Living Life As A Game: Through And Through 4 Starter Pack Status: Used!

P's voice came off as uncaring, as she robotically stated "You are literally talking to me, a G.o.ddess, and already know that your life has been turned into a game. Yet, you still question how a story you made up could be realized with such divine powers already witnessed?"

Elizabeth understood her mistake, but that didn't stop her from wondering how these instances just spontaneously came into existence. However, as she considered how her life had been flipped upside-down by these nonsensical G.o.ds, her intrigue, though still present, was buried away to some remote corner of her mind.

Now, as Elizabeth was preparing to start exploring the goodies her G.o.ddess had so graciously gifted her, a rough and mechanical gurgling noise coming from her stomach stopped her in her tracks. Before she had become a "she," Elizabeth had not eaten in over half a day. Furthermore, with the changes occurring in her body, Elizabeth didn't know if she needed to eat more now than when she was a male.

She almost managed to ignore the crunching sounds of her dissatisfied stomach to continue doing as P asked. After all, she didn't know if it was even possible for her to disobey P now that they were bounded together. Considering P's status as a G.o.ddess and her being the "chosen," as P called it, she didn't think she would get killed. But, that didn't stop her sociopathic mind from imagining a scene of being tortured for an eternity for disobeying a G.o.ddess…

Fortunately, P, either through sheer luck or from reading Elizabeth like a book, managed to quell her fears by saying "Uh… you should eat or something. I mean, it's not like I'll do anything to you for not getting back to work immediately. As long as you finish my missi… the "main quests" I a.s.sign you by their deadlines, nothing bad will happen to you."

"..." Elizabeth didn't have the courage within her to question what would happen should she fail to meet her quest's deadlines and instead, made a beeline for the kitchen. Still, dressed in her previous male form's oversized tee s.h.i.+rt, Elizabeth made it to the kitchen and prepared herself a standard breakfast meal: Chicken Fried Rice.

While she loved junk food and splurging on nutritionless candy, the previous Adrian had never once skipped eating at least two home-cooked meals a day. It was a way to counteract getting morbidly obese, while retaining a somewhat "healthy" body even if he never exercised. Now, as a result, when Elizabeth started cutting up the ingredients to her dish and managing the wok she used to work the frying rice, game like notifications of her getting experience for a [Cooking Skill] occasionally popped up.

[Cooking Unlocked!

Level: 1

Experience: 0/10

Description: The art of perfecting meals, the cooking skill allows the user to boost the buff rates of energy-based meals.

Current Effect: Increases the buffs received from Low-Mid grade Mortal-tier meals by 10%.]

[+1 Exp]... [+1 Exp]... [+1 Exp]...

By the time everything Elizabeth intended to eat was finished cooking, she received three experience points for the cooking skill and after checking over the skill for any changes, she quickly consumed her meal. Apparently, the skill worked its magic even though she hadn't done anything special and her fried rice turned better than expected.

It was so good that she literally cleaned her plate of even individual grains of rice and even though she ate it all, she felt no discomfort from overeating. With the break her body craved taken care of, Elizabeth put her plates away in the dishwasher and retreated to her room to pick up where she left off.

She picked up the grimoire for [Shadow Realm Gateway] and after willing for its status to manifest before her eyes once more, as she wondered how she would be able to use the book, a prompt requesting for her acceptance of the grimoire appeared.

[Would you like to learn Time Magic: Shadow Realm Gateway?

Yes/No]

Elizabeth thought "yes" and the leatherbound and ancient-looking cyan book shattered into bubbles of multicolored lights. The lights exploded from the book and moved a couple centimeters in all directions before being mysteriously driven to Elizabeth's right hand. As the bubbles phased through her hands and their glowing light dimmed, Elizabeth's right hand manifested a dark blue tattoo which faded after the last of the bubbles had finished entering her hand.

When the tattoo completely finished fading away, another notification rang within Elizabeth's mind.

[Time Magic: Shadow Realm Gateway has been learned!

Description: Upon activation, the caster can transport themselves into the Shadow Realm. Pa.s.sive activation requires a cooldown of one day, at no cost to the caster's time energy, while "active" activation requires one million time energy units to activate the spell at no cooldown cost.

Special Effect: The user's understanding and control of Time Magic can be used to manipulate the time differential between the Shadow Realm and the outside world. Current Effect: None (No understanding or cultivation of Time has been accomplished)]

With the Gateway Magic learned, Elizabeth moved onto the next grimoire, this time it was just a standard tome with no extra dazzling colors affixed to it, t.i.tled [Introduction To The Path Of Medicine.] She confirmed another prompt for learning the material and all sorts of medical knowledge appeared chaotically within her mind. When she was done sorting out the information she gained, a new skill was learned.

[Accupoint Skill has been learned!

Level 1: 0/10

Description: Using needles to cure any ailment and promote the body's healing. The Accupoint skill allows the user to resolve almost all medical ailments with just a couple needles and energy.

Current Effect: Requires 10% less energy to resolve Low-Mid Grade Mortal-tier ailments and wounds.]

Elizabeth picked up the needles on her bed and even though she had never used them before, she felt as if their thin and sharp shape felt natural when grasped between her index finger and thumb. She didn't have any energy at the moment, but in the near future when she did, she felt oddly confident in her chances to correctly apply the teaching of the [Introduction To The Path Of Medicine].

