《Stuck in a Game World with an OP Shop》 Chapter One, Fluffy pajama pants. Kyle had a tough time getting to sleep, but he had an even tougher time waking up. As soon as his eyes opened, he felt a gust of cold wind blow at him, and he shivered. He desperately reached out to grab his blanket, his comforter, his anything to protect himself, but everything was gone. He reluctantly opened his eyes, but only for a moment before he quickly shut them. His tiny glimpse of his surroundings revealed that he wasn¡¯t in his home, surrounded by all the comforts of modern living, but actually in a shallow cave, nowhere near his cotton bedding or soft mattress. He rolled onto his side, leaning against his forearm, and felt the stone floor underneath him. It, like the air around him, was cold and unforgiving. He felt pieces of the stone press into his skin, the uneven ground hurting him. With a loud sigh, Kyle observed his surroundings in greater depth. The cave was only about ten feet deep, seven feet high, and four feet wide. He laid with his head toward the deepest part of the cave and only a foot from the wall, where the stone face suddenly shot upward to meet the ceiling. From inside the cave, Kyle saw several large tree trunks past the cave mouth. Wherever he was, it was inside a cave inside a forest. Welcome to the world of Teyrdas. You are about to begin a quest of epic proportions, fraught with peril. To help you in your quest, you will be given access to the Temporal Shop every seven days. Just as Kyle gained his bearings, a floating screen of text knocked him back out of it. The words hovered against a dark-blue background, and did not change until he read them in their entirety. You gained 658 Credits. A random amount of Credits - between 1 and 1000 - have been added to your account. Spend your Credits at the Temporal Shop to help you survive and thrive on your way to completing your quest! The new words hovered in place for exactly as long as Kyle needed them, and then they disappeared, as if they never existed at all. But, they did exist, and Kyle read them all. His mind was thrown into overdrive. The boxes of text looked like the user interface from a videogame, but he wasn¡¯t sitting at a computer monitor; he was laying in the back of a shallow cave. Then, it occurred to Kyle that he must be having a dream. Of course, it seemed so simple now that he thought about it for a few seconds. How else would have spontaneously appeared in a mysterious cave or see videogame status screens? With newfound vigor, Kyle stood up and walked to the cave mouth, where a scene of untouched wilderness unfolded before him. It was like nothing he had seen before, but it wasn¡¯t outside the scope of a dream. Since he must have been in a dream, Kyle stretched out his arms as far as they would go and willed himself to float into the sky. He wanted it to happen, but it did not. For a few more foolish seconds, Kyle stood at the cave mouth trying to float into the air, but he never moved. Instead, he lost himself in the scenery below him. The trees were all 20-25 feet wide and at least a hundred feet tall. They had about 30 feet of height below the cave Kyle stood in, and another 50 feet above the cave before the started growing branches, which blocked most of Kyle¡¯s view of the canopy. Sounds from small critters and chirping birds could be heard from the cave mouth, and thick foliage covered boundless life on the forest floor. Something about the untouched vastness filled Kyle with a sense of peace. The absence of civilization was apparent on the plants, which all grew wild and uncontrolled. Kyle lowered his arms and backed away from the cave mouth. As he backed away from the forest, he brushed his fingers against the cave walls and felt their rough texture. He thought back to the first message he received, which told him something about a world¡­ Welcome to the world of Teyrdas. Just as Kyle began to recall the box of text, it appeared before him, again, but with only the relevant parts showing. Kyle read it and recalled the subsequent boxes of text, and left him wondering how to use his Credits and the Temporal Shop. Temporal Shop | Credits: 658 A new box of text appeared in front of Kyle, but it had very little substance. Other than displaying how many Credits he had, it showed nothing else. He expected the Temporal Shop, which was supposed to help him somehow, to have things like swords and guns in it. Temporal Shop | Credits: 658 For a few seconds, Kyle could only look at the updated box of text and contemplate what was happening. He had thought about having a sword and a gun in the shop, and there they appeared a moment later. He thought about it for a while longer and sat on the cave floor. The boxes of text were mysteriously illuminated no matter where he looked, so Kyle didn¡¯t have any trouble reading them inside the dark cave.