Troll:1.5

Morning comes once again, your successful hunt bringing with it all the joys of a full belly and feelings of actual accomplishment which cannot be beaten by anything else. You’d never felt such a high before, not once I your life did you ever know the insane drumbeat of your adrenaline boosted heart like you’d heard yesterday. You had been flying high and nothing could bring you down.

A laugh that you didn’t recognize filled your ears, those unfamiliar hands, folding down into a powerful grip. This body was yours. Another caress of it with your strange two fingered hands confirms it for you. And yet you can hardly believe it, hardly recognize it.

Yet still you reveled in it.

This was you now, not the man who’d been behind the computer contemplating his next game. No this was your own hands, bloody with life fluids of a beast, blue with a power which defied all the previous logics in which you’d believed. You couldn’t help but describe yourself as eager. Eager to get back out there, to learn more about this world and your new abilities, to test yourself like all young Trolls eventually try.

You lay still in the hammock which had been set up for you, swaying in the breeze as the sun slowly peaked from the horizon, simply enjoying the evidence of life against your skin. The scent of a warm sea breeze intoxicatingly peaceful even as you allowed yourself to drift into the morning.

Idyllic.

The home sickness, the potential worries never seemed to intrude... only your own thoughts.

You wondered a little, looking at your stats.

Eighty Experience... you could do something with that, you wanted to, you thought idly to yourself. You spent a good few minutes there lying in bed, debating just how you should spend this first windfall of experience which you’d managed to accrue. Sure your strength and intellect could use a boost, a stronger you or a smarter you meant an expansion in your potential capabilities... but in the end you decided on a particular directive of pragmatism.

You were a Troll. The new body gifted onto you was something amazing, the regenerative capabilities which you were sure any scientifically minded person back home would have given an arm to study, and most everyone would give an arm to have. Between this fact, and your ‘Gamer’s Body’ you were pretty certain that anything which didn’t manage to kill you outright would never be your death. And ‘Gamer’s Mind’ saw to it that you didn’t really react to pain as intensely as you probably should, or maybe that was just the Troll physiology... but either way it meant you didn’t need to fear getting hurt.

Thus avoiding injuries wasn't particularly important, and any space between "perfectly healthy" and "dead" became very valuable indeed. Anything at all which increased that margin would be a huge boon to you. Hmm… you looked at the little button next to your stats.

Ok A little more strength couldn’t hurt either, that puffed out your HP too either ways.

By the time you were finished clicking you’d spent a good sixty of the eighty experience… you could almost feel something in that, your body… strangely your body felt more... full. Solid in a way which defied you in trying to describe it, but you simply felt, strangely…

Healthy.

 Just looking at your HP bar now just made you feel better overall as it shot up to one hundred and twenty.

With a light sigh you finally turned it off and put it aside, lifting yourself up from the hammock as you tried to find your way to the ground in some other manner than face first. You managed to fail spectacularly on that front.

Just at the moment that your benefactor managed to walk in.

A full bellied laugh later at your expense, and Oh’Kalis was merrily watching you struggle up from your embarrassing tangle as you worked your way out of the Hammock and onto the floor. A few moment later and you were still managing to not have any clue as to how the hell you were going to get yourself out of the dammed thing.

“Ya be a good laugh ta start de day boy.” She grinned, finally taking pity on you, as if guiding a child. “Now now boy, ya gotta move off like dis, start wid swinging ya leg down first, de resta ya will follow if ya manage to get ya leg down ta mek tings stable.”

“Ugg…” You groaned up from your mess, still tangled in your sleeping place. “A hand would be nice though...”

“Now boy, ah great big hunta like yaself don need lil’ ole me ta solve ya problems.” She spoke again, almost as if enjoying watching you struggle. Strike that almost, she definitely was, it seemed sadism was a Trollish pastime activity.

With a sigh you kept on trying until finally your feet were free of the entire embarrassing mess.

You were suddenly quite glad that there were no such things as Cell-Phones here.

With a bit of effort you struggled to sit up, wiping the dust away from your poor tusks as you pouted petulantly at your smiling benefactor. Then after a moment more and a laugh of your own decided to ask her something which was on your mind.

“Oh’Kalis, ah… you know this area pretty well by now right? Anything in particular that you think maybe I should avoid?” You asked, not that you didn’t have some idea yourself, after all you’d made probably a dozen different characters and by now you knew all of the horde starting areas like the back of your hand. Or at least you figured you did... but now that your own life was actually on the line, you couldn’t help but think that maybe you should be a bit more cautious about such things. “I mean I had a pretty good hunt yesterday, but I can’t help but think that maybe there might still be places I’d be better off not sticking my nose into for the moment.”

“Well life be spared, ah careful youngster wid respect fer ‘is elda’s words.” She smiled shaking her head lightly as she did, you quite suddenly remembered how much you liked her smile. “But ya gotta know