My Isekai Fantasy Is All Wrong!

Chapter 2: Level Up

I took stock of my current situation. I was alone and naked in the middle of some forest which may not even be on a version of Earth. So far, I hadn’t ran into any hostile wildlife. I’d seen some birds, a couple different types of bugs, and a scant amount of small squirrel-like rodents. But, I hadn’t seen anything that could be a threat to me aside from maybe the one deer I saw with massive antlers. Although, it had ran off before I’d even noticed it, so maybe not; ironically the loud getaway it made while trying to “escape me” was what caused me to notice it.

What did I need? Food and water were debatable since I now had the body of a video game character. Unless there were survival mechanics embedded in my Gamer power, I could theoretically already be functionally immortal. So far, I hadn’t seen anything about a Hunger or Thirst Meter like I had for my Health and Stamina, so I dropped the issue of food and water to consider the need for shelter.

Again, it was debatable that I’d need a place to rest and recover when I already recovered my Health and Stamina at a fixed rate, seemingly in perpetuity. At the end of the day, this question would also depend on whether my Gamer power allowed me to function without sleep and face no repercussions.

Although I wouldn’t be thrilled to have no base of operations established and live as a nomad for the foreseeable future, I would certainly go through with it if I had to. Then again, perhaps it would be for the best to seek out a temporary shelter and experiment with my powers before I did something so needlessly reckless.

I was still far from the base of the mountain, but I was closer to it than I was to the summit. So, I carefully began to make my way around and down the mountain as I looked for caves to camp out at. I found a few that were either way too small or way too deep before finding one that was just deep enough for the sunlight to illuminate its end before I settled down for the first time since being dropped in this world. It was just in time, too as the sun had started to set.

I decided to continue using my Sprint Skill through the night until I felt tired enough to sleep, but similar to my experience with jogging and running for hours during the day, the exhaustion never came. It was a boring way to spend hours, but it was useful in confirming the fact that I didn’t strictly need to sleep.

When daylight broke the next day, I left my little cave and went around looking for sources of food and water just in case there was some threshold for sudden dehydration or starvation debuffed I was about to cross.

[Milestone Quest Complete!]
[Name: Survive 1]
[Description: Make it to your 1 day anniversary.]
[Reward: +10 Exp, +1 Skill Point]

[Debuff Inflicted!]
[Debuff Inflicted!]
[Debuff Inflicted!]

For a moment I braced myself only to find that I was in the same state I’d been in prior to randomly gaining three debuffs. Nothing seemed out of place, so I was a little annoyed to have been spooked. It was only after I wondered to myself if there was some screen, panel, or [Status] function that let me look at my full Stats that I figured out what happened to me.

[Status]
[Name: John Doe]
[Level: 1 (50/100)]
[Status Effects: Thirsty (-80% Stamina Regen), Hungry (-20% Total Stamina, -50% Health Regen), Sleep Deprived (-10% All Stats)]
[Health: 900/1,000 (900/900)]
[Stamina: 658/1,000 (658/720)]
[Strength: 10 (9)]
[Constitution: 10 (9)]
[Vitality: 10 (9)]
[Agility: 10 (9)]
[Perception: 10 (9)]
[Intelligence: 10 (9)]
[Wisdom: 10 (9)]
[Luck: 10 (9)]
[Charisma: 10 (9)]

Yikes. Guess, I couldn’t just skip out on drinking, eating, and sleeping without facing some sort of inconvenience. I was still countless times better off than I would have been without my Gamer powers, but I’d rather not have to deal with these debuffs if I could help it.

Fortunately, I already had remedies for the Thirsty and Hungry debuffs. I’d found a stream flowing down the mountain within an hour of exploring around my cave home and it just so happened to be surrounded by bushes of some sort of berry. Now, when I say “some sort of berry” I mean, they were identical in appearance and texture to blackberries; I just wasn’t knowledgeable enough in foraging or horticulture to confidently claim them as blackberries for sure.

