Your first Quest

You awake in shaded woods leaning against a small tree, on the bank of a gentle creek. You lie peacefully for a moment thinking over what just happened.

“So I died…” you sighed. “Was it worth it?”

You had always been a cat person, what were you to do? Watch it die?

“Well, I always dreamt of playing a full dive VR game, or being isekai’d. Earth was always so dull. Let’s see what this world has in store.”

You look at a screen hovering just below your chest.

[Quest]

Explore player menu.

Accepting unlocks Lexi the guide.

Accept?

“Unlocks Lexi..?”

You reached out and pressed accept.

The screen disappeared and quest objectives appeared at the top left of your peripheral vision. Only coming into focus if you intentionally look at it.

In front of you, a small green orb of light appeared, before flashing and transforming into what appeared to be a fairy. She stood the height of your hand and watched you with pretty green eyes. On her back were 2 sets of wings with light green hair resting against her upper back, not affected by her fluttering wings. She wore a white bandeau with golden outlines that held her sizable chest, along with a matching skirt that was slightly open at the front.

“Hi! I’m Lexi! I was summoned by the guardian to act as your guide. How are you feeling?” Lexi said.

“Uhh, fine..”

“Great! Then let's get you set up. First things first we should get you dressed.” She said looking down towards your groin.

Blushing you move your hands to cover yourself.

She smiled.

“Don’t worry! It’s simple. Just think about your player menu then motion down with your hand.”

You did as she said and a small screen with a list of options appeared before you.

“For clothes, just press inventory, select the clothes you want, and drag them into the clothing slots,” she said, while her eyes focused on your privates.

You quickly equipped some basic-looking clothes, barely noticed other items in your inventory. Glancing at them, you realized they were mostly basic stuff, like food and water, but most were items you didn’t recognize.

“You can select items to read them, but you can do that later, for now, hit the arrow at the top left of the screen to move back to the menu. There should be a stat screen. Select that.” she directed as she flew over, landing on your left shoulder.

You navigate to the stat screen and look through the information.

“Your name is.. Jason? A nice name, and look! We’re both 23! I wonder if we share birthdays... Nope. Anyway, as you can see this just displays basic information about you, at least for now. First, you need a rune!” she said excitedly.

“A rune?” you questioned.

“Mhmm. A rune will be the foundation of your magic. The lucky few are born with them or form them later on. The majority of us have to get one from a monster or find one formed in the wild, that's pretty rare though. A lot of people just buy them, you usually have to be pretty well off though. Luckily for you though, I can grant you one rune. Mostly common ones though. But don’t worry! They can be upgraded, merged, or just straight up replaced.”

“So what rune do you want? I can give you fire, water, wind, earth, ice, lightning, wood, sand, strength, or shadow.”

When you played RPG games back on Earth you would usually pick fire-type mages, something about the look of giant fire attacks made you fall in love. However, this was reality and fire had some significant drawbacks. Like burning down buildings or some other environment.

“It’s kind of hard to choose without knowing how they work,” you said. “Which runes are considered the strongest?”

“Well, it’s more about how the runes synergize with other runes you gain in the future. So it's not really about one runes strength. What really matters if your fighting style. For example, some people might like brute damage, so they might combo fire and strength runes. Or maybe a earth, shield combo for defense. The wind, lightning, or shadow runes might be used for quick attacks with critical strikes and could be combo'd with something that compliment them.”

“Personally I would pick the water rune, then you can take bathes anywhere!”

Ignoring Lexi's bathing idea, you thought deeply on your choice. Even if you could swap them later, your first choices mattered. You really weren't interested in defensive or slow-moving runes, and you just hated sand, it gets everywhere! You weren't to found of getting soaked everything you fought, so the water rune didn't sound that interesting.

After thinking for some time, you made your choice.

“I’ll go with lightning. Typically in games lightning is fast and powerful. Hard for enemies to dodge and gives you agility options.”

Lexi nodded. “Sounds good, adventurers with lightning runes can be pretty terrifying.”

“Usually runes are little round spheres with the rune symbol embedded within it. But I’ll just be transferring it to you directly.” She floated up to your chest and rested her hand on you.

“You should feel the rune settle into your body, for lightning it’ll feel like a jolt. It might hurt a bit, but it'll be over quick.” she said before focusing.

You felt a quick jolt of electricity, which you actually found oddly pleasant. Inside your chest, just below your heart, you could feel, and somehow see, a light blue rune settle into place.

[Received Lightning Rune]

[Ability: Lightning bolt unlocked]

[Ability: Lightning Cloak unlocked]

[Aura Unlocked]

[Mana Stat unlocked]

You felt amazing, brimming with incredible power. Around you sparks of electricity danced erratically You stood and held your hand out before you, feeling like a powerful mage from an anime. Then a bolt of lightning ripped from your hand, instantly slamming into the creek, causing a fish to basically explode.

