I woke up suddenly. Dawn had not broken yet, but the night was already receding. It was strange; I had never just woken up like this in the middle of the night in the real world. An inner confidence grew within me, and I knew that I had woken up for a reason.

The trees guarded the forest like gray giants, but I didn’t feel threatened. On the contrary, somehow I was sure that there was no threat. My curiosity is my scourge. I put down the burdocks that covered me, and deftly got down from the tree. Without taking any risks and paying maximum attention to where I put my feet, I tried to make as little sound as possible. I circled around from the place where I had lodged for the night. A few minutes later I noticed a small clearing, which was somehow strangely illuminated.

I still did not feel any danger, so confidently and without concealing my movements, I moved in that direction. Approaching the clearing, I realized that the glow was moonlight: while I was sleeping, a greenish-blue moon and a multitude of stars had appeared in the sky. It was so beautiful, that for a moment, it took my breath away.

Absorbed in the moment, I ran my eyes from star to star, mentally combining them into pictures. There, a hamster is dragging a sack, and there a unicorn jumps, and elsewhere, a huge demon fights with a knight of light. Looking at the stars, I saw a huge picture against which the story of my life was taking place.

You have opened the “Star Reader” ability. Beginner level (1%).

“Intellect”: +1 (2).

The message, as always, distracted me from my thoughts: I needed to come up with a way of making them less obtrusive, or learn not to pay attention to them at all.

I looked at the clearing once again. It was nothing special, just lots of grass and different flowers. However, one of the flowers seemed to have a life of its own. Its movements did not coincide with the direction of the wind, and sometimes it seemed that it was literally doing the very opposite. I went closer and sat down beside it.

At first the flower froze for a second, as if in fear, and then, as if deciding something for itself, started to move even more rapidly. The leaves increased in size, a fresh flower bud appeared, and all the old buds and flowers on the stem fell, leaving only the fresh bud.

Everything stopped for a few minutes, creating the impression that the flower was gaining in courage. Frozen in place, and trying not to breathe, I sat and waited. I could not rid myself of a feeling that something both magical and poignant at the same time was about to happen.

My legs became numb, and I could hardly restrain my breath, but I still sat there and waited. As if deciding the time was right, the flower shook its leaves, and the bud opened with a quick and at the same time incredibly elegant movement of the petals.

Absolutely not thinking what I was doing, I exhaled and stretched out my hand to the flower. I had no plans to pick the flower, and I don’t understand why I did it. At first, the flower recoiled slightly from my hand, and then seemed to change its mind and reached out to meet me, until it was in the palm of my hand.

And then the messages poured down:

You have completed “Moon Dawn-I” hidden quest. Each Moon Flower opens its bud only once a year, for exactly 15 seconds, then fades for a whole year. By linking yourself to the Moon Flower at the time of its blooming, you have prolonged its life. Now the Flower will live at the expense of your energy.

You are allowed to undertake the “Moonlight-II” quest. The Moon Flower should reach stage III of its development. The reward for this is variable.

You have received a rare “Extended Life” achievement. This achievement gives you the opportunity to study (unavailable). This achievement can be improved upon.

“Attentiveness”: +2 (7).

“Intellect”: +3 (5).

You now have the “Reflexes” ability: +1.

You now have the “Luck” ability: +25.

The “Luck” ability has reached the value of 25 points. You have received the following bonuses:

The chance of finding items of a “Unique” level or higher: +10%;

The chance of getting a job of a “Unique” level or higher: +10%.

“Luck” was your first ability to reach a value of 25 points. You have received the following bonuses:

+15% to “Critical blow”;

+15% to defend against a “Critical blow”.

You are the first Newcomer to reach the value of 25points in the “Luck” ability. You have received the following additional bonuses:

5% chance to meet someone who you will need, even if you are unaware of it;

5% chance to get an item that you will need, even if you are unaware of it.

You have discovered the “Intuition” ability. Beginner level (1%).

Your “Herbalist” ability has increased: +50% (52.5%).

What happened? All I did was go to the clearing and bond with a flower. If you are talking about rhymes, then there is no chance that I would ever become a poet or a bard. I definitely don’t have a musical ear – you could say that I’m completely tone deaf.

So, let’s analyze what happened. I did not even pick the flower; it just decided to lie on my palm by itself. Did this really happen? I gently used my other hand to raise the flower by the stem into the light of the moon so that I could see it more clearly. It somehow reminded me of the Alamania orchid, only more elegant, and most importantly, it had a life of its own. All this time the flower lived its life right in the palm of my hand. The colors of its petals were almost identical to the color of this world’s moon, and they seemed to have absorbed the moonlight. The stalk, on the contrary, was covered with a sky and navy blue glow that poured into it from my hands. I was fascinated by this course of events. The creators of this game are just geniuses! I hope that I will never take such beauty for granted, and it will continue to surprise me. Another moment later, and all the glow had gone out, but the flower grew by about a couple of centimeters, and its petals became even more saturated in color.