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. After a few minutes of thought, Kyle added a few more guns to the shop. Temporal Shop | Credits: 658 The three smaller guns were easily added to the shop, but they each had the same name. It wasn¡¯t a big issue since the descriptions were right next to the name, but it was something to think about. Temporal Shop | Credits: 658 Once again, the simplicity of changing the contents of the shop pleasantly surprised Kyle. He then tried to edit the price for the guns, but they would not change. He needed something cheaper to use as a weapon, but not a sword. Over the course of several minutes, Kyle added several ranged weapons to his Temporal Shop. Temporal Shop | Credits: 658 Only having 658 Credits didn¡¯t give Kyle much to work with, but it was enough for a zip gun or a bb gun. The description on the zip gun didn¡¯t look good, and Kyle had never used a zip gun before, so he purchased the bb gun and hoped for the best. He had used one when he was a child - more than ten years ago - so he wouldn¡¯t be a complete novice when it came to using one, unlike with a zip gun. In fact, Kyle only knew about zip guns because of old movies he watched, where poor thugs would build zip guns themselves. -400 Credits Another box of text flashed in front of Kyle, and the familiar shape of a lever-action bb gun fell behind it. The wood and metal body clanged on the cave¡¯s stone floor, and Kyle leaned forward to pick up the bb gun. As he leaned forward, the Temporal Shop screen disappeared, somehow having sensed that Kyle didn¡¯t want to see it anymore. The bb gun looked exactly like the one in Kyle¡¯s memory; it even had the Red Ryder logo on the stock. Kyle¡¯s adult hands wrapped around the bb gun like his childish hands could not, and he cranked the lever with ease. After checking the safety, he aimed the bb gun outside the cave mouth and pulled the trigger, causing a small change inside the bb gun to happen, but for no bb to fly out. The bb gun didn¡¯t have any bb¡¯s inside it, of course. Kyle brought the Temporal Shop back up and added a 4,000-count bottle of bbs for 180 Credits, which he then purchased. This time, instead of letting the bottle of bb¡¯s fall to the ground and possible break open, Kyle reached out his hand, and the purchased bottle of bb¡¯s appeared in his open palm. He now had only 69 Credits, but that didn¡¯t worry him. Kyle set the bb gun on the ground and poured a handful of bbs into his hand, which he then placed into the bb gun¡¯s bb holder. As he remembered, the bb gun had a capacity of around 600 bbs, which took several minutes to fill. Once the bb gun was full, Kyle stood with it and walked to the cave mouth, pointing the bb gun into the forest beyond him. In one fluid motion, Kyle cocked the bb gun and pulled the trigger, sending a .177-caliber bb through a low-hanging leaf. The cold air, the cave¡¯s hard floor, the cave¡¯s rough walls, the bb gun¡¯s knockback, the dull puff of the bb gun firing, and a sharp pang as the bb hit the leaf: Kyle felt them all. He began to think he wasn¡¯t in a dream. Chapter 2 With his bb gun fully loaded, Kyle walked to the edge of his cave and looked for a way down. The cliff angled at almost 80 degrees, which meant it wouldn¡¯t be impossible to climb, but it would be hard. Especially when considering that Kyle had never even attempted to scale a rock face in his entire life. He started by putting his bottle of bbs into his pocket and holding his bb gun by its center of gravity with his left hand, then slowly crawling down the cliff. He kept as much weight as possible against the rock wall and tested footholds several times before committing his full weight to them. Inside grooves and on small ledges, Kyle found places to stabilize himself, and he eventually reached the foot of the cliff. Kyle''s heart raced faster than he ever felt it race before. Not only was he afraid he would fall off at any second, but it was quite a workout. Admittedly, Kyle was not a healthy young man, and he needed many seconds of rest before