World Seed: Game Start (7 page)

“
I
see…” It took me a moment to piece together this
information. I’d probably need to go to a big city to find
these Skill Shards, but I would definitely find one. Maybe there is
one that I could use to make me better with the bow or something.
“Doesn’t that mean that if someone made a Skill Shard for
a type of magic, whoever activated that would learn all of the
different spells that person chose to record?”

Her
head nodded again as she looked at me. “That’s right.
However, most people don’t want to take that gamble. There are
only two pieces of information that can be understood from a Skill
Shard without activating it if you have it scanned. The first is the
type of skill put in, and the second is the level of mastery the
information qualifies as. Since a single shard can only hold one type
of skill, it’s impossible to sneak more in, at the same time,
the scan will cross reference the amount of information stored with
what is currently known on the networks to determine how high it is.
When making one with a magic school, you could easily just put in
your knowledge of how that school of magic works, and a few advanced
tricks to make it more effective without actually putting a single
spell in.”

I
was slightly surprised by that, but decided to thank her again and
leave. In my inventory was only thirty copper coins, not nearly
enough for the lessons. Before leaving, I made sure to ask what kind
of herbs she was looking for for the training. Then, after realizing
that I had no idea what a common fireflower or blood weed looked
like, I had her show me a picture, which I quickly sketched in order
to remember them. Surprisingly, my little sketch actually gave me a
new skill as well.

I
wasn’t really that surprised by the skill itself. I played
several artistic characters in other games, and had managed to pick
up a few skills that transferred over to real life, such as drawing.
What I was surprised about was the skill’s level. Rather than
Beginner Level 1, like every other skill I had started as, this was
Basic Level 6. Did that mean that my real life skill had managed to
transfer over to the game, and that was the level it deemed I was at?

If
so, this would be fairly interesting. I decided later to test out a
few other skills I had picked up from games, but wanted to wait for a
bit since none of them were immediately useful. In most VR games, the
system would help correct mistakes when you used an attack, and only
help you better visualize what it was you wanted to create for more
artistic skills. So, the only skills that I managed to actually
remember from my time in other games were drawing, mechanics, and
hacking.

Thinking
about that last one brought a small grin to my face. One of the less
successful VR games was shut down just a year after its launch
because its skills were too realistic, and the skills it taught
included criminal ones like hacking. After the game was shut down, I
actually tested what I had learned, not really thinking that it would
help me at all. I was a bit paranoid, to be honest, because what I
hacked was the police database, to set up a link that would warn me
if they listed me as a suspect in an ongoing investigation. A few
weeks later, I realized how dumb that was, and went back in to remove
it. Thankfully, the cops never came busting down my door. Of course,
I wasn’t really sure if hacking would work the same here, since
a lot of the more advanced technology is infused with magic. Maybe
advanced hacking would include magical hacks?

Back
to the present, I decided to test my luck and head out of town,
stopping by the quest board and picking up a horned rabbit
extermination quest. Unlike the ones offering directions, the actual
quests had instructions to remove the quest leaf when you accepted
it.

I
noticed the star on the quest, just like the ones that appeared for
spells. However, this was an empty star, so maybe it only counted as
half value? If that was the case, then this should be a very easy
quest to finish.

On
my way out of town, I saw other players heading in the same
direction. A few of them were also holding leafs like mine, which I
guessed meant that the quest was reposted for others to take. Looking
through the few players, I made my way over to Jacobs. “Hey,
you on the rabbit extermination?”

He
looked over to me and nodded. “Yeah, and I need to find a few
smaller trees. Going to try to get carpentry. Take it you’re on
the same mission.”

I
chuckled, nodding my head back to him. “Pretty much, but I’m
looking for herbs instead of trees. I’m grabbing alchemy.”

“
Feel
like teaming up for a bit, then?”

I
smiled, and accepted his invitation. Looking at the party window, I
saw that he was already level three, which irked me a little. Likely
he went out and hunted a bit before grabbing a quest. “So,
since it looks like you know your way around better, any idea where
the horned rabbits hang out?”

“
Yeah,
they usually wander around in small groups a bit to the west of town.
I came across a few of them earlier when I was practicing a new
spell, but I didn’t know I could have turned over their corpses
for a reward. Was a bit disappointed when they didn’t drop any
loot.”

I
couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Remember, this is
supposed to be ‘completely realistic’, so it’s not
like a little bunny is going to swallow a pair of boots to hand out
to whoever kills it.”

