MMORPG: Surviving a Death Game with a Glitched System

Like a little kid on Christmas morning — not that Ash knew anything about that joy — Ash’s eyes widened.

’No way...’

[Condition to reach level 5 has not been met!]

Ash tuned out the same nonsense the system spat at him as always, his eyes locked on something magnificent: boots!

Boots sat on the ground where the Snow Crawler had fallen.

’I can’t believe my luck!’

Summoning the tome, Ash pulled himself onto it. Bearing the pain as best he could, Ash cast [Focus] the moment the cooldown finished.

Hobbling over, he quickly shoved the meat into his inventory so he didn’t lure any other beasts, then set his sights on the boots.

[You have acquired Uncommon item: [Snow Crawlers]]

’Huh? Seriously?’

Sending them into his inventory, Ash hopped back onto the tome as [Focus] ended, immediately shoving his open wounds underground to stall the bleeding and accelerate the healing process.

It wasn’t necessarily the rank of the item he’d acquired that bugged him. It was more...

’What the hell is naming these things?’

A Snow Crawler had dropped a pair of boots named [Snow Crawlers].

Worse...

Ash summoned one of the boots into his hand and the other onto his right foot.

’Spikes on the bottom, ankle protection, inflexible hide, and a layer of fur...’

They were the perfect boots for traveling across snow and ice.

Not only was the name unoriginal, it was an awful pun!

’Disgusting...’

Sadly, while it would normally have been an awesome drop, he only had one leg at the moment. Plus, he was still entirely naked other than the shoes.

Still, between finally having something decent to wear and the pile of meat he’d accumulated, Ash felt comfortable enough to risk sleeping. For now, he unequipped the boot and remained perched on the tome, clutching the bow for dear life whenever a potential enemy wandered nearby.

After enduring the long, painful remainder of the night and waiting for the monsters to retreat back under the ice, Ash languidly clawed his way onto the surface, then unloaded everything from his inventory.

All of his meat plopped onto the ice, followed by the random teeth and claws he’d collected. Finally, he equipped one of the boots while placing the other among the odd assortment.

Arranging the mishmash of items into a crude bed, Ash lay down in an awkward position. Despite his body being contorted every which way, he fell asleep instantly.

***

When he blinked his eyes open, he realized he’d lasted the entire time without slipping. He’d been half expecting to wake up in a world of black and have to frantically swing himself up while relying on the shoe.

Another thing to be glad for was that the meat hadn’t even spoiled despite being out in the open.

Best of all... his recovery seemed to have accelerated tremendously while he slept. His tail was entirely healed, and his left leg had regenerated all the way to his knee. One more night and he’d be back to peak condition.

’Ah...’

Ash was almost at the point where he could hunt normally — without relying on his insane sacrifice stratagem. He only wished he had a weapon, though that would merely have been a bonus. He could manage without one for now.

But...

The moon rose, the haze rolled in, and the ground cracked soon after Ash woke up. Tonight, though, he was going to take it easy.

Not that the tundra would take it easy on him, he still need be wary of the roaming monsters.

He sent everything back into his inventory except one of the boots, the bow, and the tome, then settled himself atop the latter.

’I hope the meat can thaw.’

Otherwise, he’d need to hunt again just to eat. But the hunger wasn’t too bad yet.

Instead of hunting and needlessly sacrificing his leg or tail again, Ash decided to dedicate the hours until sunrise to mana — understanding it, sensing it, anything that might give him a foothold.

There was a chance the entire exercise was impossible, with mana perception or control being locked behind a level, class, or skill, but he had nothing better to do.

With absolutely nothing to go on, Ash defaulted to the xianxia classic: lotus pose — one-and-a-half-legged variant.

He didn’t know much about cultivation theory or fiction, but he knew meditation was usually the first step on the path to enlightenment.

Not that he wished to follow that sacred path.

He also wasn’t keen on closing his eyes and committing fully to the bit. He still needed to keep a lookout for passing beasts.

’Where to begin...’

Instead of trying anything practical, Ash began to break apart what little he knew.

’Mana is some sort of power that exists within me. I can use it to invoke my skills. It is finite. It can replenish naturally. And under certain conditions, people can sense it, along with its fluctuations.’

Then, he added his conjectures and the patterns he’d noticed over the past few days.

’Consuming food or water drops from mobs may boost mana recovery. My own mana recovery slowed the more injured my body was, particularly my tail. Maximum mana increases with base level and one of the stats — most likely Intellect.’

Finally, he had one more area to analyze: his glitched self. Specifically, the discrepancy between why [Dragon Fear] didn’t work, but [Focus] did.

’When I’m in my glitched state, my mana can interact with my body, but only my body. [Focus] affects me, so it works. [Dragon Fear] has to reach something outside me, so it fails.’

Put like that, the logic was almost annoyingly straightforward.

However...

’If that’s true, then maybe the restriction works both ways. Perhaps its fruitless and I can’t perceive the mana of others when not in my [Focus] state at all.’

There was at least one hole in that theory.

Cross had been able to sense Ash’s mana, particularly when Ash used [Dragon Fear] to bait him during their fight. That suggested mana itself could still cross whatever boundary separated Ash from the world — or, at the very least, that his understanding of the glitch was incomplete.

After all, maybe it behaved like his blood. It was a part of him, something he could touch, up until it separated from him. Afterward, he’d phase through it just like anything else unrelated to him.

It wasn’t much of a starting point, but it was all he had.

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