubled.
+1800 experience gained.
Which was immediately followed with the golden DING!
You have reached Level 3! Health and Status partially restored!
For reaching this milestone while [Naked] and [Unequipped], rewarded points doubled.
10 distributable Stat Points awarded.
10 Skill Points awarded.
Skill purchases unlocked!(Check available skills through your Status Menu)
DING!
You have reached Level 4! Health and Status partially restored!
For reaching this milestone while [Naked] and [Unequipped], rewarded points doubled.
10 distributable Stat Points awarded.
10 Skill Points awarded.
Skill purchases unlocked!(Check available skills through your Status Menu)
DING!
You have reached Level 5! Health and Status partially restored!
For reaching this milestone while [Naked] and [Unequipped], rewarded points doubled.
10 distributable Stat Points awarded.
10 Skill Points awarded.
Skill purchases unlocked!(Check available skills through your Status Menu)
DING!
You have reached Level 6! Health and Status partially restored!
For reaching this milestone while [Naked] and [Unequipped], rewarded points doubled.
10 distributable Stat Points awarded.
10 Skill Points awarded.
Skill purchases unlocked!(Check available skills through your Status Menu)
“What. The. FUCK!?” Morgan gasped. While the actual time that had passed between her being in her apartment taking a bath and her current situation of being well over a hundred feet up in the top of a tree could be counted in seconds without needing three digits, the sheer amount of new information and experience of the events had left her with such a horrendous case of mental whiplash that all she could do was just hold onto her newfound friend the tree branch and try to process it all.
“That… that happened… Did it? Or not?” she said to nobody in particular as she pushed herself up to a sitting position, straddling the waist-thick stub of tree she currently occupied. Her wounds may have been miraculously healed by the mysterious “levels” she had reached, but she was still covered in a rather disgusting blend of soap, blood, feathers, and bird droppings. And she was most definitely naked. She was acutely aware of that fact with the rough bark of the tree scraping her tender thighs and bottom. Her skin was beginning to itch all over from the nasty mess. She had for all intents and purposes been rolled in it like a piece of meat being coated in a most fell sort of breading. The other thing she was unable to ignore was the terrible smell.
Realizing she still clutched her scrubby loofah in one hand, she picked out the larger pieces of sticks and feathers out of it and once again held it up to her face to try to smell something nicer than bird droppings and the iron-tangy scent of blood. Carefully, she wiped the worst of the muck off her face and took a slow look around to try to figure out exactly where she was. It only took her a few heartbeats to realize that where? was a question that would have no easy answer.
The first thing she noticed was a confirmation of her first stunned look at her new world. Two moons chased each other across the sky, the larger leading the smaller by a thumbnail wide gap from her point of reference. The next thing she noticed was trees. Lots and lots and lots of trees. Very similar looking trees to the familiar pines, cedars, and juniper trees she had grown up seeing all around her home in Eastern Washington; the difference was one of scale. She could tell she was well over a hundred feet off the ground, and she was in a much smaller tree than the giant timber she could see all around her. The tree she currently occupied was in fact dead, with none of the verdant green needles, leaves, or anything else gracing its gnarled, stunted (compared to the other trees) form. She was still above the actual forest canopy though, thanks to her temporary seat growing out of a rather pronounced hill of raised earth. The sibling moons cast a brighter lunar glow than any full moon she’d ever experienced on earth, and in any other circumstances her view most certainly would have been utterly breathtaking. Even with her sudden and frightening situation she couldn't help but to let out an exclamatory “Whoa…”
The forest stretched for as far as she could see even in the abnormally bright moonlight, at least in every direction she could see considering she was far too frightened at the moment to try to climb around the main trunk of her new treetop home. In the distance to her left she could see a glimmer through a dip in the landscape that she thought might be a river of some sort, but she had no real way to gauge any semblance of accurate distance just by looking. Off to her right if she turned her head far enough she could just see the edge of the forest in the distance rise in elevation and give way to a stark and jagged mountain range. But the most amazing thing about the forest was, far and away, the trees.
