Chapter 4: Chapter 4: Picking Softlocks

She sat there, staring, unblinking.

Legs crossed under her, she had parked herself in front of her prey as it went about it’s idle work, managing an actually fairly intricate spiderweb.

The spider had long since ceased regarding her as even a remote threat, as the pair spent hours locked in… not combat, but something roughly approximating it at least.

She glanced back at her quest log from time to time, the one and only entry still unchanged as she stared at it in a perpetual, low-boiling frustration.

[Slay a forest spiderling: 0/1]

Hmph.

She currently had run through every in-game action she had access to with no luck, the best she could do was stun the little spider in place for about three seconds. And as helpful as that seemed like it could be later on, it wasn’t going to help her with dealing a single point of damage.

It had been a couple hours ingame since she had begun experimenting with various ways to circumvent her damage penalties to no avail. Luckily however, one of the game’s selling point features was the time desync effect, having an hour of real time stretch into about three full days in game.

So as it stood, she’d managed to softlock herself instantly out of character creation, which was… impressive in its own right, she supposed.

As she lost herself in thought, she barely even registered the spider expanding it’s wonderful creation overtop of her, the fox-eared mage obliviously becoming engulfed in thin white webbing.

It would be several more hours before her intense focus on discovering a way out would be interrupted, a loud DING from the system making her jump, disturbing the spiderling’s creative endeavors and drawing several annoyed chitters from it.

[New Skill: Bind Endurance I]

- Unlock: Be bound by a single status ailment for 6+ hours.

- Natural resistance to binding ailments, and reduction to bind durations.

- Resistance/Duration Reduction is 5% per level of skill.

God had it really been…? She rubbed her eyes, looking up at the sky. Just as the game as said, it had been just a hair over 6 hours since she’d loaded in, the bright morning sky now much duller and evened out.

At least it hadn’t been a total waste of time. Now she know she could unlock new skills by just performing actions ingame, however arbitrary it might seem at first.

This being her first skill though… it felt like it was going to give people a very specific first impression of her. Hopefully her apparent penchant for being bound up by monsters wasn’t advertised to other players.

But if she had gotten a skill like this, that meant other skills must exist with other conditions she could fulfill. And if that was the case, there had to be at least one of them that dealt damage…! She’d found her light of salvation, an escape from this tutorial!

...She really was desperate.

She COULD have just logged out and remade her character from scratch, but…

She certainly wasn’t gonna start her journey by being a quitter, right?

Steeling herself for her self-assigned sidequest, she shook herself free of the remnants of webbing, which was much more difficult to shake off than she’d given it credit for, and gave the nigh-immortal spider a pat on the head as she spun on her heel and headed off.

Her experimentation started simply. She located several sticks nearby, piling them neatly in the middle of the clearing, scattering some leaves over top of them, making herself a wonderful little pile of garbage.

Looking over the collection she’d heaped together, she decided on a decent looking stick from among them all, clasping it between her hands and testing rolling it back and forth.

She was a mage, and if every other game was anything to go by, the most basic damage spell for mages was always some kind of fire attack.

Therefore, if she could start her own fire, she’d definitely learn something like that. Easy peasy!

(It by no means worked like that, but far be it for the game to tell her that now.)

She worked at it for what felt like ages, her hands starting to feel a bit sore from rubbing over the wood so fast for so long. But her sheer stubbornness wasn’t far and away more mighty than anything like common sense or restraint, and she only rolled it back and forth against the pile of kindling faster and faster. She bellowed like a wild beast, the spider peeking over at her in surprise as she screamed from sheer exertion.

Sparks began to light up, more and more often as she kept up the attack on the wood and leaves, a malicious grin spreading on her face, an evil mastermind unleashing her ultimate ability…!

Faster!

Faster!

Faster than speed itself!

Lightning spat from her fingertips!

Flames erupted at her beck and call!

Hell itself opened up before her, dragging her victim into its waiting jaws!

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An inferno befitting her burst forth, engulfing all before her!!!

…

……

……...

She’d successfully lit a fairly unimpressive campfire!

But even so, it was probably the only thing she’d managed to do at all so far, so… a win was still a win?

And as her reward, the familiar DING returned once more, signaling what she assumed could only be her new skill(s). Without adieu, she popped up the menu, seeing three new notifications populate in, one after another.

[New Skill: Survivalism]

- Unlock: In the wild, either start a fire, prepare food, or craft an item.

- Allows quick fire-starting outside of combat.

- Allows consumption/preparation of edible monster materials.

Fire, just like she’d hoped, technically. Though having it locked to outside of combat meant it wasn’t going to be the out she was hoping for. Oh well. She clicked past to the next.

[New Skill: Gathering I]

- Unlock: Collect materials 25 times.

- Allows user to locate and gather from common gathering nodes.

- Success rate is based on DEX and LUC. Higher ranks may access rarer nodes.

Gathering could help as well later on, if she ever wanted to dabble in crafting later on… but once again, that was still a passive skill. Unless the game felt like letting her collect the spider itself, she wasn’t any closer to making progress. Hopefully the last skill would be what she was looking for.

Sighing, she flicked past to the last notification.

[New Skill: Fire Endurance I]

- Unlock: Be on fire for 1+ hours.

- Natural resistance to fire attacks and burning effects.

- Resistance is 5% per level of skill.

…?

That didn’t make sense, why had she gotten-

Sniff, sniff.

“Ah.”

She lifted her arms, taking a good look at her basic robes. Specifically, the sleeves.

The very long, dangly, unsecured sleeves.

Which, now that she was no longer stuck focusing on her fire-starting, were very clearly just as on fire as her campfire was. And had been for at least an hour already.

More importantly, the unattended flames had done an admirable job spreading out, and engulfing more or less her entire robes!

She nodded to herself.

As of this moment, she was entirely sure of exactly one thing.

“I am the stupidest person who has ever lived.”

And as those words passed her lips, the thought crystal clear in her mind, she fell directly forward onto her face, the last pip of her HP emptying itself as she poofed into particle effects, and died before finishing even the first mission of the tutorial.

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