Alakai didn't have time to reply, as he had to focus on the fight itself. Though he did take what she said into consideration when deciding what to do. Had he been a healer that could stay back, he would have been an excellent group leader, keeping an eye on everyone's health, mana, debuffs and damage output and intake. But he had never been confident enough to play a role like that. "Focus on the poisons!" The man exclaimed just as his flowing water cooldown finished. And as she had suggested, he quickly jumped back with a backflip, landed himself against the wall behind him, and jumped over the spiders like it was nothing. All to his own surprise as well. Sure, he had thought about maybe using a stepping stone to jump over them, and that he had to first back away. But it was like his body naturally reacted to that, and performed moves he had no knowledge of. Almost like instinct? It was quite an exhilarating and interesting feeling.

For the next 20 seconds all he focused on was evading the spiders, letting his natural health regeneration skill do it's work. It wasn't much, but everything helped right now. Luckily these seemed to be a type of spider using webs, which meant they weren't hunters. So they were slow enough for Alakai to evade. He hoped Kali would understand that 'focus on the poisons' meant cleansing the poisons already on him, then taking as much time as possible to regenerate mana for another heal and one or two more poison removals. After those 20 seconds he turned around to face the spiders again, dashing right beside one of them, keeping it in between himself and the other spider so only one could attack him for a little bit. Once again he used his brawl skill, slowing the spider's attack rate by 20% and increasing his own dodge chance by 15% for the duration, which was 6 seconds, with only an 8 second cooldown.

The second spider was on him once his brawl had finished. So now he was starting to get damage again. Though he used brawl again as soon as it was off cooldown. This dropped it, leaving only one spider to defeat. However Alakai's health had dropped to 422/1280 now. About 1/3. And he had two stacks of poison on him again. "Please tell me you have enough for at least a poison cleanse..." The man panted, starting to feel pretty tired and hurt by now. The poisons were still doing the most damage though, so they had to go first. "And a heal if you have the mana left." If she didn't, this was probably going to be a 50/50 fight for him, depending on who scored more 'critical hits'.

Kali was taken aback by his words. He wanted her to focus on the poisons, which was understandable but it cost a fair amount of mana. Still she did her best using the last amount of her cleanse to take away the poisons. Still that wouldn’t have helped too much, she hadn’t the mana to provide any more heals and she wasn’t at the level where she could tank momentarily for him or deal any damage to aid him. She watched him evade doing his best to deal damage while avoid taking any, fortunately the moment the second spider fell she had levelled up. She immediately felt her body lightening as her mana went up along did the costs of her spells.; Her life had increased and was slowly regenerating.

They were lucky that she had levelled up at the moment because it was likely she would have only had enough mana for one spell which could have not been enough for Alakai. Without waiting she casted the cleanse spell immediately removing the spider’s poison before granting him another heal. His health had gone up to 600 and she knew she would have just enough for another heal. He should have no problem handling the spider now, the poison didn’t return as quickly since there was only one and the damage had been reduced. The spider let out a screeching noise before falling onto his back as its legs twitched even after its death. With a heavy sigh Kali made her way over cleansing him the moment she had enough mana for it. He was healing up well without her heals but the smaller the level gap she was with him the stronger he would feel her heals.: “That was really close,” she murmured before patting his back to hint that he did well. Finally they could rest now, it was something she needed since she was feeling a little drained and it didn't help that the cave was so dark either.

Alakai suddenly heard a familiar sound behind him. The sound of someone leveling up. Well, it was about time too as these enemies should give her plenty of exp. And as a huge bonus, her mana would fully recover as well, even though her hp woudln't. But hp wasn't aproblem for her of course. Moments later the man could feel his body become lighter and less painful again. He would have most likely made it if she hadn't healed him, but it would have been incredibly close. And he felt a lot better now, even if still very tired.