As I made my way to the stream where the berries were located, I debated the pros and cons of eating them. On the one hand, it was a gamble that could potentially end my life if the berries turned out to be uber-poisonous lookalikes. On the other hand, I had Gamer powers which should help me out if it turned out the berries were poisonous in the end.

Cold Resistance as a Skill was already a confirmed thing; why wouldn’t Poison Resistance follow suit? Moreover, I had that Skill Point from the Milestone Quest as my ace in the hole. At this very moment, I could spend that Skill Point to raise either one of my Skills to the next level. So, if I ate the berries and they turned out to be poisonous, not only would I have an almost assured Poison Resistance to hopefully eliminate the threat, but I could bolster that Poison Resistance immediately to greatly increase my chances of survival.

The gamble thus remained, only it became much more aligned in my favor. I didn’t have to gamble on whether I could survive any poison, but something that even a Level 2 Poison Resistance could not handle in the very worst-case scenario.

Should I take the risk?

“Fuck it, we ball,” I muttered to myself before tossing a berry into my mouth and chewing on it.

It tasted amazing; sweeter than any blackberry I’d ever eaten, yet not obscenely so like the high-fructose corn syrup candies I was familiar with back on Earth. I waited a second, and checked my Status, before waiting a minute and checking again. When nothing changed, I shrugged my shoulders and cleaned out all the berries I could find by the bushes until the Hungry debuff went away.

I then started drinking water from the stream.

[Debuff Inflicted!]

I frowned as I checked my Status only to roll my eyes at the new Debuff that had replaced “Thirsty.”

[Status]
…
[Status Effects: Infection {Bacteria} (-80 Health/Hour - 4 Hours), Sleep Deprivation]

It took a couple minutes, but I managed to Unlock an Infection Resistance Skill which halved the effective time of the Debuff to 2 Hours and reduced the damage over time to -20 Health/Hour. All in all, I was content with saving up my Skill Point for now.

I decided to wait for nightfall to sleep away the Sleep Deprivation, so as my next course of action while the sun was still up, I tried to call up a [Quest] Function much like I’d done for my [Status] and [Skills] to see if there was anything else I could do to earn rewards that didn’t involve recklessly chugging more bacteria-infested water or Sprinting back to where the higher altitudes did Cold Damage to me.

[Quests]
[Daily Quest]
[Name: Strongest Workout Routine]
[Description: 100 Sit-Ups, 100 Push-Ups, 100 Squats, 10 Kilometer Run]
[Reward: Full Recovery, +10 Exp (First Completion Only)]

[Given Quest]
[None]

[World Quest]
[None]

[Milestone Quest]
…

There were tons of Milestone Quests to go through, none of which were feasible for me at this very moment. So, aside from the Daily Quest which was rather underwhelming for a One Punch Man reference, there wasn’t really anything I could do. Oh well, guess that means, I was going to be working out for the rest of the day.

Or not.

The Daily Quest was hardly a challenge when you were a freak of nature who couldn’t physically tire. It was honestly unsettling going through the entire workout routine without pause and no change to my body. I didn’t lose my breath, I couldn’t feel my heart rate spike, nor did I even sweat after what felt like maybe an hour of constant exercise.

There were still a couple hours left before the sunset by the time I was done, so I decided to continue exploring around my cave before eventually retreating to sleep. I didn’t use the Full Recovery I earned from the Daily Quest, for the same reason I never let my Stamina dip below 50%.

As it turns out, I got the Full Recovery treatment regardless once my Sprint Skill hit Level 3 and I personally Leveled Up to Level 2.

[Skill Level Up!]
[Name: Sprint Lvl 2 → 3 | +30 Exp]
[Description: For when you need to run like your life depends on it.]
[Active Cost: Level 1 - 5 Stamina per Second | Level 2 - 16 Stamina per Second | Level 3 - 50 Stamina per Second]

[Level Up!]
[Full Recovery!]
[+3 Stat Points]
[+1 Skill Point]
[Shop Function Unlocked!]