Sweat pours down my brow, crouched low I focus all of my senses - muscles flex with machine precision and, with immense effort, I will power to flow down my arm and gather at the edge of my dagger.

“[Scarlet Slash]!”

The tip of the knife draws a rippling line of red energy in the air zooming outward in a fan pattern, slicing mercilessly through a set of makeshift wooden targets. Taking a deep breath, I finally break my focus...

“Holy shit that rules!

I've been doing it all week, but I still get excited about it; after all, who wouldn't? I just shot a fucking anime sword beam!

Okay, it sounds impressive but… the targets in question are basically just bundles of sticks and it’s a bit unreliable past a certain range, within 2 meters it scores stone and cuts through thick branches effortlessly, but past that it sort of loses cohesion.

I can only successfully activate the ability around three out of every five tries under ideal conditions; but its better than when I started.

“Not good enough yet though…”

While continuing my practice swings, I look back on how I got to this point.

A few days ago I finally worked up the courage to use my [Knowledge Gems].

It’s taken an odd amount of practice to use some of these new abilities; while they’re listed on my status the knowledge feels weirdly separate from everything else in my head. 

I suppose that tracks though, using the gems made me pass out and have a series of surreal dreams in which I was someone else undergoing training or practicing. While the dreams were informative, I could only just barely grasp the basics. 

I received the instructions of my imaginary teachers as an unbroken string of consciousness… words were muffled and incomprehensible and might as well have been the adults from the Charlie Brown cartoon talking.³¹https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_BU5hR9gXE

Beyond that observation the only notable thing about them is that… I was right, they did give me a headache; specifically, using ten of them at once gave me a headache - that was a bad idea and I will never be doing it en mass again.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I also succeeded in getting a concussion from cracking a flagstone in the throes the resultant seizure and a stomach virus from improperly filtered lake water. I’m better now, fixed the filter too… I can’t really be too angry about it though, I also got a pair of titles out of the deal.

I thought I’d be laid up for at least a week but I managed to make use of a few skills to find a useful herb and cook up a medicine that eased the symptoms.

While I did get something out of it, I won’t lie, it scared me half to death getting sick all the way out here; it made me realize that I can’t keep burying my head and coasting along.

I got lazy and I got lucky; if it had been anything else in that water, I’d probably be dead. 

It’s not as if there’s a clinic that I can visit the next time I’m injured or ill.

I need to pay more attention.

I need to be more proactive.

I need to plan.

I need to fight.

I need to kill.

I need to eat one of those fucking giant chickens because I am fucking done with salad - the jerky is all but completely gone too. 

It’s always like that thought, isn’t it? 

Any time you buy beef jerky it just fucking disappears in one or two sittings…

Where was I?

Right, I’ve been doing some practice with these abilities, getting more familiar with my weapons, 

At first I was worried about being too loud while practicing, but something about this village seems to repel monsters, at least the ones I’ve seen. Yesterday while making a water run, I inadvertently drew the attention of a wolpertinger near the gate, but the moment I went past the threshold of the gatehouse it stopped and glared at me like I was behind an invisible wall.

I can only chalk it up to that goddess throwing in behind me, so I’ve been saying a prayer of thanks at night and asking for protection in the morning - I might be wrong, but I’d rather err on the side of caution.

Outside of just general training, I’ve using those one-time buff items and tossing around some of my accumulated points with slightly educated guesswork when it comes to usefulness; bolstering my attributes, upgrading skills and abilities, and grabbing one or two new ones alongside a few perks.

I would’ve done so sooner, but being serious… the available listings for perks, skills, and abilities are massive enough to boggle the mind. 

I feel like I made some acceptable choices, but it’s hard to believe that there could be more  options available if I get my hands on a [Legend Stone], whatever that is…

With the sun sinking in the sky [Accurate Measure] tells me it’s sometime around 3pm³²Or the rough equivalent for this world, it’s hard to say if the days are the same length., just about time to start winding down for the day. 

