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Struggle for Survival

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Soon, I open my eyes to see a pure white ceiling above. I look around, turning my head to see a grass field surrounding me. It looks like I am lying down on some sort of ‘Greek pavilion’ with the columns holding up the white ceiling. I slowly sit up, feeling very uncomfortable. This uncomfortable feeling is one of the few things I hated about joining a new game. You can still have the same body, but at the beginning of any game it will still feel weird, like having a new skin. I check around and finally make out some things a little ways away. Creatures that look like rabbits, foxes, and some other weird-looking thingies are about. I guess this would be the same as if it would be surrounding a city.

I slowly get up from where I was and start to stretch out my body to get used to it. After about thirty minutes, to make sure I was ready, I check my inventory and see what I have. I see I only have a few things such as a water canteen, some bread, and most weirdly of all a small knife. It’s not a weapon, I can tell it should not be used as one at least. I pull it out and check out what it is.

Small Carving Knife (Novice)Type:CarvingDurability:50 / 50Class Restrictions: None

Level Restrictions: None

So it is a carving knife! I think this will be helpful to me but it is not useful for a weapon and since it has a low durability I will have to find out how to repair it quickly, but that can wait for later.

I need to find a way to make a weapon and not die to one of the things in this game. If I die now I’ll lose all the items in my inventory along with my money. I start to look around the area, I need to find something I can use. I could attack animals with my fists but it isn't the best way if you can help it.

I look once more around the Greek pavilion that has no animals around it. Which I guess is kind of like a safe zone, in a sense to make sure you don't die. I was just wandering when I finally got a message from the game.

What is the name of your faction?

Apparently, I need to choose a faction name still. Well I never had any ideas to choose from really, I want to represent darkness yet something that seems at least somewhat noble. After thinking for a few minutes I thought of a name.

"Midnight Ravens"

You would like to use the name: "Midnight Ravens”?

"Yes"

Your Faction is now known as Midnight Ravens.

You are now the Leader of Midnight Ravens.

Number of Territories Owned: 3

Number of Members: 1

Faction Bank Amount: $0

Buildings Owned: 1

Wow that is a lot of information, I guess that the building that we own is the one I'm in, this must be the faction beginner’s spawn point. Also, the faction bank seems like it will help later on when we need to purchase items.

I’ll leave the faction information for later, for now I need to get started. I start to find some sticks around the area along with some small rocks. I take the Sticks and pile them up and take out my carving knife and start to sharpen the ends of them. After about 30 minutes of non-stop carving I finish making about a dozen pointed sticks. I pick them up and start figure out how I am going to hunt. All I have are these sharpened sticks and I know I can kill with them because a soldier once killed a man with a pencil. Talk about scary, I swear every time anyone saw him with a pencil the people who saw him do it shivered and took a few extra steps away.

I get up and collect my now sharpened sticks and put one in each of my hands, I think I’m going to call them needles for now. Slowly I got up and started walking over to a rabbit. Ya, I know it’s a rabbit and it’s supposed to be cute and easy to kill. I thought the same thing when I started to play virtual reality games. I won't make that mistake twice.

I am about 7-10 feet away and the rabbit is just looking at me like ‘what up bitch’. I charge at the rabbit holding one stick in each hand. I try to stab the rabbit but it dodges out of the way easily. It charges at me and lunges at me, I was barely able to dodge the attack. After a few minutes of the same pattern of attacking and missing, the rabbit attacking me, and scratching every now and then, I start to get frustrating and I threw one of the needles at the rabbit and, surprisingly, I hit the rabbit in the head.

I go over the rabbit’s body that is lying dead on the ground with the needle poking out of the head. I pull the needle out of his head and go about collecting the material from the rabbit. The hide, meat, bones, and claws. Not many know this but most items, even in the most common animal, can be used to make something one way or another. Like a bone can be used for alchemy and for making sewing needles. Now creatures like rabbits, foxes, and wolfs are not considered monsters. When they die they leave behind a body to be eaten, whereas monsters like goblins drop an items on them and some money. Sometimes you could get a piece of gold from a goblin if they were rich or they were just worthless. It’s a very weird thing how it works in general.

I go back to the spawn point and start making a small fire to cook the meat to eat it. Then think about how I threw the needle at the rabbit, it was more out of anger than actually trying. I never learned the throwing skill when I was a Dark Rogue, it seemed like a bit of a waste of time. Now it might be a good idea to start to learn on how to use it.

I walk over to where a rabbit is sitting, nibbling on some grass with its buck teeth. I ready my needle stick and throw it at the rabbit. It misses, but now I’ve got its attention. The rabbit starts running to me full speed. I jump back and throw another needle at it. It scratches the side of the rabbit but doesn't kill it.

'Damn! This is harder than I thought. I was just lucky last time.'

I grab another needle and hold it in my hand. The rabbit is already looking directly at me ready to jump. I throw another needle and the rabbit tries to dodge, but the needle was too fast and strikes the rabbit in the side. I walk over, take out the needle, and then check the body of the rabbit. It wasn't a clean kill but hey, it killed it. I start to take all the items from the rabbit leaving behind the basics, like the guts.

