Chapter 2: An Upset Woman

Yun-Jin enters the game.

Chapter 2

 

“You jerk! You should’ve waited for me!”

 

            “I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t have waited either! You just made me waste a buff, too!”

 

            “You don’t know that! You deserve it! You got a huge head start! That’s not fair. I’m not cooking tonight. Have fun with ramen.”

 

            “What??? I had to eat the stinking rye bread! Please baby, I’ll make it up to you, just please cook for me tonight.” I didn’t mention the ham sandwich.

 

“No way, buster. Now get out of the way, I’ve got to play now.”

 

            Yun-Jin had arrived back from her last class about 1½ hours after the arrival of the capsules. Screaming in rage, she had immediately crossed over and started banging on my capsule. I guess I was lucky to have a girlfriend as avid to play as I was, and also partly my fault for hyping it up so much. She was usually a reasonable girl.

 

            Fuming, we both logged on. I found myself where I had started the game. We had only been arguing for 7 minutes, so I still had about 1½ hours for my buff. I impatiently waited for Yun-Jin to finish creating her avatar. In a flash, she materialized behind me and held her head with her eyes tightly shut. Oops, guess she forgot to cover them. Smiling evilly, I helped her up. She looked quite pretty. Sure the clothes were same as mine, but she had chosen to be a wood elf, and her attractiveness had risen accordingly. Her arms and legs were longer and now I was only an inch taller than her. Her usually jet black hair had turned dark brown to match that of a tree trunk. She looked way less intimidating. After looking around, her irritation quickly dissipated to make way for wonder.

 

“All right, so we have about 3 hours until dinnertime. That’s 12 hours here. Lets meet up when the timer beeps. By the way, give me half of your bread, you won’t need so much seeing as how you can start work right away and you’re going to be working at a restaurant. Try it out first, though.”

 

Yun-Jin took one out, ate it, and almost spit it back out. She kept hitting me.

 

“You did that on purpose!”

 

“Hey! OW! Stop hitting me! People are watching.”

 

It was true. Passerby and NPCs were either shaking their heads, sniggering, or muttering in muted voices, gesturing in our direction. After looking around, Yun-Jin stopped.

 

“Hmph. Well, I might need one or two for emergency, so here you go. Sigh~. Always wolfing down food like an animal. You inhale whatever’s in front of you. Try conserving your food.” She gave me 7 pieces of rye bread.

 

            We had set up a timer to let us know when to stop playing. It would warn us ahead of time what time it was. We decided that the health of our real bodies was of top priority, which meant three square meals a day, and at least 6 hours of sleep on the weekdays and more on weekends. Yun-Jin could do a lot more studying in game while simultaneously improving her intelligence and other skills she had yet to learn. She had named herself Sunshine. We added each other as friends, and I pointed her way to the best restaurants, the library, the training hall where I would be, and the ranger guild.

 

            “See ya.” She waved and made a beeline for a successful barbeque restaurant. I had no qualms of her being hired. She had always been a master around the kitchen.

 

            Shrugging, I made my way back to the Training Hall. Once I entered, a portly man who obviously had muscles beneath his prominent belly greeted me.

“Young adventurer, I presume you have arrived at the Versailles continent very recently,” the instructor said.

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“You shall find sword training absolutely necessary when you come to confront monsters. Do you need my guidance? I tell you, take any unattended scarecrow and strike him in any way you want. A wooden sword is placed in front of a scarecrow, and it is all yours.”

 

“Thank you for the information.” Although I knew what he was going to say, there was no need to be impolite to somebody I was bound to see often for the next couple of weeks.

 

“Godspeed.”

 

I took a wooden sword from a wall, took a deep breath, and proceeded to beat the hell out of the scarecrow. Thanks to the increased strength and vitality, I tired only slightly as time when on. I was determined to milk every last second of the buff. I focused on quality and aiming for various points of the body such as the neck, head, leg, and torso. My motion had to be fluid and smooth. My muscles tensed and flexed. My beginner clothing was soon soaked. I suddenly felt the wooden sword getting heavier and a message popped up.

 

Your strength and vitality have decreased by 2.

 

            Looked like my time was up. Taking a short break, I put the sword down and walked over to a different section of the Training Hall. I smiled at what I saw. There were a bunch of free-weights neatly lined in rows, and surrounding it was a large track. I contemplated whether to work out like I did in real life. This gym was the reason I had chosen this city. I thought better of it, however, because although my stats would rise, it wouldn’t help me in completing basic training, and my sword mastery skill wouldn’t budge. Sighing, I turned back and picked up the wooden sword. My satiety was still almost full, but I knew it was start dropping in earnest now. Carbohydrates could only take you so far in comparison to proper protein and fat. Taking brief breaks for water, air, and rye bread, I continued to pummel the scarecrow. I grimaced as I swallowed the barely edible bread. The luscious meat and stir-fry vegetables Yun-Jin frequently made had definitely spoiled me. After 4 hours two windows popped up.

 

Focus

Increases power, accuracy, and the success probability of all skills. Increases ability to block out distractions.