Out of breath and low on stamina, I take a seat on the chapel steps to catch my breath; I’ve killed two birds with one stone by cutting firewood for tonight and practicing at the same time and I’m pretty happy with that.

But I’m not done with my training yet.

Done with the physical portion of my daily regiment, it seems like as good a time as any to practice the less tangible portion.

I dunno what to call it, but abilities like [Scarlet Slash] invoLve pushing something around inside of me - it uses up stamina, but I have reason to believe it’s only called stamina in the menu because that word makes sense to me.

This whole RPG ‘skin’ the system has could just be for my benefit, a convenient and familiar paradigm these weird forces are using to communicate with my brain; but that’s beside the point.

I’m trying to learn how to manipulate that energy; when I use some abilities I can feel it move in the same way I feel a muscle flex, so I see no reason why I can’t move it myself.

As for why I’m going through this instead of just practicing the abilities?

While it seems like I could just learn to use the abilities more easily through practice, I couldn’t help thinking about how skills work, or rather how getting a skill works; I got [Cleaning] and [Multitasking] from well… cleaning and multitasking. 

It stands to reason that my initiative could be rewarded; I may be able to learn how to do amazing things if I apply the few scraps of knowledge I have alongside some effort and experiment. 

While I’m not expecting to instantly be ’the best ever oh my gosh you’re so talented’ in that classic isekai protagonist fashion, it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t put in some work. 

With that as my aim, I quiet my mind and begin to practice pushing that weird energy around. 

The process is a slow and difficult one, but it’s becoming much easier as I go on; three days ago it was like trying to push rubber cement through a garden hose but now it’s more along the lines of maybe… cold honey or molasses. 

My analogies might not make too much sense, but the point is that I’m getting better at it - my muscles don’t hurt as much after doing so and there’s less of a warmup period. It seems like it’s easier to do after stretching and a period of strenuous exercise and I suspect that [Meditation] is playing a role in the process as well.

Fact is, it really doesn’t want to move and when it is forced into an active state, it wants to return to its ground state as quickly as possible; of course, after it has been unsettled it’s substantially easier to manipulate.

It comes much easier today, I feel like… I’m on the edge of understanding something.

Slowly and carefully I relax my body and begin running a wave of that strange power through it, ‘watching’ it with my mind’s eye as it goes; this is the first time I’ve felt it so clearly.

It starts at the heart and rolls upward through my neck and head before descending down my shoulder and arm and rising again into my torso then down a leg before mirroring those motions again on the other side of my body. 

As the cresting head of that energy wave passes over and through each part of my body I can feel my muscles tighten and goosebumps rise.

Maintaining a coherent path is… difficult, the energy doesn’t want to move this way, it wants to follow veins and arteries or diffuse out along nerves and muscles... but I persist and force it to hold this unnatural shape.

Before today I’ve been stopping at this point, but I feel like there is something beyond it, a teasing hint that my efforts will be rewarded. The hair on the back of my neck stands up, my skin feels searing hot... and more sweat than I provoked with hours of strenuous exercise pours off my brow... It is white hot agony and yet...

Something is happening.

The speed of the wave increases and it becomes less of a wave and more a circuit, an unbroken like of energy circulating throughout me - I feel as if I might start glowing.

Power surges through me, my heart thumps a staccato beat before slowing and leveling out, the pain is gone and what is left is a quiet and perfect fluid motion, a paradoxical sort of swift flowing stillness like a rapid current below the calm surface of a stream.

Immediately my focus breaks and I fall backward panting; the energy disperses, flowing into the nooks and crannies of my body and even just rising off of me like steam before disappearing from my senses.

Opening my eyes, I realize that at least an hour has passed, but more importantly...

“Fuck off with that title, I would trade all of the gains I’ve made for half a big mac and access to netflix and I have no shame in saying it.”

“Also… qi? Really? It… sort of makes sense but… no.”

Thinking it over, I come to a conclusion, and not an easy one.

“That… doesn’t sound quite right… but then maybe my previous conjecture is correct.”

