[Basic Skill Learned]

The moment that Foster heard this sound, saw that floating box in front of him, and his thoughts properly caught up to what was going on, he reacted the only way that he thought he could.

He pressed his hands onto the bench he was sitting on and tried to push himself as far away as he could, “What the fuck?!” Foster yelled out impulsively as he saw whatever was in front of him, without even initially realizing that he was currently falling backward. He soon felt his body get stuck to mud while his legs were still on top of the log that he had been sitting on.

“The fu...” He muttered out in a puzzled panic, trying to figure out what was happening as he stared at the creature in front of him. Or rather, the couple of them. Because now, Foster could see that it was really multiple of the same... thing stacked on top of each other.

They looked a fair amount like an Axolotl with thicker, stumpier legs. They had bright, shining eyes that seemed like spotlights to Foster. Each of them had different markings and patterns that were faintly glowing covering their bodies. Usually, Foster might have thought they were pretty cute or even beautiful. Still, considering that they were dog-sized, he had pretty complicated feelings.

And that complicated feeling soon turned into utter and absolute horror. A horror that was so strong that it wholly petrified Foster to the point of not even being able to scream.

But soon, these things... these ‘Fervent Lunacides’, climbed off each other and over the log and onto Foster’s body. They approached him a bit more, illuminating his body with the light they gave off. It seemed like whatever these things were, they weren’t that bad.

Foster had no idea what was going on, but he knew that if he wanted to survive the attack from a wild animal, he couldn’t freak out. He was wearing a pretty thick jacket, so he could defend against some scratches or bites at the very least.

Or that was what Foster was thinking. What he didn’t expect was that these creatures suddenly opened their mouths to reveal numerous rows of razor-sharp teeth like that of a sharp. Just that these were literally rotating inside of their mouth.

“Fuck...” Foster muttered quietly, and just tried to push one of the Fervent Lunacides off of his body. Luckily they seemed to be rather light, so it worked out pretty well.

While this allowed Foster to pull his legs off the log to stand up, the Lunacides didn’t really like him doing so all that much. All of them opened their mouths with loud shrieks that made some nearby birds fly off away from the trees surrounding Foster.

But before they could start attacking him, he already booked it away from them and started running. But where exactly was he running? He was suddenly in some kind of thick forest, and everything was too tightly-grown to be able to see anything, despite it being early winter.

At least it was relatively flat here, so Foster could at least do his best running from whatever those things were. They didn’t seem all that fast, but relied more on their numbers, judging from the numerous pairs of eyes spread in this forest. At least that’s the conclusion that Foster would have come to if he wasn’t absolutely freaking out.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck, fuuuck!” He whispered out as he was just running as quickly as he possibly could. Foster just dozed off, so why the hell was he here now? Did someone kidnap him? This obviously wasn’t a dream, he’s had lucid dreams before, and this was nothing like that.

Or was it? Dreams were weird, sure, but... Something like this couldn’t be a dream, Foster was sure of that. Maybe the apocalypse started, and the world was suddenly overgrown again with weird monsters. Or, he somehow turned to stone and survived on the planet for thousands of years until it naturally happened.

These thoughts were just so ridiculous that Foster wanted to punch himself just for thinking about it. Still, in the end, those were the only explanations that he could come up with.

And then, just as he was starting to think about where he should go, Foster saw that a bit further ahead, there was some open space. That would surely turn out to be the perfect place to go! Or a start, at least. Once he was out of the forest, he could start thinking about what to do next.

But just when Foster thought that he saw the reality. Instead of being the forest’s exit, it was really just a steep, muddy slope even further down. But he could see a bit of a river over there, so it would be at least a little more open there.

Foster was still freaking out of course, but at least he could think a little now, so he immediately pulled open his backpack and pushed his belongings, his headphones, keys, wallet, and phone, into the small plastic bag that he kept the candy in, of course emptying out beforehand because candy didn’t matter right now.

He then tried to push them into his boots as well as possible and keep them surrounded by the towel and tightly hugged his backpack before starting to slide down this muddy slope. There was no way he could climb down there safely, at least not quickly enough to escape from the Lunacides that were surely still following him.

Once he reached the bottom of the muddy slope, luckily without scraping his legs and pants open too much on sticks or ropes, Foster immediately continued to run toward the river.

Foster was feeling completely parched right now, he just needed to drink something, anything at all right now. He didn’t really care about the consequences at the moment either, he just needed to drink.

But as he was doing so, he noticed a shrieking sound from behind him, the same one that he heard just a little while ago. He snapped his body around and looked at the Lunacides that were approaching him. Foster was startled and instinctively moved backward, pushing his arm into the river water on accident.

“Get the fuck away!” Foster yelled out, but the Lunacides simply kept approaching him. But just before they could properly reach him, the first sunrays of the day started shining onto the world, illuminating it in a light even brighter than the Lunacides’.

