Chapter 4

Inspecting the portion of the map that had been drawn before he had run out of mana, brought up a screen showing it's information.

Map - Center of Greenbrook(Incomplete, Poor Quality) Grade may be raised with further completion.

Putting away the paper, Gareth arrived at the gate out of the town, more accustomed to the atmosphere of the town now, he noticed a small guard shack beside the gate, and a sign outside, with a warning written on it.

‘Danger- small wildlife, '

“Why would they write the smiley face sideways, there is plenty of room on the sign”

Letting out a sigh, Gareth drew the sw- … Gareth turned around and walked back to the smithy. As he walked in, the man behind the counter waved him over, and brought out Gareth’s swords from beneath the table, he handed them over.

“We will buy the Iron sword for 10 copper and the Goblins Short Sword for 30, you interested?”

“Umm, yeah, I will sell the Iron Sword then”

The man took back the Iron Sword and put 10 copper on the counter before turning to another customer. Equipping the Goblin Short Sword, Gareth turned and left, beginning to jog back to the gate.

Passing through the gate, revealed several hundred feet of cut back forest, extending around the city, To the left, barely visible, was a large road heading off into the distance. Ignoring that for now, Gareth charged out towards a rabbit, preparing to swing his sword. The rabbit noticing his approach jumped to the side, dodging his clumsy stab, then jumping to bite his face, he leaned back barely dodging the attack. Backing away Gareth put his sword up in a guard position, waiting for the rabbit to jump back at him. As soon as it did he swung his sword like a baseball bat, connecting with a thud, transforming the rabbit into a cloud of pixels.

*lvl 1 rabbit killed - 7 xp gained

Grinning, Gareth went after more rabbits, perfecting his strategy of whacking the rabbits when they were in midair, slowly moving away from the town wall. Avoiding the other players wasn’t to difficult as many had already moved on to other areas by this point. Eventually a new message appeared when a larger rabbit was killed.

*lvl 2 rabbit killed - 12 xp gained

*Level up - 5 free attributes gained

Pausing in his hunt of rabbits, Gareth checked his status and added his attribute points to strength and agility.

Character Status

Health: 20/20

Stamina: 29/50

Mana: 17/20

Name: Gareth

Level: 2(4/150)

Class: N/A

Race: Human

Titles: Twig breaker(inactive)

FA: 0

Constitution: 10

Strength: 15

Agility: 13

Perception: 10

Intelligence: 10

Defense: 12

Inventory

1 Rusty Iron Sword

10 Bread

Goblin Short Sword

12 Copper

Skills

Beginner Sword Holding - Somewhat able to hold a sword(41/1000)

Toss - able to throw objects(2/1000)

Block - you are able to move one object in front of another(29/1000)

Basic Cartography - you can make rough sketches of locations with parchment and ink(7/1000)

Now knowing there were higher level mobs, Gareth began purposefully moving towards the forest’s edge as he slew rabbits. Once just outside the proper dense and dark forest, the rabbits began to take less damage, and only more direct attacks landing solidly were able to one shot them. After reaching this area and killing several rabbits, Gareth became aware of his movements dramatically slowing down and finally saw the almost empty stamina bar in the top right of his vision. Deciding to rest for a moment, he took out a piece of bread and began to snack on it, enjoying the sight of the peaceful meadow, with curls of smoke coming from chimneys in the town, and gentle breezes drawing the clouds above along.

*Sneak Attack bonus - 6 damage received from Rabbit

A piercing pain, and blood beginning to trickle down his back, revealed that the slightly bloody bunny, currently embedded in his arm wanted revenge for his former furry companions. Slightly recovered from his low stamina, Gareth fought through the sharp pain and stabbed the rabbit, staring into its beady red eyes.

*Harvestable material detected(no harvesting skill detected) Would you like to manually retrieve resources (Y/N)?

Having wondered why there were no drops, despite that player in front of the stall suggesting there would be, Gareth decided to try to harvest something. Possibly due to the condition of the rabbit corpse being superior to the other thankfully pixelated rabbits, which would have amounted to the result of hitting a melon with a baseball bat, loot became possible.

Instead of having to gruesomely hack the rabbit to pieces with his sword, a small mini game like interface appeared, where he had to try and trace his sword along lines placed on a 3d green line model of the rabbit, complete with stab wound. A completion bar at the top of the screen showed his progress, only moving forward when the action was done correctly, on the line with the right amount of pressure. Unfortunately for Gareth, that meant he did terribly, barely filling an eighth of the bar, resulting in a poor quality, raggedly piece of leather, about the size of his face.

*Skill gained Garner - you are able to garner something from an animal, not harvest, not gather, garner

Deciding not to worry about the insulting skill descriptions, and also to get a hunting type knife later, Gareth began to walk back to town. Caught up in battle earlier, he was unaware that so much time had passed as the sun was noticeably lower, and that despite the forest being the same distance from the wall he had traveled quite far from the gate he had exited from.

Activating the Basic Cartography skill, Gareth enjoyed the walk back into town, with his magic drawing a very crude map of a wall, empty space, and a forest’s edge. Attempting to control the magic tendril was difficult beyond moving it by having it follow his hand, but by the time he had reached the wall, and lost most his mana, he was able to slightly control the ink to draw with slightly more difficulty.

Entering the town, Gareth began to walk towards the smithy hoping to find a small knife, and somewhere to log off safely.