The system could be using words that I can understand, picking concepts from my brain with definitions the closest to what something actually is and using those as synonyms because otherwise there isn’t a word for this stuff that I know.”

Of course… A test is necessary to see if it even works; after all I could be completely and utterly wrong.

“What if I make up a word for this ‘energy’ and try assigning it to the concept mentally?”

I think as hard as I possibly can - that’s not qi it’s… vitae.

“Yep, that’s the ticket… ”

It feels a bit more comfortable calling it vitae than qi; both because preconceived notions could be dangerous and distancing it conceptually from things I already have potentially incorrect assumptions about seems like a good idea. 

It also keeps me from feeling like I’m aping the spiritual practices of another culture.

This whole exercise answered a lot of questions, but there’s a big hole in my understanding of the situation that leads to another question.

“What about the things that I don’t know that the system keeps filling me in on? The name of that giant chicken monster for example or my sudden knowledge of herbs... Where does that information come from?”

I could just say ‘Well obviously the system tells me’ but that’s too much of a goddamn cop-out, things don’t just come from nothing, information has a source, even if it’s occluded.

“Ugh… fuck it, this is giving me a headache… what I wouldn’t give for a cigarette right now…”

Huh...

Another moment of self discovery, I was a smoker apparently if that thought was anything to go by.

These little bits of memory have been popping into my head for the past few days too, nothing really major or concrete but just little hints about what sort of life I lived before I came here.

“Lets… just leave that for later and do something fun, I’ve earned it.”

With that, I drop all pretense of seriousness, head inside, swig a tall glass of not virally loaded water and turn on my cellphone. 

A deeper search of my gym bag produced a hand-crank charger and another half-eaten energy bar that I scarfed down like a fucking animal; no sense in letting it go bad.

With that discovery, I can charge my phone at least but… the charger is a cheap piece of shit; I  keep feeling like I’ll break it if I put too much force into it, so I’ve still been using my phone sparingly.

I have a 2TB memory card in this bitch and apparently I’ve loaded it up with a metric fuck-ton of media. 

One benefit to losing most of my memory is seeing the star wars films again for the first time… first three are kinda crap but I like the retro vibe four through six take. The downside of losing my memory… well I forgot what movies are bad, cause let me tell you; while the seventh one was alright, the less said about eight and nine, the better.

Feeling like going for something thematically relevant; with ‘qi’ on the brain, I put on something called ‘Kung Fu Panda’ and enjoy my well earned lazy evening.

Just before tucking into bed, I have a thought… I’ve been pushing forward constantly without really paying mind to my progress. I really have been working my ass off… might as well take a look at the fruits of my labor.

“Hey menu, can I get a summary of changes over the last six days? Skip today's additions for me too.”

“Looking muuuch better.”

At first I was considering saving up all of those points, but looking at the situation, it’d be a bit stupid to do so; I’m in the shit now and as much as I might be giving up a benefit later, I need to survive to get there.

Besides, if I’ve made a mistake anywhere I can always chug the [Respecialization Potion]³³Rarity: Legendary
Quality: SSS+
Type: Alchemical Admixture
Description: A potion that allows the drinker to exchange all expended points and experience for a fresh start though it is not a completely lossless process - 10~20% will disappear. .

I’m proud of the strides I’ve made towards being not entirely fucked.

The other big thing I’ve managed is making ‘peace’ with the system or menu or whatever it’s called. I don’t know if it’s actually sentient, but playing nice seems to yield much better results.

I still haven’t mastered the use of all of them, a few of those abilities and skills aren’t exactly ones I want to blindly fuck about with based on their names and descriptions… but moving forward I might have to be more bold.

“All together, it’s been a productive week... “

I grab a piece of chalk and drag it across the stone wall of the chapel next to my makeshift bed; I would use standard tallies but I feel like It’d be a pain to constantly expand them, so for now… Babylonian numerals.

?

“Eight days… I’ve been lost in this other world’s forest for eight days; lets hope it’s not going to be too much longer.”