On the dawn of a new day, the golden radiance of the sun broke through the lavender sky, melting it softly into pastel blues and gentle pinks.

  Cid stared at the magnificent display of colors with his axe on his bloodied shoulder and a smile on his face. Numerous stumps surrounded him, cut down with less effort than fighting the wolf.

  After his battle yesterday, Cid learned that being critically low on health made him feel as horrid as being sleep-deprived. He passed out against his will and discovered that sleeping restored some HP even if it wasn’t on a bed. However, despite sleeping the entire night away, his health only went up by twenty points.

  Cid stared behind him at the roofless box of chestnut-colored wood, something he dared call a house. The perfectly symmetrical walls had a splintered gap for a doorway, a thoughtful gift from Heidee. It was definitely an act of kindness, and it wasn’t because Cid forgot to add a door when he boxed her in last night.

  ‘I should have constructed the bed yesterday… Being too tired isn’t an excuse to leave myself vulnerable… Eh… Compact inventory, appear!’ Cid swiped the air confidently, commanding the familiar emerald panel to snap open with a soft electronic woosh.

  ___________

  [Blueprint]

  [Wood] x 192

  [Logs] x 87

  [Stone] x 32

  [Stone Axe]

  [Wolf – Level 1] x 2

  [Wolf – Level 2] x 2

  [Wolf pelt] x 24

  [Wolf fang]

  ___________

  Cid grinned with pride. Cutting down trees was tedious work, but seeing the numbers go that high was oddly satisfying. The sad part was the lack of useful battle recipes.

  ‘Building this cube helped me reach level four, which only unlocked a wardrobe and a cooking station…’

  Cid sighed and glanced at Heidee as she sat in front of a campfire cooking skewered meat while nibbling on the ones that were ready. Her casual serenity was strange after everything that happened to her; Cid fell a tree on her and broke her sword, yet she wasn’t as mad as he expected her to be. She didn’t question his true class, didn’t punish him for the broken sword and just acted like nothing happened. It was unsettling.

  Cid wanted to pry into her head and figure out why she was so relaxed about everything that happened, but he also wanted to avoid direct conversation in case it escalated things, so he chose to focus on his own arsenal of tools instead.

  ‘Depending on how the bed works, I could use it instead of healing potions. That could open up a way to fight with hit-and-run tactics.’

  Cid initiated Build Mode and ejected his pseudo-spirit out of his body. It curled up and floated a short distance away, still staring at his physical self pulling out boards, wooden legs, beams and then smaller pieces of wooden joints, like tenons and dowels—pieces with jutting parts and indentations to hold the wood together like a jigsaw puzzle.

  After a short pause, Cid’s automated body—Bill—pulled out a padded mattress made from ashen fur.

  [Lost 16 wood, 176 left.]

  [Lost 8 wolf pelts, 16 left.]

  ‘Hmm… Interesting… I guess the recipe reshapes the materials even if it doesn’t fit the requirement… I mean, eight pelts would never lead to something this thick… Does that mean eight soft feathers can also make a bed?’

  Cid floated to the mattress to inspect it, its rounded edges and plump shape promising him a great night’s sleep. He suddenly noticed Heidee staring at Bill with attentive eyes, carefully taking in every motion with deep focus.

  ‘She looks so captivated by this… Is it really that interesting?’

  Cid looked back at Bill who was hammering wooden indents inside of intersecting pieces without showing any emotion.

  ‘I don’t understand what anything even is…’

  Cid sighed and floated away to re-explore the underground cave, but Heidee’s voice halted him before he moved too far away.

  “Cinders, are you… making a bed?”

  “Yeah, it beats sleeping on the ground like we did,” Cid answered on instinct without realizing that he wasn’t in his body.

  ‘Wait, she can’t hear me…’

  “But why? This is just the starting area. We’re going to leave, aren’t we?” she answered while glaring at Bill.

  Cid tilted his confused head, wondering how she could hear him. He quickly floated to Bill for answers and stared at him while talking.

  “Why should we leave so soon? There could be more dangerous things out there. We need to gather our strength first.” Bill’s mouth moved in tandem with Cid’s, yet his face remained stoic and focused, akin to some sort of soulless android.

