Ok so I read the manual and the guide, and...

FUCK. Experience gain is determined by Intelligence. Skill growth, too.

Whyyyyyyyyyy? What the fuck is this?

Also, everybody starts as a human, but there's loads of ways to become other races. Ok, fair enough. Now that I think about it, the main points of advertising were 18+ content, creative freedom and the amount of races and species in the game. All I saw was 18+, though. Creative freedom and interspecies funtime have to be worked for. What a clever way to get people to play the game, developers. 10/10 would get fucked over on my yifftime again.

This thing is a goddamn gold mine of comedy gold and design crinkly plastic. Seriously, leveling is meant to be easy. The main determiners of PvP combat are supposed to be training and gear. Or maybe ganging up on the ONE dude that does it, because everybody else is too busy fucking and sucking the night away.

Fucking pick an audience! Do you want dedicated players who'll break records every day or perverts looking for a good time? Decide yourselves! Is there a fucking problem with this game? Yes, yes there is. The biggest one is right here: it says, in big, legible writing, "Be ready to see and do stuff you don't like. We are here to please as many people as possible."

You make revolutionary technology that propels us as a race towards the next age of science and you do THIS with it. Sure, I felt refreshed this morning after sleeping for longer than I ever have in my entire life, but is it worth the flaws that will obviously come up later on? It's like these people put awkward multiplayer elements into a singleplayer game. Take for example the mad rush into town I made this morning. Storyline quests shouldn't be a thing if we have creative freedom, it should be us that make the story, not the story that makes us. Then again, I can understand unique, single user-type things in online games like the finder of the epic artifact getting a bonus from it because it's the only one that exists, but for quests?

It's just wrong, man! You can't put that pressure on someone! Just tell everybody the goal and give the quest finder an advantage and an extra reward for completing it, because it's the "true" story or something! The only thing that would be worse would be forcing everyone into a cutscene upon someone completing the big quest!

"Hey, are you listening?"

"What? Sorry, I wasn't."

"Ugh, you need to stop spacing out and mumbling all the time! Susan said we're getting the pink slip soon!"

"What do you mean, pink slip? We're getting fired?"

"No, but she implied she'd have to fire someone soon, so focus! If we fuck up, we're getting poverty for Christmas!"

If that happens, I'll be in trouble. I can't have that. Maybe I should start putting up videos somewhere or streaming myself. I'll need to give my audience good stuff, though. It also takes time to build up a following. After all that, I can set up donations and live off of my charming good looks and my crazy antics.

Yeah, right. What would I even sell myself with? I guess being in the lead for the Storyline Quest would be a nice attention-grabber. No, I mostly just need to make sure I don't lose my job right now. Ok, back to work.

I've completed my shift and gone home. Ahh, sweet PC, how I've missed you. Let's look up World of Truth on TheTube, see what's up right now. Big name Tubers talking a lot and doing terrible at a game based on reality, generic, SKIP. Clips of streamers getting sniped, doing stupid shit or just dying, it's funny I guess but that's it. No, has anything FUN happened while I was gone? Oh, there's this one guy that recorded a few attempts at scenic views and parkour clips, very nice. Especially at night, with the strange lighting... And now he's broken into someone's home. Sneak thief? Sneak thief.

Mostly though, there's loads of videos with my in-game name on them. All kinds of things, from butthurt people talking about how they're better than me and got nothing to people theorizing on what the quest is, to various gaming clans either declaring me public enemy #1 or offering me a job. Of course, there's all kinds of other videos, like a day 1 review of the game, a shitty podcast or a few hundred, et cetera.

Then there's this guy, who literally spawned in and sat down and did nothing, on stream, for 38 hours. There was an edited-down version of it, which included the big moments, like a guy coming up to him and telling him to move without getting a response and getting really insistent until he literally tried to kill him, a few samey-looking sorority girl-types messing around with him, and a few people joining in on his sitting-there session.

A second guy went through his debut as an alchemist and explained how he found out how to make transformative potions and their effects, who halfway through his video drank a potion that should've made his eyes blue but instead removed his earlobes. "Oh well, mistakes happen guys" Not like those, not often they don't.

A girl talked about her experience with 18+ content and said she'd found out that if it's on, ANYTHING can be done to you, even non-consensually. Oof...

I got distracted and spent what was left of my waking hours doing random stuff. This time, I set everything up so that I would be playing by 9:30 PM exactly, because I heard getting 8 hours of sleep is the key to a healthy lifestyle.

I laid in bed, pushed the button and once again, the void greeted me with open arms.

Waking up in the hotel, I was assaulted by notifications the instant I opened my eyes.

Congratulations on escaping your pursuers. For your troubles, you get:

3 Strength

2 Dexterity

2 Constitution

1 Intelligence

1 Wisdom

3 Willpower

All your skills increase by 1 level

You gain the Environmental Damage skill

What a haul, for a single fight. I didn't get any XP out of the whole thing, though, probably because it would be unfair to be nigh-invincible and take advantage of that to farm off of players.

Crush is ready to evolve! Please pick a race:

Green Gel

Elemental Blue Gel

Blue Core Slime

"I don't know about those two. Uh, Crush, what do you want? I'll pick whatever you want."

