It's a pretty uneventful meal back in the real world. I still feel weird and anxious, but I'm keeping myself together. I help Fara out making some pasta, and the four of us eat comfortably. Having stumbled into a few blunders in-game, I do take a minute to pull up some beginner guides and skim for the basics.

Like mages, the other main classes have their own essential skills. Swordsmanship and Marksmanship look to be the equivalent of Spellcraft, with general bonuses on top of giving more customization to their own class of attacks. For both of them, there are their basic weapon Skills which is obvious. Attack Capacity is the equivalent for Spell Capacity. Interestingly, it falls under both melee and ranged, but taking either one gives you the Skill.

In fact, that's how a lot of the basic stat boosts work, they show up under a bunch of different Archetypes in the skill tree, but taking one from anywhere works the same. Hell, apparently the Mana Core Skill for mages is listed under abilities for Magic, Healing, and Support.

Shaking aside those thoughts, I keep looking. So, besides getting a weapon and the basic competency Skill, and Attack Capacity... Melee classes are said to need an Armor and possibly Shield Skill, and Endurance to boost stamina in battle, for obvious reasons. Ranged apparently doesn't need anything else, but Light Armor is highly recommended, and Ammo Recovery at higher levels if you want to save money on ammunition.

So comparing the three, that's... five or six for Melee, three to five for Ranged, and seven for Magic. Wow, that's a big difference, and that's without even getting equipment if you're a mage... Or your actual spells. And wouldn't that make Support and Healing even more Skill intensive? You'd pretty much want everything a Magic type normally gets, and then throw everything Healing or Support specific on top of that.

Adding on further, it looks like most people get the primary stat boost for their class too; Power for fighter, Vitality for tank, Finesse for ranger, and Sorcery for mage. Then supporting stats like Speed for fast attackers, Spirit for tanks to fend off magical attacks and debuffs, and so on...

Wow, there are a lot that people expect to get, and that's before they even start specializing. I basically started the other way around, didn't I?

I'm definitely keeping all this in mind for later. Even if I have some reservations about following the 'common sense' everyone else has developed that I already know leads to samey builds and boring gameplay from so many MMOs before, it's definitely good to know. I mean after all, equipment notwithstanding, my current abilities already seem pretty good for dealing with stuff.

What should I do about my equipment though...? While I'm wondering about that, I pull up recommendations for how to upgrade gear so you can use it longer, and my eyebrows shoot up at the first thing I see. It looks like the main skill for that is Item Modification. Could I upgrade my own gear?

I start reading through a basic guide. Of course it's written from the perspective of someone going to a crafter to do it for them, but it mentions how you can give them an item and materials, and they can use those materials to change the item, making it stronger.

I switch over to a guide for using Item Modification instead, and scan through the different things it can be used for. Looks like the main one is socketing magic gems into weapons and armor for bonus stats or even activatable special abilities. Moving past that, it mentions that items are all composed of a number of parts, and depending on how the item was made, you can modify each of the parts to change the way they work and their effectiveness.

Good, I'll definitely take a look at that when I have the chance.

Apparently, that chance is now. My phone alarm goes off just as I'm thinking that, alerting us that it's our turn to go back and take the next watch while the others go eat dinner. Saying goodnight to the girls, we head back to Fara's room, and log into Planes again.

As soon as the darkness takes me, I let out a silent, relieved sigh from my nonexistent body, my anxiety blowing away. So much better...

The welcome message passes, then I'm in, blinking my eyes open.

It takes a moment to orient myself. I'm sitting on a log someone pushed around a small, crackling fire, with Azra next to me. Koru is lounging comfortably across from us. Outside the small area around the flames, it's dark. Like dark dark. A kind of nighttime darkness my eyes can't penetrate at all, completely different from what I'm used to with buildings and streetlights everywhere.

Winter, Mark, and Lara appear in glowing flashes around our little campsite, also taking seats by the fire. I can feel Azra's eyes on me, so I look back to her again. “Umm, I'm sorry,” I start with an apology, “were you in the middle of talking to the other Mei?”

“Not exactly,” she answers. “I asked her about what you mentioned before. She said we could call her Mai instead.”

“Mai?”

Azra's grin turns a little awkward and strained. The she raises a finger and quotes: “'Mai like Mei, but AI,' she said.” I know my expression is no better, hearing that.

“Is that really alright...?” I scratch my cheek.

“I don't know, but that's what she said, so...” We're both at a bit of a loss afterward, and just turn back to the fire.

We sit for a bit, enjoying the unique look of the flames, another experience I'm sure I didn't get, assuming I grew up in the city like where I live now. I can't remember if we ever lived anywhere more rural, or if we ever went camping, but I have at least gotten to experience something like this in VR before. Not to this level of detail though. I hope my computer will be alright running this game...

