Year 5007 after the system day 15 of the flowering season during the afternoon.

‘The number of my possibilities keeps increasing...’ my eyes gazed at the achievement screen section, noticing a new type of progress.

Hunter(1/100): Practise tracking and hunting. Reward 10 fame once complete.
Farmer(15/100): Practise farming hourly with tools. Reward 10 fame once complete.
Fisherman(13/100): Practise fishing hourly with a rod. Reward 10 fame once complete.
Chef(4/100): Practise cooking hourly with tools. Reward 10 fame once complete.
Swordsman(8/100): Practise hourly with a sword. Reward a class once complete.
Mage(6/100): Practise hourly with mana. Reward a class once complete.

‘If I persist in reading, would it give me a job too? The reader one?’

My hand reached out for my forehead, tapping it lightly at my silly thoughts, ending up bursting with laughter. I then thought of my skill, opening a familiar screen.

Notice: System consumed 2 mana.

System Library:

Lumberjack I, II

‘Did I have these before?’ I tilted my head cutely in doubt, trying to remember. I tapped the first volume, filled with curiosity.

Notice: System consumed 15 mana.

Lumberjack I

Author: Eric the Strong.

This is the year 170, after the system implementation. There are no book records before they created the system. Such is the age of darkness where only gods possess the terrifying truth and the great black hole in history.

I’m a commoner who earned the title strong after reaching 200 strength. A magnificent feat all on its own. Thanks to the fame I got from it, even among nobles, I used part of the money I received from a sponsor to write a piece of my story.

I started as most peasants start; we spend our status points and aim for a job. Though unlike a lot of them, my first investment was everything in strength and with time followed that through by becoming a lumberjack, one who cuts trees and turns them into logs. Materials used by a builder or a carpenter.

My wife was a farmer with relatively extensive fields. Since I was strong, I plowed her lands, which granted me some extra parameters. Of course, that was not everything, since I killed roaming monsters who approached our fields. If I were to wait on guards, then a big chance would be that we lost a lot of crops.

I learned ax art and ax mastery passive skills and used them almost every day of my life. At some point, I was cutting small trees with one chop, and well, monsters in half.

Every time I’d level up, I spend all of my points on strength. As many years passed, by level 50, I reached 100 strength, earning the title strong.

One day when I was out woodcutting, bandits assaulted my wife and son to the point of killing them both. When I found out, madness and rage overwhelmed me.

I followed the footprints and blood trails I found towards the woods while carrying an ax in each hand.

After I found them, I went crazy in rage and bloodlust. When I was done, a bloodbath with body parts, organs splattered, and broken bones surrounded me...

I discovered later I received a title called Rampage, which allowed me to unlock a rare class named berserker. There was enough disgrace from killing humans and animals to do so. It turned out to be a prerequirement to unlock it. Ever since that day, my fame skyrocketed among the peasants, and I dedicated the rest of my life to killing bandits.

I was the first one to reach the berserker rank four, but it seemed like there was more to it than I expected, but sadly by the time I almost mastered the class, I was too old to continue.

It seemed titles and achievements were one of the conditions to learn hidden classes, and another condition was to have a lot of fame and disgrace. Without high amounts, we’re bound to get stuck in the class level.

I believe it might be possible to even become a hero other than being summoned by the almighty goddess Aria, or at least something grand like that. Or not, who knows, however, if the old man sage John said the system is fair and works on laws, then I believe that chance exists.

To help my fellow humans, I’ve also done my share of the beast and monster-slaying. The more variety that is killed, the more achievements one will get.

I hope the future generations will have a lot of powerful classes and turn the tides in wars to come. It is a very violent and unforgiving world.

Page: 1/1

Temporary emotions like anger and vengeance flowed close to my heart as I read his story.

‘I’m very sorry for you and your family. If it happened to me... I’d most likely do what he did, if not worse.’

My heart tingled hard, looking at the room ceiling and sighing.

‘Even though compared to him I’m super weak, so I wouldn’t be able to punish those evildoers...’

Reminded of the later part of his words, my mind kept working.

‘This man knew the author of the world of Artana. I guess they had a relationship of sorts, and like him, he also suggested getting stronger due to the world being dangerous...’

At that I used my status, focusing my eyesight on specific parameters, the ones he mentioned a few times.

Fame: 800 | Disgrace: 1020

‘He revealed it would be wise to get this fame and disgrace as high as possible for better classes.’

I recollected my father’s teachings and started wondering about the parameters differently.

‘Since some classes require very specific things, then there is a chance that the berserker was a hidden one, like mom mentioned! I suppose it's just like dad's healer one.’

My hand passed through the status, making it disappear, and then shifted my gaze towards the system library one.

‘I’m not really sure, but I am very interested in the next volume, so let’s read more of this strongman person, lumberjack II!’

Notice: System consumed 15 mana.

