Roxyreads

So a few notes and an apology real quick.

I'm not posting a complete status before this chapter because I sort of edited the 'Master Spreadsheet' before I started and what I have in previous chapters is ever so slightly inaccurate.

The system was developed over a few days and 'finished' on almost no sleep and I made some mistakes in the original math that I only noticed while writing this chapter, minor stuff like derived statistics being based on the wrong attribute.

I'm going to level with you.

I'm not going back to fix all the previous status windows because I'm not a complete masochist, but they might get fixed up if this ever sees publication or if I end up re-posting it elsewhere.

This chapter is a bit shorter than my previous average because of all the time it took me to work out the details of where I went wrong and to read the correct formula off the back of a barbecue sauce stained napkin, so... sorry about all of that.

Anyway, thanks for your understanding and I hope you enjoy the chapter!

I have a riddle for you, how do you move literally half a metric ton of fish with a non-zero number of broken ribs?

I'll give you a minute, take your time.

...

Give up?

The answer is ‘with great difficulty’.

Getting that tuna back home was a fucking trip; I had to roll it onto my canvas to have any chance of dragging it back. Gotta admit, I had a lot of motivation to get off the beach after seeing that gigantic scaly bastard and getting bitch slapped like 30 meters as an afterthought; still, my steam almost ran out a few times after I was back in the tree line; it does turn out that fractured bones don’t help when you’re trying to move heavy things.

I actually took some time to make mental notes on my long laborious trek. My stamina gauge seemed to drop by about three or four points for every minute I spent overexerting myself; a little mental math, accounting for my regeneration speed, told me that it cost about 10 stamina per minute to do physically taxing activities.

“Huh, I wonder if you could make a build that just outpaces stamina burn and lets you basically carry boulders without breaking a sweat? Food for thought.”

After that insightful hour of dragging a dead fish bigger than me through the woods, I finally arrived back at the chapel; safely and with only a moderate amount of bitching and moaning between points A and B.

Thankfully, the preservation was a lot easier to manage. I didn’t have to think hard to realize that the basement under the chapel would make a perfect ice house, and I really hoped that was the original purpose; because it’s definitely what I was using it for.

I dragged the fish down the stairs producing a series of wet thumps on each step and heaved it up onto that big stone slab before shimmying my canvas out from under it; thankfully I’d had the forethought to stow a few of the more manageable chunks of ice from the lake. Within half an hour or so of setting them up around the room the entire basement was like a walk in fridge.

The carcass was mostly bled out in the process of dragging it back, but I still took the time to heft it up at an angle to let any lingering blood flow out from the mangled section that used to be it's head; thankful for the drain in the corner that I hadn’t paid any notice of up until then.

With that sorted and some time to relax while the fish finished draining, I headed upstairs and sat down to pull up my waiting system alerts, nearly choking on a swig of mint tea when I saw the results of the battle.

“you have to be kidding me, that counted as ‘fishing’?! Explosives handling makes sense, but... come on now.”

It felt like a punchline, but it wasn't completely nonsensical I suppose; I did go fishing for one of the meanest sons of bitches with fins I've ever seen and I came away with one of them without losing any fingers too. The new Title was a big flashing warning sign for me, as useful as it was it felt deeply concerning to see.

"Thinking about it... just how outclassed was I? I got a thousand experience for each of those and I didn't even get the final hit on any of them... and what if they're the small fry around here?"

I let that thought sink into silence before coming to a decision.

“I don't think I'm going swimming again any time soon."

Figuring out the water provision situation was going to be another another concern, if that was what the lake was full of I didn’t want to be caught with my pants down on the shore; or if we're being honest, anywhere near it.

“Maybe I can go down to a different section of beach every time and just be quick about it? If I don’t have pattern, nothing can track me, right?”

I put my concerns out of my mind and returned my attention to the information on my level up. Got some in my class combat skills, that was nice. Iron lungs and powerful voice confused me until I realized that I probably screamed at full volume for an entire minute when the giant gator came out. The level in mad bomber is what really caught my attention though, not the ability; that was nice and I’d test it out later, but something else was more relevant to me at the time.

"Hell YES; I am just racking up those points!  Ten skill points, ten ability points, an attribute point, and six perk points; I'm going to have to start spending these."

A quick check told me I had 31 Attribute Points, 14 Perk Points, 3 Class Points, 22 Skill Points, and 25 Ability Points. I took a moment to peek at my stats and made a few decisions about what to boost. I was a bit biased in my choices based on recent events and what I think were at least three fractured ribs from one of that tail slap I took to the chest.

“Alright so let’s think about this.”

“I don’t know what most of the stats do exactly, but I’m going to take a wild guess and assume that… Vitality, like Constitution, has something to do with HP.”

My supposition proved true, when I boosted Vitality, my HP Regen jumped a point per day; looking at how much was still missing I went ahead and dropped in 28 points into Vitality to raise it to 20 ¹28/4 points = 7 and saw some results; now my HP regen was 46 a day. It took me some time to do the math on that, but the conclusion it lead me to was pretty nice.

“Oh yeah, shaved five hours off my recovery with that.”

I dropped my last three Attribute Points into Endurance, boosting it to 19²3 Attribute points for 1 level in a Secondary Attribute. Carrying all that stuff around earlier had been wearing me out; fun fact, scrap metal and dead fish are heavy.

With that settled, I moved on. Scanning through the list, perks were a bit more ambiguous; as far as I could tell, they could be or do just about anything. Most of them were somewhat arcane, and not in the cool magic way, just really unspecific and confusing in their naming; nothing had a description and  the most I could glean was that a few were tagged as (Cosmetic) and probably wouldn't do anything other than make me look cool somehow. 

