World Seed: Game Start (8 page)

Chapter 6: Fluffy
Income

After
waiting for my health to recover, I discovered something that had
left me a bit speechless. Rather than the normal scenario where my
wound would fully recover as my health rose, the wound didn’t
fully heal after closing. Likewise, my health had stopped recovering
at 87, meaning that I would probably need actual healing to recover
the last bit of damage. It would probably also mean I could be more
easily damaged if I aggravated the injury.

“
Really
need to find those herbs…” I groaned to myself, knowing
that I couldn’t use any healing spells until I first learned
how to brew the potion. Scanning around, I noticed some of the
familiar red weed in small bundles growing nearby. A few of the
stalks were damaged, likely from the rabbits eating them.

I
used my dagger to cut off the root that was holding my leg, leaving
the body of the root wrapped around it for now. If nothing else, it’d
make me feel better knowing that I wouldn’t randomly start
bleeding out. When I finally stood up, I let out a hiss of pain,
being forced to acknowledge that the wound really hadn’t fully
healed.

Walking
over, I carefully retrieved the weeds, digging the roots out with my
dagger. While I wasn’t notably skilled at herbalism, I had
dabbled with it in other games enough to know how not to damage most
plants.

Two
skills, huh? Guess Herbology must be because I know that blood weed
was used in healing potions. Still, 2%? Why do I feel like it’s
just teasing me… I shook my head and dismissed the windows
while gathering the rest of the blood weed in the area. Thankfully
they all stacked in my inventory, so that wasn’t an issue. When
I got back to Jacobs, he told me that I could have this set of
rabbits, since I was the only one actually injured by them.

After
thanking him, we again set out to find more rabbits. Our mana had
recovered enough that we were confident taking on another group of
the same size, but this time we knew to be more careful of them. The
next group we came across was likewise another set of four, which
were nibbling away at more blood weed. They really like that stuff,
huh?

I
entertained a brief notion of trying to tame one of the rabbits with
the aid of the herb, but the pain in my leg seemed to demand
vengeance against the fluffy race. This time, I decided to use my bow
to try and shoot one, with my dagger kept strapped to my waist. Going
through the motions, I shot out a Lesser Spiral Arrow. Thanks to my
complete inability to hit what I aimed for, I purposely aimed for the
spot between the four rabbits, hoping it would go off course enough
to hit one of them.

The
body of the rabbit practically exploded as the arrow tore through it,
making me wince at the loss of profit. It was bad enough that we
couldn’t shove all the rabbit corpses into our inventory due to
a lack of spaces available, but now I had utterly destroyed one of
the bodies.

Jacobs
didn’t miss this fact either, and let out a tired sigh while
quickly activating his gravity spell. This time, he had aimed it a
bit more carefully, so none of the remaining three rabbits had a
chance to escape the field before it was set. Again, I finished the
battle with a series of Wind Bullets. This time, we would really have
to take a break for a while to recover mana, so we decided to head
back to town after gathering the dead rabbits. The three in tact
bodies were added to Jacobs’ catch, while the head of the
fourth was mine, as it was all we could recover of it…

I
quickly added another three points to agility, and two to wisdom.
After we had the bodies, and I went around gathering more of the
blood weed, we decided to head back to town for a little while.
Staying out in the open while smelling of blood, without the means to
defend ourselves was just asking for a wolf or something to attack.

Once
we got back, we found a guard to sell our seven(and a third) corpses
to. He didn’t seem at all bothered by the bodies of the fluffy
race, and paid a price of ten copper for each full body, only
managing to earn three for the lone head. With this, if I could
manage to find some fireflower, I would already meet the requirements
to learn alchemy!

“
So…
how long will you have to wait for your mana to get back?”
Jacobs asked after we left the guard.

I
looked at my mana, and saw that it was missing around seventy points.
Doing a quick bit of math in my head I came to a conclusion. “Almost
fifteen minutes. You?”

He
smirked a bit, seemingly proud of himself. “Only ten for me.
But I’m building a full caster build.”

