[No Title] [Kaede]

Lv6 HP 34/100 MP 22/22

STR [0] VIT [105]

AGI [0] DEX [0]

INT [0] LCK [//:Maple--wKwsD]

[Provoke] [Kicking] [Giant Killing]

Unused Status Points: 10

Actual VIT: 210

“Kyu!”

“Lwooo!”

“Bzzzzz!!!”

“KYUUU!!!”

“WARF! WAOOOOOO!”

“BZZZZZT ZZZT!!!”

“Mmm… zzzzz”

[Skill (Absolute Defense) has been acquired]

[Skill (Meditation) has been acquired]

[Skill (Shameless) has been acquired]

[Skill (Tough Skin, Tough Soul) has been acquired]

[Skill (Poison Resistance (Small)) has been automatically acquired due to (Tough Skin, Tough Soul)]

[Skill (Poison Resistance (Medium)) has been automatically acquired due to (Tough Skin, Tough Soul)]

[Skill (Poison Resistance (Large)) has been automatically acquired due to (Tough Skin, Tough Soul)]

[Skill (Poison Immunity) has been automatically acquired due to (Tough Skin, Tough Soul)]

[Skill (Kin) has been automatically acquired due to (Shameless)]

With a jolt of surprise, Kaede awoke as multiple notifications popped up in front of her, knocking her out of her dreams. She shifted slightly in place, feeling warm all over her body. She couldn’t move much but aside from the slight pain of being awoken early, she felt quite comfy. It felt similar to being a giant cotton or wool ball, something that Kaede had quite a bit of experience in.

“Eh? It’s been 3 hours already?” Kaede half-yawned half-moaned, still drowsy from being awoken. Though the words never really left her mouth properly, instead she made a sound more like “Mp? Mphh hmmphmph?”.

As the one attempting to convey these words to nobody in particular, Kaede quickly noticed her muffled speech and snapped out of her drowsy daze. With haste, Kaede opened her eyes, eager to see what was stopping her from her vocal monologue.

Fortunately for Kaede, it wasn't really anything that important. She wasn’t kidnapped in her sleep, nor had she suddenly lost her voice. All that had happened was a giant stinger got stuck in her half-open mouth. A giant pointy stinger.

Giant. Pointy. Stinger.

Kaede screeched in place, and likely would have jumped up in fright, if she weren’t nailed to the floor by the giant fluffy pile of monsters she had fallen asleep with. Right in front of her, was a giant bee, much like the one that inflicted her first damage to her back in the day on NWO, struggling in place, waving its wings back and forth in a futile attempt at unlodging itself from Kaede.

With her original panic subsided, Kaede quickly did the one thing she knew to do in this situation. With a shine of her canines, she bit down hard on the stinger, slicing it off of the bee, forcing it to stagger backwards and then fall to the ground dead. To her surprise, it tasted like stick candy.

With that problem solved, Kaede took a quick look around her. Unsurprisingly, much like the first time she decided to take a nap ingame, she was covered in monsters. Though unlike last time, this time Kaede had strategically planned to only cover herself with cute and adorable monsters, rather than the myriad of insects she had to deal with last time.

Though, clearly she had accidentally let a single bee live.

A mistake that she mentally noted to never make again.

As she metaphorically placed that note on her metaphorical mind-fridge right beside the metaphorical note on trying out a new combo involving flipping over Syrup and using a knockback skill she recently obtained to turn Syrup into a gigantic spinning projectile, Kaede took a closer look at the skills she had obtained during her rest break.

Much like last time, she had obtained two skills that she was very familiar with. [Meditation] which was obtained via receiving attacks for 3 hours straight, without moving gave her regeneration and [Absolute Defense] basically doubled her VIT, making it a clear S-Tier skill.

[Shameless] and [Tough Skin, Tough Soul] on the other hand were completely new skills that Kaede had no clue how she got, nor knew anything about. Somehow, doing the same thing she had done in NWO, had different results in this world defying the law of insanity. Unfortunately for Maple, she was completely wrong about this assumption as there was a difference this time.

In much like Maple fashion, she had obtained two skills that nobody in NWO, or even in the world she had reincarnated in would ever receive because nobody is stupid enough to sleep in a pile of clearly hostile creatures that are trying to murder you. So in other words, nobody knew that Maple back in NWO could have gotten more skills at the beginning if she had just rid herself of all of her equipment, which in NWO did not include her clothing. In fact, even this time, this was a coincidence as when she fell asleep, she let go of the “Horned Rabbit Horn” she had originally equipped for the monster mosh pit she had participated in.

