Guin’s hopes of using the same techniques as she had with the Moarbits were quickly dashed. The thick armored shell of the beetles was so tight that she couldn’t get her dagger in between the crevices. It was heavy and strong. Every time she got close, it attacked her with its large pincers, and though they meandered around as if they were slugs, they had fast little legs, and the wings hidden underneath their shells allowed them to fly.

Since sparring with them was turning out to be of little use, she decided to try and change tactics. If her experience with the Moarbits was anything to show for it, then her strikes should be relatively deadly. All she needed was one or two good hits. Guin backed off far enough for them to rubber-band to their starting positions and observed for a moment. They were like...

Turtles! She thought with a grin. Shifting into [Fox Form], she bounded over, and instead of going to attack with her dagger, she put her training to good use, swiping her leg at the beetle underneath. It was almost successful—but she hadn’t put enough force in. She sparred with the beetle again until she had a second opportunity. This time she succeeded! The beetle flipped belly up, and before it had the chance to right itself—which it clearly could do, judging by how it was going to use the armor on its back to lift itself over - she stabbed it clean in the thorax. Her attack didn’t kill it, however, so she went for it again and—somewhat unintentionally—severed its head clean off. A sticky green goo covered her from head to toe.

Mildly disgusted, she looked at its twitching corpse with pride. She killed several of the beasts after that. Learning how to trip them without leaving [Fox Form] made for much more efficient hunting, as she could trip several in one go and then finish them off in her human form. Those who successfully righted themselves before she could remove their little buggy heads proved to be a little more of a challenge, but she got half decent at tripping them with other tactics, too. After killing around ten of them, she heard the delightful bells of progress ring:

<< Skill Leveled Up! >>

<<[Fox Form]>>

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<< 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, 15 Seconds - Cooldown: 1 Minute >>

<< Skill Leveled Up! >>

<<[Spirit Armor]>>

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<< Summons a thin layer of spirit power from within to protect you. >>

<< Armor increases by 3%. >>

<< Cast Time: 10 Seconds - Duration: 15 Minutes - Cooldown: 1 Minute >>

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<<[Trip]>>

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<< You are adept at tripping people. When you trip someone, you have a chance to knock them off balance. >>

<< 1% Chance to cause [Unbalance] for 10 Seconds. >>

<< Cast Time: Instant - Duration: Instant - Cooldown: 10 Seconds >>

Guin did a little dance. [Fox From] was already at Level 4. Could she hit the first Rank before leaving the tutorial? What even was the first rank of [Fox Form]? Frowning, Guin pulled up the in-game browser attached to the [Menu] and did a quick search.

TheirWorld had many skills. It had many skills that had so many requirements that there was almost no limit to what people could discover, and indeed, no one person could have all of the answers. Even if they did have those answers, it was highly unlikely that people would be willing to share a lot of that information—especially for free. They didn’t want to make their enemies stronger or imbalance the game by pushing people in directions they might otherwise not have taken based on numbers or uses. The game proved that even the most useless of skills could have game-changing growth as you grew your character.

In large part, this was because of Rank trees. Rank trees were just about as unpredictable as classes. When an ability was able to be ranked up, the player would have to find a trainer to rank up the ability. When one did this, the original skill was traded for a new, more powerful one. In most cases, this was a better version of the same skill, but skills had different paths you could choose. A warrior, for example, usually tries to push his ability trees to match the weapon he uses. The basic skill [Slash] branches out into [Two-Handed Slash], [Heavy Slash], [Quick Slash], [Elemental Slash], or whatever else might be available. From there, each one will have its own tree, allowing the skill to become more and more specific and unique to the character. Martial skills tended to be more simplistic and straightforward, but depending on one’s aims and class, they can get more and more complex. A martial DPS AOE-style combat character might choose [Two-Handed Slash] and upgrade to [Expert Two-Handed Slash], but if a mage character aiming for a close combat caster class acquires [Slash], upgrades to [Elemental Slash], they might be able to upgrade into abilities like [Dance of the Arcane Edge] or [Slash of the Unseen]. From what the community had gathered, the maximum amount of ranks a skill could have was 10. A Rank 10 skill was generally considered to be a God-Skill. It took a long time for people to get that far, but it was well worth it.

As for [Fox Form], Guin couldn’t find anything. It was possible that it didn’t have another rank. Either that or no one used the ability enough to rank it up yet; they were still in the Beta, and the [Child of the Gumiho] trait was nowhere near as popular as the other ‘child of’ traits. There were no records of people being able to acquire it outside of the trait, either.

All the more fun for me, she thought with a shrug. She was one of the few who found the skill to be useful. Plus... Guin looked over at Tik-Tak, who was happily playing with a passing butterfly as he waited for her. She smiled. It was like she had gained a little brother. She thoroughly enjoyed playing with the little fox—and it was all the more fun doing so in [Fox Form].

“Tik-Tak!” she called. “I’m taking a break; want a snack?” The little fox snapped his head toward her and bounded over, nuzzling her arm.

“Your hunting skills are getting better!” he told her. “Soon, you will be a master hunter like Momma!”

“Thank you!” Guin smiled and shared her bread with him. He gobbled it down greedily.

