The water was just started to bubble up when the sound of alert came from the terminal. Finn only glanced at the source for a bit before turning back to watch the pot. When the bubble spread evenly, he threw in two compressed food pellets before turning off the stove.

 

He picked up the pot, walked to his personal terminal and sat down. He glanced at the alert flashing on the terminal and his mobile’s screen before placing down the pot on the ground – as far as he could place it while sitting down. After making sure it was far away from his leg, he pressed on the terminal’s alert detail.

 

His eyebrow raised from the content of the message, and he stood up abruptly to change his clothing before pausing to read the alert on his phone. This time the content of the message made him relax and stopped scrambling away. He put down the device, looked down and smiled wryly at the pot a couple of centimeters away from his foot.

 

‘Almost. My toes are safe this time.’

 

The compressed food pellet was already melted and the water in the pot turned into the consistency of a congee. He took out a seasoning pack and pour it inside the pot, and walked away to find a spoon or ladle to stir it.

 

After stirring the pot a couple of times, He sat back down on his chair limbs asprawl. He began eating from the pot, spoon by spoon, while the finger of his left hand idly tapping on the terminal’s keyboard.  

 

‘...It looked like I didn’t need to go to work today. What should I do today?’ He continued to eat in front of his personal terminal slowly, savoring each bite of artificial beef flavored congee. ‘...I’ll just edit my travelogue.’

 

He finished eating and put away the pot on the sink before picking up his VR device from his bed and plugging it on the terminal. He transferred the game’s recorded files to the terminal and waited for a while for it to finish before starting his ‘fantasy journal log’ application.

 

...

 

“I thought that I stocked up enough ration to last me in this journey, but I ran out of provision today. I am very hungry, and it was hard to get food or other things to relieve sate my hunger. I saw a horn-less rabbit, but it was faster than its usually more aggressive counterpart. I tried to kill it with my sword, but trying to kill a herbivore that tried to run away from me is harder than fending off a hungry wolf.”   “I don’t get a rabbit barbeque today, but I found some fruit and mushroom. They look edible, so I cooked them into a soup, along with wild vegetable. Taste weird, but a hungry stomach is the best seasoning for any kind of food. I end up feeling dizzy and seeing things, like that time I had a medicine overdose. I woke up late the next day, but I survived. Yeah.”

 

 

...

 

‘It’s done.’ He glanced down at the clock in the bottom right corner of his terminal and smiled. ‘I’ve already eaten, I guess it would be fine to play and continue my adventure in-game.’

 

He unplugged the VR device from the terminal and brought it to his bed at the corner of the room. He lied down and made himself comfortable above his narrow and thin bed before turning on his VR device and started to play.

 

He played for about 8 hours, his body inactive and immobile before he stirred and sat upon his bed. He made a face as he took off the VR device, and went to get a drink. He rinsed his mouth before rummaged through his clothes and other belonging. After a while, he found what he is looking for, a chicken stew flavored nutrient pill.

 

‘How did the dev mapped the awful taste? Did they make it up or somebody’s been sacrificed and  forced to taste various disgusting flavor?’

 

He walked back to his bed with a jug full of water, chewing and swallowing the pill. After he’s done he took a gulp of water before lying down and turning on the VR device.

 

12 hours later, he sat up abruptly, one hand holding his neck while the other pulled off the VR device away from his body. His heartbeat is fast and erratic, breathing like a drowned man and his body drenched in copious sweat.

 

‘...It felt so real. Maybe the Dev put a sensor on somebody’s head, mapped their nerve, and break their neck to simulate such a realistic sensation of pain.’

 

He sat still in his bed, breathing deeply to calm his disordered heartbeat. It took a while before he calmed down and his sweat dried. He looked down at the VR device and sighed quietly while leaning on the wall. After another hour of sitting, he decided to plug the device into the terminal to edit another entry of his travelogue.

 

....

 

“I killed another wolf today, and I still haven’t found food since the morning. I gave up and decided to fill my stomach with wolf meat, but I don’t know how to process it to be something edible. Should I forgo the rite and just butcher it? I don’t have the Skill necessary for that.”   “I’m kind of torn because other people say that the by-product of Skill-less endeavor is cheap or ruined goods. While usually, using the rites on a carnivorous beast and monster would just give skin and fangs. I was desperate to find things to eat because starving felt awful, so I pried off its hind leg and do the rite on the leftover.”   “The result of the rite was a wolf’s skin with only three legs, a couple of teeth, and nothing else. The wolf’s meat tastes awful, but I forced myself to eat, enough so that I have energy tomorrow. If I didn’t have anything else to eat, I wouldn’t bother with this. Definitely.”

 

...