Completely ignorant to this fact, Kaede selected the [Shameless] skill in her status and checked it out.

[Shameless]

You have no care about how the world thinks about you. And the creatures around you have realized this. 2x VIT while not wearing any equipment, Auto-Gain Kin Skill, Nullifies All Damage for 2 Seconds after removing a piece of equipment, but this bonus cannot be regained for the same equipment in the same combat.

Skill Requirement: Steal more than 20 monster’s attention including a mini-boss at once for more than 3 hours while not using any equipment or moving

“Eh? What an odd skill.” Kaede casually said, as she ignored the skill requirements and simply read out the skills abilities. The skill was conflicting, as she wasn’t exactly trying to be naked, she just spawned into the world with no clothing, but at the same time it was a skill that increased her vitality. Was 2x Vitality worth the possible ramifications of encountering other people in this world in her birthday suit?

Was it?

WAS IT?

Kaede thought hard, weighing the options. The tantalizing thought of double vitality was almost too enticing for the girl who refused to take damage. With steam practically pouring out of her head, she decided to take a look at the other skill that came along with [Shameless], [Kin].

[Kin]

You gain 5 Special Equipment slots that can only be interacted with this skill. You can place docile monsters in all your equipment slots. Monsters that spend time around you without receiving damage will slowly become docile. If you leave them, they will revert back to normal.

Skill Requirement: Obtain Shameless or unlock Taming Level 305.

Ah.

Kaede beamed. Suddenly the prospect of 2x Vitality was drowned out by the prospect of wearing cute adorable monsters as armor instead. It was then that Kaede had an idea. “Hm… [Shameless] gives me temporary invincibility if I take off equipment. And Kin lets me use monsters as equipment. Eh? If I keep all of these monsters and switch them, aren’t I invincible?” she asked nobody in particular.

In the end Kaede had seriously considered not wearing anything for 2x VIT. It was only when another skill gave her a bonus that exceeded the absolute power that was 2x VIT appeared that she dropped the idea. Temptation can be scary sometimes.

With an idea of how she was going to use her two new skills, Kaede took a look at the last new skill she had received.

[Tough Skin, Tough Soul]

Even though No Flinching Challenges are a decades old trend, you would have mastered them at their peak. Doubles Vitality. Attacks that deal 0 Damage to you instead heal you by 10% of your opponent’s attack power. Auto gain Poison Immunity Skill.

Skill Requirement: Drink Poison and then receive over 10000 attacks on bare skin without reacting whatsoever. Attacks must be received in a row however the poison can lose effect before all attacks are received.

“Ah….” Kaede squeaked. Another skill with a horrendously specific requirement had been obtained. However the absurdity of that was not why Kaede squeaked involuntarily. No, it was the x2 Vitality obviously. With this, Kaede had already transcended the level of defense that she had obtained on her first day in NWO, except this time she achieved it at a lower level and without any equipment like the Queen Bee’s Ring or her trusty Starter Great Shield. Turning her attention away from the tantalizing Vitality multiplier, Kaede also approved of the new healing factor she had gained. Though she rarely ever died back in NWO, she knew in this world, death was likely permanent, so any healing ability she could get was just as welcome to her arsenal of skills much like her favorite VIT multipliers. In fact, Kaede also noticed that her HP was also scaling up with each level, which was different from how NWO worked, where HP had to be manually increased using status points. Apparently in this world, much like many popular MMO games in the past, HP was increased by level, not by status points, which was quite helpful to her as it covered one of her major weaknesses she faced back in NWO, as back then unless she was wearing specific armor, her HP would constantly be at 40.

40…

Kaede had her status open in a secondary window, while focusing on the Skill description status screen. She quietly looked at her current HP number.

34/100 (A/N Remember she only just got her new healing skills)

Kaede involuntarily shivered despite being in a pile of very warm and fluffy creatures. Clearly she would have died already if this world had its HP scaling function the same way as NWO. The bee that she had failed to kill would have offed her in her sleep with its single venom spray attack that it launched before it went in for a melee attack which she by pure coincidence had bitten down on in her sleep, putting the bee in the perfect position to be unable to fire another poison attack as it’s mouth was now facing the opposite direction of Kaede, and it’s stinger was stuck in her mouth, making it unable to rectify that problem. Had this oddly specific scenario not happened… Well, Kaede didn’t want to think about that.

