One moment I was in the Library and the next I was standing in a closet. The room was dark, with a door on one side and 4 walls barely larger than that door. The only light was what filtered in from under and around the door. It was enough to see the state of the room, and to see that there was nothing in it apart from me, but, well, there just wasn’t anything else to look at in the first place.

The door opened into a hallway, which led down two flights of stairs before coming out into a common area.

It was a stereotypical fantasy inn. Long tables lined with benches were in the center of the room, with big round tables placed into each corner. Incidentally, the room was ‘L’ shaped, so there were actually six corners. The bar ran along one of the inner walls of the ‘L’ and behind it were shelves with plates and bowls and mugs, plus various barrels under those. There was a server behind the bar, who I pegged as an NPC based on her plain dress and apron.

The place was also full of players.

I walked over to one of the round tables, climbed into a chair and more or less collapsed onto the flat surface.

Great. All it took was dying to get here. What did I even do now?

“First death?”

A quiet voice came from beside me. It belonged to a player just as small as I was. She had furry little feet that seemed half way between normal and digitigrade, with long caramel ears sticking out of lush brown hair. Her ears didn’t point straight up but instead seemed to drape down and help frame her face, which had black eye and an adorable nose complete with whiskers. She was wearing a long, plain shirt, or maybe tunic, the same colour as her ears? It came down to her hips and underneath she wore shorts underneath that reached her knees.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Welcome to Newb Town. What got you?” She sat down on the chair beside me, clearly not intent to let me suffer alone.

I sighed. “Slimes.”

“For me it was Meck-Roaches. Giant cockroaches with metal bits. The devs drop new players in the middle of danger zones on purpose.”

“Why would they do that!?” I suspected they were just sort of sadistic. They certainly weren’t great at documenting their stuff...although, maybe that was the point? Like, drum up community engagement by letting the players figure out everything on their own?

“My theory is that they want newbies to know right away what the consequences are for dying...I’m Candy B.T.W. Candy Cane.”

Her shit eating grin was priceless. I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Okay Candy,” I giggled. “I’m...Tessa.”

It was one thing to choose that name and another to introduce myself under it. It felt weird. Not bad, but weird. Like there were butterflies in my stomach. Probably just nerves.

“So. You seem pretty lost. I’m pretty new myself, but want some help?”

I smiled back and nodded. “I’d really appreciate it.”

“Okay. So for starters, what skill trees did you start with?”

I told her. A frown spread to her cute face by the time I finished.

“Those are some rough choices.” She paused. “The Word of Beta-”

“Sorry, Word of Beta?” I interrupted.

She nodded. “It’s the fanon for the guides and opinions from the beta players. It says that Summoning is great at high levels but kinda garbo early on. Meanwhile Telsa Weapons have terrible accuracy. In the guides it’s treated more as a support tree to take later on for tank and melee builds.”

“Oh.”

“Stealth at least is pretty good, but you need to get over the hump and get some points in it before you can use it properly. And with your other skills…”

“...I’m doomed.”

“Not necessarily!” She backpedaled. “This game doesn’t really care about optimal builds. You just need to find what works for you and it’ll usually give you stuff to make it work...eventually.”

I frowned. “So you’re saying that the real problem is finding out how to get to that point?”

“Exactly!” She grinned for a moment, before turning contemplative. “I’m just not sure how to get you there…”

“So I’m temporarily doomed.”

Candy sat there and thought. While she was doing that I decided I wanted a drink. Through the magic of my player interface I brought up the bar’s menu and ordered something that sounded fruity. Then I joined Candy in silence while I waited for it to arrive.

“Hey” Candy broke her silence right as my drink arrived. It was delivered by the Bar Maid from before by the way. It was technically a beer, I think? But it smelled faintly of honey and peaches. It was a pale shade of pink.

I signaled for her to continue.

“What about your Legacy?”

“Hmm? Trash Goblin. Wasn’t that...kind of obvious?”

She grinned, then continued. “I thought I did recognize it, but I mean your abilities.”

“Abilities?” I took a sip of my drink.

“Your Legacy abilities?”

…

“Oh. I guess that makes sense.”

“You...have no idea what they are, do you?”

I shook my head.

“Sorry.”

“Oh Em Gee,” she laughed. “I thought I was bad, but you didn’t even look before you choose the cutie raccoon look!”

Cute?

Wait, Cute!?

I mean, I thought this body was pretty cute. That’s part of why I picked it after all. But cute!? Hearing it from someone else made it so much more real!

I must have been turning red, my face felt so hot.

Cute!!

Candy let out a few more chortles, then wiped the corners of her eyes.

“Why don’t you check them now?” Her voice was threatening more laughter.

I nervously opened my menu and my voice came out kind of weak at first. How were you supposed to handle someone calling you cute!

“Umm...It says that I have a scavenging passive. I can get ‘materials’ and use them to build or repair tools. Uh. And I also get free crafting job trees that match my starting skill trees?”

The moment I said ‘crafting’, Candy’s eyes lit up.

“Those are some good legacies! I got cooking as a freebee because Halfling, right? But you can literally build all of your own gear! And you even get help finding parts to do it!”

When she said it like that it did sound pretty nice. Only wasn’t I still stuck in the same place with this?

“But don’t I still need to be able to kill stuff in order to get the parts to progress towards being able to kill stuff?”

“It does give you somewhere to start. You could probably eventually find some newbs who’d bring you around in exchange for crafting stuff for them. It’s not ideal but-WAIT!”

I jumped a bit at her shout. First calling me cute and then this? This woman was going to kill me! And right after I got better from that too!

“I just remembered something! Usually people use Familiar to get monster summons, right? But you can also use it to control, like, robots and stuff! People don’t do it as much because you need crafting for the robots. Buuuuut!”

“But I already have crafting!” Candy’s excitement was contagious. I looked at my menu. “Drone Crafting!”

“Yep! I’ll bet you can make some low level drones with hardly anything. Then you’ll be able to do some stuff on your own!”

I looked over the drone crafting tree while I nursed my drink. Just like everything else, it was a lot. Frankly, way too much. But now that I had some idea of what I was looking for? Well, I could imagine the way forward. I probably wanted a bunch of scrap metal for my first drone, so that meant.

That meant…

“Oh Fucking Damnit!”