 

“I survived for another day, but the fruit I just ate was the last ripe –and passably tasty – non-poisonous fruit in this part of the forest. If I am correct, then the big pile of things in that branch of a tree is a bird’s nest. I am not too sure, after all, most of the things written in books, encyclopedia, and others... outside is different from what is found here. Should I check it tomorrow? Maybe I would get eggs or the birds nesting inside as tomorrow’s food. The tree was close to the cliff, but I don’t think it would be much of a problem if I was careful.”

 

...

 

He sat sprawling on his chair, looking up at the ceiling. The new pot of congee near his foot is still half full; he can’t finish it since he already lost his appetite. He played with the VR device in his lap, finger absently tracing the shape and contour of the device.

 

‘I’m curious what the state of my avatar would be after this death. But there’s still another 19 hours before my avatar can be played again.’

 

He looked around the room, trying to find things to busy his mind with. There is a pile of dishes in the sink but he didn’t want to wash it before he finished the congee inside the pot. There were other games in the VR device, but he didn’t want to play; most of those games are the kind of game where PtW player got an unfair advantage. More compared to the game where he just died.

 

‘I’ll just sleep until it’s time to go to work’

 

...

 

The door opened and Finn walked in. He dropped his bag and he stripped off his working clothes; throwing it haphazardly across the room on his way to the bed. After putting away the VR device he left above the bed, he lied down and take a deep breath before sighing loudly.

 

‘time to see what happen to my in-game avatar’

 

...

 

“I am under the cliff, and I don’t think I could go back to my camp from this part. I left my bag and some of my equipment when I went climbing the tree to get the eggs. I still have some spare on my gem’s space but I feel it would be better to go back to the city and resupply instead of forcing my self to go on and hope for the best. But I still need to go back above the cliff since the only city that I knew was in the direction I came from.”

 

...

 

“I saw something moving from the corner of my eye, but I couldn’t see it quite clearly. It was moving too fast. I don’t think it was a landbound creature. This place was full of big sharp boulders and lacking in vegetation and greenery, but surprisingly there was some herbivore here. Kinda look like a cross between sheep and rodent. Big, very ferocious and territorial. I almost thought they were carnivorous predators trying to eat me, but they actually just wanted to drive me away. when I inspected their mouth, there was no fang, just big bugs bunny teeth.”

 

...

 

“It’s a big bird. Humongous bird-shaped carnivore with a sharp and strong beak. I thought hiding behind a big boulder is enough to keep it away, but the boulder is snapped to pieces, and my right arm is crunched with ease. I thought forcing it to swallow a sharp sword would make it have internal bleeding or something, but it still looks energetic. I survived after I baited it away with the corpse of the herbivore. Incidentally, the crushed boulder is kind of interesting”

 

...

 

“There are many gems and precious stones in this rift valley, but the only way out is through a steep climb. I gave up climbing after the 10th time I’m falling down with a severe injury. Times like this I’m very grateful that using healing rite could heal any injury short of full body blunt trauma, dismemberment, and decapitation. Wait, I should find out how much injury is too much that it would be better to just quit and respawn.”

 

...

 

“Okay, I guess people could survive having all of their bone crushed into bits over here, as said so on the forum. But I don’t think that there would be any high tier priest that would conveniently heal me if I got pasted falling down from the cliff. Now that I think about it, I had to wait for a long time before I respawned.   I’m just falling down from the cliff while that other guy only had to wait a couple of hours IRL, and he was being chopped into bits. is it because falling down from high places is giving me more serious injury, or it was because I’m a free player? I’ll go see how much privilege the PtW player got.”

 

...

 

“It turned out PtW player can either have the expensive option of teleporting their gem to the city after their death or had the NPC aid their gem’s journey to the city. It doesn’t have to be the city though, as long as there was somebody helping them doing the resurrection rites, the gem would be fixed and they can respawn. So technically as long as there was someone to do the rites, even a free player can have a quick recovery.”   “I was always curious why there were people or animals playing with what looked like someone’s gem before, but now I knew. The animal would just get a share of the blessing while the people doing the rites or just bringing the gem to someone who could do it will get some percentage of the blessing and the money lost from the dying gem owner.”   “Maybe I should change my job to be a scavenger and get rich from picking up the Gems from dangerous areas?”

 

...

 

After another hour busying in front of the terminal, his recent entry of travelogue was done. Finn sat back on his chair, smiling contentedly, mind lost in imagination.

 

‘I think I’m addicted. Other games just didn’t feel this tempting. Even the high risk of losing the character when I ran out of my safe death quota was just making it feels like a real adventure...’

 

Finn sat up and opened his terminal, the elbow of his left hand supporting the palm that was holding his chin, while his other hand operates the terminal. He slowly peruses each entry of his travelogue, smiling in reminiscence.

 

‘I regret that making the travelogue was just a recent habit. I should’ve started using the fantasy journal log from the first time I entered the game.’