  ‘Ugh… This looks so weird…’

  “Gather our strength? Are you talking about killing the same beasts over and over again? To farm them for experience points? Ahh… This is the second time you said something cowardly…”

  ‘Big words from someone who has over a hundred health and no damage limitations!’ Cid hissed in his mind.

  “Cinders… We need to kill stronger things to level up quicker. I’m already done with my quests, and apparently I need to kill slimes and… hatchlings now. I really hoped we could travel together, but I can’t match your pace if you’re going to cower behind methods like gearing up completely and grinding for experience points. I mean, seriously, you didn’t even take one step out of the spawn location!” Heidee barked and pointed at Cid with a skewer.

  “Cowering? I’m just being smart. This isn’t just some game where we can respawn after a mistake, our actual lives are on the line.” Cid crossed his arms and tilted his spectral head in annoyance.

  “Tsk… Whatever. I’m going to continue exploring this world and looking for fun things to fight. I won’t sit here watching you build a house.”

  Heidee bit down on the cooked meat and fluidly slid the skewer out of her mouth. She grabbed the meat she cooked and walked away.

  Cid shrugged. He didn’t care what she thought, his true goal was to become stronger than most typical classes, to destroy things by himself. She didn’t matter.

  Despite how his battle with the wolf went, fighting was still exhilarating, it was something he wanted to do. There had to be a way to strengthen himself and fight things in the proper sense.

  Cid sighed deeply and pondered his situation and choices for a while, at least until a sudden cosmic tug pulled his transparent body back into his physical one. “Not again!”

  [You mastered Wolf Bed – Gained 10 XP!]

  “Ugh… So annoying… It’s ready…”

  The bed was simple in design, a rugged ashen mattress slotted into a pale wooden frame, as plain as everything else he made so far. Cid quickly plopped his dejected body onto the bed, letting himself sink into its cushy padding. A deep warmth flowed through him with a rejuvenating effect, as if he walked out of an intensive massage session and then jumped under a weighted blanket.

  [Gained Wolf Bed bonus: Wolf skill (Backstab) for 30 minutes.]

  [Gained Rest bonus: Recovered full HP.]

  The familiar tingle of the emerald panel surprised him with the information it carried.

  “Wolf skill? It makes sense for mobs and monsters to have skills but I didn’t expect to get one just by making a bed… What did Boxy say? I get altered Legacy effects because of the logic glitch? Is this what that meant?”

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Cid swiped the air, summoning his info window while thinking of the wolf skill.

  ________________________

  Skills:

  [Backstab]

  Do double damage to a creature’s back. (Ambush Skill.)

  ________________________

  Normally this would’ve been a powerful skill to have, but his crippling debuff meant he’d only get around half of his original damage if he used it.

  While he couldn’t see damage numbers like he wished, Cid had a guess about how it was calculated thanks to the wolf encounter the night before.

  Every buff and damage increase was added first and then reduced down to a quarter of its total, so even though Cid’s weapon was strengthened by [Weakpoint Exploit], all of that power only outputted a quarter of its might, which Cid assumed to be close to his base attack power if it weren’t weakened. Half was still better than a quarter.

  ‘But still less…’

  Cid sighed, failing to cheer himself up when his weakness was painfully obvious.

  “No point crying about it… So what if I can’t kill wolves by accidentally frolicking through the trees like those blessed freaks of nature!? Calling me a coward without understanding a thing! Any sane person would be a coward in my shoes! Even though I’m not!”

  With an angry huff, Cid rolled to his feet and stomped the ground, ensuring he did the most damage with every step, which surprisingly left visible pits in the dirt.

  “She’s still right… I can’t just keep sitting here building houses, I need to go kill things and explore the world. Let me think… Based on my skills, I can become a strange rogue hybrid… Rogues don't have to be strong, just fast enough to reach a high debuff count, so even if I do zero damage, if I can stack up ailment after ailment, like poison or blood loss, then I can still be dangerous. Hmm… I might find a weapon in that settlement Boxy mentioned. Two lightweight weapons that dish out ailments, maybe a few speed potions too.”

  Cid had the tools to reproduce weapons and potions, and if luck was on his side, he could find a glitched weapon or potion which he could exploit. One lucky stumble was all he needed to make his own perfect weapons.

  “But I need those ores. I bet other weapons require it too, so it won’t hurt to stock up on it before I visit town. I’ll… build a wardrobe, it should be complicated enough to stall Bill. Hopefully I can find the ore by then.”

