Chapter 4: Level up!

After my bath, I decided that it was time to set up camp since just finding that lake was work enough for the day. Why was finding water sources so god d*mn hard!? It took me half a day to find a lake while finding the ingredients for the bathing goo took no less than 30 minutes! Sheesh! Oh well, at least I got cleaned up.

I decided that I wanted to stay close to the lake I had found since coming back here every time to get water or bathe seemed like a hassle. I scouted out an area near some trees to clear out and set up a hut for the unknown amount of time that I'll be spending in this forest. After all, I was getting tired of sleeping in trees every night.

After clearing some ground of leaves I decided to scrounge up some rocks to get a small fire pit set up. While walking around I found another herd of the dear things I've been hunting, which according to Info are called leaping deer. Using stealth I walked closer to the dear, waiting for the perfect time to use speed and kill them. After about 15 seconds I saw my chance as the dear started to turn around I rushed in and slashed them in rapid succession with my dagger killing the entire herd with no problem.

Once I had got up I heard a 'ding' sound and heard Info chime in with "Congratulations! You've reached level 10! You can now access the Map function and new craftable items are now available! You've also gained the skills Rapid Strike, Ultra-speed, and Mask!"

Seeing my new skills I asked Info, "Rapid Strike? Mask? What do those even mean? Ultra-speed is pretty straightforward but what are the other two?" I heard Info sigh, then respond, "Well Rapid Strike allows to make up to fifteen strikes per second at its max level! While Mask lets you completely hide your presence from anyone under five levels higher than you!". After hearing what Info said I brightened up and thought to myself how useful both skills seemed but two things puzzled me, one being how I level up skills and the other being the level of the people in this world since Mask is only useful if the person is below or at five levels ahead of me. Apparently Info can read minds and responded with, "There is a menu under your level bar that lets you access all of you base stats and skills along with displaying your amount of available skill points which you can spend to level up your skills and help advance you base stats at a faster pace! Your base stats naturally level up while doing activities related to those stats such as reading or hunting! The base stats are Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Magic, Luck, and Focus! Currently, you're at level 97 in Strength, level 98 in Intelligence, level 96 in Wisdom, level 93 in Magic, level 95 in luck, and level 98 in focus! Each base stat can go up at a max of 10 per overall level! Since your at level 10 that means the max for your base stats is currently 100! The only way to go over the max is by using items with properties of those base stats! At the current time, the strongest person born of this world was level 150! Comparatively, this is weak but that is only due to the heroes being disregarded as they were not born on this plane! However, if we included the previous heroes the highest level would be 500! Does that all make sense? I hope so since my cake is waiting!"

What Info had told me made sense until the cake part since I'm pretty sure that the cake was a lie but oh well. I responded back to Info saying, "Your good Info! Everything made sense. Thank you!" to which Info responded with a cheery, "Oh~ It's not a problem! You're the first user to treat me so kindly! All the ones before you were weird men!" Info saying this only confused me more but it's not my business how the system works so I just moved on and responded to Info saying, "It's no problem Info! Girls gotta stick together!" I heard a sniff before Info said, "Waah~ You're so kind Hatori! I'll be sure to help as much as I can! I'll go now! Bye Bye~" and with that Infos voice was gone and I was back to being in the silence of the forest. I grabbed the rest of the rocks and twigs I needed and started to head back.

One I got back I started to build my fire pit first digging a shallow hole to put the sticks in and surrounding it with rocks.

With my fire pit set up, I decided to finally look at my crafting menu to see my new craftables. Some of the icons were still not illuminated which I assumed meant they weren't available but I saw that the clothes icon was now illuminated when it wasn't before. That means I can finally get out of the clothes that I had 'spawned' in with! The clothes I 'spawned' in were an awful tan potato sack looking shirt and shorts combo that felt like just as much like a potato sack as it looked. Looking at the crafting menu I clicked on the tab that looked like clothes. The only option that I saw on the menu did not please me but their new clothes which seemed better than my now battered clothes. The options were a leaping dear shirt and pants to make a combined set of the leaping dear attire. Seeing this I rejoiced since that meant I didn't have to hunt or forage anything! Taking the materials out of my inventory I started to make two sets of my new clothes in case one gets wet or ruined. After about an hour of cutting and sewing, I had made them. Deciding immediately to put one on I saw just how boxy these really looked but beggars can't be choosers so for now I'd have to settle for these deep brown fur shirts and pants combo.