Jojo takes a quick look around and is relieved to see that nobody is around to have seen her blunder.
The meadow around her is almost absurd in how stunning it is. Perfectly lush grass, rainbows of wildflowers, a gentle, cooling breeze. The edge of a forest marks the horizon in one direction, and sparse clouds provide shade from the sun just when it’s needed.
Lulled by the breeze and the beauty, Jojo leans back and watches the clouds pass by overhead.
“I suppose,” she mutters to herself after a bit, “if this is really a video game-y world, there’s probably something like a Status—”
She’s cut off by a bright blue screen appearing in front of her eyes, blocking out her vision.
“Guess there is,” she answers to herself.
NAME: Jojo RACE: Human JOB: None HP: 10/10 MP: 10/10 SP: 10/10 STRENGTH: 1 VITALITY: 1 CONSTITUTION: 1 AGILITY: 1 WISDOM: 1 INTELLIGENCE: 1 CHARISMA: 1 ALLURE: 1 LUCK: 1
“Dang, I suck.” Jojo laughs to herself. “Gonna have to level up quick.”
There’s a rustle in the grass. Jojo wills the screen away, and it poofs out of existence to show…
A blob.
A little blue blob of goo wobbles a few feet away from her. It has no real defining features aside from the slight sheen of whatever sorta-liquid-sorta-solid makes it up. It’s not really doing much of anything, either, just… Wiggling.
“Oh, shoot,” Jojo says. “A slime. Can I, like… Identify?”
When she says that, a blue box pops up over the top of the slime:
Slime Level 2
Followed immediately by another box in the corner of her vision:
Skill: Identify has reached Level 2
The skill upgrade even updates the identification above the slime without prompting.
Slime Level 2 HP: 10/10
“Ooh, nice. Lots of good stuff I learned there, just gotta—Woah!”
Suddenly, the slime attacks!
Or, well, it moves at least. It kind of slithers forward, sliding in a zig-zag about a foot closer, then compresses itself flat before springing back up and leaping towards Jojo at… Well, at a decent speed. Nothing crazy, but it’d probably hurt a bit if it was, like, a water balloon.
Jojo dodges well out of the way far before the attack gets anywhere near her. She stumbles a bit from the unfamiliar movement, but rights herself quickly enough.
“Hoo,” she sighs. “Not used to fighting. That’s gonna be something I have to learn quick. Like maybe… THIS!”
After psyching herself up, Jojo runs at the slime and tries to punt it with all her strength. It doesn’t dodge or anything, just accepts the kick, and her foot sinks deep into the goop.
The HP above the slime’s head ticks down to 11.
Unfortunately, the slime itself doesn’t budge from the kick. In fact, it starts moving forward, up onto Jojo’s foot, seemingly trying to encompass it.
“Hey! Get off of me!” Jojo yells and stomps the ground, trying to knock the slime away. The stomp does another 3 damage, but the slime remains firmly stuck.
Jojo prepares for another stomp, but just as she starts the downswing, the slime suddenly compresses all around her foot. The pressure is intense, and the pain is immediate, enough to make one wonder if they broke something.
None of that reaches Jojo’s brain before the stomp finishes, though.
She slams her foot down and immediately yelps in pain. Her foot—now broken for sure—slips right out from under her and she slams down hard onto the ground, sending an extra little spike of pain up through her arm where it hits the dirt.
Instinct takes over, and—still yelling through the pain—she reaches down and grabs a fistful of the slime, then rips it off of her foot and chucks it as far away as possible. The whole slime stays stuck together, apparently unable to be cleanly divided, and sloughs easily off of her foot before sailing formlessly through the air. It lands a ways away, bounces a couple times, and then rolls to a stop and wobbles dizzily.
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Skill: Barehanded Combat has reached Level 2
Skill: Barehanded Combat has reached Level 3
Skill: Barehanded Combat has reached Level 4
Skill: Throw has reached Level 2
Skill: Throw has reached Level 3
Skill: Pain Resistance has reached Level 2
Panting, Jojo waves away the notifications piling up in the corner of her vision. “Well, at least I can tell the experience multiplier is working,” she grumbles, then adds “Status.”
HP: 2/10
Groaning, she looks over towards the slime.
HP: 2/15
“Well, at least I’m winning.”
The slime starts approaching again, but Jojo isn’t keen on the idea of letting it get another attack off. She glances around herself quickly but doesn’t see anything useful. Instead, she sighs, yanks her shoe off of her still-good foot, and takes aim toward the slime.
“Let’s see if that skill is worth anything.”
She launches the shoe forward, and it rockets through the air. It flies faster than a shoe should even be capable of, spinning at ridiculous speeds, and slams into the slime with a resounding splat. Bits of slime fly everywhere, making an absolute mess of a huge area around where the slime was, and the shoe sticks out of the ground at the point of impact, stuck into the dirt like a throwing knife.
“Woah.”
The bits of slime all over start to vanish into little twinkling pinpricks of light as the notifications roll in.
Skill: Throw has reached Level 4
Skill: Throw has reached Level 5
Level Up!
1>2
HP RESTORED!
MP RESTORED!
SP RESTORED!
ALL STATS +1
Level Up!
2>3
HP RESTORED!
MP RESTORED!
SP RESTORED!
ALL STATS +1
“Whew.” Sighing from exertion, Jojo first tests out her injured foot to find that, indeed, it seems to be completely healed. She’s a little anxious about what kind of mess she might find inside the shoe, but… That’s a problem for future Jojo.
Present Jojo pushes herself up onto her feet and half-stumbles over to where the slime died. She digs her shoe out of the ground and puts it back on, then notices a little gemstone next to it and picks it up.
The gemstone is about the size of her fingernail and the same blue as the slime was, although it has none of the bounciness the slime itself seemed to have. It’s just a rock.
“Identify.”
Slimestone
Skill: Identify has reached Level 3
And again, the identification updates for her.
Slimestone An F tier monster gem that once contained the Darkforce of a slime
“Darkforce? Guess that’s something to ask about when I find a town,” Jojo muses to herself. “First, though… Status!”
NAME: Jojo RACE: Human JOB: None HP: 90/90 MP: 30/30 SP: 90/90 STRENGTH: 3 VITALITY: 3 CONSTITUTION: 3 AGILITY: 3 WISDOM: 3 INTELLIGENCE: 3 CHARISMA: 3 ALLURE: 3 LUCK: 3
“Woah!” Jojo gasps at the change in stats.
That’s a huge increase in HP, way more than she was expecting. Maybe…
Maybe it was kind of stupid of her to fight that slime at level 1?
She chuckles under her breath. “Whoopsie…”
She lets the moment linger a bit, then shakes it off and thumps her chest reaffirmingly. “Whatever! I lived, and I got two levels from it, so what’s done is done! Plus, I even got loot!”
Jojo eyes her shiny new rock for a moment, then goes to put it in her pocket before remembering something else the angel said. Something about a dimensional storage?
She imagines putting the stone in an “inventory,” and sure enough, it vanishes. She tries to think about the contents of her storage, and can picture the stone clear as day in her mind. She tries taking it out and putting it away again a few more times, just to make sure she has it all sorted out, and it really is just as easy as thinking.
“Another win for Jojo!”
She pumps her fists in the air, grins wide, and then skips off towards the horizon.
Next stop: Anywhere else!