When Sarah confirmed her skill choices, she expected to be presented with a menu for choosing a class. Instead, the skill menu folded away and was replaced by her Status menu.
Name:
Sarah Overmeyer
Race:
Human
Class:
None
Level:
0
Attribute Points:
0
Attributes
Physical
Mental
Strength
0
Vigour
0
Dexterity
0
Dexterity
1
Endurance
0
Fortitude
1
Perception
0
Perception
1
Skill Points:
0
Skills
[Polyglot]
[Keen Eye]
[Dimensional Storage]
Before she could do more than confirm that her Status now reflected the attribute and skill choices she’d made, the new menu also folded itself away. Her pen and notes vanished, followed by the low table and the lump of grey stone on which she sat.
For a split second, she felt herself falling but then gravity disappeared and so did her surroundings. A moment later, gravity reasserted itself and she opened her eyes (when had she closed them?) to find herself in the middle of an alien forest.
She had a single moment of pure panic, thinking she’d been dropped into the middle of the wilderness after all, before she caught herself. This was still the tutorial, in a virtual reality, and not the real world; plus, the trees around her might be wild but the road beneath her feet was a sure indication of civilization. It was a dirt road, lacking paving of any kind, but it was broad, well-packed and well-maintained, with a slight rise in the middle and ditches along both sides to facilitate run-off whenever it rained.
Turning in a slow circle, Sarah searched her surroundings with a careful gaze. The trees seemed off, both familiar and not at the same time. The leaves were just a little bit too angular, the needles of evergreens a little too plump, the various shades of green not quite correct. The undergrowth was equally strange, with far more variety of colour than she would have expected to find in any forest on Earth.
At least the foliage didn’t seem threatening or dangerous in any way, she reflected. She heard the singing of birds and the occasional buzzing of insects but none of the local creatures had yet revealed themselves to her.
The road cut a mostly straight line through the forest, deviating here and there to bypass various features of the land. In one direction, she could see the road curving around an enormous boulder. What she could see of the landscape was fairly flat so she wondered if the massive hunk of rock was one of those that got left behind by a receding glacier in the far distant past. She’d read about that phenomenon back when she was on Earth. She’d never actually seen one of them for herself, but she’d thought it was rather grand, the idea of an enduring monument to ancient history, left behind by nature herself.
In the other direction, Sarah could see that the road shimmied slightly to the left to accommodate the path of a thin thread of water, bubbling its way out of the forest to follow the road for a short bit before returning once more to the shaded mysteries beneath the trees.
Someone had gone to the effort to shore up the right side of the road with a bit of masonry to prevent the curl of flowing water from digging into the path.
From above, bright sunlight flooded through the gap in the canopy and bathed the road with warmth and light. Sarah took a deep breath and marveled at the rich scent of green and growing things. It was all quite remarkably real; she could almost forget she was in a simulation.
“That’s probably a good way to treat this,” she muttered to herself. “If I treat it like real life, instead of some kind of video game, I’m less likely to make stupid mistakes from overconfidence.”
The song of the forest paused for a moment at the sound of her voice, but it quickly returned when she finished speaking. Confident that she was in no immediate danger, Sarah took a moment to examine herself.
She was wearing black cloth pants that seemed to have been tailored specifically for her. They probably were, she thought with mild amusement. Her pants were tucked into fantastically comfortable leather boots that reached mid-way up her calves. Her shirt was a rich, forest-green in colour, long-sleeved, and reached part-way down her thighs, with short slits at the sides. It was a style that immediately brought to mind the word tunic. Around her waist was a slim leather belt, fastened with a crudely carved wooden buckle. Dangling from the belt on her left side was a sheath with a wood-handled knife, and on her right was a small leather pouch. Slung over her right shoulder was a small water skin on a braided leather strap.
Curious, she pulled the knife from its sheath and looked it over, very careful to avoid the sharp edge. The handle was fashioned from some kind of dark brown wood and was the perfect size and shape for her grip. The blade was a dull grey and about as long as from the tip of her middle finger to the heel of her hand, and the width of three fingers at its base.