Blue Core Slime lit up. Must be the grade that comes after Gel.

"Okay, then. Make it so, you are now a Core Slime!"

Unlike Biiro's evolution, I got to see the process of Crush turning into a Core Slime. First, it compressed itself down, without losing any water, into a ball. Then the ball polished itself into a perfect round sphere. Finally, a substance started slowly oozing out of it, forming a coating, then a little bump, then a rounded, volleyball-cut-in-half-sized lump before it stopped growing. It was now a slime, but with a core. Its body, of the same color as the rest of the slimes, was nevertheless stronger than before, with a solid center and a regenerative exterior.

I left the hotel unhindered, then headed down the street, aiming to buy a few essentials then get out of dodge. It was dawn, and hopefully I could catch some potion vendors and some treats for my pets.

A player was selling three types of bottled drinks. "What are these?" I asked. "Health, Mana, Stamina. The basics, they don't do that much but they work in emergencies. 35 Gold each."

"I'll take 4 Health and 2 Stamina. Here you go, it's 210."

"Thank you for your purchase. Please buy from me again." Poor lad, he looked like he wanted to die.

Heading over to one of the gates, I stopped to buy various nuts, fresh fruits, dried fruits and a few cuts of meat. I intended on lasting a long time outside. The total came to exactly 200 Gold.

After leaving the city, I looked at the map. A lot of surface was blank, but there was a point on it with "Quest Objective: Corrupted Woods, Level 20 Dungeon" written above it. You can't enter a dungeon if you're not sufficiently high level, so I'd have to grind 7 levels as fast as I could. I need the XP anyways, and it's pretty far into the woods, further than I've ever gone anyway.

"Hey, is that the guy with the quest from yesterday?"

"You fucker! You made me waste my time! Give me back my glory!!"

I was already angering people. We were right at the gates, though, and next to the guards. I ducked under his wide halberd swing and he got tackled before he could do anything.

"Nice arrest strategy, really new. That's a genius tactic right there."

I ran off, sprinting through the fields in case anyone tried to beat me up like he did. On my way out of the meadow (I was in the section where there were only slimes), I noticed that the Great Slime King had respawned. Never one to stray from a bit of banter, I shouted "YOU'RE FAT" as I ran by.

It looked at me with the closest thing in Slime to a death stare. I stuck my tongue out at it. It didn't try to catch me, just turned and angrily used a mortar strike of slime spit on some poor unsuspecting girl. Sorry for that. On my way into the woods, I immediately encountered a boar. No time for messing around, I nailed it from behind while it ate some mushrooms. The next twenty minutes were mostly high-speed surprise attacks on a surprisingly high number of single and double enemies. Sometimes, I missed and had to use a second swing.

Then the forest got older, and darker. The wild dogs were getting closer and closer to actual wolves and the boars were replaced by more of the porcupines. An evolved form? In any case, the dungeon was getting closer and I needed some kind of edge. I just didn't have nearly enough XP. I went and cleared out the monsters around the dungeon, pack after pack of what had now become Young Wolves, leaving the chill spiky lads alone. It took me 2 hours once on the spot, but I reached level 20.

You won!

You get: 5403 XP

Level up! You are now level 14!

Level up! You are now level 15! All stats increase by 1!

Level up! You are now level 16!

Level up! You are now level 17!

Level up! You are now level 18!

Level up! You are now level 19!

Level up! You are now level 20! All stats increase by 1!

28x Fang

10x Dog's Tail

14x Boar Meat

3x Boar Tusk

8x Wolf Pelt

45x Big Fang

710 Gold

Biiro gets 1285 XP

Biiro is now level 13!

Biiro is now level 14!

Biiro is now level 15!

Crush gets 1607 XP

Crush is now level 12!

Crush is now level 13!

Crush is now level 14!

Punching has leveled up!

Kicking has leveled up!

Sprint has leveled up!

That actually took less time than I thought it would. I've really been wasting my time a lot, huh? Okay, it's time to dive in!

You have entered the Corrupted Woods dungeon.

It was a hole in a huge amount of very thick, twisted foliage. Inside was a dark open space full of dark nasty trees, only illuminated by a ghastly pale light that seemed to come from nowhere. I trudged forward, my pets following me through even though they weren't level 20 themselves. I walked around, looking for any clues as to an altar of chaos being present. After a minute of searching, I encountered an enemy. It looked like a short tree at first, but I was wrong. It was a small corrupted treant, or some sort of treekin!

I didn't expect it to come to life, so the first hit came out of nowhere. I took a big branch to the face, pushing me to the floor and dealing 38 damage. I scrambled away and took a good look at it, the only reason it got me was because of my not expecting it. I punched it a few times but it didn't react much, aside from more slow swings of its "arms". A dropkick got it, though. Seems like its natural defenses are pretty high, so I need to hit it hard.

Knowing this, but not its weakpoints, I aimed for the general center of its upper torso and used a Mighty Punch. That left a big indent in it and it fell over. A few regular punches on top had it turning to red dust.

Now, where's that damn shrine?