Racial Skills

  "Finally!"

  Warren hurriedly went to check his newly gained stats, eager to see how he improved. thinking about it, he should've checked it as soon as he started, but he had been too eager to try hunting. This time, with the right stats, he would be able to do better.

  "Status!"

  "Why is there both Fame and Infamy?"

  It made sense. If you had a high Fame, you generally could get away with a few Infamy-gathering activities, like how a king could tax their people for more money. It would give them a bit of a bad reputation, but overall it'd be lower than their good reputation. In addition, Warren suspected it affected how NPCs reacted to you. After all, they'd charge a hero less money than they would a normal mercenary, and it would affect whether or not they'd give you quests.

  "What's the Perception stat and what's the differences between resistances and affinity?"

  So basically, Perception was your senses working together to let you notice and react to something. He could see how that would help archery and long-distance attacks. Meanwhile, Affinity both lowered the damage you took and raised the amount you dealt with a type, while resistance would lower the amount of damage alone. Sort of like how a Fire Mage would be able to deal more damage with fire and resist any damage due to his experiences with it, versus someone who had experience in being burned by fire wouldn't be as hurt as the first time they got burned. Probably, some of the resistances could be turned to affinities if you worked with them long enough.

  "What are my racial skills?"

  Seeing his racial abilities, Warren was filled with joy. He had suddenly gained four different spells, that in total, slowed his enemies while speeding him, burned and hurt them, strengthened his physical abilities in one form and strengthened his magical abilities in another, and on top of that he had Essence Drain! A spell that drained both health and mana while restoring your own was almost unheard of, and he had gotten it off the bat! The only downside was that he had to maintain skin contact with the target. He had to admit, when he had read that, his mind went to a deep dark place, before he dragged his mind out of the gutters. He had read histories where fox spirits drained the life force of people in... such ways, but he silently he swore never to use it like that.

  Turning back to the stats, Warren was at a dilemma: if he put them in Strength or Vitality, then his Vulpine form would decrease it, and the same for his Human form if he put in his Wisdom or Intelligence. He was stuck for so long the sun finished setting, and the beach began to get cold. Finally, he realized the solution.

  In Human form, he was basically strong but not smart, and in Vulpine form he was smart but physically weak. Therefore, if he trained each for in what it was weak in, when he transformed into the other form, he'd get a boost. So, even if he turned into the Vulpine form now, and was reduced to 6 Strength, he could train it to 7 Strength so that in Human form his Strength would be then be 14. Likewise, in Human form, he could do the same by reading or doing calculations!

  Warren laughed, for the first time in years. The game scanned your brainwave while you were playing, allowing you to move your character. by doing so, it basically read your mind, which meant it followed his thoughts. Even the game agreed that it was a good idea. The ability to physically train up your stats had been one of the selling points of the game in the first place, though that had been mostly ignored due to most people's thinking being confined by previous games they had played. But Warren hadn't gotten to play any of those games. The closest he had gotten to them was reading about adventures in books. Since this was a game, Warren could even use those ways the main characters in those books had trained himself!

  Despite his feverishly racing thoughts, Warren suddenly shivered. The sun had set long ago while he had sat and examined his stats and skills and a wind began to blow, chilling him even further. For all his thinking, he had forgotten a simple thing: he had forgotten to set up a camp.

  It wasn't all his fault either. Other players rarely bothered setting up camp for the night, as they could just log out and wait a couple of hours for night time to be finished and log back on. In addition, the books he had read rarely went into much details on the camping aspect of the adventure, preferring to linger on the swords and magic. So Warren was forced to scrounge for some more branches, in an attempt to start a fire. He found a meter-deep depression in the cliff at the end of the beach, which was only several hundred meters long. He had cleared the crabs from it earlier and it was out of the way of the wind, so he set up the branches for the fire.

  Then came the fun part: trying to light the fire with his bare hands. He tried rubbing sticks together, sparking rocks off each other, all to no avail. He had almost resigned himself to a cold night shivering against the cliff, before he realizied the solution.

  "Shift!"

  Warren could feel his tail, throwing him off balance, but he ignored that and kneeled over the pile of branches.

  "Fox Fire!"

  Using Fox Fire, his mana pool, and his mana regen (boosted by the safe area's bonus mana regen and his tail), he cast his first spell. A globe of fire, about the size of a golf ball hovered in the air next to him. He tried guiding to the fire, but it refused to move, before he finally hit upon the idea of focusing hard on it and moving it slowly. Using that method, the globe drifted into the branches and set them alight. He finally ended the spell just before he ran out of mana, leaving him exhausted and curled up next to the fire. The fire eventually died out, but it got him through most of the night towards morning.

  In the morning, Warren groaned as he got up, sore from sleeping on the cold sand. Immediately, he set up the fireplace again, using some leftover branches from the night before. Once again using Fire Fox to start the fire, he gnawed on some of the bread while staring at the coals. He was getting tired of bread, it was his third meal of it. Seeing some sticks, he had an idea, making us of the crab meat he had gotten off all the crabs. He took it out of his inventory, stuck them on the ends of the stick, and cooked it over the fire. He had seen it done in movies and for marshmallows so he figured he might as try. When he finished, he examined the end production.

  Hesitatingly taking a bite, Warren chewed it.

  "It's delicious!"

  Finishing it off and starting on the rest, he felt far better after a full stomach. He stood up, dusting off his hands on his pants. Now, it was time to train.

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  Author's Note

  Feel free to comment on this, I'm trying to get better, so I appreciate any feedback.