As she examined the knife, a small blue window popped up in front of her, making her flinch in surprise and drop the knife, at which point the screen vanished.
“Right,” she said as she recovered from the start, “the system is still here. That was probably a tool tip, identifying the knife.”
Gingerly retrieving her dropped item, Sarah focused intently on the blade, holding the thought in her mind that she wanted to know more about it. Almost immediately the blue window re-appeared.
[Simple Iron Belt Knife (Basic)]
“Well, that’s not terribly informative,” she said with a snort. “Is that all there is or do I need to get a skill if I want more information? [Inspect] or something?”
She tried to remember if she’d seen any inspection type skills in the Skill menu but there had been so many that they’d all started to blur together in her memory. Finally she shrugged and focused on each of her other belongings to see what the system would tell her about them.
[Sturdy Leather Boots (Basic)]
[Sturdy Cotton Pants (Basic)]
[Sturdy Cotton Tunic (Basic)]
[Sturdy Leather Belt (Basic)]
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
[Small Belt Pouch (Basic)]
[Small Water Skin (Basic)]
“Well alright then,” she said, re-sheathing her knife. “They are all Basic ranked items but they are Sturdy, which is a fair trade-off for starter items I suppose.”
She rubbed the edge of one sleeve between finger and thumb.
“It feels like cotton alright. But is it really cotton or is it some kind of local equivalent that the system is simply translating into the closest comparable Earth material? Questions for another time, I suppose.”
She removed the suspiciously light water skin from her shoulder and shook it. “Yup. Completely empty.
“Hope this water is potable,” she added as she started walking over to the tiny stream.
The water was incredible. It was cold, not the make-your-teeth-ache kind of cold, but the crisp, soothing, refreshing kind of cold, the kind of cold that means you can feel every swallow as it slides down your esophagus and into your gut. And the taste! Sarah took another sip and held it in her mouth, swishing it around her tongue to savour the flavour.
Was this what real, wild, natural water was supposed to taste like? She remembered the water she’d always drunk on Earth, water that had been heavily filtered and made “clean” and “safe to drink”, water that tasted somewhere between bland nothingness and the various chemicals involved in the purification process.
She’d never really enjoyed drinking plain water before but this she could get used to. This water was like fine wine, or at least, what she imagined fine wine would be like. She’d never had anything but the cheap stuff so she didn’t really have a true comparison. Perhaps a better metaphor would be…hmm. She pondered the thought as she drank her fill and then topped up her water skin and replaced the stopper.
She cupped her hand in the running water and raised one final taste to her lips, humming with happiness. Aha, she thought. The taste of this water was like Spring; like the first breath of new life bursting forth from the white dormancy of Winter’s cold.
She giggled. Wow, she felt like…like that time her roommate had been on the back porch, smoking something that definitely was not tobacco, and all the smoke had drifted in her open bedroom window and settled in a cloud above her bed, in which she’d been trying to sleep.
Was it the water? She stared at the little creek but nothing happened, so she tugged the stopper from her water skin and stared hard at its contents. A little window popped up but all it said was [Untainted Water].
So, no, it wasn’t the water. But she felt high…well, maybe not quite high but…happy…and cheerful…and a lot less inhibited than normal…which was really, really weird because her entire planet had just been destroyed. That thought sobered her up quickly enough.
After another careful examination of her surroundings to make sure nothing dangerous had snuck up while she giggled over water, Sarah sat down on the side of the road and watched the trickling, rushing, meandering flow of the small creek.
So, yeah…home was gone, destroyed, never coming back. Her friends were scattered to the proverbial four winds, her family…she ruthlessly stopped that thought in its tracks. She would be reunited with the people she loved once they all got dropped off on the so-called Sanctuary worlds. She had to believe that. If she didn’t have that belief, that hope…if she gave in to grief, to despair…it would crush her.
Well, not totally crush her, she knew she’d see them all again in Heaven, after all, but to have no hope of seeing them again before then, of facing the rest of her (hopefully) long life knowing she’d never again feel the soft warmth of her mother’s hugs or the powerful but incredibly gentle strength of her father’s arms, never hear the deep love layered beneath wry humour in her brother’s voice…that loss – limited to one lifetime though it might be – would lay her low for a time, for too long a time.