continuing. He sat against the cliff and put his bottle of bbs on the ground, but kept his bb gun in his hand. He knew, at any moment, he might need to use the bb gun to defend himself, so he shifted it back into his right hand while he rested. After several minutes of heavy breathing, Kyle stood up and scanned the forest. The plants coming from the forest declined in height as they neared the cliff, but the ones five feet away were ten feet tall. They made it almost impossible to see more than a hundred yards out. Darkness covered the foliage, brought on by the thick canopy above them and their own mass. Kyle turned left and followed the cliff, leaving his bottle of bbs behind. If he needed to, he could just turn around and keep walking until he found his bottle of bbs again, so he wouldn¡¯t lose his cave. Whatever he did, Kyle didn¡¯t want to lose his cave, else he''d be stuck in the wilderness with nothing to call shelter. While he walked, Kyle cocked his bb gun and fired it into the forest. He didn¡¯t have any particular target, but it was satisfying to see the bb shoot from the barrel and pierce leaves. Kyle made sure not to hit a tree - where the bb could bounce back and hit him - but, otherwise, shot randomly. A few minutes later, after walking a fair distance from his cave and bottle of bbs, Kyle saw a new box of text flash in front of him. You have learned the passive skill Shooting. Kyle stopped walking, intrigued by the apparent skill he had learned. The dream-like state he found himself in already felt like a videogame, but having skills made it much more apparent. He shot his bb gun at a random leaf, even aiming it before pulling the trigger, but he didn¡¯t feel anything different about the action. Stubbornly, determined to find out more information about the skill, Kyle shot his bb gun into the forest several dozen times, waiting for another notification. Your skill, Shooting, has leveled up! Current level: 1. +1 In addition to the skill leveling up, Kyle checked the Temporal Shop to confirm he had gained a Credit. He shot his bb gun into the forest, again, but still didn¡¯t feel anything different. As it stood, Kyle¡¯s only method of obtaining more Credits would be leveling his Shooting skill, but his mind worked rapidly to formulate a plan on how to earn more skills and more Credits. He walked back to his bottle of bbs and continued to shoot into the forest, but applied extra focus to the cocking maneuver he used on the bb gun lever. The hard plastic began hurting Kyle¡¯s hand as he surpassed a hundred shots fired, but two level-ups in Shooting and the gaining of a new skill was enough for Kyle to disregard the irritation. You have learned the active skill Cock. Kyle expected to earn another passive skill, but an active one was still welcome. He now had 75 Credits, and the second skill would help increase the rate he earned them. However, the skill was active, and he¡¯d first need to know how to use it before he could level it up. Though Shooting was passive, Kyle had a feeling he needed to use a skill to level it up. That worked easily with Shooting, simply because it was a passive skill, but Cock wouldn¡¯t work like that. Somehow, Kyle needed to find out how to activate the skill. ¡°Cock,¡± He spoke and felt his hands urging him to complete the movements even before he finished speaking. Feeling foolish, Kyle shot the bb gun and thought the word ¡®cock¡¯, which made his hands tingle, wanting him to follow through with the cocking motion. Kyle let his hands move with the pressure his active skill put on them. He repeated it several times and found himself able to concentrate more on the aiming portion of shooting and less on the now-painful action of cocking the bb gun. You have learned the active skill Aim. Really, Kyle wondered, what couldn¡¯t be made into a skill? He finally pressed in on the bb gun trigger, focusing heavily on the action his finger performed, overemphasizing it in his mind. You have learned the active skill Shoot. Kyle turned around and looked at the rock wall between him and his cave, and began climbing it. The entire time, Kyle focused his mind on the creation of a skill called Climb, which would allow him to let his body automatically climb the wall. Sure enough, once Kyle reached the top, a box of text flashed in front of his vision. You have learned the active skill Climb. He was ecstatic. Kyle had always liked videogames, and the mysterious world he found himself in was telling him to gamify his life by converting his actions into skills, which the leveling of was the only way to earn Credits. Kyle didn¡¯t have any problem with this, and quickly made himself a plethora of skills from basic actions. As the forest turned dark for night, Kyle retreated into his cave and brought his bb gun and bottle of bbs with him. He discovered the System that governed the boxes of text worked on simple impulses from the brain, and just thinking something like ¡®Show all skills,¡¯ created a list of Kyle¡¯s skills in front of him.