“Eep!" Lexi jumped. "Calm down! You’ll drain your mana if you don’t control yourself, you released your aura! Also, you really shouldn’t be able to cast lightning bolt without chanting first..”

“Anyway, focus! Try to imagine a cylinder-shaped aura around you and then squeeze it in a small area around you.”

You tried to focus and did as she said.

“Good, good. Now relax the power slowly, like a storm losing its power, the rain finally easing.”

You slowly felt the rippling power around you fade. Eventually, the sparks faded and the power was contained. However your body still felt energized and full of power.

“I’ve never felt anything like this. I feel so powerful, is this how mages feel all the time?” You said, feeling mighty.

“Yes, the first rune always feels amazing. Like you gained a piece of you that has always been missing. A power so strong you could slay dragons. But you would still be labeled as weak in this world, and you must learn to get used to it. Just look what you did to that poor fish. You need to train a lot to become truly powerful.”

Looking at what remained of the fish you electrocuted, you sat back down, attempting to calm yourself.

After a few moments, Lexi landed back on your shoulder.

“How about we take a look at your stat screen again?”

You did as she suggested and opened the screen.

You immediately noticed a few more stats on the page.

“Mana… Is that a lot? Also, why does the lightning rune have an A rank?”

“That’s a pretty average amount of mana. As for the rune, the rank is the quality of the rune. Since it was a gift, it's a good one. The only thing better would be S rank, but giving you that would just be cheating. The lowest rank you can get is E, so A is still very good.”

“What does bronze rank mean for my lightning bolt?”

“That's the rank of your ability. You can level your abilities by using them, or by absorbing monster cores. Every ability starts are the bronze rank, unless you absorb it from a tome that specifically says a higher rank. After you pass the bronze rank there is silver, gold, platinum, and diamond ranks.”

You nodded.

“Another important thing is passive abilities, you can see a list of them by pressing the tab at the top of your screen. You shouldn’t have one yet, but it’s possible you were born with one or more likely in your case granted one by the guardian. Take a look!”

You did as she said and opened the passive abilities tab. There you saw two entries on the screen.

The first one was pain tolerance, allowing you to feel less pain when attacked.

“I’m really glad I got that one, I can’t imagine feeling the pain of having my body burned by fire or crushed by a giant boulder.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone with that one. That’s really lucky!” she responded.

“What’s that other one?….”

“…”

Lexi’s face turned a bright red.

“Mana-enriched seminal fluid... Wow. That... Is actually something highly sought after.”

“What does it do?”

“Well, basically whoever receives your cum gains a power boost.”

“Remember how I said you could level abilities with monster cores? It's like that. Let me explain a bit about monster cores."

"Monster cores are an item dropped when they are killed. Adventurers can use these monster cores to level up their abilities to save time, or even upgrade the quality of your rune. The problem is, is the monster you kill must have the same rune as you do, otherwise the core can't be absorbed. So if you had a water rune or water type abilities, you would need a monster core from a monster that used a water rune. On top of all that, the monster core also needs to be the correct quality.”

“Take your A-ranked rune for instance. You would need a rank-A monster core to upgrade it without the quality dropping. Rank S if you want to improve it.

“What do you mean upgrade your rune?”

“As I said, runes can be combined or upgraded. If you get enough experience or use a monster core you can upgrade the rune. For example, the Fire rune can be upgraded to an Inferno rune.”

“Getting high-ranked monster cores can be very difficult though, since it means killing high ranked monsters. So most adventurers are stuck with whatever quality rune they found, and they're to level up the hard way. Also, another issue is, if you use too many low-ranked monster cores, you may end up absorbing bad attributes.”

“Your ability though solves all those problems! The mana-enriched seminal fluid works on anyone regardless of core-type. Plus this is an S-ranked ability, so adventurers can consume it to level abilities, upgrade their runes, or even rank up the runes quality. Anyone who gets your semen can gain a power boost without any of the negative drawbacks! Well... I heard some girls might become addicted to cum… but that’s not a negative!”

“If people were aware of your ability, they would do anything they could to recruit you. Some may even try to abduct you. If you do reveal it though, many would be willing to pay top dollar to have sex with you. You could probably even marry into the royal family if you wanted.”

You sat back and thought of all the possibilities of this new ability. That cat wasn’t lying when it picked a gift suited to your tastes. Thinking of your future you were beginning to feel excited.

“Anyway, that’s pretty much everything you need to worry about for now. Next up you should head to the city marked on your map. There you can register yourself as an adventurer at the guildhall. You can make your information public for recruiters, or join a party. Unless you feel like going solo. You can make your choice there.”

“For now though, I’ll be going, you can summon me back by opening your menu and selecting ”Summon Lexi“.

“Unless… You need help relaxing?” She said with a slight blush.