Grief would get her killed, whether here in the tutorial or later in her first steps into her new world. So for now she would hope, no, she would believe that it was only a matter of time until she and her family stood side by side once more. For now, it was her job to get stronger, to learn, to be ready, so when the time came she could do her part to help them build a strong foundation for their new lives.
As her new conviction settled deep within her being, Sarah released a long sigh and closed her eyes, tipping her head back until her face was bathed in warm sunlight. She could smell the rich, green scent of the living forest all around her, the earthiness of the sun-baked soil beneath her, and tantalizing hints of floral perfume upon the dancing breeze.
The air was full of delightful sounds: of birdsong from a dozen different types of feathered beast; of tree leaves fluttering and cavorting in the light wind; of tiny buzzing wings as busy little bees carried pollen and new life from bloom to bloom; of bubbling, gurgling, rushing, flowing, swirling water as the creek waltzed majestically and tangoed swiftly and mischievously between the noble trunks.
Sarah suddenly burst out laughing, opening her eyes and looking around her with delight. Ok, she got it now. Yes, her world was gone (and no, she didn’t consider that this might be some kind of coma-induced hallucination or elaborate prank, everything was far too real for that) but this…this was beauty and wonder beyond anything she’d previously experienced. Sarah had lived her entire life within cities, her only experiences of nature the carefully manicured parks and artfully designed “green spaces” scattered throughout urbanity.
This place she found herself in was wild and true; the road made allowances for the easy passage of humanity but it made no attempt to tame that which lay to either side, that which was beautiful in a way no human (or probably alien either) could ever design. She was high alright…high on life, and apparently it made her wax poetic.
She giggled again before taking a deep, slow breath of wonderful forest air and rising to her feet. She had places to be and things to do, but first…she lightly slapped the side of her own head in reprimand for forgetting something so important until now…she needed to prepare for whatever might await her further down the road.
She raised her fingers one by one as she made a list.
“One: food and water. Water I have, food I need to find. Two: set up my [Dimensional Storage]. Three: figure out some kind of weapon with which to defend myself. Four,” she glanced back and forth, up and down the road, “decide which direction to go.”
She pondered for a moment but couldn’t think of anything else that needed to be done – or could be done – before she set out from this place.
So, food and water, she thought. She held up her full water skin and gave it a little shake, grinning a bit at the subdued gurgle. Okay, not totally full, just enough air in there for a bit of sound. Still, water: check.
She slung the braided leather strap of the water skin over her shoulder and tugged open the flap of her [Small Belt Pouch]. “Aha, I was right!” she crowed enthusiastically, thrusting her fist into the air and striking a dramatic pose.
She then blushed and glanced around furtively, looking for witnesses to her silliness, before remembering she was all alone and laughing gently at her reaction.
“Really need to get myself under control before I meet new people,” she muttered to the forest, returning to her examination of the belt pouch. It did indeed contain food, though not much. There was a single hunk of dried meat, about the size of a child’s fist, wrapped in lightly waxed cloth; [Travel Jerky], the system called it.
She wondered why the name didn’t specify the type of meat before coming to the conclusion that she probably didn’t want to know. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, it was true, but she was suddenly grateful that she wouldn’t be consuming this mystery meat with her actual physical body.
She didn’t feel hungry just yet so she wrapped the meat back up and tucked it behind her belt, for lack of any pockets. The only other item in the pouch was a roll of cloth that the system identified as [Linen Bandage (Basic)]. She took that out too and then focused on her skill, [Dimensional Storage].
[Dimensional Storage] (Purchased) Rare (4SP)
Ability to link a pocket dimension to a physical item for the purpose of storage; Can store items of any rank; Efficiency of storage will be influenced by the rank and type of the item used for an anchor; Pocket dimension can only be accessed by someone with the [Dimensional Storage] skill who has been authorized by the owner of the anchor item; Volume of accessible space increases by 5% for each additional point in FOR and M-DEX
Attribute Requirements: 1 point FOR + 1 point M-DEX
Other Requirements: None
She immediately knew there were two items in her possession to which her skill could be anchored: the water skin and the belt pouch. There must be a requirement that the anchor already be a container of some kind, she thought as she directed the skill to the pouch. She felt it lock on and settle into place and she immediately gained an instinctive awareness of how much room was available in her newly expanded pouch. She felt it in the same way as she could feel her nose, or her fingers, or her feet. What was that word? Proprioception? Something like that.
