5 My First Battle

I continued down the winding road for a while before spotting a town in the distance. Happy to see some kind of civilization, I make my way towards it.

Partway through my trip, I stumbled upon some rabbit looking animal. It was large, like a jackrabbit, but it had some kind of horn on its head. As I was staring at the rabbit, a notification came in.

You learned a new skill!

Analyze: [Rank E] (Active) Give the user information on the focused object. More details available at higher levels

I close the window and focus again on the rabbit.

Name: Horned Rabbit

Level: 1

(Aww. It looks so cute.)

I decide to slowly make may towards the rabbit to see if I can pet it. Once I get close enough, it perks up and looks my way moving its cute little nose around. I crouch down and beckon the cute furball towards me.

"Hey, mister rabbit. Over here."

As if answering my wish, the rabbit started to hop towards me.

(Wait, isn't he moving a bit too fast?)

I notice the rabbit is now making a beeline straight towards me at an incredible pace. Before I can react, the rabbit lowers its head and rams straight into me.

I feel some of the air pushed out of my lungs and a sharp pain in my stomach. I felt my body fly in the air a few feet before I hit the ground. I shakily get on my hands and knees coughing, when I notice that the rabbit's horn broke off in my side. I then see my HP bar go down.

HP: 3/9

I may not play many games, but even I know that once that hits zero, I die. I look up at the not so cute rabbit. It is just making a rebound pass towards me again. I shakily get up and draw my sword and hold it with two hands.

(Cheeky little bastard. Fine, this mother will play with you.)

He jumps in the air towards me, and my years playing softball kick in as I swing with all my strength. I feel a slight sickening sensation as I watch the rabbit get cleaved straight in half. The pieces of its body hit the ground as some of its blood splatters on me.

You learned a new skill!

Power Swing: [Rank E] (Active) Doubles the damage done with a melee attack at the cost of accuracy. -60% accuracy.

So that's how real-life skills come into the game. I will need to experiment with that later. I look down at my wound and realize I am still bleeding as I lost one more HP. I cut my left pant leg to the point the left side looks like booty shorts. But I don't care right now, as I cut long strips of cloth.

I pull the horn out of my side and quickly bandage my side to stop the bleeding.

You learned a new skill!

First Aid [Rank E] (Active) Heal 1 point of HP. With the right tools, you can cure status ailments.

Giving a mental fist pump, I activate my First Aid skill again. Instead of working, I get the message that I need to wait 30 minutes to use this skill on me again.

I looked at the horn and the rabbit and decided to try and put them in my inventory. I see the rabbit and horn turn into lights and disappear. Checking the inventory, I can see they are in there.

Pretending I just did not almost get my butt kicked by a rabbit, I make my way back towards my destination.

----

Judging by the sun, it was about noon when I reached the town. The dirt road I was on was most likely a side road as it merged to a more extensive road made of stone. I walked up towards the large gated wall and saw what looked like a guard of some kind leaning on his spear.

"Excuse me, sir."

Startled that someone spoke to him, he looks at me before speaking.

"Yes. What do you need?"

"I'm new here, and I would like to know about the town and where I can sell things. I have horned rabbit I need to sell."

"Right, so this town is called Darkwood City. It's a little small for a city, but it is growing quite fast. We have the Adventurers Hall; there you can request or accept tasks from other people. You can't join them though unless you have a permit from either the Fighters School, Hunters School, or the Magic Academy."

"We also have a few shops in town as well, such as a smithy, tailor, and a tavern. There are more but those are the basic ones. You can take your rabbit to the butcher and sell the meat. Then you can sell the pelt and horn at the tailor. On behalf of the lord of Darkwood City, welcome."

I walk into the city, and I feel a sense of excitement. The town truly did feel like something out of fantasy. I notice there are a lot of people walking around, and a few of them have a green icon above their heads. I would guess those are the other players.

I walk around town for a while, asking where I could find the butcher and the tailor at. About an hour later, I was walking out of the tailor shop with a grand total of 37 gold. That seems to be the currency in this game. I check the gold to dollar ratio and discover that right now, it is 1 gold to 1 dollar. That can change, though, as more people use the gold exchange. Also, looking at the currency, it seems that 1000 gold equals to 1 black gold coin.

Seeing as I have some time left before I must start dinner, I decided to check out the different schools. I didn't know which one I wanted to do first, so I made up my mind to go with the hunter school first.

I make my way towards a large tribal looking building with the Hunter School sign on it. Walking in, I notice a counter with a catgirl. Seeing her makes me wish I had picked that race instead. She did look kind of cute, and I wonder if I could pet her. I mean, I would pet myself if I looked like that.

"Hello! Welcome to the hunter school! How can I help you?"

"I would like to train here."

"Certainly. It will be 10 gold and that would give you some training equipment and access to the training yard. Your trainer will be Urlgan, you can find him in the training yard by himself."

I hand over the money, and I was given a simple set of leather armor, a bow, quiver of arrows, and a survival kit. I find a secluded spot and change into my leather armor. While changing, I am reminded again of the fact, I still have a dick.

The armor felt more like clothing than I thought it would. It was mostly just a cloth sleeveless shirt and long pants. It had some hard leather pieces that fit over the top of it. Like some sort of chest piece that fit snuggly, leather shoes with shin guards, and it came with some fingerless gloves. The glove went just below my elbows and had a leather part that covered my forearms.

Once I was dressed, I to the training yard where a large muscular green-skinned person. He had long black hair in dreads and two tusks coming out from his lower jaw. He was doing some exercises and stood at about 200 cm.

"Are you Urlgan?" I had asked with some uncertainty.

He stopped what he was doing and wiped some of the sweat off his forehead.

"You must be a new recruit. My name is Urlgan Shadow Hunter, but everyone just calls me Urlgan."

He had spoken in a deep, gravely voice. It definitely matched his looks. I am still not too familiar with the races yet in this game, so I don't know what he is.

"To start the first thing to know about being a hunter is knowing when to run. Knowing that could save your life. To start I want you to do twenty laps around the yard. Got to build up your endurance."

I looked at the large training yard, and I almost fainted. It was nearly 3 km around the whole track, and I had to run that 20 times!?