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. Skills Those were the skills Kyle learned in the few hours before dusk, and they brought him to a total of 805 Credits. Based on what the System told Kyle, he wouldn¡¯t have access to the shop for seven days, which meant he needed whatever he spent those 805 Credits on to help him survive until then. For those cold nights, Kyle bought a sleeping bag for 300 Credits, a 98-count box of granola bars for 210 Credits, 24 bottles of water for 95 Credits, and a chicken tender dinner basket for 130 Credits. The chicken tender dinner basket came with seven succulent stripes of chicken stripes, a bowl of mash potatoes, a bowl of gravy, a side cup of ketchup, and a heaping pile of french fries. After eating, Kyle slipped into his sleeping bag and placed his bb gun at his side, ready to grab it at a moment¡¯s notice. When morning arrived and Kyle woke up, he laid in the sleeping bag for almost another hour. Not only was it cold, but he had to shit. Only when he couldn¡¯t resist the feeling any longer did get out of his sleeping bag and walk to the entrance of the cave, utilizing his skill to overpower his desire to turn around and go back to sleeping. He took his bb gun with him and climbed down from the cave, and a sudden realization hit him: he had no toilet paper. It wouldn¡¯t be the first time he shit in the woods without any toilet paper, but that didn¡¯t make it any easier. Kyle felt the direction of the wind - going from the right of his cave¡¯s entrance to the left of it - and turned left and walked. Shitting downwind would lower the smell he had to endure to a minimal amount, if any reached him. Along the way, he used his shooting skills to shoot down large leaves from the canopy, which he could use as a replacement for toilet paper. A shitty replacement, metaphorical sense. Several minutes later, Kyle returned to his cave with three skills, Shit, Piss, and Wipe, none of which gained a single level. Surprisingly, after he climbed back into his cave, Kyle received a fourth skill, but not because of his own actions. You have learned the auxiliary skill Cold Resistance. Immediately after learning the skill, Kyle felt the air around him get less cold. His body became less susceptible to the lack of heat because of the skill, which was different from how any of his other skills worked. So far, Kyle didn¡¯t know how passive skills affected him, but he knew that active skills made it so he could complete a task without focusing on it. To test the effects of passive skills, Kyle just needed to learn more of them, but he didn¡¯t know where to begin. Active skills could be created simply by wishing to create the skill while doing an activity. His passive skill, however, was learned randomly, without any personal intervention. If it had to do with how long he did it, Kyle would have already learned passive skills like Sleeping and Breathing. Kyle learned the Shooting skill after only a few minutes of shooting the bb gun. He had experience with it in the past, but he also had experience eating baskets of chicken, and he didn¡¯t get a skill for that. Kyle didn¡¯t have anything he needed to spend the day on, so he decided to spend it exploring. It would be a good chance to see more of the world outside his cave and learn some new skills. He filled his bb gun back to full, put a bottle of water in one pocket, and put two granola bars in his other pocket. Then, he left the cave. On the way down, Kyle¡¯s Descend skill gained a level, and he used his Walk skill to walk left, into the wind and away from his earlier business. While walking, Kyle practiced Shooting and attempted to learn more about the System. He started by saying game-related keywords, trying to open new menus. ¡°Status,¡± He said for his first attempt. Fenrir still patrols the Great Northern Forest. Treant still grows in the Midnight Jungle. Leviathan still swims in