10. Exploring Her Menu

After reading the perks, Bree quickly decided to accept the quest. She didn't fully understand everything, but she was enough of a gamer girl that she knew these were things she wanted.

She was about to select 'Yes', when she heard a soft ding in her inner ear, and a silly girly voice quickly talking in her head with an overly excited tone. "You definitely wanted this quest, so I selected it for you. There's just no way you could say no!"

The voice was somewhat disconcerting and initially tickling. She stuck her pointer fingers in her ears and plugged them, but she still heard the voice excitedly talking.

Thank you for choosing the 'Beginners Tutorial Quest', I am your Quest Assistant. What's my name?"

This was not the best time to ask Bree to name her, since Bree was in an annoyed state. The ding, tickling in her ears, and yammering were irritating, and so the first thing that came to mind, was 'Ding Dong'.

"Your name is Ding Dong."

There was silence and after a moment, a bright yellow swirling light appeared and a little fluffy white kitten, about the size of the black kitten appeared. It had big yellow eyes, yellow sparkly butterfly wings, and a little rainbow colored unicorn horn. It's tail was quite full and fluffy. "You can't possibly name me Ding Dong! I've been waiting soooo long for a name! I know! Name me Daisy! Daisies are my favorite flower."

"Fine then, Daisy. Please remember in the future to not select quests for me," Bree said to the little white and yellow cat.

It's tiny mouth opened in an O shape. "Oops! I can get excited sometimes. Tee Hee."

Posh who'd been floating to the side of Bree rubbed his paws over his face and sighed. Then he unzipped part of the air and slipped in to the space pocket for a nap, zipping it closed behind him.

"Posh! you come back here and help me!"

Nothing, no answer whatsoever.

"Yay! Now that it's just the two of us, we can get back to the tutorial!"

Bree could feel a headache start to come on, this level of cheeriness and energy was a bit much for her to keep up with. She rubbed her temples and squinted at the floating fur ball of sunshine.

Once again the Menu screen popped up. "To get to your menu, all you have to say is, 'Menu Open, or call for Mr. Grouchy Pants, Posh. He's technically your Menu Assistant, but it's my job to explain the menu right now as part of the Tutorial Quest, since I'm the Quest Assistant. Since you were already told about the Beastmen button, we'll just skip over that and I'll explain the Storage button."

"Since you don't have a bag equipped, you can't use your storage feature, but normally you could open your storage directly from your bag or look at your inventory in the storage feature. Larger Items that you normally wouldn't be able to carry, can be stored in your storage feature and pulled out from there or by reaching into your bag. Any items put into your storage feature become weightless and just take up one slot in your storage space. Larger bags have more storage slots, but the bags themselves can only be unlocked and carried if you have high enough stats. Sometimes bags and other items can be won, but that doesn't guarantee that you can equip them even after you own them. You can only have one storage bag equipped at a time and only you can get into it, unless you assign someone else to be allowed access. Anything not in your special storage bag can be carried in a normal bag, but it will have it's normal weight and space restrictions. Shifters, pets, and other living creatures can not be stored in your storage bag unless they are in a Storage Pod, which can be purchased in the shop or won from certain quests," said Daisy.

"Next on the list is the Status button." She quickly selected the status button and the status screen popped up. Under the word 'Status' in bold print, was a picture of Bree as she is now, in this life. She was a proud and regal woman with large gray eyes, caramel colored skin, plush lips, and beautiful thick dark brown hair. She had a curvy hourglass figure, with generous curves. Next to the picture was her name, Bree. She reached up and touched her face, feeling the unfamiliar structure and couldn't hold back a small happy giggle that bubbled up from between her lips. She felt her new hands caressing her new face. This was real, as strange as this all was to comprehend, this was her new life. Her new beginning. She looked down at her generous new curves and could feel her face heating up, before quickly looking away.

Below her picture and name it said:

Assignable Points: 20

Strength: 0

Charisma: 0

Agility: 0

Luck: 0

Stealth: 0

Senses: 0

Intelligence: 0

Mana: 0

Bree looked at all of the zero's on the screen and lifted an eyebrow.

"Your status menu does not measure your starting stats, but only keeps track of your status boosting points that you assign to each category. All of your stats appear as zero since you haven't used any of your boosting points yet. Once a point is assigned to a category, it can't be switched to another category. Strength allows you to carry and use heavier objects. This is important for equipping items. Charisma allow you to unlock hidden quests, capture targets more easily, and get better deals on items in the real world. Agility gives you higher energy and and allows you to use certain items. Luck helps things to go your way more often. Stealth allows you to be more sneaky and use certain objects. Senses allows you to heighten your sense of hearing, sight, scent, touch, and taste. Intelligence gives you a mental boost and can allow you to unlock certain abilities. Mana increases your ability to use magic."

The next thing on the menu is 'Battle', which is also locked and there's really no need to talk about that. Seriously, who wants to talk about battling; gross! Basically you can take over territory and yadda yadda. When that becomes more needed, you can always have Posh explain that to you in more detail. Basically you can challenge others and have your mates battle for your place, win territory, or other things. Sometimes shifters are also wagered as a prize. Although you're special in that you have the entire Otome Gamer system, everyone in this world, from the second shift and up, have the battle system and at least one ability of their own. If you get challenged, it'll unlock a tutorial.

