“deep breaths, calm down Eden, you’re just stuck inside a game with no idea how to get out and have no way of contacting the outside world, no don’t think, clear my mind”

Quill takes a few deep breaths ignoring everything around him and focuses on his breathing. knowing the start of the breath with the inhale, awareness of the natural gap between inhale and exhale and the full release of the exhale. Whenever things got a bit too much for Quill he would always start to focus on his breathing to help him keep calm and collected though normally he would only do this in public except for those rare moments where his anger or annoyance was at his peak as it is now. After a few minutes Quill was starting to feel more calm and relaxed and closed his eyes to focus even more and get rid of all the negativity of his emotions and give himself a rational mind once again.

a few hours pass with Quill just sitting there in this state until he finally opens his eyes feeling fully calm and collected. As he does so he sees a message in front of him.

you have learnt the Breathing skill

'another skill? there seems to be a skill for just about anything, even normal activities like breathing. Odd only now I got this skill, you’d think it’ll be the first skill you get. Is there a walking skill as well? oh well, better to have the skill than not seems as I’m stuck here for a while'

the skill Breathing has leveled up

the skill Breathing has leveled up

the skill Breathing has leveled up

the skill Breathing has leveled up

the skill Breathing has leveled up

the skill Breathing has leveled up

“holy, it's level central here!”

’skills have levels? that's interesting, so if I level the stab skill to the max would I be able to pierce through anything and max carving skill would carve to the finest detail? then what would max breathing do? let me calm down quicker? let me breathe better? I guess the only way to find out is to level them up’

After closing the message Quill was expecting to see the green forest he’s been in all this time and that he did, but there was one difference. It was dark, very dark and the rabbits were nowhere to be seen. Quill wouldn’t be able to see at all if it wasn’t for the fire he made and that was on it’s way out.

“what the hell happened!”

Quill couldn’t believe it’s dark already. He knew it takes him a while to calm down but it never went past 15 minutes but now it took him till the sun came down. to be fair, it was already late in the day and would only take a few hours to set but to be completely unaware of those hours passing without him even realising was quite a shock to take in.

“either I was really, really mad or this is the effect of the breathing skill”

Quill mumbled this to himself before looking around to confirm he couldn’t see any rabbits then looked towards his fire.

’I should add more fuel to the fire as I can’t use the rabbits fluffy goodness for warmth, seriously, I thought they would treat their guardian a bit more nicely’

Quill grabbed some dry leaves while being slightly annoyed that the rabbits simply left him. Even though it has only been a day Quill had at least bonded a bit with the rabbits that healed his wounds, brought him food and saved his life. After all this he simply didn’t think the rabbits would simply leave without any warning even though they have done exactly that twice before this.

“guess it’s just me and my oversized leaf”

Quill grumbles to himself feeling slightly lonely as he lies down next to the fire before drifting off into the land of dreams.

When Quill woke up he discovered his fire has completely gone out, the sun is in the sky and the rabbits are lazing about

’now they show up’

still feeling sore about being abandoned last night he starts to plan what to do today

'the first thing I should do is increase my survivability. I don’t know how the death system in this game works but I sure as hell don’t want to find out, almost dying hurt like a bitch so dying should be ten times worse right? So to increase my survivability I guess I need to gather materials, get a better weapon than this rock, it’s sharp but it’s still just a rock and I need to try to level up some of my skills as they are the only game-like thing in this game so far'

Confirming his goals for the day Quill gets up to realise an important factor for survival, water. He would have completely forgot about if he didn’t realise his throat was dry as a desert from not drinking for an entire day

’Of course, if there’s hunger in this game then why wouldn’t there be thirst. That's complete common sense, can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner. Top priority, find water. There must be a water source close for the rabbits to drink so I got two options. Option one, search for the source of water randomly or option two, watch the rabbits and follow them to the water. Both of these options have their cons. Option one has no directive, I could be walking in the completely wrong direction without even knowing it. And option two could be a complete waste of time, there are simply too many rabbits and if I decide to follow a rabbit then I have no idea whether it is going to water or not'

After contemplating which option to choose he ultimately decided to go with option one so he could gather some materials on his search as well.