The moon confirms your right to communicate. From now on, the Moon Flower will be fueled by your energy, taking 10% of the maximum value of your mana.

Well, regarding the mana, the news was quite unpleasant, but apart from that there were plenty of pluses.

“Where should I put you? It is hardly worth putting you in the bag, so perhaps it is better this way.”

As soon as I placed the Moon Flower into my jacket pocket, the flower weaved its stem and fastened itself inside the pocket. Even more: the flower literally rooted inside my shirt, piercing it with a stem in a couple of places and covering all this mess with leaves. I hoped that this specimen of flora would not object if I suddenly wanted to change clothes into something else.

“You have no objection if I decide to change clothes then?” I asked, looking at the flower.

Of course, I did not expect an answer, but for a moment it seemed to me that the petals were moving about, as if saying “Yes.”

“Lord, help me! Not only am I talking to a flower, but I even see it answering me back.”

I suddenly felt terribly sleepy: I wondered what time it is was. My internal body clock told me that it was still night time, and an hour had gone by. I should use it more often, but so far it had been of little use. It seemed that for today I had already accomplished everything that could have been done, good or bad , so I could go back to sleep with peace of mind. I dragged myself back to my tree almost on autopilot, climbed into my homemade bed and fell into a deep sleep.

The morning greeted me with the smell of foliage and a warm light that poured through the trees. Having eaten yesterday's fruit, I decided that it was pointless to waste room in my bag for the bed, so I left it on the tree. Instead I considered it was a good idea to collect as many yellow fruits as I could for the road. After collecting twenty-one yellow fruits, my abilities improved:

“Strength”: +3 (7); “Agility”: +5 (10); “Stamina”: +1 (6); “Attentiveness”: +4 (11); “Accuracy”: +6 (10).

The “Attentiveness” ability increases much more slowly after 10 points. The “Herbalist” ability also rose, but only by 1.5%, however the “Throwing weapon” agility added another 8 points, and like many of my agilities, had reached 10 points. After I found the last fruit, I spent another fifteen minutes searching for more, but to no avail. Possibly there were no more fruits, or my “Attentiveness” was not high enough. An unexpected benefit of hunting for yellow fruit was discovering another seven acorns. Now I had seventeen acorns for ammunition. This heavy fruit really was a type of acorn, or could be described more precisely:

The “Lead Acorn” is an incredibly heavy fruit, and absolutely inedible; used in blacksmithing and as a throwing weapon.

It seemed that by sheer chance I had used it for just the right purpose. When in the morning I picked up the first acorn in my hand and was preparing to throw it at the yellow fruit, I came across a simple description of the acorn. Immediately afterwards there was a message about a 1% increase in “Intuition”.

Having finished robbing the surrounding trees of the fruits that interested me, I continued my journey through the Forest of the Fey or Fairy people. It just so happened that my path lay not far from the clearing that I had visited the night before, so I decided to pop in once again and see how it looked in the daylight.

To my surprise, the clearing wasn’t empty: there was a beige-red creature in the clearing resembling a cross between a puma and a Pomeranian Spitz. It had incredibly pointed ears that ended with cute tassels, and as many as three long tails, and the tip of the one in the middle ended in a fluffy hammer shape. The creature was playing in the grass, constantly running around the clearing. Looking more closely at the creature, I noticed an inscription above its head in white: “Alphiner Cub”. As far as I remember from being a gamer, the color of the inscription is very important. White in most cases means that the creature is quite harmless.

Your “Intuition” ability has increased: +1% (3%).

It seems that I guessed the meaning of the color correctly: as they say, nothing special, but I was pleased. Let's hope that the rest of my gaming knowledge will help considerably more. Very carefully, I tried to hide behind trees and move quieter than usual. Since there was a gap of about seventy meters between the forest and the clearing, I decided to watch for a while before I showed myself. I chose a huge tree for this purpose, something similar to a weeping willow: its branches bent down and seemed to hide the trunk from view. As quietly as possible I crawled in under the canopy of foliage. The branches parted slightly, and created a perfectly acceptable observation point.

You have discovered the “Camouflage” agility. Beginner level (1).

The effectiveness of your disguise is 60%.