the Endless Ocean. Wyrm still flies above the God¡¯s Finger Mountain. The world is 86% covered in Miasma. The status screen wasn¡¯t what Kyle expected, and he paused his shooting to carefully read over it. Four beasts were mentioned in the box of text: The giant wolf, Fenrir, the giant tree, Treat, the giant sea creature, Leviathan, and the dragon, Wyrm. Then, the box of text mentioned Miasma, and that the world was mostly covered in it. Kyle didn¡¯t know much about Miasma, but he knew it was a bad thing. The cold chill in the air made Kyle worry he was near the Great Northern Forest, and that Fenrir might also be nearby. If that was true, he¡¯d have to leave quickly, before he came into contact with the godly creature. ¡°Map,¡± Kyle spoke, hoping a map of the area would appear. Unfortunately, all he saw was a map of the area he had been to. It showed his cave, the place where he dumped a steaming load, and where he currently stood. The map didn¡¯t have much detail to it, and the things were labeled as Kyle internally labeled them. Interestingly, he could use the Walk skill on the map, and his body would begin walking to that location. He couldn¡¯t Walk somewhere he hadn¡¯t been, and the area beyond the edge of the forest was dark gray, as well as the area above the cave, and in front of Kyle. He continued to walk forward, resuming his Shooting practice, and tried more System commands. The next keyword Kyle found was ¡®Quests¡¯. Quests The listed quests intrigued Kyle, but he didn¡¯t stop to examine them further. He tried asking the System to explain the quests, but the System didn¡¯t respond. He paused his shooting to read the box of text and was about to resume it when he heard the sound of foliage rapidly being crushed, coming from somewhere inside the forest. Whatever was causing the destruction, it was getting closer. Chapter 3 ¡°Cock, aim,¡± Kyle spoke and pointed his bb gun into the forest, in the direction of the destruction. His hands moved automatically, priming the bb gun for shooting in less than two seconds. If he was manually doing, it would have definitely been slower, but using his skills made him fast. The forest was too dark to see anything, and Kyle could only hear the crashing of branches. However, as the crashing sounds got closer, they also got slower, and soon stopped altogether. Through the thicket of bushes and vines, Kyle saw the glowing yellow eyes of an enormous beast staring back at him. The eyes were each larger than a quarter and several inches apart. Whatever beast they belonged to must have a huge head and body, with a strength capable of ripping Kyle to shreds. Kyle thought back to the quest he looked at a few moments ago. The first on the list, kill a wandering southern grayridge, could be the description of his current encounter, and what he¡¯d need the force the outcome to be. Kyle and the beast already met eyes, and there was no escaping. Based on the second quest in the list, Kyle could guess that the beast was hungry, since it left its home. The southern grayridge had the quest to find food, and Kyle had the quest to kill the southern grayridge. The southern grayridge would wait until Kyle turned his back or approached too closely, but that allowed Kyle to shoot his bb gun at the beast¡¯s eye, puncturing it. He immediately followed up with the Cock skill and dodged the beast as it leaped toward him. The beast roared and rammed into the cliff behind where Kyle once stood, and its eye bled profusely. The giant, wolf-like creature snarled in Kyle¡¯s direction, and he shot it again. Kyle¡¯s second shot didn¡¯t hit anywhere vulnerable on the beast¡¯s body, and simply enraged it. The beast jumped forward and pounced on Kyle, knocking him to the ground. The beast clawed at Kyle¡¯s chest, and Kyle thrust his bb gun forward, trying to push the beast off him. You have learned the active skill Push. You have learned the active skill Thrust. You have learned the auxiliary skill Claw Resistance. Kyle activated his newly acquired skills, comboing them to effectively push the southern grayridge off his body. He quickly used his Shoot skill, which combined cocking, aiming, and pulling the trigger into one skill, and shot another bb at the beast¡¯s face. Again, the shot did little-to-nothing against the beast. Kyle¡¯s skill rapidly gained levels as he snuck in three more shots at the beast, one bb going through its last remaining good eye. You have learned the active skill Eye-Shot. Kyle