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I walked back to my fire and started to cook the meat I got from killing all the rabbits today. After they were done cooking, I picked up some of the meat up and took a bite, and damn is it bad. The meat has no real taste to it, no spices, or even salt. I will have to fix that in the future, but it fills my hunger bar up and helps keep me hydrated from the juice.

I get done eating that awful meal and look up at the stars. This was one of the few things that I loved about being in the army, being able to look up at the stars and see countless around. I could never see any stars in the city, too many cloud and lights. When I was stationed in Iraq I would sometimes get up in the middle of the night and go look at the sky. There were no major cities polluting the sky and I always thought it was one of the most beautiful things in the world. I laid down on my back and looked at the stars for a while, I couldn't hunt well in the dark and didn't have night vision which sucks.

I wonder what is in the admin shop in the middle of this world. I don't know because I didn't set it up, really only to add NPCs you could buy from, but that was simply clicking a box and making the basic price for humans. Then setting a percentage up for all the other races. That was all set up by the computer and wasn't done by me, so I hope the prices weren't too big on some of them.

I get up and check how many needles I have left after breaking a few from the hunting. Seeing that I only have a few needles left, I start to make more of the needles for hunting. I was hoping to generate the Throwing Skill but I guess it will take a bit of time.

I will need to find or make a real shelter because this isn't the best place. It’s too open and not very reliable. I need something that can keep me safe and warm. This building is most likely the spawning point of the faction for me, the other four must have one as well.

If I'm going to beat them I will need to do four times as much work as them to even keep up. I do have some advantages that is I don't have to share experience or loot, and I have military training so I can fight even without using the game system so this will help me fight. That will help me beat them in a one on one fight but for a larger group I will need to train more or get NPCs to join my group and then get their levels up to fight against them.

Ah! So much work to do and so little time to do it.

I start making more needles and putting them into a pile, and after about an hour of making them I get a skill.

You have gained the skill: Carving

Sweet! This will be very useful for me later on now that I have the skill. I noticed my needles have become better, they are smother and easier to handle. I take all the needles I made before and threw them into the fire and started to make new needles I notice every now and then I get a ding but I push them aside to look at them later. After I made about a dozen needles I stop and close my eyes to sleep until morning.

I get up in the morning and start to walk around, getting rid of the morning stiffness. This is one of the things I find cool and annoying at the same time. Even in the game if you sleep on the ground you are going to be stiff and sore just like in real life. Although, in the army I often had naps for short periods of sleep on the front lines when we had those moments of peace. We all needed sleep and that sleep felt like heaven to me then. After I walk off the stiffness, I walk over to the field and pick out a lone rabbit nibbling on the grass.

I take out a few needles and start to crouch down to try and sneak closer to the rabbit. After I get about 5 feet away, the rabbit smells something and looks around. I stop moving and ready my arm to launch the needle. When the rabbit is looking away I launch the needle and it hits the rabbit. It starts to turn around but is too slow and is hit by another needle dead in the heart. After a few seconds of moving a bit, it falls over twitching and dies.

I walk over and gather the materials, soon I move on to a new rabbit. This repeats for a few hours, sometimes missing but my aim has improved greatly then I finally get what I want.

You have gained the skill: Throwing

Finally, I got this skill! Now I need to practice with it. I know people often check their skills to see how good they are or how much they have mastered a skill which is something that I find pointless, why check something that doesn't matter. It helps, but checking it every time you think it improves will only get you caught up in stats and points. I set up a rule or more like ritual which is once I have completed a dungeon or beat a boss monster I check my stats. This is so I can make myself not try and improve my level and work on improving myself. It is also a reason why I often dismiss notifications except for skills I gain.

Soon, I am throwing needles even better, missing even less, and now the needle goes through the rabbit sometimes. One of the good reason that needles are good against rabbits, and I don't need to use more than one needle, is even if I'm off by a bit it is still a hit and it slowly bleed's out or I can walk over and just break its neck.

After I kill about 11 rabbits I head back to my camp site and start cooking some of the rabbit meat and making more needles to kill rabbits. Now that I think about, it shouldn't I try to kill something bigger. Maybe a fox, they are stronger so I need to be more careful and I need to try and make some better gear if I can.

I can only do so much in a certain amount of time. I think I will try to make a bone needle and try and use the furs to make some simple gear if I can. What I think will be best is if I try to get all the crafting skills I can to help me make weapons and gear. This way I can get more money from them when I am able to go to the Safe Zone and sell things. I know in the beginning I won't get much money. In fact, I will probably lose money trying to make better gear, but once I get better and better the worth of the gear and weapons I make will be worth more. I will, of course, keep the really good gear and try to find good use for it.

So here is what I need to do:

1. Learn more Crafting Skills.

2. Kill animals for material.

3. Make better Gear.

Guess I won’t be running out of things to do anytime soon. Better get a move on.