The trees in this forest made the giant redwoods and sequoias she had seen in the american northwest look like quaint little christmas trees. The hilltop that “her” tree grew out of formed a clearing almost a quarter of a mile across by her best estimate. It was at the very least a hundred and twenty feet or so from where she sat to the gnarled roots that had caught the giant eagle before her bathtub ended its final moments of outrage. The slope then steeply dropped off for several hundred feet further before giving way to smaller trees at the edge of the forest, trees that only grew in size and majesty the farther away from the root-covered knoll upon which she was sitting.
“There must be something different about either this tree or this hill, or both…” she spoke out loud. While her “level ups” had restored her health and healed her ruptured eardrums and internal injuries, her voice still sounded muffled and far away due to the congealed blood that had built up before her miraculous recovery. After a partially successful attempt to clean her ears out with the careful application of her fingernails, Morgan simply sat for a few minutes to organize her thoughts.
Morgan Mackenzie was not stupid. Far from it in fact. She was a below average college student who only took light class loads because she worked a full time job. Her average to bordering on poor grades through high school and into college were a result of her apathy and lack of motivation, and not from a lack of intelligence or capability. She simply wasn’t interested in more than just getting by, as long as getting by was reasonably achievable and left her plenty of free time for things she actually enjoyed. Like the company of a select few friends, her books, and looking at cute things on the internet, with the occasional interlude for sexy times with her now ex-boyfriend. That particular train of thought brought her bad mood crashing back with a vengeance, pulling her out of her reverie so that she noticed the rough bark she was clinging to. Not to mention the increasingly itchy coating of icky she was currently wearing. Carefully, she adjusted herself to hold her more sensitive bits away from the scratchy bark she was clinging to like human shrink-wrap. Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, she refocused on the messages that had appeared in her vision. As soon as her attention came back to them, the last golden “level up” message returned to a startlingly vivid clarity. “What is ‘status menu’? She said to herself, jumping slightly as a silvery list of text and numbers replaced the previous level up message.
Status Information for: Morgan Mackenzie
Level - 6
Primary Class: [Locked]
Secondary Class: [Locked]
Health - 74/74
Stamina - 24/24
Mana - 36/36
STR - 3
AGI - 5
CON - 4
VIT - 4
INT - 6
Stat points available to distribute: 50
Current Skills: None
Basic Skills now available for purchase!
Skill Points available: 50
Titles, Mantles, and Aspects
[Worldwalker(Title)] - You have travelled through the void between the many worlds! Every world is different, each with its own gifts and dangers. To help you survive strange new places you gain a slight boost to health and an increased ability to learn new things! (+50 to Health, +50% increased gains to Skill Experience)
[Naked Survivor(Aspect)] - You have defeated foes and increased your own power while [Naked] and [Unequipped]! For gaining five or more levels in this manner without the benefits of a [Class] you have gained this Aspect. Experience gained and points rewarded are doubled while you are [Naked] and [Unequipped]. This Aspect will modify some learned or available skills with appropriate bonuses to offset your incompatibility with equipped items. Equipping clothing or items of any type will disable this Aspect, rendering modified skills and benefits unavailable. Facing further challenges and reaching new milestones of personal growth while [Naked] and [Unequipped] will enhance this Aspect for even greater benefit.
“Huh…” huffed Morgan as she took in the sudden influx of information, this time actually paying attention to the words somehow being projected into her eyes. Even though she had played games like Stardew Valley, Factorio, and Starbound more than anything else, the similarities to MMOs and RPGs was not lost on her. As she focused on her dismally low stats she received not another notification but a vague sense of how they worked. Understanding how her stats worked did not intrinsically lend itself to helping her figure out how to get from her chilly treetop location and to somewhere warmer and safer. Preferably a location with another bath and a change of clothes. A brisk, bone-chilling wind rustled her elevated perch and reminded her just how naked she was.
