I woke up, and the fire I made has already died down and that morning has already risen. My clothes were already dry, so I decided to try my luck on hunting for food, only to find a pile of fish and a bunch of skinned dead animals.
"W-What the heck?! What's all this doing here?! Guide, help me out here and explain!"
[IT LOOKS LIKE SOMEONE GAVE YOU FISH AND A BUNCH OF SKINNED DEAD ANIMALS.]
"Yes I know that, I'm wondering what its doing here!"
[SOMEONE MUST HAVE PLACED IT FOR YOU, I DON'T KNOW WHO, BUT THEY SEEM TO NOT WANT YOU TO STARVE.]
"So... someone else is here?"
I look around, but I couldn't see anyone. Maybe it was a pity traveler who thought giving food to a cat child in the middle of the forest would be a good idea? If that's the case, that was very nice of them.
"Well I wouldn't want this food to go to waste, let me bring the fire up again so I can cook them up!"
As I started to cook, I overhear Guide speaking time me again.
[HUMAN RACE PHYSICAL SKILL UNLOCKED: COOKING I]
"Huh, would have thought I'd start gaining skills just by cooking. Weird. But Guide, do you have to announce every skill I obtain? Won't it get annoying?"
[YES AND YES.]
I sighed, of course it's gonna be repetitive and annoying. A small bit of me hoped that it wasn't the case, but that ain't happening, I guess. After eating, I felt energized and ready to try and level up, since my level was at zero.
So I decided to tried fighting normally by myself, I saw a stick and immediately tried to create a spear with a sharp stone I found on the ground to sharpen the stick. Flashing back to when I was learning to use weapon props to fight in drama class, they brought professionals to teach the students to fight realistically. The first one was the spear, and I began to copy the moves gracefully. Mixed it with ballet I learned from my previous childhood for 4 years and you got yourself a powerful spearmen.
"Let's see if I can try hitting this tree."
I immediately attacked the tree with my spear, and landed multiple direct hits to it. Remembering every step, every detail, keeping myself light on my feet. I lost count after 30 hits, and kept making combo after combo, until the tree broke down from taking too many hits. But just when I was about to make my leave, I stepped on my tail.
"OW! I have got to remember where I place my tail, damn..."
And then it dawned on me, I didn't get experience points from destroying that tree. I didn't even get Guide to tell me that I gained any skills from doing any of those attacks.
"Guide, can I look back at my Skill Trees and Status Profile?"
[UNDERSTOOD NOW LOADING SKILL TREES AND STATUS PROFILE.]
I knew it, I didn't level up, and there aren't any physical skills for weapons and the skills for weapons are all magic based only. But why?
"Guide can you explain why there are only weapon boost magic skills and no physical weapon skills?"
[THIS IS BECAUSE SKILLS ARE LEARNED BASED ON ITS UNIQUENESS. SOME RACES CAN LEARN SKILLS OTHER RACES CAN'T. SOME SKILLS ARE ONLY LEARNED FROM ONE RACE ALONE. AND THERE ARE MANY OTHER UNEXPLORED UNKNOWN POWERFUL AND SOMETIMES TABOO SKILLS THAT CAN BE OBTAINED BY SPECIFIC PEOPLE UNDER CERTAIN TYPES OF CIRCUMSTANCES THAT DON'T EXIST AT ALL IN ANY SKILL TREE AND CAN ONLY BE USED BY THE INDIVIDUAL BODY ITSELF, WHICH ARE LISTED IN YOUR UNIQUE SKILL LISTS.]
"Okay... and how does the Cooking Skill is not a common skill anyone can learn then?"
[WELL FOR STARTERS CAT KINS ARE KNOWN TO BE WILD SURVIVORS AND EAT THEIR FOODS RAW. MANY OTHER RACES ARE THE SAME.]
"Raw?! But don't cats die when they eat raw meat?!"
[I DON'T KNOW, HAVE TIGERS DIED FROM EATING WILD MEAT?]
"Well no-."
[THEN DON'T QUESTION THE FOOD CHAIN OF YOUR OWN RACE!]
"Geez, okay, I get it! Um what about my LV, how come that didn't gain any EXP?"
[LV STANDS FOR LEVEL OF VIOLENCE, WHICH ONLY INCREASES THE MORE YOU KILL. EXP STANDS FOR EXECUTION POINTS, WHICH IS WHAT'S USED TO GAIN LV.]
"S-So basically..."
[BECAUSE THAT TREE WASN'T A LIVING CREATURE, YOU DIDN'T GAIN EXP. YOU CAN HOWEVER GAIN STATUS POINTS WITHOUT KILLING, BUT IT WOULD BE A LONG PROCESS.]
"Okay! Phew, I thought I was gonna be stuck as a helpless girl... but this works just fine. I don't want people to see me as a murderer...