As if they were going to shrivel, they returned back into the shade, hissing at Foster angrily before disappearing in the thicket.

“Heh... hehe... What the... fuck is going on..?” He asked himself as he pulled his hand out of the water, just staring down at himself. Finally, he had some time to actually process everything, although that didn’t really help him all that much.

Where was he suddenly? What were those... things? And most importantly, what was that ringing sound? In the end, he didn’t find an answer to any of that. Foster didn’t recognize any of the scenery around him, but this definitely wasn’t New Jersey anymore. He never even heard of ‘Lunacides’ before, and ‘Animal Planet’ was Foster’s jam when he grew up.

But that ringing... maybe just one of the Lunacides screeched weirdly. That seemed to be it. Either way, for now, Foster should probably get himself cleaned up a bit. He would just get sick if he kept wearing these muddy and drenched clothes.

Luckily he had his gym clothes in his backpack. At first, Foster thought it should be a little too cold for that, but then he noticed that it really wasn’t. It was actually pretty warm at the moment. So, Foster slowly changed into his gym clothes, despite them reeking of sweat, and then started to clean his other clothes. At least he only wore them once after cleaning them the last time, and that time was today. Or yesterday, it seemed like now that the sun went up.

“Well, I guess this just means I don’t have to go on my run today, huh?” Foster asked himself with a wry smile as he just sat there for a moment. With a deep sigh, he tried to guess the time and pushed his hand into the side of his backpack and pulled out a small white box. He grabbed one of the pills from inside of it and swallowed it soon after that.

Then he simply stood up and made his way toward the large rock that he spotted not too far away from here while waiting for his clothes to dry as he looked at the sunrise.

Foster soon felt his own stomach grumble, so he opened his backpack and took a quick look inside. He pulled out a granola bar before turning it around and rubbing his eyes to get rid of the tear-induced blurriness and quietly muttered to himself, “Now, what flavor is this...”

[Organic Raisin Crunch Granola Bar]

With the ring of a bell, a blue, slightly translucent box appeared in front of Foster. But the very moment that the ringing disappeared, it was replaced by the sound of an Organic Raisin Crunch Granola Bar flying through the air as Foster tried his best not to fall off the rock he was sitting on, “Excuse me?”

He asked himself confusedly, but that was just a weird instinct. “Is this a fucking game?” Foster asked, and then it immediately clicked in his head.

“Hah! I figured it out! I was kidnapped and am now being used as an experimental subject for a full-dive VR game!” He exclaimed, pointing upward at the sky to try and get some sort of response, “Or rather! I broke the simulation, didn’t I?! Th-There’s some kind of bug, and now I can see information on shit, right?”

Still waiting for some sort of answer, Foster kept staring at the sky before he was once more interrupted by his grumbling stomach. With an annoyed mumbling, Foster just stood up. He walked over toward where the granola bar ended up landing and then returned to the rock. The floating box disappeared now, but he figured he could make a new one appear.

Foster slowly concentrated on the granola bar again, and the same box from before started floating in front of him.

[Organic Raisin Crunch Granola Bar]

“So, first off, why the fuck did I buy ‘Organic Raisin Crunch’?” Foster asked himself as he ripped the package open and bit into it, and then looked down toward it with pleasant surprise, “Huh, not bad.”

And after swiftly pushing the whole bar into his mouth and pushing the wrapper into his pocket, Foster turned back toward the box and slowly extended his hand.

For just a moment, he felt a bit of resistance, meaning that it was definitely really there. But beyond that, his fingers just slid through whatever this box was made of. It was a bit of a freaky feeling, but for the most part, Foster figured it wasn’t as creepy as those glow-in-the-dark shark mouth-blender motherfuckers from just before. Or maybe it was. Perhaps the adrenalin from nearly being ripped into pieces was distorting his image a bit.

Either way, there was something that Foster was sure of. “This is way too fake... It looks like in those LitRPG stories...” Foster muttered quietly, and then opened his eyes a little wider than before, “But then... Erm... Status...” The moment that Foster muttered this out, actually even a slight bit before then when he thought about how ridiculous it was if it were to pop up, a larger blue box appeared together with two consequent ringing sounds.

[Foster Locke]

[Class - None][Level – /]

[Health – 80/80]

[Mana – 90/90]

[Stamina – 79/100]

[Vitality – 9][Strength – 8][Endurance – 10]

[Agility – 10][Intelligence – 10][Wisdom – 9]

[General Skills]

-[Appraisal LV. 1]

“You’ve got to be... What the hell is this?” Foster muttered quietly as he looked at the floating status box in front of him that made him feel as if he was sitting too close in front of his laptop’s screen, “How did I get here? And what is this, why is my strength only 8? And is that a lot, or too little? Jesus fucking christ, is this enough to even fight a fucking ant here, or am I the ant?”