“F-F-F-FUCK,” she stuttered. The muck she was splattered with was making the cool wind feel even colder, and the cold gave the rough bark she was pressed against an even more savage intensity. With her newly restored health from the leveling up, it did not hurt exactly, but it was just about as far from comfortable as she could get without actual pain. Her hair was matted with shampoo and baby bird guts and beginning to dry, and the rest of her body had begun to itch like mad.
“So… either I’m dead and this is hell, I’m dreaming, or according to this ‘Worldwalker’ title I’m in another world. This shit sucks too much to be a dream. Dropped in bird shit is definitely a kind of hell, but giant trees and a creepy forest are definitely pointing towards another world. I hope. Or think. I might just be going insane…”
A small part of Morgan’s mind realized her words were too quick and her breathing far too rapid, and she struggled within her own mind to hold the oncoming panic attack at bay. Taking a deep breath, and with no other ideas for what else to do, she looked back at her stats once again. With her conscious attention on just her stats, the image zoomed in on that section and the rest fell out of her vision. Focusing her attention on her available stat points, without understanding how she knew she could do so, she willed a single point into her strength stat. She felt more than saw her STR increase from three to four, followed by a quick but noticeable twitching of her entire body. She repeated that several more times in a row, and as her STR hit eleven her entire body cramped so intensely that she nearly passed out. She had hugged her tree limb so hard that she had driven the rough edges of the bark into her skin all along the insides of her legs, arms, and her bare breasts, while her hands had clenched so tightly her fingers were pressed completely through the bark and into the outer wood of the tree.
“OW! OW! OW! SHIT! FUCK!” she panted in a strained cadence as she forced her hands to let go and with extreme care readjusted her grip. She tenderly eased herself back up to lean against the trunk of the tree, wincing as the bark pulled loose from her skin. As fresh blood welled up from dozens of tiny cuts and tears, a new message appeared in darker silver text in front of her displayed stats.
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Status Afflicted: [Minor Bleeding]!
Feeling insulted by the rather obvious message, she couldn’t help but to blurt out “I know I’m fucking bleeding here god-dam-” Her jaw snapped shut in surprise as she saw her health tick down by three points. What silenced her wasn’t seeing the numbers, but the feeling that passed through her mind and body as it happened. It was an unpleasant mixture of a moment of faint weakness flavored with hints of nervous fear. As she focused her attention more closely on her health numbers she was overcome with a sense of ominous dread. The silvery text gave her no answers, but she suddenly knew with every fiber of her being that allowing her health to drop to zero was a very bad thing. She was suddenly afraid, more than she had been when she was falling, even more afraid than when the eagle had screamed and hurt her so badly. Because now she knew without knowing how that zero health points was THE END. As this realization struck her, Morgan felt another pulse of weakness and saw her health drop three more points. She felt it, without being able to explain it even to herself. Her instincts told her that the stat labeled “CON”, her constitution, affected her health, so she quickly dumped five of her remaining forty-three points into it.
Increasing her CON did indeed increase her health pool, but to her horror and dismay it increased the maximum while doing nothing for her steadily dropping current health. Her maximum health grew by thirty points to a total of a hundred and four, and the increase was followed not by muscle cramps as she had experienced when she increased her strength, but instead a wave of nausea and lightheadedness. Another pulse marked another three health points lost, dropping her to sixty-five. The pulses seemed to hit every tenth or so heartbeat, and Morgan knew she would not have very long, a minute at most, if the bleeding did not stop soon.
“Let's try vitality, instead,” she hoarsely groaned, still dizzy and nauseated by the fact that her health was almost halfway gone. Before she could lose another chunk of health she looked at her stats. With an all or nothing thought she added ten points to her VIT stat, leaving her with only thirty-three points. Not that Morgan had time to consider points of any sort as she felt her heart stop. And then she felt a THUMP! in her chest that radiated outwards like an electrical jolt. Barely managing to keep her balance in the tree she saw her stamina had jumped to eighty-four, but more importantly the next dreaded pulse from the bleeding only cost her two points of health. She held her breath for a few heartbeats but the next pulse didn’t arrive. And then her health ticked back up a single point, and she released the air she’d held in her lungs, gasping for more and nearly hyperventilating in relief. She had been given no message, but somehow she simply knew she was no longer afflicted with the bleeding status. Her maximum stamina had increased, and now her current stamina had begun to regenerate, slightly faster than her health.
