After obtaining leather and boar meat Winter scanned his surroundings to look at the knocked over trees. An idea popped into his head and he took out his wood cutting axe. With it, he was easily able to harvest logs from them. Next he gathered a few small leftover pieces of wood together and lit a fire to cook the boar meat on, relaxing and eating it once it was done.

The meat was chewy and tasted awful, akin to a rubbery old shoe, but it helped recover his stamina back to full over the next few minutes. His mana took a bit longer to regenerate by itself, but eventually he was as good as new. He stood up, dusted himself off, stretched out his arms and legs began searching for the next boar.

It didn’t take long to find one and once he had he started the process anew. It was easier exhausting the second one now that he knew what to expect and how to utilize the surrounding environment to the fullest. He tried to take advantage of the fact that the boars could be used to help him level woodcutting if he had them ram into the right type of trees, and during just the second encounter, he got some significant improvements.

Level Up!: Minor Heal reached level 2!

Attribute Up!: You’ve gained +1 Agility

Attribute Up!: You’ve gained +1 Constitution

Congratulations, you have reached level 2!: 3 attribute points available, +24 health, +10 mana!

He took a moment to catch his breath as the second boar collapsed, navigating to his character window and looking over his stats. With each level he’d be able to assign 3 points to any of his main attributes but he wasn’t sure yet which he should focus on. Constitution would help with his stamina, agility with his movement, intelligence with his magic power, spirit with his magic regeneration. Strength could help him block more and help with taking the heavy blows. The stats had obvious offensive benefits as well but Winter could ignore that aspect of them given his intended playstyle.

“Leveling fast... recovery rate would be most important, right? Constitution and spirit… for now let’s get those up to lower my downtime.” He thought out loud. He added 2 points to his constitution, and 1 to his spirit, and saw that his stats reflected the changes once he applied the attributes. Each point of constitution was raising his maximum stamina by 2, and points in spirit were raising his mana recovery rate by roughly 1mp per minute. His stamina recovery was a percentage of maximum based on his hunger, so the higher the maximum got, the faster it’d recover on its own.

Feeling satisfied with these choices, he pulled out the knife again and headed over to his second victim’s corpse, pausing for a moment as he stood over it to wipe sweat from his forehead once more. It was quiet around him, sirene even. The sound of the wind blowing through the trees, birds singing in the distance.

He took in a deep breath of fresh forest air and the scents of the nearby vegetation filled his nose. He didn’t want to admit it to himself completely yet, but he closed his eyes to enjoy the moment - he was starting to like the game.

“Right, let’s get to it then.”

Harvest boar, harvest logs, cook meat, recover, find the next boar, run it to exhaustion, repeat. Winter followed this process for the next couple of hours.

Level Up!: Minor Heal reached level 3!

Level Up!: Shield Mastery reached level 5!

Attribute Up!: You’ve gained +1 Agility

Attribute Up!: You’ve gained +1 Strength

Level Up!: Creature Harvesting reached level 3!

Level Up!: Woodcutting reached level 3!

Level Up!: Cooking reached level 2!

Thanks to his experience boost the levels were coming fairly fast, Winter was aware this would slow down as they got higher though he was more surprised by how many boar steaks he got away with eating in the last hour. It felt strange to be able to eat so much food and have no consequences to his actual body, given how well the game simulated the taste of food. That being said, his boar steaks were not delicious at all and he would’ve been happier with no flavor in the simulation at all.

On his 10th steak he started considering ways to make it taste better. His inventory was chock full of apples, but mixing them with the steaks didn’t do much. Instead he started scanning the nearby vegetation for anything useful. Using his herbalism skill he was able to locate some spices - he could ascertain that they had no value for alchemy and thus were easy to find. Other players in the area ignored them for that reason. He chopped them up using his knife and tried using them to season the steaks. They certainly helped with the flavor but he couldn’t help but feel he wasn’t using the spices correctly. Each attempt he tried different methods of preparing them and cooking them with the steak using the limited tools at his disposal.

About 2 hours and 20 boars in he’d finally gotten rewarded for his efforts. He managed to cook up a boar steak that tasted much better, and granted him a 10 minute long buff that increased his stamina recovery rate by 1 per minute.