Leaving those thoughts, I relay what Mai said to the others. They don't have much to say, and we're back to watching the fire not long after. I back my stream camera off, so they can take in the view too.

Keeping an ear out for trouble, I can't help but notice how many animal sounds come from around us. Night birds, frogs, little insect chirps. I wonder how much of that is background sound, and how much of it comes from actual simulated animals?

At least none of it sounds actively dangerous. No clatter of rocks or snapped branches just outside the fire light.

A short while later, the other two groups return, and it's time for the night watch. Group one is up first; Flare, Nolen, and Taryn. They spread out, Flare and Nolen taking a torch with them as they slowly patrol the area around our campsite, while Taryn says he can see better with his night vision.

That reminds me, shouldn't I have better night vision? Well, that's what it said about the cat-kin race, and I turned out to be dark-touched, so I'm not entirely sure. But I mean, I have the ears and tail, so I should have the cat-kin stuff too, right?

With that in mind, I excuse myself from the fireside briefly. When I hear the small swish of plantlife behind, I turn to see Lara following. “What are you up to, Mei?” she asks.

“I wanted to test my night vision.”

She considers for a moment before she gets it. “Right, you look like a cat-kin. How is your night sight? I can't see anything out here.” As she speaks, she looks back and forth. The light from the nearby campfire is still enough to illuminate us, but beyond that, not much.

“I don't know, that's why I'm trying to figure it out. I think it takes a couple minutes to adjust though, right?”

“Mm.” With her confirmation, we stand together briefly, looking off into the dark forest. It's an interesting experience, staring off into the pitch-black darkness, only to eventually realize it's not as dark as it was before. I have to keep blinking, but as I'm rapidly discovering, my night vision is really good.

In just a minute or so, I can see all around me with surprising ease. Everything is a tad fuzzy, with the bright spots where the moon and star light slips through the leaves overhead glowing with bright halos, but even the shadows aren't too deep.

“Ok, wow,” I breathe. “I can see really well.”

“This actually isn't that bad,” Lara agrees. “It would be hard to navigate or fight, but I can at least tell what's around me.” It's always such a surprise, how good night vision is, even in the real world. And unlike Lara, I wouldn't have any trouble like this, I can see perfectly fine.

We stand a little longer, enjoying the surprisingly serene forest. My eyes trace tiny little glow bugs that flit between the plants underfoot, and I smile happily.

Game or not, this is an amazing world, just to exist in.

Eventually, we move back to the fireside to get some sleep. Lara sets out a couple bed rolls for us, and I look around to see our other party members already asleep. Then my eyes catch on the sleeping wolves. Why are there...

Emma summoned a handful of wolves to use like bedding, and they look unexpectedly comfortable. Zykael is perched and snoozing on one of their heads.

Just a short distance away, two smaller wolves are curled up together. When I look at them in confusion, their name tags appear, and I have to stifle a laugh.

They're Koru and Azra. The wolf-kin race is more likely to get transformation type Affinities, but I didn't realize these two actually had them. They're big, about the size of a person, but I'm sure they'll be a lot bigger in a few years once they're fully grown.

Actually, I think a year here is only four months real world time, so they'll be all grown up in just a year or so, right? Maybe I'll have a chance to visit them in Mebin to hang out once our little adventure together is over.

Moving past my hesitation after seeing so many animals all of a sudden, I sit down at the fire again. “You can go to sleep, I want to sit up a little longer,” I tell Lara.

“Sure, just don't stay up too late, Mei.”

“I won't.” She lies down, setting her wake timer for the start of her night watch, and then settles in to sleep. I sit for a bit. I can pick up the crackles of the three on watch moving through the surrounding forest, and relax for a bit.

I pull in my stream camera and give a wave for the late night viewers. The channel has died down to only a thousand people. Most of the devs are gone too, probably since it's off work hours. There are a few still hanging around though. Does Dana Corp have overseas offices?

Idly wondering, I scan through the mindless late night chat for a bit, before settling the camera up and behind me again to look down over our whole group. I stretch my muscles tiredly, but there's one more thing I want to do before I turn in. I pull up the Item Modification menu and select Modify Item.

The new screen doesn't show anything until I take out my bow. Holding it in my hand in front of me, the menu fills in, and I can suddenly see a whole lot more information.

There are little markers on different parts of my bow, pointing out the limbs, the grip, the string, where each piece attaches together... I look it over carefully, noting how it includes information about the materials used for each part. Or, it would, except they're all listed as unknown.

The question is, how might I be able to make it durable enough to withstand my shots? I tap on the section for the limbs, since that's where it started to break earlier. It lists a few different things.

First is material type: wood. Obvious, but good to know. Below, there are stats for power, flexibility, weight, durability, and magic. It only says they're 'low' without any more description beyond that.