“Oh, thank God!” she sobbed. Morgan’s entire evening had been a frantic rollercoaster ride of emotional ups and downs and even some side to sides and stops and starts, and she didn’t even understand herself how she was managing to hold it together as well as she was. After nearly a full minute of simply leaning against the tree trunk, she realized that the bark of the tree wasn’t digging into her skin as painfully as before. Consciously thinking about it brought the knowledge into her mind; her CON stat affected not only her total health but her general toughness and resilience as well. She saw her current health march up another tick. It wasn’t coming back very fast, but it was coming back. Slow was better than nothing, after all. With new determination, she once again looked at the stats section of her status screen:
Status Information for: Morgan Mackenzie
Level - 6
Primary Class: [Locked]
Secondary Class: [Locked]
Health - 67/104
Stamina - 28/84
Mana - 36/36
STR - 11
AGI - 5
CON - 9
VIT - 14
INT - 6
Stat points available to distribute: 33
Current Skills: None
Basic Skills now available for purchase!
Skill Points available: 50
Note to self: DO NOT dump points into stats all at once! Morgan mentally scolded herself with a weary sigh. She realized the obvious correlation between her sudden seizure and spending stat points to more than double her strength. The sudden shock and energy from vitality made a sort of sense, but she had no idea why constitution made her feel sick by increasing her health pool. Such considerations had soon dropped from her immediate priority list as yet another sensation quite rudely intruded upon her already quite miserable state of existence.
Hunger. Morgan felt a growing hollowness in her belly, reminiscent of visits to doctor clinics for tests where she had not been allowed to eat the day before. Not quite to the point of pain, but with a low growl her empty stomach announced that it intended to not be ignored for much longer. Realizing she would not be allowed to stay in her tree for much longer, she went back to her stats with the intent of figuring if any of them might somehow provide a way for her to safely make the perilous descent.
Tentatively she put a point into AGI and waited. With only a slight shiver affecting her body it was hardly an effort to keep her balance in the tree this time. She repeated this process every thirty or so heartbeats until her agility stat was equal to her strength. As she had increased the attribute much more slowly this time, she almost did not notice the effect. It took her several moments of introspection to realize she no longer felt dizzy when she glanced towards the ground, and balancing herself on her craggy perch was much easier to do. Morgan’s body simply knew how to stay centered on the branch without her conscious mind having to concentrate on it, and keeping her tender parts away from the sharper outcroppings of the rough bark was so easy it was barely an afterthought. “Oh, now that is a definite improvement!” she quipped out loud. With her mood slightly improved, albeit with her hunger even more noticeable, she moved on to the last of her attributes.
Morgan’s intuition correctly pointed towards the INT statistic being related to the mind as the others had the body. Thusly forewarned by previous experience, she braced herself for a headache or worse as she added a point to the intellect attribute. There was no headache, but she did feel her mind become a little less muddled. Another two points and she felt somewhat lightheaded, but it quickly passed after a few deep breaths. With her mind becoming sharper each step of the way, she gradually increased her INT to match her VIT, leaving her with twenty points left. While more than doubling her initial intellect as a stat brought no epiphany or revelation, she did find herself getting more solid impressions of what her different stats did whenever she focused on that part of the translucent text floating in front of her eyes. She also found that it did not so much impede her vision as she simply saw both the floating words and the forest vista before her at the same time. With that particular paradox threatening to give her a headache, she switched to putting points into her constitution. More health can’t ever be a bad thing, she thought to herself as she remembered how close she’d come to dying several times merely in the first five minutes of appearing in this strange and frightening world.
Each increase to her CON was followed by another mild but noticeable wave of what she could only describe as a full body nausea that did not play nice with her growing hunger. It finally dawned on Morgan that her body was literally changing itself with every point she spent increasing her attributes. She found that fact less disturbing than the realization that she didn’t find it disturbing. With her total health now increased, and not all that keen on experiencing any more unpleasant waves of sickness, she incrementally spent the rest of her points on her VIT.