With the bit of renewed energy he had gotten he charged the last spider. This time he didn't think of defence at all, and just went all-out to get the spider down as fast as possible. It dropped soon enough. Then a second later, Alakai almost did the same. He stumbled to the small side cave with an open door, then let himself fall on the ground once he had entered. The place was actually kind of cosy. Several stones you could sit on, surrounding a small fireplace with even a cooking pot on a tripod. These places were explained as lunch or resting area's for the people that used to work in the caves or mines before the monsters came. So now it probably wasn't any different. "I'm *pant* dead tired... *pant*" Alakai murmured as he laid there, deciding that he could eat laying down almost as well as sitting upright. "I *pant* have some food. Inventory." He spoke, the window opening in front of him instantly. He tried to click the lunchbuxes, but as soon as he would have touched the window, instead his hand automatically grabbed something out of the display in front of him. Like it was a portal to a small other dimension or something. "Interesting..." He mused, tossing one of the lunches towards Kali. They were properly packed, so no worries about the food getting dirty if she didn't manage to catch it.

He opened his own, checking to see what was inside. He had never really paid attention to what was in these regeneration items when it was a game. Two sandwiches, an apple, and a small leather pouch with some nut-looking things. He then took out the sandwich and took a bite. Immediately his face contorted. "Ugh...the hell? This food tastes like digestive biscuits..." He muttered, looking at what was in his hands. It had lettuce, cucumber, egg...the usual for a healthy sandwich really. Yet it barely had any taste, and the taste was all wrong as well! Even so, as soon as he had swallowed the bite his hp and mana started to regenerate more quickly. So it still had game effects.

(The idea for now is that, while ingredients themselves taste like normal, though maybe with different names. But when you use the cooking skill to make something out of it, it tastes like digestive bisquits/water. There's more to it, but that's something for later. ;) It has to do with why my character has cooking as sub class.)

Kali was relieved to see the spider go down, a part of her was happy that she could see the status of Alakai clearly. In real life diseases could not be seen, at least in the game it allowed party members to see if one was cursed or poisoned so she could use her skills appropriately. She felt herself gain a lot of experience from that last spider, almost enough to level up again. She was catching up levels quite fast with the level of the monsters here and having Alakai tanking helped a lot as well.

She watched him stumble to the side and quickly followed behind him going through the open door only to see a fireplace along with a cooking pot. She found it a little misplaced having thought the cave was unexplored, but nonetheless was happy to see resting spot. She couldn’t help but let out a soft chuckle at his words, he had done most of the work so it wasn’t a surprise plus he was being constantly poisoned as well. Moving over to him she got the fireplace lit up by the torch she carried. Once it was lit she set the torch on the walls where a stand was built to carry them. Returning back to him she sat down crossed legged watching him take out some food from his inventory, surprisingly it looked good and she didn’t hesitant to take it off him. “Thanks,” she replied before unwrapping it. Her lips parted and she took a large bite only to cringe at the taste. She hadn’t disliked biscuits it as that she had prepared herself for the taste of bread and ham. Swallowing the mouthful she watched him stare at the sandwich clearly displeased with what he had. “That was too close for my liking… do you think we can actually die here? I mean die without being sent to the church reviving spot?” she questioned softly hoping that wasn’t the case. She had noticed one skill on her, it was a revival skill which was a good sign but it hadn’t given her any specific details on if it was for players or monster pets. Still she wasn’t too keen on finding out in case that wasn’t the case. This place was still new to her, dream or not. “There’s probably a boss… I have two mana potions that I can activate during our fight to increase my regeneration, plus I’m almost level 14 so that should aid us a bit.” She brought up the topic of the boss, hoping they could plan for it before engaging.

She took another bite out of her sandwich and shivered at the god awful taste, why couldn't they just have made it look like biscuits since it tasted like that? It was creating cognitive dissonance for her considering how she liked sandwiches a whole lot more. Shaking her head she forced herself to eat it so she wouldn't have to feel unsettle about it.

Alakai thought for a few moments and shrugged. "To be honest, it's hard to tell one way or another until someone actually dies and revives or not. But so far, I think there's a 90% chance that we will revive. Everything we've encountered so far was like the game. Even the people of the land had similar vocabulary. So there is no reason so far to think we won't revive." The man, though very reluctant, kept eating his sandwich before finally sitting up. He felt a little better now, though would need some more rest before he could continue.

