Project: TheirWorld - Chapter 018 - Part 1

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First Blood

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TheirWorld

As she started running, Guin once again threw up [Spirit Armor] and went into fox form. She hadn’t checked her notifications yet; she hoped that she was earning body and endurance points, but she decided not to care. After all, she had raised so much in three days of hardly trying, it wasn’t something she needed to worry about in the current circumstance.

Looking at the map, it seemed they were another good half hour from the area that was marked on the map. What was more, she noticed that there was a red line that was running across. This was what players called the ‘Border’. It was what separated combat zones from non-combat zones, which meant that where she was going, there be monsters.

In the main game, the world was pretty open when it came to combat, except for cities and special places. In the tutorial, most of it was closed off, save for the outskirts of the zones and things like cellars where there were some extermination quests. There were actually quite a few recorded combat quests in the tutorial zone; it was a requirement to at least try combat before being loosed into the main world, and there was even more for those who looked for it.

When the two foxes reached the area of the red line, Guin came to a stop. Following suit, Tik-Tak skipped a bit as he stopped, twitching as he looked at her. He turned to look out into the woods, his ears snapping in different directions and his nose sniffing the air as he saw the area was filled with creatures. Guin edged into the area, testing the behavior of the AI before she let Tik-Tak go in. She felt better after seeing that none of them seemed to be of a mechanic where they wanted to attack first. It was a good place for her to learn how to do battle.

Checking her status bar, [Spirit Armor] still had at least ten minutes before it expired, so Guin morphed back into human form.

“Tik-Tak?” she went. The little fox looked at her expectantly as she continued, “Do me a favor. I want to try and catch one of these rabbits by myself. Could you stand guard in case anything weird appears?”

“Of course!” he went, giving a little tail shake.

Drawing her dagger, Guin approached what looked like a rabbit with tiger stripes and a lion’s tail. The animal eyed her wearily as she went nearer to it, and moved away when she got close. She ran after it, succeeding only at landing face first on the ground. With her fourth attempt at running after the rabbit creatures also failing, she decided to try switching her target to some large beetles that were crawling around. They were slow, encumbered by large shells that protected their wings.

To Guin’s great dismay, however, the beetles were just as fast as the rabbits when she approached them. In a huff, she fell to the ground. How was she going to learn how to fight with these things? She fiddled with her character windows, searching for inspiration. Tik-Tak walked over to her, and sat next to her as he looked around. She pouted at him.

“Tik-Tak!” she whined at him. “You can catch rabbits, can’t you?”

He gave a yip-like snort and held his head up proudly, “Of course I can catch rabbits! You are just too slow, Guin!”

“Tsk,” her lip curled at him. “How modest.” He gave her a fox-like grin as she rubbed his head.

But then, furrowing her brows, she had a thought Casting [Fox Form], she stretched her body a bit and tested her footing. Tik-Tak watched her with great interest as she began to run around. Suddenly, she froze in her tracks and looked around. The rabbits and beetles had run from her - but the speed that she had as a fox could catch up to them!

Several ideas popped up into her head at once.

Giving herself a running start, she jumped up and undid her form in mid-air. It was clumsy, but she managed to land on her feet. After a few more tries, she started to calculate how she should need to move in order to draw her weapon as she shifted from one form to the other. Thus far, she had been using the fast cast buttons on her arm in order to cast the spell - but that wouldn’t work for what she wanted to do.

The first thing she needed was to stop using those buttons. With renewed determination, she began working on attaching the skill to her motions. It took her her a good hour or so to get both the transformation and the ability dismissal down to motions - but it didn’t go as smoothly as she had planned.

Looking down at her hands, Guin pouted a bit. It’s hard to differentiate the cast movement from the fox’s normal movements… She didn’t want to make a lot of noise, either. Clenching her fist with a sigh, she set her mind to a new task. If she were going to use the ability for the purposes that she wanted to in the future, she had to figure out how to at least dismiss it mentally. For the time being, however, what she had would do.

After a little more practicing, there was a nice bell sound, and a screen popped up.

> > > > > > > >

Pleased with her progress, she sat and took a break. Night was falling in-game as she shifted. She and Tik-Tak shared some bread. [Spirit Armor] had expired again, so she recast it - this time to the tune of a bell sound.

> > > > > > > >

Happy that her effort to keep her spells up wasn’t going to waste, she would keep up the practice as long as she could.

The time had come, however, to put her theories of combat into practice.

Choosing her target - one of the rabbit things from before - Guin mentally prepared herself. Settling her heart down, she fox shifted and took off, pouncing on the rabbit as it began to run.

Almost instinctively, Guin chomped down on its neck. The warmth of it’s blood and body, tasting of metal and dirt, filled her mouth as her teeth broke the skin. It first, there was delight - but then, horror. She gagged, giving the creature a chance to throw her. Her mind in panic as she tried to get the taste out of her mouth, she disengaged the form with the button. Because she had gained agro from the creature, instead of running, it attacked her. Fumbling with her knife, Guin managed to grab it by its ears. It’s apparent razor sharp, yellowed teeth, gnashed at her face while its paws clawed at her arms and hands. Though she reminded herself that it was just a game, her heart shuddered as she stabbed at it. One stab became two. Two stabs became ten.

Before she knew it, Guin was kneeling down in front of the desecrated corpse of the creature. The blood faded away after a minute, but Guin could still smell it; still taste it. Her whole body shivered as she sat and stared at the corpse - until suddenly it POP-ed into a battered looking treasure chest.

For the moment, however, she didn’t care. The evidence of her crime had disappeared, yet she was still horrified to have done it. Tears filled her eyes.

“You did it Guin!” TIk-Tak shouted as he hopped over. “You got the rabbit! ...Guin?” His little black nose went into her face, but she could only stare, wide eyed and shivering…