While she was happy to see her total maximum health increase, she realized it was truly only as useful to her as much as she had the ability to recover it. Each point she spent on VIT was accompanied by a corresponding rush and feeling of energy, and her maximum stamina grew accordingly. She felt more than saw her current health, stamina, and mana pools begin to tick upwards much faster. As her remaining distributable stat points dropped to zero, she checked her main status once again as hunger gnawed sharply in her gut.
Status Information for: Morgan Mackenzie
Level - 6
Primary Class: [Locked]
Secondary Class: [Locked]
Health - 73/140
Stamina - 41/168
Mana - 41/84
STR - 11
AGI - 11
CON - 15
VIT - 28
INT - 14
Stat points available to distribute: 0
Current Skills: None
Basic Skills now available for purchase!
Skill Points available: 50
With her increased vitality bringing a noticeable increase to her regen, Morgan focused her attention on her available skill points in the hope that something there might possibly lead to her finding her way down from the tree and towards something safer. Hopefully with food, her increasingly insistent innards reminded her with another gurgling growl. “Skills!” she said out loud, and as expected another menu overlay appeared.
Skill Acquisition Menu
Skill points may be spent to gain new techniques and traits to enhance your capabilities! Skills that are available for purchase will vary depending on your level and your previous accomplishments! Due to your previous methods and circumstances for reaching your levels and milestones, several Basic skills have been modified and are now available! Choose carefully, as some skills are incompatible with each other or certain classes and may lead to future restrictions on available skill and class selection. Other skills may provide bonuses in tandem or even unlock new and unique skills and classes in the future!
Available Skills:
[Naked Instinct(Passive)] - [5 Skill Points] Due to earning the Aspect [Naked Survival], the skill [Survival Instincts] has been modified and purchase cost reduced by 50%. While naked you are bare before the dangers of the world and need every edge you can get to help you survive! This skill improves all of your senses in order to help you detect impending danger. The [Naked] version of this skill will also help you detect possible beneficial situations! May receive bonus improvements from other [Naked] skills.
[Naked Resilience(Passive)] - [5 Skill Points] Due to earning the Aspect [Naked Survival], the skill [Natural Resilience] has been modified and purchase cost reduced by 50%. That which does not kill you makes you stronger! This skill improves your chances of gaining resistances to any negative status effect or damage type you are exposed to. Repeated or continuous exposure increases resistances over time. The [Naked] version of this skill improves your chances of gaining new resistances and improves the rate at which learned resistances increase! May receive bonuses from other [Naked] skills.
[Naked Recovery(Channeled)] - [10 Skill Points] Due to earning the Aspect [Naked Survival], the skill [Recovery] has been modified and purchase cost reduced by 50%. Eventually everyone falls, but sometimes they get back up again! This skill allows you to recover health at an increased rate while channeled, at the expense of Stamina. Health recovery rate and Stamina cost per second dependent on skill level and possible bonuses and/or negative status effects. The [Naked] version of this skill also recovers Mana in addition to health, and instantly recovers a small portion of both Health and Mana upon activation! May receive bonuses from other [Naked] skills.
[Naked Camouflage(Channeled)] - [10 Skill Points] Due to earning the Aspect [Naked Survival], the skill [Camouflage] has been modified and purchase cost reduced by 50%. Mighty enemies or juicy prey, sometimes it’s better not to be seen in the first place! This skill allows you to blend in with your surroundings while channeled, reducing the chances you will be noticed at the expense of Stamina. Effectiveness depends on skill level and the skills and abilities of the ones you are hiding from, in addition to possible bonuses and/or negative status effects. The [Naked] version of this skill also expends Mana in order to suppress your natural life energy, further decreasing your chances of being detected! May receive bonuses from other [Naked] skills.