I
let out a sigh, not at all wanting to spend the next fifteen minutes
just walking around. “I’m going to log out for a few
minutes, check on the house.”

He
nodded to me, and I looked through the menu for the logout button.
It.. .wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Typically, the logout
button was at the very bottom of the menu, and I almost panicked when
I didn’t find it. It’d been ages since an accidental
virtualization happened, but it was always that distant possibility.
Then, I noticed that the option was just hidden a few slots higher,
and grumbled under my breath.

Soon,
my world turned black. I was no longer Falenel, the failure half-elf,
but John Hulett, the NEET human. With a thought, the Seed opened up,
allowing me to exit, and light to pour in. I pulled off the mask and
stood up, giving a light stretch. There was still a pain in my leg
from where the rabbit had speared me, but I chalked it up to phantom
pains. After all, there wasn’t a visible wound over the spot,
just a feeling of deep soreness.

The
next thing I noticed was an ever-so-slight reduction in my gamer gut.
If nothing else, that made me happy, since it meant that the Seed
really was worth the money spent on it. Walking to the nearby door, I
got a rather annoying jolt of static when I gripped the handle, but
was otherwise unimpeded as I put on some clothes and went downstairs.
I wasn’t very hungry, but decided it would be best to grab a
small snack and a drink before heading back.

On
my way back to my room, I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror, and
for a moment I thought something was off. I just couldn’t quite
place it, so I just attributed it to losing a bit of weight. I only
needed to spend three minutes out of the game, thanks to the time
differences, so I quickly made my way back to the Seed, and logged in
once I had satisfied my stomach.

To
my surprise, this satisfaction actually carried over to the game, and
I didn’t feel the need to stuff my face with stale bread
anymore. I was, however, lying sprawled out on the ground, with a
rather annoyed looking Jacobs standing next to my body.

“
Note
for the future, logging out does not make the character disappear.”
He explained simply, making me understand what had happened. I must
have fallen to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. Then,
to make sure I wasn’t robbed or killed, Jacobs had to stand
watch over me while I was gone.

“
Sorry
about that. Good news is, it seems like eating in the real world will
also help here.” He raised an eyebrow at that curiously. People
who had been virtualized never really felt the need to eat unless it
was simulated in the game they played, so that wasn’t likely
too big of a deal for him.

By
now, both of our mana pools had recovered, so we once again headed
back out to hunt. Since we knew the general area where the rabbits
lived, it didn’t take long for us to find them. We would hunt
two groups between each break, gathering the blood weed and bodies
after each fight. Jacobs and I both hit level 4 by the time we were
ready for our second break, and he hit level 5 just after we got
hunting again.

Thankfully
for me, I managed to find some fireflower during our second
excursion, though it was still massively outmatched by the amount of
blood weed I had collected. I could only hope that the alchemy
instructor would either buy the excess blood weed from me, or the
recipes would make use of it. I didn’t want to carry around
tons of the herb forever.

Another
thing of note was that after hitting level 5, Jacobs said his
inventory grew, from a 2 x 2 grid to 3 x 3. We were thankful for the
extra five slots, since it meant we could carry over twice as much.
On our third trip, we finally hit our goal of ten rabbits each,
finishing the quest that we had taken. Thanks to our caution after
the first hunt, we didn’t take any additional injuries, give or
take a couple small scratches.

I
had saved up my points from the last few hunts, and decided to
accurately check the meaning and effects behind a few of the stats.
So far, I had been spending mostly based on intuition, but that
wouldn’t be good for the long run.

Looking
through the stat descriptions, I nodded my head slightly. Wisdom and
intelligence were as I expected, but I had been placing a higher
importance on agility when I should have focused on dexterity. Using
the points I had saved up, I did my best to fix this snafu, before
heading to the alchemy instructor with my shiny new silver coin, and
inventory full of herbs. On the way, I took another look at my status
and skills, somewhat pleased with myself for not being a total
weakling now.