Kali mentioned a boss at the end, and he nodded. "There is, yes. Though a miniboss. Just a bigger spider than the other ones. It should be an enemy with about double the hp and the ability to summon one of those smaller spiders we've seen once or twice. Though only the boss can poison me. I think we should be fine as it's like fighting one large and one small spider together in terms of damage, minus one poison stack, and the fight probably taking longer." He took the apple, figuring it was best to have a full meal before continuing. Though then, as soon as he took a bite, his eyes stared at the item in his hands in surprise once again. "This is...definitely odd. This apple tastes just like...well, apple!" Figuring Kali would want a piece too, the man quickly opened his inventory and took out his cooking set. In the game it had just taken up one inventory slot. It still did, but it felt like cheating a little bit considering what it consisted of. Three different cutting knives, a sharpening stone, a wooden plank, a basic spices mix, flint and steel, and a wooden spoon and long fork. Probably for stirring and turning things over. And they all fit into a small iron pot which could be put into or over a fire. Right now all Alakai needed was a knife though. So he grabbed the middle-sized one and cut the apple in half, handing the part he hadn't taken a bite of to Kali. "How can an apple taste like normal, yet a sandwich taste like dry biscuits..." He asked out loud before taking another bite. He wouldn't lose his appetite over it. This world was filled with things they didn't understand yet. But spending all of your time fretting over it would just waste time. Better to try and take everything in as much as possible, even if it didn't make sense from their perspective.

Kali listened to his view understanding that he probably was right. It seemed valid enough that they would be able to revive. The fact that she had the skill to be capable of doing it showed hinted to her that it was possible for her to be able to use it. Still she was hoping to try it on a corpse since she hadn’t gotten to try it when she was playing the game before. He went onto explaining what the boss would be like, it almost seemed like he had been doing his homework because he was knowledgeable over these things where she wasn’t. Then again he had been playing since the beta stages so that probably allowed him to gain better insight compared to the other normal players that recently joined like herself. “It should be fine, my heals had a shorter cooldown and my mana regeneration has increased. It shouldn’t be too much of a problem,” she mumbled before returning her attention back to the fire.

However she hadn’t very long to mind her own business. Alakai muttered something and turning her head she took note of him staring at an apple as if it was strange. Tilting her head she watched him open his inventory taking out his cooking set. Growing curious with what he was up to she moved over to him, taking a closer look at the knives and stone. “Wow, that’s pretty neat! I can’t wait to get my sewing stuff I can make us all sorts of stuff,” she added before taking the apple he offered her and taking a bite. “This is good,” she spoke with surprise before she gave it back to him.

Alakai raised a brow, then shook his head. "No no, that part is meant for you. After that awful sandwich I figured you could use something with taste as well." Who would want to have an after taste of dry biscuits? And he hadn't even made the tea yet. Heck, he didn't know if the tea would have any flavour. Speaking of which. "I guess I'll make that tea now. We should be able to keep a few of them with us in our inventory. And you can use them to quickly regain some mana in between fights." She slowly got to his feet, taking his cooking kit with him, and sat down at the fire. After opening his inventory and receiving two water skins and the mushrooms, he started cooking up the tea. The description said it was an every day green tea type. So he hoped that it tasted something like a green tea.

Now came the truly interesting part. Alakai put the water and mushrooms in the pot and the pot on the fire, opened his skill window, and selected the tea. And as if by magic, the water started to boil right away. A small extra window popped up, showing a bar and a timer for 20 seconds. "Woa...cooking like this is easy." He mused as he pointed at the screen. "Twenty seconds and it's done. I'm...not sure it'll taste like anything, but we'll see." And indeed 20 seconds later the water and mushrooms disappeared, and 5 glass bottles with a light-green liquid in them appeared in Alakai's lap. "Even this works like the game..." He spoke with a grin, handing 3 of them to Kali. "Here you go. With your increased mana regeneration, shorter cooldown, and these drinks we should be able to clear the second part much faster. Maybe in two-thirds of the time. So with any luck we'll be out again around two pm. That is, if the respawns aren't too terrible. But when there are less players in an area the spawn rate is also lower, so..." He was quiet for a moment, then turned a little red and smiled awkwardly. "Heh, hear me rambling on again. I guess it's a bad habit of mine when I talk about games..."