[Naked Weapons(Activated)] - [20 Skill Points] Due to earning the Aspect [Naked Survival], the skill [Natural Weapons] has been modified and purchase cost reduced by 50%. Sometimes what you were born with is all you have to rely on! This skill hardens your body when you strike or are struck by enemies, allowing you to deliver devastating impacts with your own body, or reducing damage you take by a significant amount at the cost of Stamina. Effectiveness depends on skill level and stats, in addition to possible bonuses and/or negative status effects. The [Naked] version of this skill enhances this effect at the added cost of Mana, thickening your skin into a tough layer similar to tree bark, stone, or even metals at higher levels! May receive bonuses from other [Naked] skills.
[Naked Magic(Activated)] - [20 Skill Points] Due to earning the Aspect [Naked Survival], the skill [Basic Magic] has been modified and its purchase cost reduced by 50%. Some people throw their fists, but some throw fire and lightning! This skill provides the basic ability to manipulate the elements of Mana that flow in and around you, at the cost of Mana. Continuous training and experience will lead to finer control and senses of individual elements of magic. True dedication may lead to enhanced affinity for specific elements or types of magic. The [Naked] version of this skill further enhances your ability to control the primal forces, increasing the rate at which you develop affinities and future magical skills. May receive bonuses from other [Naked] skills.
Morgan took a few minutes to read the descriptions of the skills presented to her. The list itself was quite long, but many options were dim to her eyes with a [Conditions not met.] in place of a skill description. From what names she could see, most of those seemed to be related to weapons or armor, and she had neither of such things available anyway. None of the skills shown in her list cost more than her fifty available points to spend, so Morgan assumed it only showed her skills she could actually afford to get.
The first four skills Morgan considered absolutely necessary. A way to avoid danger was so appealing as to cause her to salivate, although that may have also been because of her extreme levels of hunger. This made [Naked Instinct] and [Naked Camouflage] the first things she spent her skill points on. She hesitated for a moment because of the [Naked] part, but it was a very short moment. Morgan saw no equivalent skills providing similar options without the “Naked” part tacked onto it in her list of available options, and she was already naked. It’s not like I can get any more naked than I already am, she thought to herself as she mentally okayed the brief “Are you sure?” confirmation messages. In the space of time between one heartbeat and the next, Morgan felt her entire existence shift.
After a brief flash of disorientation that was over faster than it was possible for her to measure, Morgan’s entire body froze into perfect stillness and her eyes snapped their focus to a patch of movement in the distant treetop canopy. The wind had been rustling the leaves and branches of the forest all around her as long as she had been sitting in the tree, but she could tell that this particular spot of movement was not the wind. After a few moments she relaxed again, once her senses confirmed it was moving away from her location and not towards her, thus most likely not a threat at that moment in time. She could see other things in the forest as well, not clearly, but vague impressions as her gaze roamed back and forth across the verdant landscape. A particularly shadowy area seemed to radiate danger, while another gave her a simple blank feeling, and yet another area with a twinkling glimmer between the trees assured her that water could be found in that direction. The urge to head in that direction was suddenly quite strong, and Morgan then realized she was as thirsty as she was hungry. The impulse was so intense that before she realized it Morgan had shifted her hands and feet on her branch and started looking for a way down. That is, until she looked down towards the roots spread all over the hill her tree was growing out of, and the sudden sense of danger caused her to instinctively flatten herself onto the limb once more. She felt the sudden drop in her stamina and another pull on her mind that had to be mana as [Naked Camouflage] activated in response to what she saw below her.
The ground around the tree was moving. Before acquiring the skill such movements had been imperceptible to Morgan’s senses, but under the effects of [Naked Instinct] it stood out so severely that she was hard pressed to imagine how she could have missed it before. As she watched from above, the rippling shadows resolved themselves into roots. They writhed and slowly crept their way towards the fallen nest and the crushed and mangled bodies of the eagle family that had so precipitously gifted Morgan with the experience points and levels to acquire her newly improved stats and skills. As she shifted her gaze to the very tree she was clinging to, however, her newly improved instinct was giving her the opposite impression. One of safety that told her on some level to simply wait, and be still. Not one to argue with such a powerful instinct in light of her short but intense time in this new world, Morgan did just that as she relaxed and let go of [Naked Camouflage].
