They ran for about fifteen minutes before they ran into an area marked with a red line that ran across the map. This was the Border, an indicator that she was going into a combat zone. Coming to a stop, Guin and Tik-Tak looked ahead, his ears snapping in different directions and his nose sniffing the air as he saw the area was filled with creatures.
In the main game, the world was pretty open when it came to combat, except for cities and special places. In the tutorial, most of it was closed off, save for the outskirts of the zones and things like cellars, where there were often extermination quests.
Tik-Tak turned to Guin for permission before edging into the area, but she shook her head and stepped in first. Before going in, she wanted to test the behavior of the AI before she let Tik-Tak go in. While she was confident she could handle herself, she wasn’t prepared for an escort quest. If the creatures were overly hostile, she’d be better off calling Stella for help or at least look for a combat tutorial elsewhere.
But when nothing seemed all that interested in attacking her first, she called Tik-Tak forward. It was a good place for her to learn how to do battle the way she preferred.
Checking her status bar, [Spirit Armor] still had at least ten minutes before it expired, so Guin morphed back into human form.
“Tik-Tak?” she called. The little fox looked at her expectantly as she continued, “Do me a favor. I want to try and catch one of these rabbits by myself. Could you stand guard in case anything weird appears?”
“Of course!” he went, giving a little tail shake.
Drawing her dagger, Guin approached what looked like a rabbit with tiger stripes and a lion’s tail. The animal eyed her wearily as she drew nearer to it and moved away when she got close. She ran after it, succeeding only at landing face-first on the ground when she tripped over a tree root. With her fourth attempt at running after the rabbit creatures also failing, she decided to try switching her target to some large beetles that were crawling around. They were slow, encumbered by large shells that protected their wings.
To Guin’s great dismay, however, the beetles were just as fast as the rabbits when she approached them. In a huff, she fell to the ground. How was she going to learn how to fight with these things? She fiddled with her character windows, trying to find any hint she could use against them. Tik-Tak sat next to her, and she pouted at him.
“Tik-Tak!” she whined at him. “You can catch rabbits, can’t you?”
He gave a yip-like snort and held his head up proudly, “Of course, I can catch rabbits! You are just too slow, Guin!”
“Tsk,” her lip curled at him. “How modest.” He gave her a fox-like grin as she rubbed his head.
Furrowing her brows, her eyes hovered over her [Fox Form] ability. Casting it, she stretched her body a bit and tested her footing. Tik-Tak watched her with great interest as she began to run around, playing tag with her prey. The rabbits and beetles had run from her—but the speed that she had as a fox could catch up to them!
Several ideas popped up into her head at once.
Giving herself a running start, she jumped up and undid her form in mid-air. It was clumsy, but she managed to land on her feet. After a few more tries, she started to calculate how she should need to move in order to draw her weapon as she shifted from one form to the other. Thus far, she had been using the fast cast buttons on her arm to cast the spell—but that wouldn’t work for what she wanted to do.
The first thing she needed was to stop using those buttons. With renewed determination, she began working on attaching the skill to her motions. It took her a good hour or so to get both the transformation and the ability dismissal down to the motions—but it didn’t go as smoothly as she had planned.
Looking down at her hands, Guin pouted a bit. It’s hard to differentiate the cast movement from the fox’s normal movements... She didn’t want to make a lot of noise, either. Clenching her fist with a sigh, she set her mind on a new task. If she were going to use the ability for the purposes that she wanted to in the future, she had to figure out how to at least dismiss it mentally. For the time being, however, what she had would do.
After a little more practice, there was a nice bell sound, and a screen popped up.
<< Skill Leveled Up! >>
<<[Fox Form]>>
<
<
<< Shapeshift into a small fox. You cannot cast in this form. This ability cannot be used in the Veil. >>
<< Speed increases by 10%, Attack decreases by 90%. >>
<< Cast Time: 5 Seconds - Duration: 1 Minute - Cooldown: 1 Minute >>
Pleased with her progress, she sat and took a break. Night was falling in-game as she shifted back. She and Tik-Tak shared some bread. [Spirit Armor] had expired again, so she recast it—this time to the tune of a bell sound.
<< Skill Leveled Up! >>
<<[Spirit Armor]>>
<
<
<< Summons a thin layer of spirit power from within to protect you. >>
<< Armor increases by 2%. >>
<< Cast Time: 10 Seconds - Duration: 10 Minutes - Cooldown: 1 Minute >>
At least her effort to keep her spells up wasn’t going to waste. She’d keep up the practice as long as she could.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
The time had come, however, to put her theories of combat into practice.
Choosing her target—one of the rabbit things from before—Guin mentally prepared herself. Settling her heart down, she fox shifted and took off, pouncing on the rabbit as it began to run.
Almost instinctively, Guin chomped down on its neck. The warmth of its blood and body, tasting of metal and dirt, filled her mouth as her teeth broke the skin. At first, there was delight—but then, horror. She gagged, giving the creature a chance to throw her. Her mind was in a panic as she tried to get the taste out of her mouth; she disengaged the form with the button.