Now with all of her new skills properly assessed with the precision of a master exploit finder (A/N which is more accurate than it is funny), Kaede turned her attention to the large pile of monsters she was covered in. It had grown surprisingly larger since she last saw them, prior to her power nap. The majority of monsters contained within her surrounding pile of fur consisted of mostly direwolves and horned rabbits, however, Kaede had also spared several slimes as well, because they were nice and cool. In total, she was surrounded by around 40-ish monsters, and she only had 12 free equipment slots, since she wanted to keep her hands free.

Turning to the monsters, who were now all staring at her expectantly, she unsheathed her right arm from the pile. Without care about statistics and logistics, Kaede decided to just randomly pick the monsters she wanted as her equipment, and just let the rest of them follow her like a shepherds herd. She also made sure to immediately turn her new status points into more VIT.

In the end, she stood up surrounded by her new herd of adorable monsters with her status looking like this:

[No Title] [Kaede]

Lv6 HP 100/100 MP 22/22

STR [0] VIT [115 + 84]

AGI [0] DEX [0]

INT [0] LCK [//:Maple--wKwsD]

[Provoke] [Kicking] [Giant Killing] [Kin] [Poison Immunity] [Shameless] [Tough Skin, Tough Soul] [Absolute Defense] [Meditation]

Actual VIT: 1592

Equipment

Head [Greater Slime (Kin)] Vit + 5

Body [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Right hand [N/A]

Left Hand [N/A]

Legs [Dire Wolf (Kin)] Vit + 9

Shoes [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Accessories [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Accessories 2 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Accessories 3 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Extra Slot 1 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Extra Slot 2 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Extra Slot 3 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Extra Slot 4 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Extra Slot 5 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

…

Looking at herself, Kaede concluded that the [Kin] skill was very strange. Equipping monsters as equipment was already an interesting concept by itself considering aside from the liquid slimes, none of the monsters were really armor shaped beings. Perhaps if she had obtained something similar to her old friend Chrome’s in-game pet, which was literally floating armor, the skill would make sense. But instead she looked like all of the aforementioned monsters had literally fused into her skin. She had furry outcrops of Horned Rabbits peeking out of her chest and body, and even one of the heads was fully conscious and moving, despite the fact it’s body had fused into Kaede. Her entire nether regions were completely covered (to her relief) with wolf fur and it’s head stuck out in front, as if it was a hilarious prank costume. Around half of her hair turned goopy and green and had produced its own little pokan slime face. Saving the least odd change for last, her feet were no longer bare, instead wearing sentient bunny slippers, morphing the rabbits bodies into the correct shape as if they were made out of wool, ignoring the fact that these creatures have insides and organs.

All in all, it looked absolutely ridiculous, which was standard for Kaede at this point.

With her self-customization completed, Kaede held her arms up and stretched, getting used to the additional weight onto her body as well as the shifts in movement caused by the fact that the creatures intertwined in her body were still sentient and moving. In NWO, armor didn’t exactly weigh too much, and neither did weapons actually. Armor in NWO was surprisingly simple for the complex VR game, as it only appeared visually on the body, felt like armor on the body and gave the user a certain stat gain and possibly abilities. There was no such thing as a weight requirement or strength requirement or even speed reductions, which if there was, would have screwed Kaede quite early as she didn’t exactly have any strength in-game. However, that was not the case here, each of the monsters weighed like they were supposed too, though she was unaffected. Apparently, game logic seemed to have overtaken real logic in this world as her AGI stat was already at the minimum it could be, so she didn’t feel any slower, she only felt the weight on her body, which was just a small annoyance.

As she finished her stretches, and started feeling refreshed, a feeling deep in her gut stopped her. It was then that Kaede remembered that she had nothing to eat for the last few hours, aside from the bee stinger she had just chomped on. This was a problem that needed to be solved immediately.

Crouching onto the floor, Kaede quickly picked up her only weapon, the “Horned Rabbit’s Horn” and started moving forwards. Earlier, she had noted that she had received the [Poison Immunity] skill early, which meant the deadly… or should I say, tasty monsters that lied deep inside of the dungeon she was in were now fair game for her to fight against.

It was time to hunt.

The Poison Dragon’s Cave was a very hazardous place for living beings to enter. Poison littered the floor and even came into the air as deadly toxic gases. There were very few plants inside of the cave, only small mosses and fungi that could live off of the poisons, likely due to evolutionary advantages that allowed them a place to live without competition. It was the absolute worst possible place to hunt. Almost every creature there had to either be poisonous or live off of poisonous creatures which meant either way there was poison inside of their bodies and due to their harsher living conditions, the creatures were more cautious and intelligent, compared to the stupid rabbits that could probably keep ramming into a brick wall repeatedly until death if they thought it was an enemy. This was one thing that didn’t change from NWO in this new different version of the cave that Kaede found in this world.