Morgan was acutely aware of just how vulnerable and basically helpless she was in her current situation. The flashy messages and menus displayed in her vision may have given her a few answers and definitely saved her life with the regeneration provided by her newly boosted Vitality, but the simple fact that it was happening at all spawned more questions in her mind than she could list if she had days to sit and contemplate. She was absolutely certain about a few things, however. Apparently I’m not dead, but in another world, she told herself. And it works differently from Earth, that’s for sure. And I’m stuck in a giant fucking tree. Naked. And cold. And hungry. And if a giant SOMETHING doesn’t eat me, a goddamn tree has me stuck here while its creepy fucking roots do god knows what…
Morgan inwardly turned back to her skills menu and read through the descriptions again. [Naked Resilience] did not seem to provide any immediate benefit, but she was pretty sure that resistances to harmful things would be vital to her survival. After all, from what she had seen so far, every single thing that existed in this world intended her harm. First the birds, and now even the tree in which she was tentatively taking shelter seemed to be of nefarious intent. She spent the ten skill points to acquire the skill and waited for the inevitable feelings of drastic changes in her body, but a single heartbeat turned into ten turned into a full minute, and she felt no different. Relieved, she continued her perusal.
The skill [Naked Recovery] was also pretty much a no-brainer from what she could tell. She had no gear, no medical supplies, and while Morgan was no stranger to the outdoors, she had no guarantees she would ever find such things in this strange new world. Reassured by the lack of side effects from purchasing the previous skill, she spent the required points for [Naked Recovery] and immediately understood that this time something was very different. Morgan’s heart jackhammered a staccato beat as it tried to pound her rib cage open from the inside. She had been crouching on all fours on the tree limb and the only thing that saved her from falling off was the fact that her muscles once again seized up. Her fingers buried themselves into the tree. Her recently increased Constitution kept the bones in her hands from breaking and the skin from tearing, but only just. Not that she could appreciate such merciful coincidence.
Morgan Mackenzie was burning. Nothing in the context of her entire twenty two years of experience living her life could have prepared her to anticipate what was set in motion within her body once she acquired the skill [Naked Recovery], and she had not been graced by fate in order to have met someone who could have explained it to her. Self-healing [Recovery] type skills in her new world were not even all that powerful, not in the greater schema of the universe. Nor were they typically uncommon, although Morgan was decidedly unique in unlocking a [Naked] twist on the usual iteration of it. Unfortunately for her, all abilities that allowed for a person to consciously heal their own injuries and wounds did have one thing in common: in order to consciously and directly heal the body, the brain must be able to sense the body. While that may eventually one day seem to be a simple concept to Morgan, any possible chance of her pondering the matter right then were effectively zero. For the simple fact of the matter was, the body and its system of nerves were not made to convey that much information about that many things, nor the brain naturally able to deliver such information directly to the conscious mind. Thusly, they both had be forcibly adapted to the [Skill].
Raw, primal mana pulsed through every fiber of Morgan’s body. Her face and jaw clenched in a grim rictus as every slam of her heartbeat drove the agony to greater heights. She could feel her nerves being torn apart and rewoven, every moment more and more information and sensations pushed into her mind, a mind that was woefully inadequate for the task of interpreting such a flood of knowledge. She could feel her sanity begin to fray as the pain stretched out the moment like a rubber band just before the snap. And then as suddenly as it started the pain and pressure vanished, leaving Morgan panting to catch her breath. Before she could even begin to re-assess her body’s condition, notifications intruded once more upon her attention.
You have gained the Skill [Pain Resistance]!
[Pain Resistance] has reached Level 2!
[Pain Resistance] has reached Level 3!
Status afflicted: [Starvation] You are starving! All regen disabled!
Status afflicted: [Weakness]! All stats reduced!