I was focused on doing everything quietly and imperceptibly, and then a message appeared in front of my gaze! Not controlling my movements, I jerked back and bumped my back against the tree. That would have been okay in principle, but there was one small problem! The collision was accompanied by an incredible racket, like creaking cart wheels.

The effectiveness of your camouflage has fallen: -20%.

Obviously, the little creature could not help but hear such a noise. It froze in its tracks, but literally a second later it continued its game, completely ignoring me. Why, I asked myself, was I hiding? It was either sure that nobody would upset it, because it was under the protection of the Fairies, or it was strong and confident, and feared nothing. I decided that the cub wasn’t going anywhere, so I wanted to find out where all that racket that had so suddenly spoiled my disguise had come from.

I spread back the branches to form an arch, and the daylight lit up the tree trunk. I began to take a closer look. The tree was defined as:

Bramble - a deciduous tree growing in many forests in this world is used… (Information unavailable).

So, my “Herbalist” ability did not allow me to define everything and anything yet. Okay, what's next? The trunk was hung with garlands, and lumps of different shades of green and black. Carefully, so as not to cause damage, I removed one of them from the trunk and peered at it more closely.

The Fiddle is a variety of noisy mushroom. It grows on the bark of trees, and can be used for cooking, alchemy and as a magical ingredient. Edible fresh, it replenishes magical energy by +15.

It looked like a very useful mushroom. I put the mushroom that I had already picked into my bag, and carefully picked a second one. These mushrooms occupied only one compartment in the bag. I really felt like having a pint at this moment. Unfortunately there was absolutely nothing to drink, so I began to collect all the mushrooms that my greedy hands could reach. The result of my mushroom robbery was one hundred and eight Fiddle mushrooms of different shades. My “Herbalist” ability increased by +4.5% and reached 60%. My “Stamina” increased by +2, to become 8. My fun was over, so I returned my attention to the creature in the clearing.

I decided to resort to the traditional way of domesticating non-aggressive animals. When I got to within a couple of meters of the place where the creature was having fun, I pulled out a yellow fruit and offered it to the beast in the open palm of my hand. Then I kept completely still, and began to wait with a sinking heart. At first the creature pretended that it was alone in the clearing. Hey, it didn’t know who it was dealing with! I'm very patient, and such an interesting pet would be indispensible to an unarmed person like me. So, I'm sorry creature, but I'll have to tame you.

The creature’s smooth movements kept breaking off whenever its nose detected the seductive aroma of the fruit. Eventually, unable to withstand such torture, the creature stopped and looked at the fruit enviously. It sighed, sucked in the air, and approached the treat with small crouching steps. My legs had gone numb, and my outstretched arm had also gone stiff and felt incredibly heavy, but I endured patiently and waited for my future pet to try the fruit.

The youngster had already made up its mind, so pretending that I wasn’t even there, it took the fruit in its teeth and carried it away, after which it started eating the delicacy. I stood up, and while the youngster finished eating the fruit, I stretched out my arm and legs. Then I took out another fruit and sat down cross-legged. Now that the Alphiner knew how delicious the fruit was, it definitely wanted to try another one. This was clear to see from its fascinated gaze, which was glued to the fruit in my palm. However, I had no intention of just giving it the fruit. “Come on then!” I wiggled my arm slightly, letting the fruit move around a little on my palm.

The creature, still not trusting me, came up and tried to steal the fruit again. I gently closed my hand over the fruit so as not to allow this to happen, showing that this time it would have to come for it. Pretending not to be interested in a second fruit, the creature wandered to the middle of the clearing and started to play again without much enthusiasm: its gaze kept coming back to the delicacy.

Its desire for the delicious food overcame its distrust. The cub approached and, trying to keep as far as possible from my hand, took bite after bite from the fruit. I fed it fruit after fruit, and eventually I managed to win its trust, and it even allowed itself to be stroked while eating. After eating five more fruits, the Alphiner was literally full to bursting. Its movements began to resemble the movements of a pregnant cat. It looked at the next fruit in my hand without too much enthusiasm: the desire was still there, but it couldn’t eat any more. The youngster rubbed against my leg and then headed for the forest.

What a bummer! I had hoped that I could tame it, but all I managed to do was to earn its trust. Okay, I promised myself that I would try to come back here in a couple of days. You never know, I might manage to tame it yet. As soon as the creature disappeared from my field of vision, the system issued new messages:

“Stamina”: +3 (11).

“Attentiveness”: +1 (12).

Relations with the Alphiner pack in the Forest of the Fairies: Good – 150 points. Trust - 1 850.

Not wasting any more time, I left the clearing and headed in the direction I had chosen the day before.