“So even stuff like this is possible.” He mumbled to himself proudly with a mouth full of passable steak. He continued experimenting with other spices, improving his craft as he leveled up herbalism alongside the other skills. Another hour in and his shield broke, but luckily he’d gotten an extra shield from Ruffily during the whole boar stream fiasco. With it equipped he continued grinding the boars like this for the next few hours, postponing eating dinner with his mother when she came to check in on him though the Simbox communicator.

As the time passed he kept focused on a few things. Firstly, how long it would take before Keldan and his goons would be able to log back in, and secondly, the durability remaining on his shield. Once the shield got low enough he started making his way to the copper hills west of Orm. He wanted to be back in Orm with enough wood and copper to recraft shields and tools before Keldan and Swiftstar could log back in, so he moved through the forest as efficiently as possible.

By the time he got to mining ore again the boars were becoming significantly easier to deal with. Because of his attributes and skills going up, they were dealing about half as much damage by the 18 hour mark and he was able to cast strong enough heals that he could take out up to five boars in a row before he needed to stop and recover. He was reluctant to test his luck on the higher level Rockjaws around the copper hills though, and instead opted to just avoid them for now until he could get a decent set of armor equipped.

He managed to fill up his bags completely before wearing out the last of his pickaxes and felt quite satisfied with his haul, making it back to Orm with just under 30 minutes left before the troublemakers would be able to log back in. He slipped into the craftsman guild hall, stretched out his arms, and decided before digging in that he oughta take a break to have a chat with his mom. Once he was sure he’d tucked away in a nice private corner of the guildhall, he logged out of the simulation and stepped out of the Simbox.

The sound of his footsteps coming down the stairs prompted his mother to stand up from what she was doing in the living room.

“Finally, I was starving.” She called up as she made her way to the kitchen and turned on the microwave to warm up the food, plates set for them both already. He took a seat at the table waiting for the food, but one glance from his mom at him caused her to do a double take.

“What’s the matter?” She asked worriedly.

“I uh… I’m playing the game a bit much, right? Just like David did.” Eli said aloud as he thought about it.

“Is that why you’re making that face? Oh please.” She rolled her eyes at him. “You’re not nearly as bad as I was when I was younger.” She smiled as she leaned up against the counter to face him.

“If we’re both playing, then I don’t want it to be like it was with David, where only one of us sits all day in the Simbox...” Eli suggested before taking in a mouthful of food.

“That would be nice, but we’re trying to save up for your schooling right now, remember? Simboxes ain't cheap.” His mother raised her eyebrow at him.

“That’s what I want to use the game for, if I can get enough currency in-game I can convert it into real world money and buy one.” He was reluctant to tell her his other goal in the game, as he knew if she heard he was trying to make David delete his character, she wouldn’t approve.

“Sure Eli, but I want you to prioritize your education over playing together.” She replied sternly.

“I can handle both, don’t worry.” Eli replied confidently.

“Is that so, hm?” She smiled. “How about you focus on your Exams, and if you do well, I’ll try calling in some favors with my boss to try and get my hands on one of the discarded Simboxes lying around at work. They’ve got some in storage that are just missing a few replacement parts to work, and one of my coworkers' spouses knows how to repair them. Said they’d be willing to do it for the price of parts if I could get the box, which at first look seemed to be under 200$.”

“That sounds… really planned out already.” Eli stared quizzically.

“Yeah... I was going to do all that anyway.” She smirked back at him. “Derrick's not the only one excited you’re playing something, gotta use this summer to show you what your old lady is made of!” She grinned with pride while flexing one arm and patting her biceps with the other. “Kalmoore’s kinda far though, so, be a good son and find out for me how I can get there from Lanusk.” She said this with a poor helpless girl voice to try and garner sympathy, and Eli bought into it with absolute enthusiasm.

“Y-yeah, sure, I’ll figure it out. Just a warning though, I’m gonna be working hard to make money, so I probably won’t be riding horses with you much.”

“You better not be. Once your school's paid for you’ll have to buy us the new Simbox models that came out, heard they up the immersion significantly, with auto-cleaning functionality. Dream play enabled... Oh, and momma wants one of those them there Auto-kitchens for the house.” She winked.

“Just how much money are you expecting me to make?” Eli nearly spit out his food, knowing state-of-the-art hardware she was describing cost about as much as an Autocar.

“You’ve got all summer, right? So, a lot. I mean, as long as you know what you’re doing. I don’t think you were dying to a boar 3 days straight just for fun, right?” Her devious smile returned.

“I know what I’m doing.” Eli grinned.