I finished cooking and began to eat the meats and fish almost instantly. Wow, was I really that hungry? But deep down, I felt a little guilty, all this meat and fish were killed, meaning someone had to have blood on their hands just to hunt it, right? I felt full and began to pick up my spear again.
"Well... I just gotta make sure I don't kill anything then. Which could be difficult... I would have to rely on berries and vegetables..."
I began to attack on my own practicing with my spear and attacking trees and rocks. Of course my spear kept breaking, so I had to make a new one. And when night fell, I made my fire, but kept my spear too close to the fire and it lit up.
"OH SHOOT-!"
Without thinking, I threw the spear to a nearby rock and it broke the rock into pieces along with the spear.
[HUMAN RACE MAGIC SKILL UNLOCKED: FLARE SHOT I]
"Did I just... learn magic by accident? Guide, how does learning magic usually work?"
[THERE ARE THREE WAYS TO LEARN MAGIC: INHERITANCE, STUDY OR EXPOSURE. INHERITANCE IS NOT NEEDED FOR STUDY OR EXPOSURE AND ARE JUST BORN WITH MAGIC SKILLS ALREADY, THEY JUST NEED TO CONTROL AND MASTER. STUDY IS THE BASICS, FROM LEARNING THROUGH BOOKS OR WITNESSING IT FROM AFAR AND MEMORIZING IT. MOST PEOPLE PURSUING TO BECOME MAGES WOULD MOST LIKELY STUDY FOR MORE SKILLS. FINALLY, THERE IS THE EXPOSURE TO MAGIC. IT IS IF YOU ARE IN A ENVIRONMENT SURROUNDED BY MAGIC AND USE THE SURROUNDING MAGIC TO CREATE AN ATTACK ALL ON YOUR OWN. MOST OF THE TIME EXPOSURE MAGIC IS OFTEN LEARNED BY ACCIDENT.]
"So the fire surrounding my spear was also exposed by the magic in this forest... and when I used it as a attack, it gave me the skill?"
I went to find something to lie down on, and I began to yawn. I'll think about all this later.
"Welp, time to test all of this out tomorrow..."
I woke up, and another pile of fish and skinned meats next to me. Okay, now I know something's up. Someone was here, and someone is obviously watching me. I decided to brush it off and continued my original schedule of trying to train myself. I looked for another stick and sharp rock to make another spear. Remembering the exposed magic from before, I decided to use that as a way to train my magic skills.
"FLARE SHOT!"
It immediately set the spear on fire, but instead of a stab movement I went for a slashing move instead.
[HUMAN RACE MAGIC SKILL UNLOCKED: FLARE SLASH I]
"Yes! I knew it! At least this way I can choose between a slash and piercing attack styles. I know I can't bash people with spears, but two ways of attacking is enough. I'll just keep upgrading the strength of these two skills for now and will think about the other magic attribute types later."
My training kept going on.
[HUMAN RACE MAGIC SKILL UNLOCKED: FLARE SHOT II]
[HUMAN RACE MAGIC SKILL UNLOCKED: FLARE SLASH II]
[HUMAN RACE PHYSICAL SKILL UNLOCKED: COOKING II]
And on.
[HUMAN RACE MAGIC SKILL UNLOCKED: FLARE SHOT III]
[HUMAN RACE MAGIC SKILL UNLOCKED: FLARE SLASH III]
[HUMAN RACE PHYSICAL SKILL UNLOCKED: COOKING III]
It went on for hours.
[HUMAN RACE MAGIC SKILL UNLOCKED: FLARE SHOT IV]
[HUMAN RACE MAGIC SKILL UNLOCKED: FLARE SLASH IV]
[HUMAN RACE PHYSICAL SKILL UNLOCKED: COOKING IV]
Even days.
[HUMAN RACE MAGIC SKILL UNLOCKED: MASTER FLARE SHOT]
[HUMAN RACE MAGIC SKILL UNLOCKED: MASTER FLARE SLASH]
[HUMAN RACE PHYSICAL SKILL UNLOCKED: MASTER CHEF]
Even after my fire training... No matter how much time passed, I was still given a mysterious amount of hunting food. It even made me accidentally master my cooking skill, which was a nice boost, but not what I expected. I couldn't hold it off any longer. It was nice yes, but for what purpose would they do this for them? I need to meet the person who visits me every night, since apparently traps didn't work. So along with my flare shot and slash training, I tried to secretly learn 3 very specific skills from my Cat Kin Skill Tree.
[CAT KIN RACE PHYSICAL SKILL UNLOCKED: NIGHT VISION]
[CAT KIN RACE PHYSICAL SKILL UNLOCKED: SENSITIVE HEARING]
[CAT KIN RACE PHYSICAL SKILL UNLOCKED: SENSITIVE SMELL]
It's time, I finally did it. Now I can catch that nice mystery hunter by surprise and repay him. I just to do one more thing before I rest. One more thing.