Kali was surprised that he wanted to give her the whole apple, so she pulled it back and thanked him once again. Taking another bite she let out a moan of pleasure with how sweet it was. It was juicy and good to her taste buds. “I actually don’t mind the biscuit tastes, it’s just really weird biting into what looks like a sandwich and having it taste like biscuits,” she commented before laughing. She watched him take out his ingredients for the tea. Inching closer to him she watched him drop the mushrooms into an empty pot and magically water began to fill it. She couldn’t see the timer though she was began to wonder how long it would boil for. Though again the moment the timer had run out the pot disappeared and left him packaged tea. Taking the bottle she shook it with amazement. “Wow, that looks pretty easy, no mess to clean either!” She exclaimed before opening her inventory and pocketing them.

“Healing you should be a lot easier this time, we won’t have to worry,” she assured before laughing as she caught him turning red. Patting his back fairly hard she shook her head, “You like the game, nothing wrong with that. It’s good for the long run, you can help me out with my stats and point division and all that. Oh! Wouldn’t it be great if we created a guild or something? You know for those cool raids they have at the max level?” she spoke with excitement having seen a glimpse of it when they were showing demos of the game play before it was released.

"I know what you mean. Biscuits can be good. But when it looks like a healthy sandwich, it really ruins the taste doesn't it. Luckily the apple tastes okay." Kali commented on his cooking skill. Indeed it was very nifty to not have any cleaning up, or waiting time really, while cooking.

Luckily the pat on his back didn't hurt in this world. This new body of his was a lot more sturdy than the one in the other world. As much as this world looked like a game, he couldn't see it as them being inside of one. It all felt too real for that. This wasn't a game. This was somehow now life for them. Or at least, that's what he thought. And what a part of him that he didn't want to admit to, kind of hoped was true. A chance to start a new life, and in a world of fantasy with the powers of a game character no less didn't sound too bad considering where he had come from.

"Glad you think about it that way. Most people in the game told me to stop being so concerned about all the details and just enjoy the game. But I guess this is kind of my way of enjoying it. Even better than you're not bothered by it, though that's understandable since those numbers I love so much come in handy now. I'm not much for guilds though... I can't stand being the centre of attention. Makes me nervous. Also a reason I wanted to go out I guess. The crowd of the city, with so many players together..." He shrugged, taking another bite of his apple. "But who knows, maybe I'll think about it differently now that it looks like this world will be our life for an undetermined amount of time. And if it's true that we can resurrect, then I guess I won't have a choice but to involve myself with larger groups, since then I definitely want to try out raiding."

After finishing his part of the apple Alakai stood and stretched a little. His body felt light and rested again. And that while they had only been there 10 minutes or so. The food had probably helped as well. It tasted completely wrong, but with every bite he could physically feel the improvement in his mana, health and fatigue. "Let's get going. I'm almost level up anyway. Too bad we can't see a fatigue bar in the status window as well. In the game there were penalties if you killed too many enemies too quickly. Hence why most had safe area's like these. We should keep going though. The faster we're done here, the more time we have to...hmm..." He stopped himself, thinking to himself for a moment. "If this is a fresh start in a new life, do I really want to spend all day, every day, levelling up? That's the exact same thing I did back in the other world..." He turned to Kali and smiled. "Actually, instead of just grinding today, how about we try to finish the dungeon quickly and have some time to enjoy this land's scenery? We went through the forest, the plains and that village quite quickly. We could take an hour or so to rest and go sightseeing around the village."

((Double post))

At first Kali was worried that he wouldn't have wanted to raid. Raiding had been partly why Kali bought the game, the items looked good and the adventure of it was thrilling and exciting to her. Of course it didn't appeal to everyone so it was understandable. However her frown left the moment he said he would be interested in raiding and would get over the fact that he wasn't good with people and attention.

"I'm glad, the item drops are good in raids, some of the raids need about forty players. But we should probably level up the most we can now," she replied while mindlessly playing with her ears. She had chosen to be an elf so her ears weren't human. Compared to the human female she was a lot taller and a bit on the skinny side. Her ears were pointed and well her chest was... A lot bigger than her human body. She wasn't given the choice to touch up on everything completely.

