I was walking through the prairie again back towards the area I started in. Partway through my journey, I spotted some more horned rabbits. I may have been a little vindictive towards them because I had my bow out and an arrow nocked.

 

"You guys will make for good practice."

 

I was using [Sneak] to make my way towards a rabbit. Once I was close enough, I then activated [Snipe] and took aim. I liked using these skills because they assist you when you want to do something.

 

[Snipe] places a white pulsing circle in my vision, and it moves with my bow. I found the pulsing action is connected to my breathing and heart rate as well. The arrow can go anywhere within that circle, so I would guess that circle gets smaller as the skill ranks up.

 

Once I had my shot lined up, I let the string go. A moment later, a thud could be heard as the rabbit dropped.

 

You have gained enough XP to level!

 

Seeing that message made me excited. Wanting to level up some more, I spent some time hunting rabbits. I would practice sneaking with some, others I would run around while shooting them.

 

Once I had my fun, and my anger over these rabbits subsided, I checked my notifications. It seems I gained another level, and my [Snipe] and [Bow Mastery] leveled up. Even my skill [Friend of Eri] leveled up.

 

It was about 2 pm in-game before I made it to the forest.

 

"I guess I will just wander around in the forest until I find something. I hope I don't get lost, kind of wish I had a map."

 

Once I said that a screen popped up in front of me. It was a map that showed everywhere I had been while the places I haven't been to were all blurry.

 

"Oh! That's useful."

 

With my new discovery, I roamed around in the woods using [Survival]. I was using it to find any animal tracks and find plants that might be useful to me.

 

Item: x2 Black Lotus – A plant that has a necrotic poison.

Item: x21 White Lotus – A plant that has an excellent enhancing effect.

Item: x4 White Moss – A moss that soothes any status ailments.

 

I started to notice that the further in I went, the fewer animals I had found. There was also a light fog rolling on the ground giving the woods an eerie feeling. The sky had become visibly darker as well, looked like just before a storm.

 

[Survival] picked up some large footprints about the size of my hand. They looked like they belonged to a dog of some kind.

 

"Looks like a big dog. Should I follow them?" I had said while placing my hand over the tracks.

 

I decided to follow them as it might lead me to something with my quest. I crouched down, and as silently and quickly I could, I followed the tracks.

 

It had been about ten minutes before I could hear some growls and what sounded like another person. Following the sound, I came upon a fight between a giant wolf and a tiny person. The wolf was a dark black with streaks of dark red in its fur and bone spike coming out of its back. It stood, at my best guess, around 165 cm.

 

The person it was fighting was a girl who looked like she could be 19 or so, but the odd thing was she could have been no taller than 100 cm. She didn't have any armor and wore a green shirt of some kind that had half sleeves, Brown pants, and a pair of leather boots.

 

She was doing well against the wolf, but I knew she would lose eventually. Without thinking about it too much, I activated [Quick Shot] and shot five arrows at the wolf. Two of them had missed, but the other three hit their mark.

 

The wolf turned its attention to me and ran towards me. I then ran in between the trees shooting the wolf. I used [Analyze] on the wolf and found a red bar above its head, and it showed it was half empty. I also discovered that the wolf was called a corrupted wolf. At this time, I heard the other person speak.

 

"Hey, wolf! I'm over here!"

 

The girl shouted and then ran towards the wolf and started to attack it. The wolf was confused as its attention was pulled in two directions, me shooting it with arrows and the girl and her sword. A few minutes later, the wolf had finally died.

 

*Huff*

"Thanks for the assist. I didn't know if I would make it back there and don't want to find out how the respawn works. Anyway, my name is Lenora."

 

The small girl looks up at me with her had held out. Not wanting to be rude, I reach out and shake it.

 

"Nice to meet you, I am Gwyndolyn. You can call me Gwyn. I don't mean to be rude, but what race are you?"

 

"You're fine, I am a halfling. It looked like it would be fun to play. I see you chose to be an elf, that's a brave choice."

 

"I didn't know elves were like this when I chose it…I…didn't read the whole description."

 

Lenora looked at for a moment before bursting out in laughter.

 

"I'm sorry I don't mean to laugh at you, but that is funny. At least you get to experience both worlds. So…what brings you out here?"

 

"I got a quest to investigate the woods."

 

"Sounds similar to mine. I ran into some traveling nomadic beastkin tribe. I met up with someone from Darkwood City, and he wanted me to investigate the woods. Do you want to party up with me?"

 

"That would be nice. It would make finishing this quest easier."

 

Lenora has invited you to join her party.

Accept <Y/N>

 

After I accepted, Lenora's name, level, and health bar appeared in my vision's left corner.

 

"That's handy. I can see your health and level. I see you are level 4 too."

 

"Yeah, but I don't know a lot of skills yet. So for the quest, I heard there are some ruins somewhere in this forest. I am guessing that is where we need to go."

 

"I'll take your word for it. I don't know where I am going."

 

We spent the better part of the day mapping out the forest, trying to find some ruins. We had killed some more corrupted animals as well. Because of the inventory limits, we only took what we thought would be useful.

 

"Looks like its starting to rain." Lenora had said while holding her hand palm up towards the sky.

 

"I got a tent, but I don't know how big it is." I had said while I was scrolling through my inventory.

 

"That's good, but we should try to find some high ground or a cave. I don't know how the weather works in this game yet, and I don't want to get flooded."

 

We roamed around, constantly checking our map, looking for any place we could set up camp. Lenora turned on a function for her map that shows elevation to assist us. After a while the rain was coming down really hard, both of us were completely soaked.

 

"Lenora! I think I see something in that hill over there."

 

"Ok. Works for me as long as we get out of this rain."