Because she had drawn blood and gained agro, instead of running, it attacked her. Fumbling with her knife, Guin managed to grab it by its ears. Its apparent razor-sharp, yellowed teeth gnashed at her face while its paws clawed at her arms and hands. Though she reminded herself that it was just a game, her heart shuddered as she stabbed at it. One stab became two. Two stabs became ten.
Before she knew it, Guin was kneeling in front of the desecrated corpse of the creature. The blood faded away after a minute, but Guin could still smell it, still taste it. Her whole body shivered as she sat and stared at the corpse—until suddenly it POP-ed into a battered-looking treasure chest.
For the moment, she didn’t care. The evidence of her crime had disappeared, yet she was still horrified to have done it. Tears filled her eyes.
“You did it Guin!” TIk-Tak shouted as he hopped over. “You got the rabbit! ...Guin?” His little black nose went into her face, but she could only stare, wide-eyed and shivering.
But it’s not real, she reminded herself. It wasn’t real, and generated monsters did not have the same kind of AIs as NPCs. Still, her heart filled with dread, and tears fell from her eyes.
Soft, echoing laughter filled the air, and Guin snapped around. There was nothing.
“In this world, its kill or be killed...” an amused voice came into her ear, smooth as honey. Guin looked around her, but she only saw Tik-Tak’s concerned face.
“T-Tik-Tak, did you hear that?” she asked him, but he just tilted his head. Lifting herself off the ground, she spun herself in all directions. There was nothing. From somewhere, nowhere, the laughter came again, drawing out into a soft chuckle, and then, the sound grew. It grew, and it grew until it sounded as if the whole forest had joined it, laughing at her, cursing her.
The world began to spin and bend, and suddenly, there were swirling beasts in the shadows with glowing eyes of red and gold and teeth. Laughing, laughing! They took each other by the hands and danced, forming a ring around her that began to enclose her. Each time they danced closer to her, they doubled in size - their voice growing with them, from soft to booming - and then the shadows crept, touching her, sliding over her clothes and body, leaving a cold, wet trail as it a hundred tongues were licking her, tugging at her, pulling her into some vast, freezing ocean.
Guin opened her mouth, but no voice came out. No voice could come out. There was only fear. Warm wet tears were falling down her face, and she fell to the ground in a silent scream, hugging her knees.
“Guin?” Tik-Tak licked her hand. Guin lifted her head.
The forest was quiet. The beetles and the rabbit creatures scurried around calmly as if nothing had happened. The world was as it was. Peaceful. Serene. Fuck this game, fuck this game...
After taking the next few minutes to calm herself down, Guin remembered something very important: her traits weren’t active in the tutorial zone - except in combat zones. She pulled up her notification window.
Most of them were about the quests and the skills she’d been gaining, but her eyes fell on the last two lines on the list:
⚔<
👻<
“Ah—” Guin muttered out loud, suddenly feeling disgusted. She had forgotten. Now she would really get to experience what it meant to have the negative traits that she did. Still, she didn’t think that they would manage to turn the game into even more of a horror movie than it already was. Feeling rather ashamed that she had let the game get to her, she stood up and brushed herself off. That's right, she thought to herself. It's just a game. Nothing can hurt you here... There was nothing more to this than strings of numbers.
Swallowing hard and putting her fear aside, she looked through the notification list again, this time with a warmer feeling creeping in. From what she could tell, she was getting a point of endurance for every point of [Body], and a point of [Spirit] for every point of [Intellect]. She pulled up her [Character Screen].
<
<
<
<
Being in combat seemed to be the only way to increase her lowly [Resilience] stat, and so far, the only way she saw to increase her [Reflexes]. She was slightly surprised that her [Spirit] was still going up so fast. Raising her [Resolve], [Perception], and [Fate] without the aid of a quest was also a mystery she might have to look up later. For now, though, she exited the screen with an aggravated sigh and looked to the next of her prey.
Guin looted the chest the rabbit had left behind. There was only a single tutorial token and a handful of coins, so she took those and brushed herself off. She let the [Horror] debuff—which hurt her stats considerably in addition to everything else—fade before moving on.
Now she was simply feeling vengeful.
Steeling herself for what came next, she cast her [Fox Form] and went after another Moarbit. This time she remembered to shift back into her regular form, and with the dagger in hand, plunged it into its back and dragged it across its small body right into the ground, breaking its spinal cord. It was bloody, but it was an instant kill. Though she felt only slightly better after that second one, killing them became considerably easier after the third. After spending a good hour going after the Moatbits, a bell sounded, and a screen popped up:
<
<<[Backstab]>>
<
<
<< Your weapon shines with a peculiar thirst. >>
<< Your next attack to the back of an enemy is an automatic critical hit. >>
<< Cast Time: Instant - Duration: 15 Seconds - Cooldown: 10 Seconds >>
“Tsk,” she went, putting her hands on her hips. On the one hand, she was happy—it was a much-needed offensive skill for her. On the other hand, she wasn’t terribly fond of the fact that she had been gaining more and more rogue-oriented abilities.
Nevertheless, it was a good time to move on to the beetles. Looking at them, it seemed like they would be at least a little more difficult to kill. Guin activated her [Spirit Armor], shifted into [Fox Form], and began stalking her prey.