Her thoughts were disrupted when he stood up and mentioned heading on to the boss. She watched him question what they would do after killing the boss before concluding that they should enjoy an hour off. "Oh! That's great!" she squealed with excitement. "Want to explore further out? We have a mount so we can reveal more places on the map, oh and we'll know what area to head to later on?" She suggested as she moved over to pick up the torch from the wall. It was only an hour but their map was still dark, it was the kind of game that exploring was needed in order to light up areas of the map. Some quests would require things to be collected from different villages to encourage roaming so there was also the possibility of picking up one of those quests if they could find it of course.

"Sounds like a plan. There are two different paths leading out of this valley. In the game, one went to a light density forest with a small lake in the middle for level twenty and above. The other to some fields, then dunes, and behind them the sea and a small harbour city. Though you needed to be level 25 to safely cross the area. So we can go check out that lake area. I read in a data file that there would be a fishing quest there too, so I think we can expect two or three houses owned by fishermen. Maybe they'll have some food to sell." He nodded as if agreeing with himself and headed to the exit together with his partner.

In the very next area, after killing two spiders, Alakai could hear a soft 'ping', and in the corner of his eye he could see a small notification window pop up with the message 'You reached level 18!' This game didn't allow you to assign stat points yourself, but the hp and mana boost was good. This combined with the levels Kali had gained, would make the rest of the normal enemies easy as long as they were careful not to let her get aggro. After another 40 minutes of walking and fighting they reached a rather large hall. On one side, several entrances had been carved into the wall, clearly dwarven made by the design. On the other side, several caves went into different directions with rail tracks leading through two of them. Alakai hadn't read the lore of this place, but he could guess it was once a dwarven mine. And considering the size, they probably abandoned it because of lack of minerals. As usually Dwarven mines were huge, or at least had some people living in them.

"Okay hold up...this should be the end." The man spoke, looking around carefully. The boss was probably hiding in one of the caves, if there was indeed one. That wasn't what he was looking for. He wanted to see if the quest npc was there or not. Nothing to see yet...so there was only one thing to do. "Well, here goes... In terms of stats this shouldn't be too hard, but the boss in the game was huge..." He stepped inside further, ready to defend himself if needed. Though luckily this boss liked to announce itself. As Alakai could hear a chilling shriek coming from one of the caves. And out came the spider. "Broodmother" it was called, and this one was at least 2 times as big as the largest spiders they had encountered so far. "Oh shit...I didn't like spiders before, and this certainly isn't helping." He spoke softly. He glanced at Kali one more time, nodding quickly, before dashing towards the huge creature.

Kali listened intently to him. Both sounded appealing to her, but it was unlikely that they would be going to the harbour city considering her level. Level 25 was still quite some way away from her and the risks of going there were present so she figured it’d be best to avoid that until they were twenty plus. “Oh! Maybe we can catch fish? Oh that’ll be really cool, I’ve never caught fish in real before,” she exclaimed with excitement. This world had so much to offer, they could climb mountains, visit different cities with different cultures, and enjoy all sorts of things that wasn’t possible in her real life. She wanted to collect rare mounts and do all sorts of unique quests, she wanted to get as far ahead as she could compared to the others.

Kali hadn’t liked how big the place was, it was dark and eerie and there were plenty of surprises too. She stopped when she heard him speak. Glancing around she noticed that they were in a large open space, there were smaller caves up ahead and she hoped that he wouldn’t make her go in because it was likely to be filled with those nasty creatures. Unfortunately her hopes were smashed as he went ahead bravely. She admired his courage and followed him behind but kept her distance so she wouldn’t pick up on any of the enemies. Still she lifted her arm up high enough to allow the fire to grant him some vision of the area. Kali grew tense when she heard the noise and within seconds a spider came out. Her mouth fell at the mere size of it. It was a beast, it’s legs covered with thick strands of hair and its eyes glowed red. Her eyes widened when he ran towards the creature, immediately she prepared heals and cleansed him off poisons knowing that it would deal some crazy damage because it was the boss. She was also sure that she’d have nightmares tonight about this.