didn¡¯t let any time go to waste and dodged another leap from the beast, which had both eyes destroyed and couldn¡¯t see anything in front of it. Kyle activated his skills continuously, shooting the beast with a barrage of bbs. Heedless to the tiny balls of steel being shot at it, the beast turned to Kyle¡¯s general direction and charged. As expected, however, the beast missed, and Kyle ran backward, using his Run skill to fluidly navigate without looking. While he backed up, he continued to shoot, gradually wearing down the southern grayridge¡¯s will to fight until it retreated back into the forest. But Kyle couldn¡¯t stop there. His quest was to kill the southern grayridge, not just to wound it. However, Kyle didn¡¯t have a way to kill the southern grayridge; his bb gun would never be powerful enough to pierce its skin and bones. He looked around for something else to use as a weapon and settled his eyes on a large rock. The rock, a little smaller than Kyle¡¯s head, could be broken into smaller fragments and used as a knife. Kyle picked up the rock and threw it down against a larger rock, causing it to break into several fragments. Most of the fragments were too small to be used for anything, and the large fragments didn¡¯t have any good edges. While Kyle had failed to turn the ordinary rock into a piercing weapon, he plenty of rocks around him to use as materials. It would only be a matter of time until he had his razor sharp rock. Not too far from Kyle, the blinded southern grayridge plowed through the underbrush and occasionally hit trees. Its large body had a hard time maneuvering around bushes and vines even when it had working eyes. Without its eyes, the southern grayridge couldn¡¯t prevent itself from running into trees. The aged southern grayridge had lived a long life - almost a decade - and had never been put in such a precarious situation. If it were with its pack, it could use its nose to follow the rest of its kin. However, by itself, it could only stumble around the forest and distance itself from the entity it encountered. In front of the beast, a thick vine grew across a fallen branch. On that vine, hundreds of thorns pointed upward with razor-sharp points. When the southern grayridge stepped into the fallen branch, it didn¡¯t hit any of the thorns, but when it stepped on top of the branch to prepare itself for jumping over, its paws were impaled by the thorns. The southern grayridge whimpered, and Kyle followed it. He used a newly acquired skill, Track, to follow the southern grayridge with his map. When he used his skill, a line of red dots formed on his map, leading him toward whatever he was tracking. He couldn¡¯t automatically move there, because the area wasn¡¯t explored yet, and Kyle manually walked toward his target. Vines and bushes grew dense in the forest, and Kyle used the barrel of his bb gun to push foliage out of his way while he walked. He needed to buy a set of sheers when the next shop day came, then he could start clearing pathways through the forest, but Kyle didn¡¯t let thoughts like that distract him. He had a sharp rock in his pocket and needed to kill the injured southern grayridge. The southern grayridge fell backward after having its front paws impaled. It could barely think - after having rammed its head into so many trees - and laid on the forest floor, ready for death to take it. The beast had lived a long time and fathered many children; he only hoped his pack would find a suitable location for their new den.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. But, when Kyle entered within ten feet of it and his scent drifted into its nose, the southern grayridge stood back up; Its survival instincts wouldn¡¯t let it die from just a few puncture wounds on its face. ¡°Eye-Shot,¡± Kyle spoke. He gave away his position, and the southern grayridge looked directly at him, ready to pounce, but Kyle used his skill to shoot the southern grayridge in its left eye. Then, he fired again. And again. Kyle shot three times in rapid succession, putting a steel bb into the southern grayridge¡¯s eye socket each time. Kyle walked closer to the southern grayridge while staying alert for any sudden movements. He cocked his bb gun and held it in one hand while he pulled the stone from his pocket. He had shattered a much larger stone into many smaller pieces, making the one that was in his hand. It had a sharp side and a round side, making it easy to hold and cut with. Kyle didn¡¯t