Quill heads away from the rabbit habitat into the unknown while marking the trees with his sharp rock so he won’t get lost. As he walks along Quill noticed quite a few bushes had berries on them which he assumed that's where the rabbits got the berries they offered him before. The further Quill walks away the more different creatures he finds and not all creatures looked the same as real creatures. There were creatures such as a monkey with 3 tails and what looked like a pigeon made up of what seems to be plants. Not all creatures were bizarre though, there were normal monkeys and pigeons as well but the mix of creatures makes it hard to tell the type of climate this place is in. With the rabbits one would think that this forest is in the northern hemisphere but the addition of monkeys makes it hard to believe.

’This is a game after all it’s not hard to think that a climate system wasn’t implemented or a completely new system was created for this world. There’s no point of thinking about all this now’

After walking for a bit longer Quill started to notice there was a lot more rocks on the ground compared to other parts he has been to so decided to follow them. The amount of rocks kept multiplying until he actually broke out of the forest to find himself on a beach. But the beach wasn’t a beach made of sand, it was a beach made of pebbles

“great, I find water and it’s seawater. I find a beach and it’s a shingle beach, trust my luck”

Quill has hated shingle beaches ever since he was taken to a shingle beach for vacation as a kid and his sisters wanted to play on a sand beach so decided to bury him in the ‘sand’ and forgot about him. At the time his parents were studying rock formations in a nearby cave so there was no one to stop his sisters. Quill was buried for two hours before his parents finally finished studying the rock formations and dug him out. There were cuts all over his body from his neck down but luckily there were no scars left from this incident. His sisters got grounded for 3 months after that.

Quill gave a bit of a disgusted look at the shingle beach before turning around and headed back into the forest. There is most like a river leading into the sea so Quill kept his close to the beach and made sure not to go past the rabbit habitat.

After two hours of searching the breathing skill leveled up once and he finally found a river. Seeing the river Quill immediately rushed towards it with enough enthusiasm that he almost collapsed at the riverbed. Seeing actual drinking water reminded him of how thirsty he was. When he saw the sea his trauma with shingle beaches protected his mind and body from ravaging at the seawater but now clean water is in front of him, he simply lost control and dunked his head into the river to drink from it. Quill drank water, not breathing for 10 full seconds before finally releasing his head from the river.

After coming back to his senses he picked a nearby large leaf to dry his head and thought about his next course of action

’that’s water sorted but first I should check how far this river is from the Habitat. I don’t want to make a two hour journey for a five minute trip’

Quill knows he hasn’t gone past the rabbit habitat and he walked roughly in a straight line to get to the shingle beach so following the river upstream will take him in the general direction of the rabbit habitat. With this logic Quill decided to follow the river upstream but not before marking this place as the starting point of his upstream journey watching the forest for signs of the rabbit habitat while plucking berries from bushes to snack on along the way.

Soon enough Quill gets to a point where he notices one of his markings on a tree. He goes up to the tree to see how far this tree is to find out he is actually very close to the rabbit habitat and by looking at the river if he goes to the rabbit habitat and turn left into the forest again then he would probably reach the river in 5-7 minutes.

’I spent so long to find something so close, I don’t know whether I’m lucky or unlucky. Now I know where the water is I guess i’ll pick up material on the way back’

Quill makes his way back to the rabbit habitat picking up branches, sticks, stones, leaves and a small log. If you’re wonder how he is carrying all this, he is using his leaf ‘clothes’ as a pouch, it may not be comfy or hygienic but it does the job strangely enough.

After reaching the habitat Quill dumped all his good on the floor with a sigh of relief.

“aah, this feels good, that was way too itchy, I need to make a bag or something”

Quill sits down to examine his materials and tries to think of things he can make with these things.

