(Tentative about rping right now due to events in another game. If I just COMPLETELY SCREW UP and am horrible, and am scolded, I will just drop completely. Just a fair warning. I am feeling sensitive right now, and if I can't get it right, I shouldn't do this at all anymore).
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Val pocketed another small drop-item from a freshly-slain creature - a random meat/food type of item. She didn't know exactly what it was supposed to do, but she'd heard that there was some kind of Cooking skill one could acquire in this game, so various foods and food-combinations must enhance certain attributes.
She'd taken to life away from the square in the Town of Beginnings. She couldn't face the thought that most of the people she'd met were going to die, nor that she was soon to die right now. She'd noticed quite a lot of people shuffling around in the woods and fields right now, using the random monsters and creatures to level themselves up in preparation to clear the levels. In her experience playing videogames, she'd never gotten through any reasonably challenging one without dying at least a few times - not even ones that had an incentive at the conclusion for a "no-deaths" end. Val thought ruefully to all of those characters that she'd purposefully killed a few times just to watch their death-animations.
It wasn't her fault that Link could die in many interesting ways, was it?
Yeah, now some crazy game-designer was playing with her. There were more ways to play a game than just one. She didn't have to be a frontliner or even a second-wave warrior. She could hang back, perhaps use the "hunting" skills she was cultivating to help others in the game. Not everyone in the real world was a part of the military, or a cop, or a firefighter. The world needed its farmers, mechanics, and to a lesser degree, its graphic designers. Yeah, she could make quite a bit of money just doing hunting for drop-items to sell to the fighters and get a nice little home somewhere to live until the game was cleared...
Val shook those thoughts out of her head. Could she really live being a coward? Sure, she was doubtful she had the skill to make it to the end-boss, but she could try, couldn't she? Level up on lesser creatures. Get strong. Surely, people would start forming guilds. Maybe she could join one.
She signed as she looked out over the forest. "I'll be as much use to you as I can," she recited to herself, pretending to solicit a guild-leader, "I'll fight hard and I'll hunt treasures for everyone. And when the fight becomes hopeless, I am willing to become your sacrificial lamb..."