"Anyway, Loran, do you want any help with that?" Soze asked the young man trying to force the flint ax head into the wooden handle.

"No... I almost... got it!" With one last hard shove, the blade slotted into place. A new alert popped up in front of Loran.

[ITEM (Stone Ax) HAS BEEN CRAFTED]

[50 EXP AWARDED]

[PLAYER IS THE FIRST TO CRAFT THIS ITEM]

[1000 EXP AWARDED]

[NAME]: Stone Ax

[DESCRIPTION]

A simple ax made from Flint.

"Alexx," Loran said, awed at the amount of EXP he was awarded, "You're gonna hate me for this."

Alexx was confused for a moment, but after seeing the new tool in his friend's hands, realization dawned on him. "...Fuck you, you're not allowed to make anything anymore. You got another first bonus?!"

"Wait what?" The others looked back and forth between the two, confused by their exchange.

"The first person to craft specific items gets an EXP bonus" Loran explained, "the Stone Knife got me 600 earlier, and" he held up the ax, "this just got me 1000."

"Bullshit!" Yang nearly jumped to her feet.

"Yang!"

"No, sorry Sis, but I'm calling bull on this one."

"Alexx is right, you're not allowed to craft stuff for now," Soze agreed.

"Is this really such a big deal," Yin asked, not knowing enough about video games to judge on her own.

"They're just exaggerating," Loran assured.

"Don't lie to her!"

"Yang, just because I'm new to this whole 'video game' thing doesn't mean you need to safeguard me like this."

"I mean he's not-" Soze suddenly stopped and turned to look at Yin, " wait, safeguard?"

"Yes? Is something wrong Mr. Soze?" Yin asked.

"First of all, just Soze is fine kiddo. Secondly-"

"Really? Sis has been speaking like a goddamned college essay since we got here and you're only noticing now?"

"What problem is there with my vernacular?"

"Vernacular..." Alexx muttered in confusion.

Yang did not say anything else but calmly gestured towards Alexx, knowing that her point had been made for her.

"Alright, alright," Loran said, hands raised, "moving back to our original topic, Yin, in the grand scheme of things 1000 EXP will mean nothing, but it's a pretty big head start right now. Big enough that I don't think most games would ever let you get it consistently."

"So him getting it twice is bullshit," Yang said.

"...I see."

"Anyway," Loran said, tossing the ax to Alexx before picking up the now cold fish skewer, "I assume you'll just be chopping more trees for a while?"

"Probably," he grumbled, taking a few practice swings.

Opening his menu, Loran stared at the staggering 1300/500 EXP gauge. Admittedly it wasn't that much, but having enough to immediately level up twice felt like an accomplishment. 'All that from just one ax, this is so broken,' he thought. Looking over his menu, he glanced at his Skill list; both Stalwart and Analyse were still at Level 1.

As of yet, there had been no indicator as to how they were expected to level up Skills. Loran had used [ANALYSE] dozens of times already, but there were no signs that he had made any progress. 'Do Skills not grow from use?' A part of him hoped not, otherwise, he would probably need to take a ton of damage to level up [STALWART]. On a whim, he tried concentrating on [ANALYSE]. Suddenly, a new prompt appeared.

[WOULD YOU LIKE TO LEVEL UP {ANALYSE}?]

[COST: 100 EXP]

[YES] / [NO]

"Oh... okay then," he sputtered through a mouthful of cold fish.

"What now," Yang asked, her voice thick with sarcasm, "did you find another way to break the game?"

"No, nothing's broken," he assured, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, "apparently we pay EXP to level up Skills."

"Oh, yeah I guess that's important," Soze said.

"Wait, so we have to choose between Levels and Skills?" Alexx asked.

"I don't think it's that big of an issue, we can always get more EXP after all, it just takes time." Thinking for a moment, Loran started dumping EXP into [ANALYSE], figuring that it would be more useful than [STALWART] over the next few days. Spending 900 EXP raised [ANALYSE] to Level 10. He decided to throw the rest into [STALWART] just to be safe.

[NAME]: Loran

[SPECIES]: Human

[LEVEL]: 4

[EXP]: 0/500

[STATUS]

{HP}: 100/100

{SP}: 100/100

[END]: 10

[STR]: 8

[AGI]: 8

[DEX]: 10

[PER]: 10

[REMAINING ABILITY POINTS]: 13

[SKILLS]

[ANALYSE] Lv.10

(Active: Cost 5 SP) Allows the user to learn detailed information about a target.

[STALWART] Lv.6

(Passive) Reduce damage received by 6%.

"Oh, while I'm thinking about it, what Skills did you guys pick?" He asked, closing the menu. "I chose Stalwart."

"I thought about taking that," said Yang, putting a few points into her Skill, "but I took Tenacious instead, the one that boosted END."

"I took Mighty," Alexx chimed in.

"Yeah," Soze said, briefly glancing at the various tree stumps around the camp, "I think we noticed. Anyway I picked up Sprint, you know how that old saying goes 'you don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than your friends.'"

"Wow," Yang said, her voice thick with sarcasm, "how noble."

"I try," he joked, "there are better ways to handle a bear anyway. What about you Yin."

"Um..." she pulled up her menu, "I chose Far Sight. I used to take archery lessons so it seemed pertinent."

"You can use a bow and arrow? That would help with hunting. We should probably make one-"

"NOT YOU," they all said at once, except Yin. None of them had any intention to let Loran get another bonus anytime soon.

"Alright, alright," Loran said exasperatedly while Yang chuckled at his expense.

Suddenly, Yang's eyes narrowed in concentration. "Hey, Loran. Since you brought up the Skills, I just thought of something."

"What is it?"

"The Skills we could pick from, didn't they seem kind of, I don't know, basic?"

Soze shrugged, "they're the game's introductory Skills, what more do you want?"

"I know, but for a game that was selling itself on being super customizable, it just seemed too simple. I didn't think much of it at first, but now that we know the game has a Skill creation system, you don't think that all the Skills from here on out will be auto-generated do you?"

Soze's face paled at the thought. "Oh god, I hope not."

"Would such a thing be bad?" Yin asked.

Alexx looked similarly confused.

"Sis, trust me; there have been dozens of games that have tried to use procedurally generated Skill systems, and every single one has been a boring mess."

Soze shrugged. "Some kind of limitation of the software."

"The problem is because those systems used pre-existing code to write each Skill," Loran explained, "basically, because all the Skills had a similar starting point the resulting Skills were all really similar, despite being called unique."

"Hm, well I can certainly see why people would be dissatisfied by such systems."

"Yeah, but this one," Loran thought back to the strange feeling he had when he acquired [ANALYSE], "I don't think this game has the same boring system."

"What makes you say that?" Alexx asked.

"I don't know, it's just a hunch," Loran shrugged, "besides, like Soze said, it's a limitation of the software, not the idea itself, and if anyone can get that code right I'll bet on the guy that revolutionized the human race."

Yang rolled her eyes, "alright, whatever you say fanboy."

"You know what, it's too late to argue, I'm gonna log out and eat something."

"Really? It hasn't even been an hour in reality yet?" Yang said, having gained a good sense of the time dilation over the years.

"I didn't eat anything before starting, I was too excited," Loran said, slightly embarrassed, "anyway, I'll see you guys later."

After a short round of goodbyes, Loran gave the mental logout command...

...

...

...

...But nothing happened.