That last one is kinda obvious, she thought to herself. The first knowledge her new skill was providing her with was that such fundamental changes to her body had required fuel, and it had used her body’s reserves for that purpose. She had not lost any health from the transformation, and as it had been steadily ticking upwards before this point she now had over two-thirds of her total. But the last of her body’s nutrient reserves had been used up completely, and once those ran out the magic had begun to devour her other tissues. Looking down at herself only confirmed what the extra senses were already telling her. Her body was now gaunt and hideously skinny. Her ribcage was grotesquely pronounced, as were her hips and her arms and legs with knobby knees and gangly elbows. Her breasts had gone from the smaller side of average down to almost totally non-existent.
Carefully she pried her hands out of the crushed tree bark. She almost laughed out loud upon noticing that her loofah scrubby was still with her, although now rather filthy and smushed into the bark of the tree when she had latched on. Morgan held onto it as if it were her last lifeline connecting her back to her familiar apartment. The spark of humor and remembrance only lasted an instant, however, because her hunger was no longer something that could be ignored. She felt increasingly lethargic and noticeably weaker, although not as weak as before she had increased her strength. At least not quite. With her increasingly desperate hunger she pried up a small piece of the bark from the tree, as that was the only thing in her reach she might possibly have a chance at chewing. It tasted like cardboard and dirt, and expanded her mind’s definition of the word “dry”, but she was able to just barely work up enough saliva to manage to swallow the scratchy lump. She was about to take a second bite but was interrupted by a sudden spike in her [Naked Instinct]. It wasn’t the same feeling as the crawly fear the roots had spurred within her. It wasn’t even fear, exactly, but it was extremely powerful and intense, and she was paralyzed in the face of it. And then the tree began to shake, causing her to cling tight once again, as another notification popped into her head.
By offering your defeated foes to feed its roots, you have reawakened a:
[Tree of Mana(Legendary Tree, Guardian of the Forest, Father of Faeries)]!
The Tree has granted you its favor!
You have gained the Title: [Blessed of the Guardian Tree]! You need never fear its hungry roots! Future offerings or actions that benefit the tree may enhance this TItle!
She did not notice this new influx of information, as the struggle to not fall out of the tree required all of her attention and effort in her weakened state. She did however notice that not only was the tree shaking, it was glowing. A pale warm light, low in intensity but definitely there, began emanating from the roots on the ground. Flashes of green and gold pulsed along the ever-brightening roots. The shaking became more intense the brighter the light became, threatening to dislodge Morgan from its branches. The massive clearing occupied by the tree was illuminated in stark relief as light poured out from between cracks and fissures in the bark. The tree stopped shaking suddenly as the light faded to almost nothing. Silence thundered through the forest as if a great pressure held everything still for a single moment, pregnant with expectation. Morgan could not have made a sound or drawn a breath no matter how hard she might try.
And then with a GROAN that was felt more than heard, the tree was growing, and Morgan found herself pressed into her tree limb as she was pushed farther towards the sky. The strobing light could be felt in the air, a pulsing power that throbbed in her bones. A dozen feet, two dozen, then more. The broken ends of the forked branch that she occupied suddenly cracked and split as new green shoots exploded forth. The main trunk of the tree widened with rippling cracks and crunching noises and old, withered bark was pushed away to fall to the ground by a fresh and vibrant grey-brown mottled covering. More branches sprouted both above and below Morgan, with shoots and leaves forming a massive sheltering canopy. The shed bark began to crumble underneath her hands and feet so she scrambled backwards to brace herself against the trunk. To her bewilderment the tree trunk was no longer behind her and she tumbled backwards in fright, certain she was falling to her death. But she simply fell flat on her back into the newly formed hollow just below the canopy. The tree had split into several branching trunks that kept growing up and splitting off more of themselves, leaving a small almost flat space only a few paces across in the center. Morgan scrambled right to the middle of it, clutching her loofah to her chest protectively. Exhausted, starving, terrified, lonely, and of course still naked, she did the only thing she had the strength to accomplish with her entire world shaking around her. Morgan Mackenzie simply sat down and waited.