She tucked the jerky and bandage into the pouch then, following the instincts of the skill, removed the water skin from her shoulder and lowered it towards the opening of the pouch also. The strap went in without issue, but the leather bag itself was larger than the opening of the small pouch. Sarah instinctively knew the size difference wouldn’t be a problem, but she still grinned in delight as the water skin somehow shrunk itself down, bit by bit, and vanished into the pouch.
“Cool.”
Now that she’d anchored and used the skill, she had access to more information about it than had been in the system description. Not only could it not be accessed by anyone without both her permission and a [Dimensional Storage] skill of their own, it couldn’t even be seen by most people.
If the average person were to look inside her pouch, it would appear exactly as it had before she tied her skill to it. She could choose certain items to be visible, though those items had to already be in the [Storage] and had to be able to fit in the leather container naturally without any dimensional trickery, but it was a far better disguise than having an apparently empty pouch. Sarah wasn’t quite sure why she would need such a disguise, but the skill assured her it would come in handy down the road.
She shrugged and decided it didn’t matter one way or the other just now. The only downside of the disguise was that anything she chose to be visible was treated as if it were in a normal pouch, meaning it could be removed by anyone. She could see how that part might be an issue but it shouldn’t be a problem if she made sure to keep anything valuable hidden and out of reach.
For now, she chose to make the jerky and bandage visible, closed the simple wooden clasp of the pouch, and went back to her prep list.
“Okay, food and water: check. [Storage]: check. Weapon…”
Her belt knife was sturdy and sharp, but it was probably intended more as a tool than a weapon. Sure, it might do the trick if she were desperate, but anything that got close enough for her to use the knife on it would also be close enough to do plenty of damage in turn. She needed something to keep attackers and threats at a distance.
This was actually a fairly simple problem to solve. With a bit of searching through the forest fringe, Sarah found a branch of the right shape and thickness and set to work removing it from the tree, trimming off the side branches, and cutting it to the right length. Her belt knife proved its utility in the task, and in very little time Sarah had a sturdy, more-or-less straight and smooth, wooden staff almost as long as she was tall. With a bit more work, one end was whittled to a sharp point, and she was done.
It seemed the system agreed with her, because the wooden item’s identification changed from [Oak Branch] to [Crude Wooden Spear (Basic)]. She decided that the system must be translating alien terms into the closest comparable Earth term, because she was pretty sure real oak trees didn't have faint lines of orange beneath their bark.
As soon as the system acknowledged her creation as an actual weapon, another window popped up.
Congratulations! You have earned the skill [Wood Carving Proficiency (Basic)].
Note: Earned skills cannot be activated until you have a class. Interact with the nearest town monument to choose a class.
Well now, that was neat. She’d gotten the impression, back when she was choosing her first three skills, that crafting proficiency skills couldn’t be earned without first purchasing the associated crafting knowledge skills. Maybe there was still a chance to get the earned skills on their own, just a very slim one?
She shrugged. It was just one more reason to find civilization sooner rather than later. She could probably get a lot of questions answered at one of those town monuments.
“Okay, then, food and water: check. [Storage]: check. Weapon: check. Final item: which way?”
She stepped to the middle of the road and looked as far as she could see in either direction. She even went down to the giant boulder so she could see around it, but it didn’t matter; in both directions, all she could see was the road running on endlessly through the forest. She eventually decided to go in the direction opposite the boulder. The creek seemed to be flowing roughly that direction, and it seemed like a good idea to keep relatively close to a water source, just in case it took her a while to find whatever community she was supposed to integrate into.
Using the spear as a walking stick, she swung off down the road, head held high, breathing deeply of the rich forest air, not realizing that the birds and bees weren’t the only things to take notice of her passing.