This of course meant nothing to Kaede, who brandished the Rabbit Horn in her hand like a steak knife, eyes looking around for prey. Her entourage of monsters of course felt no fear, only pity for any who stood in their new masters way.

As she moved forwards down the winding passages, one particularly potent source of poison started to emerge, in the form of a violet flower that only seemed to bloom deep in the cave, where the poison was thicker. It spat out copious amounts of toxins out of its pistils, to the point one could mistake its reproductive activities as insect culling activities instead. Though to Kaede who held [Poison Immunity], it was the equivalent of smelling the light fragrance of spices in the air compared to the pepper spray-like effect it should be giving to any foolish traveler that would dare enter this damned place.

Unable to find any prey so far, Kaede took a closer look at these flowers. “Hmmm, I wonder if I can eat these?” Kaede wondered to herself, as she plucked one of the flowers out of the murky earth. Normally, flowers tend to not be the edible part of a plant due to it being the equivalent to a sexual organ of a plant, making it quite important to protect. If edible at all, humans can only really eat the nectar produced by the flower, or rarely the petals themselves, though usually via infusion into teas. Kaede had none of this knowledge however, and simply thought of saffron, a particular spice derived from a flower, which she correlated to the possibility of all flowers being edible. With those simplistic thoughts egged on by her growing hunger, she took a bite from one of the flowers petals.

A flower literally spewing out poison.

…

“Oishiiiii!” (A/N I’m not writing MMMMMMMMM, in fact why does MMMMM mean “good tasting” in English anyways?) she cried out. To Kaede, who was unaffected by the poison, the flower tasted the same way it tasted to the toxic herbivores living in the caves, like mint, but with sugar. For Kaede, who hadn’t eaten in a decent amount of time, it was delicious.

Like a woman who doubted her husband's love, she started plucking petals off of the flower vigorously, collecting them in her slime hair, which had a sticky property that made it very convenient. It would make a nice snack while she ventured further into the passages.

At this point, Kaede had traveled quite far into the cave, entering multiple passages and facing a large share of dead ends. She had yet to encounter many monsters on her way, only a few toxic slime which she dealt with swiftly by slurping them down like jello. The layout of the cave was vastly different which was refreshing, as it was a new experience for Kaede.

Though sadly, since the only monsters she had encountered were slimes, there really wasn’t much to eat. She had hoped that she could find the toxic lizards she had seen in the NWO version of this cave, as they looked quite similar to the boss, which meant they probably tasted the same, which wasn’t good since it tasted like green peppers, but at least it was sustenance and she wouldn’t have to kill any of her adorable entourage. At this point, the few flowers she plucked and the few slimes she ate were not giving her a lot of food and her tummy was rumbling like crazy. She was seriously considering killing one of the rabbits, just to eat something. In fact, in hindsight she could have eaten any of the rabbits she had killed during her massive fight earlier as she only started targeting the bugs halfway through the battle. (She could also have eaten the bugs but she is also a high school girl with Entomophobia, so no.)

But she was long past that part of the cave and she didn’t feel like getting any more lost that she already was. She reasoned with herself that those corpses were no longer good to eat, completely ignoring the fact she has perfect poison immunity which also extended to immunity to disease, which basically allowed her to eat like a vulture or a maggot. Though Kaede was unknowingly correct in saying she could not eat those corpses, though for a different reason, as in her sleep, those fresh corpses were mostly eaten by the other carnivorous monsters like the direwolves, with the rest decaying due to monster corpses decaying fast due to their dependance on magic. She of course had no clue about any of this.

As she continued to drone forwards, still alert for prey, Kaede found herself upon another set of caves that caused the path to diverge. Not feeling like spending too much energy pondering about which cave to go in, as in the end it was a 50/50 shot of which she would choose much like every diverging path she had encountered in the cave so far. Following no instinct in particular, she immediately started going down the right path.

As she trekked down the pathway, Kaede started to notice something was off. Stopping herself suddenly, a rabbit behind her accidently bumped into her. Feeling the bump on her calf, Kaede turned around to pick the rabbit back up. It was then she noticed that the path behind her had disappeared.

“Ah. It’s gone.” she deadpanned. Of course there was nothing she could do about that with her current skill set so she didn’t think much of it and simply picked up the rabbit who fell, before once again turning around to continue walking down the only direction she could go, forwards.