have any experience in killing, but he had a general idea of how it was done. He held his bb gun in one hand and prepare to strike down with the stone in his other hand. If he really needed to, he could use his bb gun as a melee weapon, but he didn¡¯t want to put any additional stress on its components. It still worked, but it was covered in scratches. It might not survive Kyle using it as a club. Just when Kyle was about the bash the southern grayridge¡¯s head with his stone, the beast jerked its head and bit in Kyle¡¯s direction. The bite missed, but it caused Kyle to stumbled backward and shoot his bb gun at the southern grayridge¡¯s mouth. The southern grayridge, pulling on every last bit of strength from its muscles, jumped at Kyle. Its claws were weak; its mouth was broken. Kyle shifted his grip on his bb gun to hold onto the barrel, which was all metal, and bashed the southern grayridge on the snout. You have learned the active skill Bash. His first attempt successfully created the skill, and Kyle immediately used it, following his manual strike with a quick, automatic bash. The southern grayridge couldn¡¯t react fast enough to get out of the way of Kyle¡¯s bashes. Each time it began to think, a heavy blow to its skull caused it to enter a daze. It finally collapsed, unable to hold itself up any longer. As it did, the bashing also stopped, and the southern grayridge felt hope. It resigned itself to its fate, but the onslaught halted! Quests Kyle stopped to check his quests. He still had the quest, for which he assumed the beast in front of him to be the southern grayridge in mentioned, which meant either two things: the beast he killed wasn¡¯t a southern grayridge, or it was still alive. He walked around the southern grayridge¡¯s body and picked up the stone he dropped. He held it in his hand, feeling the heft of it, and walked beside the southern grayridge¡¯s body. He winced, then slammed the sharp edge of the stone into the southern grayridge¡¯s skull, breaking the bone and splattering gore on Kyle¡¯s arm. Kyle released the stone inside the southern grayridge¡¯s skull and backed away. The beast was dead, he was sure of it. By checking his quests, his confirmed it. Quests The quest to kill the southern grayridge was gone, and the list of quests moved up. At the bottom of the list, a new quest appeared which seemed to have to follow the quest above it. Kyle equated it to a questline in a videogame, except he could see the next two quests. At some point, he would have to find the abandoned den of the southern grayridge that attacked him, then find Laurel Tal and save her. Disregarding the quests for the moment, Kyle walked around the southern grayridge¡¯s corpse and sat against the fallen tree. His whole body had blood on it, but only his hands, arms, and chest were significantly injured. He would need a new set of clothes as soon as the shop opened up. ¡°Notes,¡± Kyle spoke, and a writable box of text appeared in front of him. He made a bullet list of things he needed and added clothes. A few second later, he added shoes and a set of sheers. Kyle was tired, and he opened his list of skills while he rested. They were originally organized in the order he gained them, but Kyle sorted them into Active, Passive, and Auxiliary categories and removed the descriptions. From his point of view, most of the names were self-explanatory. Skills, Active Kyle¡¯s Shooting skills leveled up to level 9, and Claw Resistance leveled up to level 1. All-in-all, Kyle gained 227 Credits from his skills and 200 from the quest reward, putting him at a total of 497 Credits. The bloody corpse would need to be dealt with, but Kyle decided to do that another time. He stood up and stretched, then opened his map and walked back to his cave. Tracking the southern grayridge had brought him quite a distance into the forest, and it was only thanks to the map that he found his way back to the cave. Once at his cave, Kyle turned right to retrieve his bottle of bbs, bottle of water, and the granola bars that he left behind when breaking rocks. He picked them up and returned to his cave but didn¡¯t enter it. He sat against the cliff and sighed, emptied his pockets and leaned his bb gun against the rock wall. The southern grayridge had hurt him, but it wasn¡¯t life-ending. Half-way through his granola bar, Kyle fell to the side and curled into a fetal position. His adrenaline wore off, and the pain from his wounds assaulted him at full-force.