Next, she picked up the remaining Cyan colored grimoire to learn what P called a "Time cultivation manual," and while reading through its status, she learned of its formal name.

[Learn Temporal Meditation?

Yes/No

Temporal Meditation: A Mortal Grade meditation technique of the highest level. Given to the user by the G.o.ddess P********, this cultivation manual will last the user till the end of the Mortal Stages of cultivation.

Effect: Training with the mantras and methods of Temporal Meditation will yield the user 0.01 * [Intelligence Stat] units of time-type Inner Strength per minute of successful meditation.]

Elizabeth looked perplexed at the awfully low-looking yield of what was described as a technique of the highest "level." But, regardless of her questioning att.i.tude, she accepted the prompt to learned the technique, and after she regained her focus, the way the world appeared before her had fundamentally changed. Just the integration with the knowledge of time cultivation was making use of Elizabeth's 20 points in Intelligence; subtly augmenting perception.

She now understood why the technique was given such high esteem even for its apparently worthless yield. The primary reason the yield looked so bad now was because she was a still a no-level newbie. But with the manual, there came an explanation of the ranks of cultivation in the Mortal levels and a corresponding chart to what her stats would look like as her cultivation/level increased.

As a no-level noob with only 20 Intelligence points right now, she wouldn't be generating much inner strength at all. But just the act of meditating increased her Intelligence stat and the rate would only increase due to her affinity with Time; her innate skill. By the end of the Mortal Stages, she would have hundreds, if not thousands, of points in each of her stats.

Now, all that was left was to pick a weapon. Elizabeth picked up the orb-bound book that had a monochromatic gradient masquerading as its color scheme and immediately thought of choosing a staff as her weapon. It was just what she would think of in a.s.sociation with her status as a mage. Just having the thought "staff" was enough for the orb to give her a yes/no prompt, but Elizabeth didn't really want to be a traditional mage.

When she taught about her dumb idea of making a random "speed mage" build, whatever that was, the image in her mind was that of a bandit flas.h.i.+ng through time hacking people to pieces as she slowed down her perception of time and used an unG.o.dly speed to make fighting against her (character) a nightmare. And as her mind drew a picture of what she envisioned during yesterday's late night, the prompt of the orb changed from creating a staff to creating pair of dual swords.

But regardless of what weapon she picked, the fact still remained that she didn't know any spells or magic that used energy; never mind the fact that she had yet to cultivate even a speck of internal strength. Elizabeth did as per usual when confronted with a hard choice, she debated herself furiously for minutes and hours with the end of the one-person-debate hardly coming to a close any time soon.

In fact she had been stuck debating this "most important" choice as she deemed it, that even P in her metaphysical presence couldn't stand another second of Elizabeth wasting valuable time. Out of the blue, P started talking, which Elizabeth had yet to acclimate towards, so P's voice startled her. "Eeeeeek!!!!" As Elizabeth awkwardly rubbed her nose for making the first ever female-like screech of her life, P "invisibly" snickered at her before beginning her suggestion.

P said "You know, for the small price of one drop of blood, you could find out what weapon(s) are best for you."

"Really? Let's get right to it then!" With her newfound skill in medicine, more specifically, acupuncture, Elizabeth gently p.r.i.c.ked one of her fingers before asking for further instructions. "Ok, just let a drop of your blood drip onto the orb and the most suitable weapons for you will appear."

As Elizabeth was waiting for the blood to gather under her finger tip to drip down, she mindlessly let her tongue slip as she asked "Why didn't you say so earlier? Were you trying to get me to pick incorrectly? Or was it just a test of patience? Cause if truly was, I'm sorry to say I failed..."

Elizabeth hadn't yet gotten used to having someone to talk to, so her habit of talking to her self manifested in addressing P with the question she had built up. Almost immediately though, P retorted and her response managed to shock Elizabeth. P said "Actually, I wasn't supposed to tell you that secret function of the orb, but you were just taking too long..."

"Whoa, you weren't supposed to? Won't you get in trouble then?"

"No, ********** will just balance out my outburst by lessening the time you have to complete your first main quest. Look, you just lost 12 hours..."

Elizabeth checked and sure enough, her deadline changed from 6 days and roughly 17 hours, to 6 days and 5 hours! As she sulked in her misfortune, enough blood had finally gathered to let gravity do its work. The blood hit the orb, only to phase right though and leave no evidence of its existence whatsoever and after the orb exploded in familiar bubbles of multicolored light, Elizabeth watched in wonder as the lights actually separated into three distinct shapes.

However, as the shapes grew more and more defined, the look on her face changed along with it, becoming grimmer and grimmer as the time pa.s.sed. Eventually, when the three weapons condense from the bubbles, Elizabeth painted an abstract picture of disgust and confusion on her face as she looked at the weapons "best suited" for her.

There on her bed, there actually sat two identical handgun pistols along with a short tanto-like blade… At the peak of her confusion, Elizabeth couldn't help but mutter "What the f.u.c.k is this?" She didn't even pay attention to the notification from the quest functions, alerting to her completion of Objective 1.