What do I have on me...? I pull up my inventory, sliding it off to my left side, the item modification window remaining in front. What I want is more durability, right? I have a small variety of drops from monsters, along with the rocks and plants I gathered earlier, and a few probably-crafting items from my invasion rewards. Probably don't want to touch those yet though.

Let's try... this. I select a piece of 'metal hide' from those metal insect wolf things. Dragging it over to the modification window, I drop it on the marker for the the bow limbs.

The window immediately updates to display the expected changes. Power and durability would go up, which is what I'm looking for. However, the flexibility would decrease, and it would get heavier. No change to magic. It only gives the directions the stats would move with arrows, no indication of the magnitude outside of weight getting two arrows instead of one to show it would go up a lot.

Besides that, there's a line indicating that the upgrade efficiency would be 'extremely bad.' When I tap on that to find out why, it lists a number of reasons.

Insufficient upgrade materials

Insufficient supporting materials

Missing necessary crafting equipment

Materials are unprocessed

Item Modification Mastery too low for these materials

Item Modification level too low for these materials

Ok, that's... a lot. To start, I check my character menu again, and find I have an extra Character Point now. I sigh. Now that I know how many other Skills I have waiting to pick up, it's a bit of a shame, but I really need to get my bow in working order.

I put the point into Aura. It grants me 4 AP, which I convert into 2 SP, both going into my Item Modification Skill. That raises its mastery from 1 to 3. Not much, but it's something.

Turning back to the modification screen, I'm glad to see the message that my mastery level is too low gone. The Skill level is still too low, but at least it doesn't have an issue with the Modify Item Ability despite it being level 0. Since that's fine, I decide to leave it be for now instead of putting any AP into it.

As for the quantity of materials, I select a second metal hide and that satisfies the requirement. Next, what are supporting materials?

When I attempt to delve further into that, the only description it gives is items that will help the new materials bond to the existing ones better. So like something to attach them...? I sift through my inventory again. I have some plants in here that might be sticky like sap, and act like a glue? Some are more like vines, to tie them on maybe?

I try selecting some vines for supporting materials, and the modification menu changes again, showing the material of the bow limbs will change from wood to plant. Is that... good? The nondescript arrows indicating the changes to the stats don't change much, except for the weight decreasing. Now it looks like it'll only get a little heavier, instead of a lot. That's... something?

Next is crafting equipment, but I obviously don't have any way to fix that. When I tap on it for more info, it says I'm missing a crafting space, knife, and sheers. I'm not exactly sure why those are necessary, especially since a lot of this goes through a menu... Nothing to do but take the hit and move on.

The last issue is the materials not being processed. I doubt I can do anything about that either, but I pull it up anyway. It says that it means the materials I'm using haven't had anything done to them to make them more suitable for use with crafting. But what could I even do, I wonder? I pull one of the metal hides that's selected from my inventory to look at it, and immediately grimace.

The thing dropped straight into my inventory from one of the monsters, so it's not like I got to see it before. It looks like it was ripped off of the monster whole, metallic surface on one side, and some kind of hideous gunk still attached to the backside, like rotting flesh or something.

Just to start, I hit the thing with Cleansing Ray. The metal gets more shiny and the flesh less diseased looking at least. Wishing I had some sort of knife like it recommended, I scrounge around until I find a decent rock to use, and get to scraping. I pull away the stuck on flesh as best I can. It's not pretty and nowhere near perfect, but it's a definite improvement.

It takes some time though, the piece of hide is a good portion of the size of my forearm. I pull out the second hide, finding it's just as much of a mess, and get that one cleaned up too. Ugh, is there any way to wash your hands in this world...?

Putting that from my mind, I pull out the 'unidentified vine plant' from my inventory. My senses tell me it's something edible and could be used in medicine, but that's it. I take a while to pluck off the leaves sticking off, since I'm only interested in the vine part.

“Ok, let's see...” I murmur. Going back to the menu, I see the message has changed. From 'Unprocessed' to 'Partially Processed.' Good enough.

Overall, there's one very good change in the projected modification. The effectiveness has increased from 'extremely bad,' to 'very poor.' The stat arrows have finally moved some. I got a second arrow on durability, which is pretty great, it's the main thing I'm looking for in all this after all.

“I really hope this works...” I hit the button to make the change, and watch the pile of materials disappear, all forming into a glow of light briefly. When it clears, my bow is no different, but I do have two very odd looking hides left. They have these crazy criss-crossing lines all through them, from the vines I guess. And they glow faintly.

When I look at them, I get that distinct feeling of the game telling me what I need to do. I have to attach them to the parts of the bow I'm modifying. Picking up the first one, I immediately notice the problems. It's just as ripped up and ragged at the edges as before, and I have no way to clean it up like this. I can deal with that though. The bigger problem is that it's not big enough, not as long as the entire bow limb. I give the thing an experimental tug, and find it's actually pretty stretchy.