  Cid’s virtual soul jumped out of his body and watched as Bill pulled out boards and strange wooden hinges from the void and stacked them near each other.

  [Lost 15 wood, 161 left.]

  Cid didn’t linger and zoomed like a wispy torpedo towards the hidden cave he saw before. He hastily slid down the slope and shot through the small maw of the cavern.

  A snarl drew his eyes but it didn’t stop him from drifting away while he watched two wolves with their canines interlocked in some sort of fight for dominance or the most misguided kissing session.

  ‘There are wolves down here too?’

  Cid grimaced and glided past the glowing chamber of enchanting fungi, right into the dim corridor of rocks on the left.

  As he had hoped, the obscuring dark didn’t last once he turned a bend and discovered a scattering of sapphire mushrooms. A massive lavender metal deposit stuck out of the jagged surface of the cave—a jackpot of Heirachtic ores if it wasn’t anything else.

  He suddenly decreased his speed and floated upside down to examine the reflective metal, curiously poking the ore. Its cold and rugged surface resisted him, and his hand didn’t go through it. “Whoa… Can I grab things as a ghost?”

  Cid swooped down into a squat and tried to pick a stray pebble. He felt its rough texture but couldn’t move it, as if it was glued down with a divine-grade adhesive.

  “Guess no–” An equally divine-grade squeeze suddenly pulled his leg and mercilessly fished him out of the cave past the many trees in short milliseconds. Cid never got into a car accident, but hitting his true body at Mach two speed instilled a fear of driving inside of him.

  “Gnh… My head feels like it will burst…”

  [You mastered Basic Wardrobe – Gained 10 XP!]

  “Alright, that cave has what I need. If I can somehow smoke the wolves out, then I can grab a decent amount of ores. And I won’t have to worry about dying since I have this!” Cid grinned and slapped the bed to put it in his inventory, but it remained stoically static, not reacting to his wishes at all. Instead, a small panel flashed open, showing the same stat benefits as resting in it.

  “I activated it just by touching it? That’s neat, but… I can’t take it in my inventory? What’s the criteria for picking stuff up? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t…”

  [Help: Inventory — The Crafter role can move items, equipment, objects, materials, ingredients, and several other object types in its inventory. Structures, environments, creatures and resource deposits are restricted from being picked up.]

  “Ah. Oh well, I can make more anytime I want so I’ll just leave it here.”

  Cid took a deep breath and crouched down in a running position.

  [Skill Activated: Swift Dash.]

  With an explosive push, Cid’s feet kicked off the ground and sent him leaping with every step, now brimming with the tireless speed and energy of an athlete. The wind blew his hair back and brushed his face with a refreshing coolness, reminding Cid of the dream-like vividness of his surroundings.

  He felt elation welling up inside him as he glided like the wind itself, a speed demon reincarnated. If he were to race a horse right now, then he was confident he would win despite having half the legs and a quarter of the horsepower.

  “Stop, scoundrel!” a masculine voice shouted with fury. Cid flinched and dug his heels in the earth to stop, but he couldn’t control his hastened speed and rammed painfully into a tree.

  [Received 3 damage.]

  “I’ll gut you if you move closer!” another man hissed.

  “Why!?” Cid screamed and glanced around him in a panic but saw no one nearby.

  “You think I’ll let you walk away after what you did to them?” the commanding voice growled hatefully from behind a different tree.

  With a gulp, Cid slowly inched closer to the umber bark and peaked behind it. He saw a man wearing full-plate armor, covered from head to toe in ashen steel while brandishing a hefty longsword—a high-level paladin judging by his well-decorated and effective radiant armor.

  On the opposite end stood a blond man wearing an ebony hood over intricate dark leathers, his clothes embroidered in crimson linings. A skull pendant in bright crimson and violet highlights stuck out against the dark hues of his clothes.

  Under the rogue lay several bodies wearing different types of leather and steel armor, protected further by metallic pieces such as helmets and shoulder pauldrons. Their defenses didn’t do much to save them from the lacerations and deep gashes inflicted on them.

  It didn’t take a detective to figure out the blond thief was the cause since both his daggers were drenched in blood and his manic smile rivaled Heidee, a certified psychopath according to Cid’s standards.

