Far From Vanilla: Modded Game Reincarnation

 I spent the first two hours of my first day in Source, dipping my injured right hand into a cool stream. It may sound pathetic and may look like an attempt at saving face– because it is. 

 These two hours were enough to teach me quite a few things. While I was trying to stop myself from complaining about the pain, I was thinking instead.

 The mod-pack that I installed made the game fundamentally harder. Progression was not as simple as getting wood the second you spotted a tree.

 Yes. That simple fact was what made me, an ‘expert’ feel stupid. The world around me wasn’t cubic, but it was smooth and very natural, something only found in fan-art of the game or in real life.

 But my old life has become my new life, the rules of either world intertwining into a tangled mess that I would have to uncover one by one.

It should be obvious enough from the visual changes, but habits honed through a decade of playing the game are very difficult to change. However I don’t have a choice. 

I only had one life here, a hard mode of all hard modes, and injuries sustained don’t heal immediately at the cost of energy derived from food. I could feel the chill of the air on my neck and the dryness of my mouth.

I obviously would hunger, but I would thirst too. Even more problems branch off from those problems, nutrition, provisions, preservation, transportation of supplies—

“Damn it.” I wiped the bead of sweat falling down my forehead. 

If I can sweat, then I can freeze. All damage sustained by a portion of my body would be isolated on that part, like my hand for example. To be even more meticulous, my right ring and pinky fingers were now unusable because of the fracture.

“The bones aren’t protruding out of my skin at least, so it isn't a compound fracture, but I still need to fix the bones in place so that it’ll heal properly.”

 How long that would take, I’m not sure. Furthermore, in-game time was not just twenty-minutes, but true to the twenty-four hours of my previous life.

 By using proportional fractions I can probably guess how long this would take to heal, but it’ll have to heal first. Even then the educated calculation wouldn’t be accurate. It couldn’t be guaranteed anyway.

Still, it’s the best I can do in the present situation.

I can’t pause the game anytime I want to think, and time is a resource I can’t squander, not with the impending threat of the night. I was completely confident in my abilities to fight the hordes of the night, but that tree humbled me before I could run off to my death.

I feel oddly thankful to that tree.

I still hated it though. 

My ego wouldn’t let me thank a tree just yet. 

I still have some semblance of pride.

However, that brings me to my present predicament. How do I get resources? Important resources to eat three meals in a day and be able to create weapons for my own safety.

I looked at the reflection of myself in the stream and saw the glimmer of my answer. To be more specific, I had to look inside the water instead of the idiot currently submerging his hand in it.

Flint. 

I needed a flint from the gravel in the stream’s bed. If I needed something sharp enough to start, then flint would be the only answer I have. It is soft enough to be collected by hand in the game. Maybe that'll be the case too?

I would most definitely be slower considering I was right handed. No matter how I look at it, this is by far the lowest I’ve ever been in my life. 

But why am I enjoying this? Why am I smiling like a kid in a candy store? I don’t know, but my time will be spent collecting flint instead of thinking. I was burning daylight and fueled by desperation and fear of the nightly horrors.

 It seems that a man can shovel as much gravel as they need if their life depended on it.

After about an hour or so I gathered enough flint to carry in my hands. That was then I realized another problem. 

Inventory management. 

I did not have any way to store anymore beyond the four pieces of flint in my hands. 

 This realization allowed me to notice my physical body. I actually had clothes from modern times, considering the game was fairly crude in terms of timeline, medieval or early iron age, give or take.

 To be exact, I was wearing black jeans, branded basketball shoes, and navy-blue polo-shirt, underneath an oversized plain black sweater. I was astonished at my ignorance. 

The reason as to why I was sweating so much was because I was wearing two layers of already thick layers of fabric. I was so caught up by the rush of the situation that instead of making it better for myself I put myself at risk of a stroke.

I ditched the sweater and immediately dove for the stream, drinking my fill. I was quite parched as well. While I was at it, I doused myself with a healthy splash of stream water. 

“I need to take better care of myself, after all at the moment, my body is the only tool I have at the moment.” I know what I said, but I looked at my swelling right hand. I wasn’t doing that good of a job at it already. 

It was already noon on the first day. I barely had any daylight left before the monsters were going to come out. Even worse, I was in a heavily shaded area, birch trees made good canopies after all.

 The perfect place for monsters to appear.

 I needed shelter. 

Fast.