Doing my best, I stretch it out as much as I can, just barely covering the upper limb of the bow while still wrapping around the narrow piece of wood. I do the same for the lower limb, grimacing at the tight fit and the way the torn up edges leave gaps despite my best efforts. No wonder why it rated the enhancement so badly.

I get everything situated to the best of my abilities anyway. Once I'm done, I press the button to finalize the modification and stare as the glowing materials seep into the bow, fusing and morphing.

When it's finished, the shape has changed completely. Rather than strips of wood for bow limbs, they've been replaced with thick curves of vine, like a huge version of the tiny vines I used for the supporting material. They have a dark gray, metallic shine to them too. And despite their plantlike appearance, there's way more resistance when I give my bowstring an experimental draw. Maybe too much; the limbs hardly bend and I start to worry about the string snapping if I pull too hard.

That of course, leads to me looking into upgrading the string. I dig through my inventory again. Something durable but flexible? No, strings need to survive a lot of tension, right? Do they even simulate that or do they only care about durability stats...?

What I end up pulling from my inventory makes my ears twitch anxiously.

“This is such a bad idea...” I hold a 'chitin leg' in my hand, which basically just looks like one of the legs cut off of those Oblivion bug creatures earlier. I hit the thing with Cleansing Rays until I run out of mana and the color looks a little less... otherworldly purple.

I use my trusty sharp-rock to crack the thing open and take some time to scrape the stringy meat stuff out from inside. There's a surprising amount of it, and I store it back in my inventory for... reasons? The thought of attempting to eat the stuff is downright terrifying, but who knows?

Once I basically just have the outer chitin shell remaining, I search for a supporting material, but I can't even begin to guess what it's expecting of me at this point, so I pull a bunch of rocks out and select the ones with gems inside. Some part of my brain is saying 'magic bow string can't snap' I guess.

Maybe I'm too tired and I'm just not thinking clearly anymore. All those Cleansing Rays took a lot out of me... I give the small stones a good few whacks with a larger rock, trying not to be too loud and cause some sort of alarm from the night watch. I break up the stones and pick out the bits of gem I find, piling them in my palm until there's a decent number of them. When I store them in my inventory, they show up as a bunch of 'fleck of gemstone' items, which I select for the supporting materials.

Looking at the info window, it says the string upgrade will increase the power, durability, and magic. But again, with a decrease in flexibility, and more weight. As long as it can survive me shooting it...

I put through the change, and get a big, faintly glowing leg thing this time. I wrap it repeatedly around the bowstring, all the way up its length, then watch as the weapon changes again. It isn't as drastic a change as before. Instead, it looks like the string became kind of dark gray like the color of the chitin after I cleansed it. It does have this weird crystalline luster to it when I hold it near the fire and peer at it closely though, so that's kind of interesting.

The important part is the function. When I do another test draw, it doesn't feel like it's going to snap. Rather, my arm would probably go first. It's a way heavier draw now, only just within my limits without seriously straining myself. At the same time, it doesn't feel that much stronger, just harder to pull. I think that's the reduced flexibility I'm fighting against. The bow itself is heavier in my hand too, but not enough to be an issue.

Just one more thing... I take out my arrows. I can't use them like this if they literally disintegrate when I fire them. Thanks to the magic of video game logic, the whole stack rests in front of me as just a single arrow. When I open it up in the modification window, it shows the attachment points at either end for arrowheads and fletching. Mine have no arrowheads and some tiny cheap feathers that in reality might do more harm than good.

The menu also informs me that I'm modifying five hundred sixty eight arrows at once and will require more materials for them. Crap, they care about modifying every single arrow?

Given the quantity, I search through my inventory, and select rocks as the primary material. It's the only thing I have anywhere near enough of. I end up with fifty seven selected before I have enough. So, a rock is good for ten arrows? I go through, doing the same for the supporting materials, until I'm out of rocks. I'm just a little short, so I scour the ground around our campsite for a few more that I can feel are decent materials, barely filling out the material requirement.

I'm not about to process the variety of over a hundred rocks, as tired as I am, so I just go through with it as is. And then a whole pile of rocks rains out of my inventory. Right, there are like fifty of them as primary materials... With a sigh, I start grabbing the glowing rocks and shoving them all together until they combine into a big amorphous blob, and press that around the arrow.

When I finalize the change, it all melds in, the arrow growing a little longer, but otherwise remaining the same. It's more gray than wooden brown now, and feels sturdy to the touch, if not very flexible anymore. The material type did change to stone after all...

It'll have to do, I'm really tired. That took a lot more work than I expected. Dumping my stuff back into my inventory, I slump down into my bedroll, and I'm out.