“Well then, it’s time to play the guessing game… I need to pick some that will help me survive out here.”

I ignored the cosmetic effects and dug into my other options, a few clearly caught my eye as something I could guess at the effects of: [Critical Focus], [Will to Live], [Furious Fists], [Swift Mending], [Wild Empathy], and [Green Thumb]; there were tons more of course, and I’m sure there might’ve been better choices, but these were the ones I could understand at first glance.

“I hope I’m not here long enough to start farming and I don’t see myself fist fighting with many things I’ve seen in this forest; so green thumb and wild furious fists are out… those others look alright.”

I could afford the other four, so in the end I decided on grabbing all of them; [Critical Focus], [Will to Live], [Swift Mending], and [Wild Empathy].

“So to sum things up: I figure that critical hits are about the only way I can land a good blow against something like those giant fish, [Swift Mending] probably has something to do with my HP regen and I can’t be laid up for long if I need to forage for food out here, [Wild Empathy] should help me figure out if animals are friendly or want to tear my arms off, and I definitely want whatever [Will to Live] gives me.”

Satisfied that my decisions all made sense and were justified, I went ahead and confirmed my choices and moved on. Class Points weren’t available for spending without one of those legend stone things, and so all that I had left were my Skill Points and Ability Points.

I ended up learning a few things over the course of this level up session, and I've got to say it involved a whole lot more math than I expected.

“Okay… looks beyond just buying skills, I can use Skill Points to boost a skill’s level.”

I poked around with the menu a bit and worked out that the cost to boost a skill, it took a lot more scrap paper than I'm willing to admit. If my calculations were correct, with white text the cost for a skill up was the square of the level you’re increasing it to.³Level 2 costs 2², Level 3 costs 3², etc, etc. The green ones were a little harder to figure out but I think they were squared and then multiplied by 1.5.⁴Level 2 costs 2² x 1.5, Level 3 costs 3² x 1.5, etc, etc.Yellow ones were easier to figure out, the number was just cubed.⁵Level 2 costs 2³, Level 3 costs 3³

“Ah, middle school math, how I’ve missed you; now… to get new skills, or boost what I already have…”

“It seems like getting the first four or five levels of a skill is pretty easy just with practice, at least for me, and buying new skills or saving up to afford the later ranks is probably a more economical choice.”

“Yeah... I should probably save these and buy skills on a case by case basis.”

In the end, I didn’t make any new purchases and moved onto abilities; this time I had something specific in mind.

“I need something to tell me when I’m about to do something really stupid or if I’m fighting something that will completely wreck my shit; something like ‘danger sense’. I do not want a repeat of the fishing incident.”

After announcing my attentions aloud, my menu did some things automatically. I was pleasantly surprised to find that thinking out loud brought some results, the text of the ability menu search bar filled with a complex mess of gibberish I couldn’t hope to describe and spat out the following results.

"Huh… so the system is deciding to be helpful… ish."

I spent a few minutes trying to decipher the symbols and then gave up and focused in on the abilities.

“So ostensibly, even if they sound similar or do similar things, these are all... different; I should probably try and give them some thought individually..."

"Sense Danger probably works on things that aren’t just monsters… it might tell me if something is poisonous, but it doesn’t strike me as being very specific.”

“Threat detection would probably point out enemies and maybe traps…”

"Early Warning gives me the sense that it might give me notice if something is about to go very wrong.”

“Combat Premonition and Area Awareness are a bit harder for me to pick apart, the first one is probably like… an action oriented ability for fights and Area Awareness is… awareness of an area?”

Okay, so maybe my guesses were a bit haphazard, but I figured out how to deal with the uncertainty in a way that I considered absolute genius.

“Fuck it, buying them all!”

I paused for a moment and considered the past few days, The System or whatever was behind it had started to let up on the snark... and I guess it wasn't entirely undeserved.

"Hey uh... blue... window thing? I'm sorry if I said some hurtful things before now, lets try and be... friends?"

I felt a bit silly for waiting for a response, and in the end nothing indicated a change, but I felt better for it.

"Shit... I'm talking to myself aren't I... goddamn I hope I'm not losing it."

After pulling a 'castaway' and personifying what might've been an entirely mechanical collection of numbers, I decided to move on like nothing happened and mashed confirm, dropping 24 points.

I swear my mind opened to the world.

The room was a storm of information, the distance to the nearest wall, the angular incline of the floor, statistical chances of structural collapse. Everything was presented in a strange symbolic language of sounds, colors, and abstract concepts that I understood instinctively; several points of burning orange and red warned me of the collected potential poisons in my reagent kit and the microbial life in the water currently slowly dripping through my striated filter; it reminded me of a foggy time in my distant past when I once experimented with shrooms.

I clutched my head and couldn’t think in straight lines for what felt like an eternity; it’s not that it particularly hurt, I just couldn’t focus on any one thing. My mind drowned in a thousand different assessments until that bubble of perfect awareness of my surroundings and the dangers therein just collapsed.

“Oh shit that was kinda… cool.”

I wrapped up this session by equipping a few useful looking skills and then tool a look at my full status.

"Shit, that perk is doing work, I'll be mended up by this time tomorrow."

With that sorted, I began considering real food, more specifically the fucking giant fish I had chilling in the basement.

Roxyreads

The next chapter is going to be a bit slower coming and probably closer to my usual length, this one is the result of some serious procrastination from my actual job.

Ideally it'll work out so we keep the thursday-friday release, but honestly it's all a bit up in the air, the only guarantee I make is that you get at least one chapter a week.