Lumberjack II

Author: Eric the Strong.

This is the year 175, after the system implementation.

The old man John already passed away... one of the most amazing human beings that ever existed. Before I die like him, I’ve decided to write about a very scary encounter that I experienced.

If it wasn’t for the wise people like him that planned amazing strategies to outdo other races in wars... we would have perished by now, even with the help of the heroes. Back then, in a request to my dear friend, I went to explore the territory between our kingdom in the north and the demon one.

I found a lot of monsters... I killed a lot of them... and also ran from the strong fierce-looking ones. After doing my best to survive, and eventually, after traveling for a long time. My feet reached upon a peculiar place with red sand, instead of the typical ground made of earth with bits of grass here and there, or even a yellow sand closer to the ocean on the west.

From my trips, I figured it was a zone that covered the south path of the demon kingdom. It was then that I discovered the reason humans and demons didn’t have many encounters.

From all the opposing forces from the different races that we humans know exist, the beast race, monster race, and demon race. None of them matter compared to what my eyes found. In the middle of our kingdoms, a certain creature owns a territory as large as humanity. This place reeked of his scent and marks, therefore the ground being red.

A monster above all others, a red dragon.

To our current knowledge, there’s a chance that more creatures like this one exist throughout the world, and more races, too.

Towards the center, I saw a gigantic turtle fighting the dreadful flying beast. It was a duel between two colossal monsters where each skill they used blasted enourmous parts of the land, even though it was mostly sand.

Ultimately, the dragon won the duel; I think? After the dragon left, an army of sandworms started digging below the gigantic turtle and drowned it under the ground. I don’t know if it got devoured by the worms or if it was already dead by then.

After my return to the kingdom, they diagnosed me with a rare disease. It seemed like those lands were incredibly rich with mana.

The doctors named the illness mana disease, as my mana pool was too small and couldn’t handle the exposure it received from those places.

There’s no cure for it, so sooner or later, I’ll meet my friend John.

‘It certainly wasn’t much about learning more things about his lumberjack class, especially since he focused on the new class.' 

I placed my finger, passing it softly in front of my lips and nose, doing my best to hold in the willingness to cry and the tears from falling.

‘It sounded like he became a sort of explorer at a later age.’

Once I left my bed, I changed from a pajama to casual clothing.

‘There are places that we humans can’t walk into without suffering consequences? Mana disease... I wonder if there’s a cure for it now.’

My hands folded the clothes I used to sleep placing the pieces carefully on top of the bed.

‘A red dragon... is there a race of dragons or does it belong to the monster race? How about that giant turtle he mentioned?’

‘Are those things even possible to exist...?’

My feet walked out of the room towards the bathroom to the left.

‘In my past life, I’ve read stories about fantasy creatures, but they didn’t sound in the slightest close to these.’

After peeing I washed my hands, then rubbed my face with a bit of soap, removed the sleep crust, and fixed my tiny eyelashes, with a few soft hits to them.

‘Just how strong is a red dragon? Is it a unique monster or simply one of many? Is the world truly so vast that we’re just little fluffy worms living in it?’

‘What if one of those giant monsters would drop by our Lumen kingdom? Even with every human together, are we strong enough to stop them? I wonder if the colored sand comes from it being owned by a red dragon. Was it caused by a skill of sorts?’

I dried my face with a nearby towel, and bits of the hair that got wet.

‘If the dragon leaves that territory or maybe dies of age, in case they die from that, will the surrounding territory change back, allowing the demons to invade us? I wonder if king Lark and his generals even thought about any of this.’

My stomach growled, causing me to hasten to the kitchen to take breakfast, thinking about more possibilities related to the information I read, and becoming more and more worried about the dangers of this world. This caused my inner will to grow stronger, but also for an inward desire to one day become powerful.

After eating, I returned to my room, took a seat in front of the small wooden desk, grabbed a pencil, and wrote about all the worries that went through my mind in that peculiar black book. Once I finished, my heart felt a lot lighter and the usual cheerful expression returned. I peeked through the window to check out the weather.

‘A sunny day... guess I’ll go water the fields before dad wakes up for my lesson.’

Time passed by quickly as I handled my field. While I watered it, I noticed a couple of spots with tiny holes in them. Upon closer inspection, two of my fingers entered it to check if the seed was still inside.

“How dare they!?”

With an enraged tone, my gaze surrounded the entire area, looking for culprits, but to no avail, as there was no one.

“I’ll have to make a scarecrow with mom before they return to attack my field again!”

I pouted and sighed, feeling unjustified by the thieves.

“It’s a good thing I made some deep holes, otherwise the losses would’ve been bigger.”

A big smile filled my expression proudly, remembering my mother’s advice back then.

“I wonder if dad’s awake yet...”

I turned around to my house, leaving my back in the river's direction. After some seconds of not noticing any movement from far away, I began fishing to pass the time and get food for us.