Suddenly, she felt the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. A soft voice seemed to be whispering in her left ear: “You’ve done quite a number on these critters.” It was the same voice that had frightened her earlier. Guin shuddered and snapped her head around to once again see nothing. Then, in her right ear, she heard: “Of course, you are going to kill more, aren’t you? After all, just look around! These creatures have overrun the forest! They must be culled...” She felt something run through her hair—and a strange surge of strength enter her body.

Jumping up with a screech and a shiver, she shook her head as if there were something on it. After a moment, she looked around again.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“A-Are you okay, Guin?” Tik-Tak asked her, but she had no answer.

“You didn’t hear that?” she asked, but he just shook her head. Growling, she pulled up her notifications again.

<<[🌀Notifications](❗)]>>

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Well that’s nice... Guin thought to herself, though she still felt a little skeeved out. As a gret trait, [Haunted] worked both ways. There were huge discussions about traits like these. In order to see what was haunting them, you needed to have gained a reputation with the spirit, have the [Veil Sight] ability to see it, and the [Veil Walker] ability to speak with it—else, it was little more than just a random buff or debuff that made people's lives more interesting. Perhaps because of the trait's oddities, it was also one of the easiest traits to get rid of. One could very easily go to a temple and be exercised of it.

As for those who had grown a relationship with their spirit, they had a little more success at figuring the trait out. The compare and contrast of players’ spirits revealed that more than likely, the spirit that was haunting you was not determined at character birth. Rather, the spirit somehow did not become a set type until it materialized for the player. Also, it seemed that the players had gone through several events and conversations, often during quest points, that seemed to push a spirit in one direction or another. It seemed that the final materialization of the spirit depended heavily on the quest it chose to solidify in.

It had been floating around that in the case of all grey traits, there was a chance that you could push them to favor buffs over debuffs. In the case of [Haunted], it seemed that there was at least one man who angered his spirit, and it never buffed him again—it only debuffed him. In the case of other traits, there was one story of a girl whose grey trait became a positive trait and became a powerful, summonable weapon. The possibilities, as with everything else in TheirWorld, were intriguing. It also seemed that these grey traits were the only ones that had the chance to evolve like that.

Still, she hadn’t recalled hearing anything about the spirit being so active so early in the game.

But, of course, what was publicly available was limited. Even Guin herself had no intention of posting her stories online, and she assumed that for every one of those who did post, there were at least twenty other people who didn’t.

Perhaps the spirit was so active as a result of the spirit-based quests she was working on. Her entering the combat zone allowed it to be born using the information from the quests that had already been completed—the majority of which, aside from the basic tutorial quests, were spirit quests.

Since there was nothing she could do about it but play as smart as she could, she stood up and brushed herself off again. She checked her character window again after looking at the insane amount of stat points combat was giving her.

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<< Tutorial Tokens: 63 - 1c, 19s, 0g, 0p >>

Most of her stats were now over ten. From her research, it sounded like most people graduated from the tutorial with fifteen or so points in six of the ten stats depending on how many points they had initially put into [Presence], [Resolve], [Perception], and [Fate], which were the four most difficult stats to increase. Hitting 20 in a couple of stats was expected, but it most people didn’t remain in the tutorial long enough to go beyond 30 points.

Looking at her own stats and considering how fast they were increasing just from basic combat, she felt she could easily raise them quite a bit more. With the amount of progress she was making, she felt it reasonable to aim to have at least twenty points in the main six—and considering this quest line and the others that she had taken up, she imagined achieving even higher stats was fully possible with the tutorial bonus.

According to most people, while these stats might help a little at the start of the game, the effect was only temporary, as the bonus stats granted per level quickly made earning points tedious and insignificant.

Guin wondered if Stella and Bahena were having a similar experience to her. She felt a little guilty not having gotten the chance to play with Stella yet, but the time-consuming and individual nature of her quests made it difficult. Not to mention that Stella only seemed to spend a few hours in-game herself.

Even then, she saw no reason to rush. She still had a lot to learn and gain from this tutorial zone. Casting [Spirit Armor] and [Fox Form], Guin went about her hunting business, with Tik-Tak serving as a scout and lookout.

Fighting and clawing her way to the map location, she was now almost freely morphing in and out of [Fox Form]. As things got easier and more fluid, she grew even more excited. The buff that the spirit who haunted her had given her had quite an effect on her power and speed and allowed her to decimate the population of Moarbits and Beedants in the area.

Along the way, her [Backstab] and [Trip] abilities gained levels:

<< Skill Leveled Up! >>

<<[Backstab]>>

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<< 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 >>

<< Skill Leveled Up! >>

<<[Trip]>>

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<< You are adept at tripping people. When you trip someone, you have a chance to knock them off balance. >>

<< 2% Chance to cause [Unbalance] for 10 Seconds. >>

<< Cast Time: Instant - Duration: Instant - Cooldown: 10 Seconds >>

Her nose wrinkled a bit at the fact that there was nothing for [Backstab] to improve, but she knew that there were quite a few skills that had levels just to earn a Rank Up—and [Backstab] was a well-known and beloved assassination skill that had a well-advertised ten-rank tree.

Finally, they arrived at their destination. As she stood before the strange cave that was exposed by the uprooting of a fallen tree, she shivered.

As if called upon by her reaction, the voice pressed against her ear proudly said, “Good work, Child of the Gumiho.”

Shaking her head, she turned to Tik-Tak and said: “Stay here...”

The little fox gave her a worried look but nodded anyway and sat on his haunches, watching her go down into the cave.