  “Heh… We don’t hafta do this, y’know. They were gonna die one way or another. Might as well give their death a purpose and make it help us survive in the long run. Come on, boss, you know I’m right. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of an ending war.” The blond rogue cracked his neck.

  “It isn’t the right side if it’s next to a snake who backstabs his allies without a thought! I have no need for traitors in my world!” the knight yelled and leaped to the rogue with a wind-rending slash.

  The rogue vanished then suddenly appeared behind the knight in a split second. He quickly impaled both daggers into the knight’s upper back, causing a miniscule shockwave to rupture his armor.

  “Gnh!” The knight didn’t idle and quickly turned back to elbow the rogue. His arm passed through the flickering mirage of the fiendish fox as he appeared a few meters away. The rogue’s insane speed made Cid’s [Swift Dash] look like a slow jog in comparison.

  The knight huffed and turned around, an azure orb flashing from the slit of his helmet like the eye of a vengeful ghost. His damaged armor suddenly mended itself as if it was living and breathing.

  “They call you a fearsome Tank, the wall protecting Earlius, and I see why. You survived a chunky critical hit that would’ve killed anyone else… Teheh… But you signed your death when you angered the Monarch. I ain’t letting you drag me with you, so I’m going to trade your head for a lavish life in his group!”

  “Scum… You need to attack me a thousand times before I die, but if I get my hands on you once…” The knight bolstered his stance, igniting several wisps of azure flames all around him.

  “As if you can catch me! You want a thousand attacks!? Then take them! Ahahahahaaah!” The cackling man suddenly turned into a shapeless blur, becoming a streak of black that shot all over the place like a frenzied spring. Sparks flew across the paladin’s armor, acting as the only indicator that the rogue was even attacking him.

  Cid’s jaw dropped. He was so busy with his own disadvantages that he didn’t even consider how big the gap between him and the other classes was.

  The knight suddenly plunged his sword into the ground, causing an azure arcane circle to expand outwards. The air pulsed with a nearly invisible shimmer and pulled the rogue and the many corpses to the knight.

  “What!?” the rogue shouted in surprise.

  “Got you!” The knight dislodged his weapon from the ground and slashed at the blond rogue in a smooth motion, but the cunning bandit masterfully used the corpses as footholds and avoided the attack by jumping over the sword with a spin.

  “Tricked you!” The rogue threw two daggers in the slight gaps under the knight’s shoulders and continued turning in the air.

  Before the rogue could complete his fall, the knight spun around sharply and hurled his sword like a spear into the rogue’s stomach, pinning his back violently against a tree.

  The rogue coughed out blood and looked at the sword inside him with intense pain. A devious smile slowly formed on his bloodied lips. He chuckled and pulled out a crimson flask from his pocket.

  “Neheh… Ngh… Not bad… That left me critically low… but lady luck swoons for me…” The rogue smirked through bloodied teeth and drank the liquid.

  The knight groggily stepped closer but then fell to one knee, blood aggressively cascading out of his helmet and over his chest, his body shivering intensely as if he was afflicted by a hidden winter storm.

  “Hehaha! I wasn’t kidding about the thousand slashes! [Scattering Rush] pairs nicely with Sanguine Slaughter and Putrid Plague.” The rogue raised his daggers up, one oozing a sickly green liquid while the other had a crimson sheen. “Gifts from my new favorite boss! Know what’s the best part? Poison and bleed don’t care about your high physical defense. Several stacks combined with a critically loaded [Weakpoint Exploit] and it can kill a boss in seconds, so what’ll happen to a level fifteen joke like you!? You die!” The rogue laughed.

  The knight struggled to pull the same flask out of his inventory, his body jittering and shaking too much for him to do anything besides fall on his side and convulse painfully.

  Cid grimaced at the sudden shift in battle. “This doesn’t look good… That’s my cue to leave.” He nodded to himself and walked in the opposite direction.

  “Ahh… You decide to walk away now? You should’ve done that while I was too busy with the fight to notice you…” The rogue looked at Cid’s direction with malicious hunger, his own body still pinned to the tree. Cid felt his blood run cold as his throat struggled to swallow his escaping soul.

  ‘I messed up… He killed a level fifteen tank so easily… What can I even do as a lousy level four Crafter!?’