'hmm, lets see here, the branches can be fashioned into javelins giving me a range attack but leaves me vulnerable in melee… well more vulnerable. maybe if I attach sharp rocks to them for more of a spear weapon but then i’ll need to find a way to attach them… what if I tie them together? but I haven’t really got anything to tie them with unless I want to use the stalk of plant...well may as well try it. Lets see what else I can make, it’s a long shot and would take a while but maybe I could carve the log it into a small shield… but thats a waste of a lot of wood. I could strip the bark first and then try to make something with it… wait, isn’t bark used to make rope? if it is then I could use the it to make the spear. that’s that done but what about the sticks and leaves? can’t really think of anything at the moment so I’ll just use them as tinder. So javelins first and maybe some wooden spears just in case the rope fails then strip the bark, wait, shouldn’t I strip the bark off the branches first? they are gonna be shaved off anyways so that's first and after wood spears is pointed rocks then rope creation and finally the shield. got it'

Quill started to strip the bark off the branches. It was actually quite an easy thing to do, just grab the edge where the branch disconnected from the tree and pull. Sometimes the line of bark would corner off into a seemingly useless piece while over times it would go all the way to the end of the branch. While stripping Quill was separating the product into piles of branch, bark, failures and stripped wood. After a few branches a message popped up.

you have learnt the peeling skill

“seriously… this is a skill? at least it’s more active than the breathing skill. who knows? maybe i’ll be able to peel a wolf to death. hah”

'seriously though, would this skill let me peel anything at max level? imagine being able to peel a layer of steel with your bare hands… would not actually look impressive but maybe it has crafting uses. But that’s far into the future anyway'

Quill quickly resumes his work after contemplating his skills as usual and by the time he finishes stripping or rather peeling the bark the peeling skill leveled twice though there isn’t much difference in performance between the levels in fact there’s wasn’t any at all.

“well, this skill is shit”

’now that I think of it, the breathing skill only made me able to take slightly longer breathes, does that mean there's a lot of levels so skills only really make a difference at extremely high levels? its easier for skills like breathing that level up simply by living but other skills like stab and carving would take ages to level up? how much time were they expecting people to spend in this game? probably a lot with the capsule features. well, that's enough of that, onto the javelins'

Quill went to the stripped wood pile and separated them into two piles, one of 90cm to 120cm size wood to be made into javelins and one of 150cm to 270cm size wood to be made into spears. Even though there was only six in one pile and five in the other pile he still felt the need to separate them. The reason for so few is simply that's all he could carry, log under one arm, just over a dozen branches under the other and pants full of stones, sticks and leaves, it’s a surprise he made it to the habitat.

Quill grabbed his trusty sharp rock and a piece of wood from the javelin pile and started carving away. inspecting his work whenever a piece of wood came off the branch and meticulously looking for imperfection after completion making sure it was perfect and no mistakes were made, though there were some of course. Quill is no master carver with his busy lifestyle.

After making his fourth javelin as one would expect to happen sooner or later a message popped up

you have learnt the weapon appraisal skill

“wait, what? I learned how to appraise a weapon from carving? how does that work?”

’maybe it’s because I’m carving weapons so I’m getting accustomed to how weapons should be? this game is so confusing, so I can appraise weapons now right? so it will show me information about the weapon such as damage and attack speed right? that's actually a really useful skill! I’ll be able to choose my best work without simple guesswork. so how does this skill work? hopefully it’s voice command unlike the menu… that god damn menu...right, focus, here goes’

Quill hold up his javelin stares at it almost as intensely as he was while making it and mutters the words

“weapon appraisal”

a wooden javelin

Quill’s face has an expression of a mixture between shock, laughter and disappointment.

“why...just why? I bet my mom and dad are laughing their heads off right now. I fell right into their trap”

Quill was really pissed this time, all that hard work for a skill that just tells him what he already knows. It would be hard to find someone who could stay calm in this situation and that someone definitively is not quill

“no, wait, calm down me, deep breaths, only finally found a voice command that works only for it to be completely worthless and tell me things I already know”

Quill starts taking deep breaths and once again loses awareness of everything around him except for his breath.

Once Quill open his eyes again he truly feels refreshed and notices a familiar message box

a wooden javelin

'forgot to close the message'

right after closing the message box another one instantly pops up

the skill Breathing has leveled up

the skill Breathing has ranked up