Now turned forwards again, her face slid into a face of disbelief. “Eh. It’s gone too.” she deadpanned once again, a pokan face replacing her normally cheerful face. Just like she said, the path in front of her was also gone. In its place was a small wooden chest surrounded by old musty fungi and more importantly, a lot of metal scraps. Metal scraps that looked a lot like old armor bits, sword handles and bent arrows, not exactly what you want to see around a regular chest.

Now Kaede was absolutely naive and an airhead, but she was above all else a gamer. So, she figured quite easily that the chest in front of her was very much a trap. A trap she really had no problem in springing because she had yet to find a trap that could damage her.

“Um… can you all step back a bit?” Kaede swiftly ordered the monsters behind her. With a few hand motions to emphasize her statement, the rabbits and wolves behind her stepped backwards, giving Kaede ample space.

Hearing the movement behind her cease, Kaede smiled. Now that her entourage was clear of the trap, all that was left was to trigger it and possibly get some loot. With a slow motion Kaede stepped forwards towards the chest and she put a hand on the lid.

As soon as her hand touched the lid of the chest, she heard a snapping sound, similar to the sound that rope under high tension would make if it was cut. Without a doubt she had triggered the trap.

The trap of course was your average guillotine trap, the type that under normal circumstances, comes out of nowhere at high speed, beheading any fool who triggers it. This time was no different as a meter wide and 12-inch long guillotine suddenly came out of nowhere and swung at Kaede, aimed straight for her neck.

However, Kaede was ready. As soon as she heard the rope snap, with a swift motion, she flung her shoulder behind her. As she did this, a horned rabbit flew out of her shoulder and landed with the rest of the entourage behind her. Instantly, her body started to shine, as her skin started to take on a translucent form.

*CLUNK*

In an instant, the blade swung onto Kaede. As it struck the small girl, it stayed in place for a few seconds before it snapped in two. None of the force behind the swing even entered Kaede, forcing all of the damage onto the blade, damage the blade was never designed to take, causing it to fail spectacularly. Shards of small bits of metal rained onto the ground, and the two ends of the blade landed on the ground with a large *THUD*.

And as quickly as the event happened, Kaede’s body returned to normal.

Letting out a deep breath, Kaede silently cheered. Kaede had always found that skills found their best uses when used. Words could only describe so much, it was always better to use the skills yourself to discover how you can use them. In this case, Kaede, who was slightly afraid of the trap, had prepared herself ahead of time to test out [Shameless]. She was already quite sure that she could survive a trap in this dungeon due to the fact she had already done so in the past, but it never hurt to have insurance. And with her path behind her blocked, she had no other choice but to trigger it.

To her surprise, [Shameless] worked better than she could hope for. It’s activation timing was crucial and an obvious weakness, as the invincibility only lasted 2 seconds and there was a small delay when using the status screen to remove equipment. Furthermore, manually removing equipment would take longer and was impossible if that equipment was one attached to her via the [Kin] skill. However, she immediately noticed that [Shameless] seemed to have a hidden attribute. In the past, while she played NWO, she noticed that even when she didn’t take damage, she would always take knockback. It was especially problematic when she engaged in PvP, as people like Mii could keep her at bay and with her nonexistent AGI, she couldn’t catch up. However, this trap ended up dealing no knockback to her, something which did not add up with the past. Heavy weapons and by extension, heavy traps always inflicted knockback when swung in any direction except for down back in NWO. But this trap broke instead, proof that all the force had gone right back into the blade.

This meant that the invincibility aspect of [Shameless] was even stronger than Kaede thought it was.

[Skill (Red Herring) has been acquired]

“Ah!” Kaede exclaimed. Apparently her skill test had ended up giving her yet another skill. She pulled up her status to check it out.

[Red Herring]

You are prime bait for traps. You can set a skill to automatically activate when you activate a natural trap or a player-made trap.

Skill Requirement: Purposely trigger a trap and completely destroy/nullify it without dodging it while in a party of more than 10.

Huh. This skill description gave Kaede some interesting information. It seemed her companions that were hiding behind a rock behind her were considered part of her party. This meant that [Kin] also could possibly hold hidden attributes as well.

Of course she immediately selected [Shameless] and attached it to [Red Herring]. That was a no brainer, as her reaction time was pretty poor. She had only succeeded in blocking this guillotine trap due to already knowing there was a trap ahead of time. Now, she could overcome this weakness and be completely immune to traps in the future, which could include traps that ignore defense in the future.

Now all that was left for Kaede to do was open the chest that lay in front of her. She quickly gestured behind her, signalling the peanut gallery to rejoin the main Kaede formation. As footsteps gathered behind her, Kaede’s eyes gleamed, her focus now solely on the chest with unknown loot in front of her.

It was time to open it.