 

 

Sword Mastery [Beginner Lvl. 1 (0%)]

Increases Attack Power with a sword (+10% ATK) Increases Attack Speed with a sword (+3% ATK SPD)

 

 

            I soon got a message from Yun-Jin. “I got hired!!!” That was fast. I replied “Good job, I’ll be a the training hall.” The power output had noticeably increased. I made sure to keep my body tight and flex my legs, abdominals, and back. The extra tension helped my focus and worked my whole body as a system. Then I incorporated different footwork and worked on efficiency of movement and use of energy, increasing dexterity. I decided to eat only if the satiety bar dropped past the last quarter until starvation. This would be difficult once Yun-Jin got her cooking skills up, but it was worth a try. About eight hours later, Yun-Jin joined me after politely greeting the instructor.

 

“Lets go over to the park, I brought dinner.”

 

My ears perked up at the mention of proper food.

 

“One sec, let me just get one more stat boost.”

 

“All right, I’ll be running on the track, then.”

 

30 minutes later, I was greeted with,

 

Strength rises by 1

 

 

“Stat window.”

 

Character name: Meadow

Alignment: Neutral

Level: 1

Profession: Blacksmith Helper

Title: None

Reputation: 0

Vitality: 105

Mana: 100

Strength: 15

Dexterity: 14

Endurance: 15

Wisdom: 10

Intelligence: 10

Luck: 10

Leadership: 0

Attack: 3

Defense: 0

Fire Resistance: 0

Ice Resistance: 0

Earth Resistance: 0

Air Resistance: 0

Electricity Resistance: 0

Holy Resistance: 0

Dark Resistance: 0

 

Sword Mastery (Beginner Lvl. 1 28%)

Identify (Beginner Lvl. 2 (14%))

Repair (Beginner Lvl. 2 (51%))

Sharpening (Beginner Lvl. 1 (89%))

Polish (Beginner Lvl. 2 (76%))

 

 

            I put the sword away, and went over to the track. I was flabbergasted. Yun-Jin was running as if her life depended on it around the track. The sight wasn’t very pretty, and she was getting more than a few stares from the others. Fortunately, she saw me, slowed down, came over, said hi, and promptly collapsed on the track. Sighing, I piggybacked her out of the training hall.  She came around on my back on the way to the park.

 

“Dude, you stink. Go take a shower.”

 

“Well you don’t smell like flowers right now either, princess. Deal with it.”

 

“Jerk.” Smacking my head, she swiftly wrapped her arms around me.

 

“This feels good.”

 

She sighed contentedly and I rolled my eyes. We got to the park and I set her down on a bench.

 

“Why were you running so fast?”

 

“Well running increases dexterity, so I thought the faster I ran, the faster it would increase, simple as that.”

 

“Yeah, but it isn’t efficient. You lose time by being passed out, and it could’ve been dangerous. What if I wasn’t there? Not everyone here is nice, you know.”

 

“…Pervert… Well I didn’t know my avatar would be THAT weak. Aww… Were you worried about me?”

 

I fought the urge to roll my eyes again.

 

“Whatever, just don’t let your endurance get to zero like that again, got it?”

 

“Got it, Dad.”

 

“Anyway, SHOW ME THE FOOD.”

 

Yun-Jin took out her canteen. Instead of water, however, it was soup. Apparently, the head chef was a nasty lady, but Yun-Jin wasn’t cowed. Since Yun-Jin couldn’t learn the cooking skill immediately, she made do with being a kitchen helper. Although she couldn’t learn the cooking skill yet, she still got to observe the masters at work and also had obtained the handicraft and sharpening skills by chopping, cleaning, washing, drying, removing trash, and so on. The head chef was so impressed with Yun-jin’s skill and work ethic she had filled her canteen full of soup to make the rye bread edible by the end of the day. Yun-Jin had earned 6 silvers, raised her level and handicraft skill by 1, and also increased her dexterity, strength, stamina, and vitality by 2. We drained the soup while having a piece of bread each. We knew we’d have an actual dinner in RL momentarily, but it was fun walking around the park at sunset. This was a good substitute for the usual dinner we ate out on Friday nights.

 

Art (+2)

A gift in comprehending and practicing beauty, art renders meals and products elegant in an aesthetic and practical sense. Improves when you see, hear, smell, taste or touch beautiful things, or create artworks.

 

After logging out, we ate dinner in RL, talking about classes, work, and RR, obviously. It felt strange to eat again, but we were hungry, so it didn’t matter. We logged back in afterwards. I had 12 hours to train. She had briefly visited a shop and purchased needles, strings, scissors, and other essentials of sewing. Both of us believed that multitasking was a myth, and sewing while reading with low handicraft was a recipe for blood, distraction, and disaster. She decided to spend her time in the library, and sew when her brain tired out. As for me, by hitting the scarecrow, I was able to obtain two additional points in strength and dexterity.

Once we logged out, it was around 11P.M., so we got ready for bed. Yun-Jin had focused on anatomy and healing magic today, and planned to focus on fire and ice over the weekend. Instead, I told her to start working on archery, as it would take longer for her to learn than simple magic. Although she had taken some archery classes and liked them, archery had proved to be quite difficult for her. She had still progressed moderately in the couple of months she had trained before the game came out, so I still had high hopes and expectations that she would eventually succeed.

Author's Note

Should I go into more detail, or are their actions too repetitive and predictable. Should I quicken the pace of the plot?