"Next on the list is 'Mates', you have none. Onto the next!" said Daisy.

Daisy continued," 'Equip' can be used to put items on your body without feeling the weight of them and being able to auto-magically have them available when they're needed. Such as armor and weapons can be equipped and come out when they're needed for quick usage. Only three set outfits can be made ahead of time to be interchangeably automatically equipped. Everything else needs to be pulled out from your storage or put on the old fashioned way; bummer!"

"Quests are next on the menu, but I already explained those to you."

"Then there is the Search option where you can manually look for something or ping either me or Posh, if you can't otherwise access us. Like with Posh hiding ring now, he can be pinged and will be dragged out from wherever he's hiding! Lookie!"

Daisy flew up and poked the screen where it said search. Once search popped up on the screen, there was a place to ask a question and underneath that were pictures of Daisy and Posh. Daisy pressed Posh's picture and a swirling purple light appeared and then Posh. He was lounged back on a small fluffy cloud and painting his toenails bright red. He held onto the little brush midway into painting and looked at them while blinking his eyes. His tiny mouth popped open, right before quickly opening up space again, and dashing in. Right before he closed up space, his little paw reached out and pulled in his fluffy little cloud seat.

A big excited grin appeared on Daisy's face and she bounced while her eyes glittered. She reached out her little clawed paw and pressed Posh's picture again. This time he was lounging in a little bubble bath and scrubbing his back with a long handled brush. His face turned as pink as was possible, considering his fur being black and again he disappeared as quickly as possible.

"Ahhh!" Daisy's mouth popped open in delight and she eagerly bounced forward ready to press Posh's summoning button again. Bree held out her hand and blocked Daisy who was desperately trying to reach around Bree's hand, stretching out her arms, and extending her tiny claws while pressing her cheek up against Bree's palm. "Must..get...it. Miiine...neeeed.....buuttttonnn...goooood."

"Pfft!" Bree tried to hold back her laughter and remain stoic. "If you finish the rest of the tutorial in a timely manner, than I'll allow you to press Posh's summoning button once more, but only once more."

"Alright!" Daisy quickly bounced back and went back to the tutorial.

"'Recipes' are a list of different recipes that you accumulate and create. You can follow them or you can automatically use a recipe to create the item the recipe makes. Sometimes these are food related and sometimes they're item related. You can only make the item in the recipe if you have all of the ingredients in your storage space and making the item uses up available Stamina.

If your Stamina goes too low, you could pass out and not wake up for quite some time until you recharge. There are items you can use to make your stamina go back up, so it's a good idea to keep an eye on it. To look at your health and stamina, you just have to say show health bars and your health and stamina will show in the top left corner of your vision. To hide them, just say hide health bars. All shifters past the second shift have access to their Health and Status bars.

"The 'Shop' button on your menu will open the inner shop where you can purchase unlocked items. It's important to remember that even if you own an item, you can't use it unless your stats are high enough to operate the item.

"The 'Skills' button leads you to the menu option where you can select new skills to assign to yourself or one of your mates as long as that skill is unlocked, is compatible with the person you want to assign it to, and their level is high enough to support that skill. Each skill can only be assigned to one individual at a time. Each individual only has five skill slots and will lose the ability perks that go along with that skill if it's removed. Once a person is assigned skills, they can be viewed in their Status or Mates screen. You can only assign skills to yourself or one of your mates.

"The 'Party' button is not to make an instant rave, unfortunately, it's to assign other team mates when you're doing quests with others. It makes it so that you can share prizes and experience points with other individuals in your party. They don't have to be your mate in order to have them in your party. All shifters past the second stage of shifting have access to the 'Party' feature.

"Every shifter past the second shift can see their Health and Status Bars. Can accept up to three Quests at a time, but they have to accept them from a guild request board. They can see their Party status, and any members stats in their party, if that individual allows their stats to be seen. They are able to see their Battle system, and mates status, but aren't able to make modifications. They can see their storage, but it's only used to temporarily hold items that they won from completed quests for 48 hours. They can see any features that go along with their specific ability, like yours is Otome Gamer, there's could be Healing, or something else. They can see their stats, but can't assign experience points and modify things as they please. Their experience points automatically assign themselves and any skills they get are gained from repetition and not selection. They also don't have automatic assistance like Posh and I, they have to join a guild to learn how to control their specific ability, although it is possible to contract a spirit assistant, but you don't need one of those."

As Bree digested all of this, she realized that in this world, she had a seriously awesome ability that will give her quite a boost. Perhaps this was a little bit of karma paying her back for all of the horror she'd had to endure up until this point? Either way, she wouldn't complain.

"And that concludes the Quest Tutorial. MEOW!" Daisy's tail wagged happily while she wiggled her butt and then excitedly pounced at Bree's screen. Her tiny paws batted at the menu button at lightning speed while she redirected the menu to the Posh summoning button. Then decisively slammed her paw down in glee.