This wasn't the first time Bree had looked at a selection menu in a game. In her past life, she'd become a quite well known gamer, but that wasn't overly surprising when you considered her deteriorating health. She loved Otome and RPG games the most and somehow that had followed her here into this new life. This was fine by her, since coming to this strange new world she'd felt entirely lost and alone. For the first time since coming here, she felt the overwhelming stress and dread lifting somewhat.
"How do I open the menu?"
The flying cat rolled it's eyes. "Just say, open menu. It's going to be annoying working for you if you're this dense and helpless."
Bree lowered her eyelids slightly to a bored expression while looking at the flying cat.
It could feel a shiver of cold fear traveling up it's spine as their eyes locked on each other. It quickly looked away and went back to filing it's nails, pretending to be unperturbed.
Bree smirked at the flying cat who had gone back to pretending that she didn't exist. "Open Menu," Bree said.
The flying cat didn't bother to look up as the floating blue word changed into a larger translucent blue rectangle screen. At the top of the screen, it said 'MENU' in bold lettering. Below that, there were three rows of words down and four words horizontally in dark blue.
Across the top row of four words it said, 'Beastmen, Storage, Status, Battle.'
Across the middle row of words it said, 'Mates, Equip, Quests, Search'
Across the bottom row of four words it said, 'Recipes, Shop, Skills, Party'
A big grin spread across Bree's face and her eyes glittered in excitement. A cute little dimple appeared in her right cheek. "Yuuus!" She clapped her hands excitedly and squealed a little.
The flying cat looked up from filing his nails. "Pfft! I see you're excited," he said while tucking his nail file into the air next to him. It disappeared in a flash of light, and was no where to be seen, as if it hadn't existed in the first place.
Bree focused on where the nail file had disappeared, but still she could see nothing. "How did you do that?"
A proud look appeared on the black flying cat's face. "Do you really what to know? I might tell you if you ask nicely. Perhaps, 'Exalted one, please grace me with your wisdom'. Something along those lines could possibly work." The flying cat grinned and swayed back and forth in the air with excitement evident on his face.
"No thanks," Bree said nonchalantly and turned back to the menu, effectively giving the flying cat no more of her attention.
It's big green kitty eyes widened and it's tiny cute mouth opened when her eyes quickly turned away. It felt a distinct loss from being ignored which it felt that it must correct immediately. It flew into her line of sight, between the menu screen and Bree. "Since you want to know so badly, I suppose I could tell you. I can see the pockets in space and use them as retrievable storage."
Bree smiled internally at how easily it was to get the flying cat to turn around. She continued to look bored and appear unaffected in front of the flying cat.
He paused while looking at her bored expression in surprise. His ears lowered against his head in dejection and his tail drooped.
Her heart softened minutely at his cute pouting face. "That's quite impressive. Do you store all of your things there?"
His eyes perked up, "Yes, I store all of my things there. I could even store living objects there, but they can't move from the spot they were stored at and can't interact with anything out of the space storage place."
"I see, well aren't you a clever kitty," Bree said while gently patting his head.
The flying cat lifted up it's chin proudly and softly purred.
Bree internally squealed at the sight, completely fangirling, but kept a calm face for the flying cat to see. OMG, so cute!
"What's your name?" Bree said.
The kitty stopped purring. "I don't have one. My master is supposed to give me one."
Bree pointed at her chest. "Me?"
The cat shook his head, "That's right."
"Hmm, I'll name you Posh."
The little black cat tilted it's head to the side to allow Bree to have easier access to the bottom of it's head for scratches while it thought about it's new name. "Alright, I'll accept this new name." He gave a proud little smile and his tiny nose wiggled. Bree just wanted to squeeze the cute little flying kitty in a hug, but just barely resisted the urge. So cute!
"Since I named you and it seems that we're going to have a lot of interaction with each other from now on, you may call me Bee if you'd like. Calling me master seems a bit too formal to me."
Posh tilted his head to the other side, "Bee. Alight, I'll call you Bee from now on."
Bree smiled. "Great! Now that we have the introductions out of the way, could you help me with this menu? How do I interact with it?"
"You just need to either ask me to pull up something specific, as if you were using a search bar, like a shortcut or you can press the air over the word like pushing in a button."
"Like this?" Bree lifted up her hand and held out her pointer finger, pressing on the floating word. To her surprise, she felt a tiny bit of resistance in the air over the word Beastmen in the top left corner of the menu. The word glowed, before opening a new menu.
At the top of that menu, it said 'Beastmen' and below that, it showed wide rectangles, shaded out in gray that said 'Locked in bold print.
"What's this and how do I unlock it?"
"This is a list of possible capture targets that you can choose from. When you encounter someone that you're interested in collecting, they will show up here. It will show their affection points from one to ten with a row of hearts, their abilities, as well as strengths and weaknesses. You can unlock upgrades and quests involving the beastmen on this list as long as you have enough affection points from them. You can only unlock a beastman after you put your pre-marker or temporary marker on them. A temporary marker, is light gray and can be used if you're just considering them as a future potential mate. They can't accept you as their mate unless they have the darker gray pre-marker on them. You can unlock the stats of any beastman who has your temporary marker, pre-marker, or marker on them. However, if your mark is removed from the beastman, you will no longer have access to his stats, unless you buy a Skeleton Key in the shop, which is a one time use item that unlocks one thing for you permanently. This isn't a cheap item for a beginner, so I wouldn't suggest wasting your points on it.
"There are special capture targets that are worth a lot of points and difficult to obtain. If you encounter one of these targets, their affection bar will unlock automatically and they will trigger a quest with the amount of points you will receive if you successfully capture them as well as some other perks that come along with their successful capture. At that time, you can choose to accept that quest or not."
"Capture?" said Bree.
Posh rolled his eyes. "You successfully mark them and they accept you as their mate. They have to give you their 'Spirit Stone' though, or else it's not a full capture and you can't unlock all of their capture benefits. Capturing a target is also considered an accepted quest. You can choose to give up on an accepted quest early, but you lose all of the points you've accumulated from that quest and you're locked out of that quest in the future. You can also only accept five main quests at a time and five sub-quests at a time. To check your quests, you'll have to click on the quests button on the main menu. Sometimes you can accidentally trigger a quest and you'll be asked if you want to accept it. Triggered quests can be chosen immediately and some of them can be stored for a later time, but most are lost permanently if the opportunity is lost. Not all quests involve capturing mate targets, a great deal of them don't. Out of all the capture targets, leaders of large territories and Legendary Beastmen give the most capture points. Other beastmen also give some capture points and some of them transfer useful abilities to you if you gain their Spirit Stone."
Bree blinked her eyes, while processing all of the information; this was all quite a bit to take in.
Suddenly her menu dimmed into a dull gray color and over the menu there appeared neon blue words,
Quest Unlocked!
'Quest Tutorial'
Will you accept this quest? Yes or No.
Quest perks upon completion: +50 Status Points to assign, +5 Beginner Skills, +5 Recipes, +100 coins for Shop, +1 Basic Starter Survival Kit, +1 Low Grade Healing Potion, +1 Low Grade Energy Potion, +1 Low Grade Mana Potion, +1 choice for Beginner Battle Style, +1 Beginners Outfit, +1 Beginners Weapon, +1 Beginners Backpack.