He
smiled wryly at the comment, but nonetheless nodded his head. It
wasn’t long before we were out of the city. “So, what
kinds of spells do you have? I saw you walked off with the elemental
class earlier.”

“
Yeah,
so far it’s just a Wind Bullet, Gust, and a hold spell. I’d
say I could shoot them with my bow but… I can barely hit a
target when it’s not moving, and rabbits are known to be fast.
You?”

“
I’ve
got a repulsion spell, and a slow with damage over time.”

I
tilted my head at the description. “Gravity crush?”

“
Pretty
much, yeah.”

“
Couldn’t
you use that spell to do weight training? Well, once you have the
mana to keep it active, anyways.” I idly thought, and heard a
chuckle from next to me.

“
Maybe
if I was aiming to be a muscular mage. I’d rather work on
combat spells for now.”

After
saying that, we heard a ruffling of leaves and stopped. Off in the
distance, were cute little fluffy bunnies, with a long horn on their
heads that was half the size of their body. In this particular group
there seemed to be four of them, so we looked to each other and
nodded. Neither of us were new to games, so it wasn’t that hard
to know a basic plan. I’d fire my hold spell while he launched
his damage over time, and he’d keep that up while I fired my
attack spells.

And,
for the most part, that’s actually how it went down. I felt
silly thinking about the chant I had recited over and over in the
tutorial, and this time merely focused on the feeling of mana I had
while casting the spell. Once I had the mana ready, I shot it down
into the ground, and focused on the four fluffy sacrifices. My mana
sought out nearby roots and launched them from the ground, making the
rabbits try to flee.

At
the same time, Jacobs was focusing his own spell, and the rabbits
suddenly fell to the ground, finding it hard to stand properly. My
roots weren’t as badly affected, and managed to securely wrap
around three of the four rabbits. The fourth managed to escape the
area of his spell before it could be caught, and vanished into a
bush. Still, three out of four isn’t bad right? Now that they
were held, and apparently unable to break free, I fired a single Wind
Bullet at each of them, which seemed to do the trick. There was a
sickening crunch from the combination of pressure from the two spells
before each rabbit was dead. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the
last rabbit before it charged out of the bushes, its eyes glowing
red. Before I could even react, it had speared my leg with its horn.
The same leg that the rat had gone for in the tutorial. The same SPOT
on the leg. What is it with these monsters?!

Biting
back the pain, I swung my dagger down at the rabbit which was
thankfully stuck trying to pull itself out of my leg. Stop twitching!
God, that hurts! I was able to feel every tiny movement of its horn
as my dagger seemed to fall down unnaturally slow. Why does pain
always make things seem to take longer? After what felt like an
agonizing minute, the dagger finally finished its descent, completely
severing the rabbit’s head from its neck. “God, oww, fuck
that hurts.”

Jacobs,
just now becoming aware of what had happened over here, looks down
and goes wide eyed at the rabbit head now stuck to my leg. “Fuck,
they can be vicious. Remind me to practice that repulsion spell me…”

“
Yes,
yes, later. Can you help me get the fucking horn out of my leg
first?!” I almost growled out. In my opinion, I was handling
this fairly well. I was stabbed through the leg, with the full
sensation of pain, and not screaming bloody murder. What did I get
myself into? Even deaths in other games had never hurt this much!

After
pulling out the rabbit’s horn, I paled because another window
also appeared.

I
was at a loss for what to do, neither of us had any healing spells.
And this was taking away five health a second! Another eleven
seconds, and I die just from bleeding out. Did that thing spear an
artery or something?

Fuck
you game! I did the only thing I could honestly think of, and cast my
Nature’s Grasp spell again, this time on my own leg. It always
works in movies, right? Cut off circulation to the injured area, and
you won’t bleed out!

Thankfully,
this seemed to work, because the bleeding messages stopped appearing
and my natural health regeneration took over. Altogether, I had lost
40 points of health, which took four minutes of sitting on the ground
to get back. I wasn’t just doing nothing though, because I was
happy to receive another window when the bleeding had stopped.

I
quickly opened up my character information to see what rewards I had
received from leveling, before the game had a chance to find some
excuse to rob me of it again. A new section had been created at the
bottom telling me I had five points to spend. After debating on it
for a few seconds, I dumped three points into my agility, and the
last two into my wisdom, giving me…