Scott Ambrose
Level: 61(81)
Costume: Barbarian
EXPERIENCE POINTS
Item EXP: 5678
Equipment EXP: 3860
Skill EXP: 1914
Trait EXP: 5000
Waifu EXP: 5000
World EXP: 1250
DYNAMIC ATTRIBUTES
Hit Points: 475/475
Energy: 190/190
STATUS ATTRIBUTES
Strength: 10 (14)
+Endurance: 11 (19)
Agility: 10 (12)
Mind: 10
Spirit: 10(16)
Luck: 10
TRAITS
Cool Under Pressure
COSTUME TRAITS
Unwavering Spirit
Powerful Frame
SKILLS
Itemization [0]
Identification
Edged Weapon Mastery [0]
Wilderness Survival [0]
Camping [0]
Mining [0]
Negotiation [0]
Thievery [0]
COSTUME SKILLS
Rage
Shout
Frost Resistance
Weapon Appraisal
Axe Mastery
Sword Mastery
Hammer Mastery
Spear Mastery
“Hell yeah, finally increased a stat!” Endurance was an excellent stat to increase as well, since it provided more energy and hit points.
Frankly, this was the moment he had been waiting for as he wanted to heavily focus on endurance for a while. Now that the attribute had increased, he felt comfortable spending trait points to boost its growth. Scott threw away twenty-two hundred trait points to triple the training speed of his endurance. However, to his shock he noticed that the training modifier was higher than expected.
It made no sense to him at first, but then he came to realize the truth. His costume increased his endurance training development speed to twice that of a normal man. That must have been used as a base modifier, meaning that any skill points added would be worth twice as many percentage points. The two hundred percent additional boost he had paid for had effectively made it so that it would be an additional four hundred percent instead. Combined with his now natural doubled training speed, he would be able to train six times faster than a normal man.
Thinking about the possibilities, Scott could not help but to smile.
The remainder of the afternoon, and the entire next day were devoted to heavy endurance and strength training. He only stopped training long enough to gather food and to take a meal. Otherwise, he continued to work his perpetually tired body.
Unlike a normal man, his game-like existence allowed him to continually improve without certain pesky considerations such as downtime. Unless he developed a status effect, he would be fine. At the moment, his muscles were stiff but not yet to the point of an actual affliction.
It was early evening on the sixth day when he saw what he had hoped to see. His endurance had increased once more. He had undertaken over a week’s worth of training in that time period and grown because of it.
Happy as he could be given his current living arrangements, he settled in for the night. Tomorrow would be another long day. He was close to increasing his strength, he could feel it.
Once the next day came, he was thrilled to discover that he broke past the barrier to a new point in strength before noon. This gave him the opportunity to splurge points on his training regimen once more. He spent twenty-three hundred trait points in the hopes of scraping up another few stat points soon.
However, he decided to take the day off from his heavy workload in order to rest a bit. Instead of training, he set out to explore the area once more. There was a lot to see and do. Besides that, he was tired of berries and fish. If he was lucky, he would find something else to eat.
The forest was quiet, almost tranquil. Birds did chirp and the occasional critter scampered through the underbrush, but for the most part it did not feel any more dangerous than a forest from his home world.
Scott walked through the forest marking his trail as he went. The plant life was just as wild and varied as the trail he had blazed before, but it did not take long for him to leave the forest and enter into a rocky and barren landscape. “The hell? This couldn’t be more than a mile from my camp…”
It was a weird transition. He looked back to the forest then to the barren landscape beyond. Did the forest exist in a bubble for some reason, or was there a literally break in how nature worked from one location to the next? It was impossible to know, but it made him curious.
“Can’t go this way… I’ll definitely end up lost,” said Scott.
He turned back to the forest and used some dead tree branches and rocks to mark the location where his trail back to his camp was located, then began to walk along the outskirts. He walked for quite some time, hours in fact, but saw little difference in the land scape. Eventually, he went into the forest and gathered materials to mark the spot where he stopped his exploration. It could prove to be a useful training area since he would not need to dodge as many roots and thorn bushes.
Scott ran back to his last marker while sprinting full out for as long as he could manage, then walking to rebuild his stamina before repeating the process all over again. Even so, it took quite some time to get back to where his trail started.
Panting from his heavy exertion, Scott took a moment to catch his breath. He went back to camp to get some of that sweet, sweet, berry lunch and rested for a while before he came back to this point.
“Right, now let’s see what’s over the other way,” he said.
Admittedly, he did not expect much. For the next couple of hours, he was not disappointed. However, he trotted to a stop when he saw something in the far distance.
“Is that a house?” There weren’t supposed to be any sapient creatures around the area, so that possibility made no sense to him. It was still a good distance away, but he decided to risk the possibility that he would not get back to camp before dark in order to check it out. He did make a quick save, however.
Scott ran toward the suspected house, and upon getting close enough to see it clearly, he grinned broadly. It was, in fact, a house.
Closer inspection provided more details. The house was run down, its door busted in and one side burned badly. Someone had lived there at one time, but things had gone badly if the arrows sticking out of the ground here and there.
Ancient dried blood practically coated the floors and walls of the little house. “Man… This…”
What kind of people had lived here? Why did this happen to them? As the first sign of actual intelligent life in the world, Scott found himself fascinated by the house. It was crafted from stone, mud and other simple materials. Definitely not a modern house from either of the worlds that he had seen.
He wandered around the little stone cottage and searched it for clues, or supplies. He had not suspected that he would find anything. Strangely, he was wrong. Underneath a blood splattered bed, he found a badly damaged and well-aged book.
He opened it up and looked at the bizarre scratches that no doubt passed for the written language of that world. Just like back in zombie town, he saw that writing shift into his native tongue.
As it turned out, it was a logbook. This house had been an outpost of some sort. It referenced other buildings, which now that Scott thought about it, he had seen a lot of rubble in the area. This house was the only standing structure left other than a small section of stone wall.
Time passed as he read through the book. It was not particularly long, and mostly references the occasional trade account or inventory log.
“The Ara’uka have begun their great generational migration. I fear that the lords of Ga ‘Frei will not act even though I have sent them many messages,” he spoke aloud. “They must send their armies, or all will be lost. Even now the fertile plains and sea of grass begins to wither. Those creatures have started to awaken and to dev
our the very heart of life in this part of Nowhere.”
“I fear this migration will spell the end of the green lands. They have scarcely recovered since their last migration,” he continued thoughtfully. “Though, the forest itself will recover as it always does. Their vile fertilizer makes certain that their hateful green god thrives.”
“Damn…” whispered Scott. Whatever the Ara’uka were, they had clearly been an ecological nightmare.
There was a clear undertone of dread in the words as written that even his translation picked up on. The forest was the home of the Ara’uka. “I’ve seen enough plotlines to know where this is going… I think I should probably not stay here the entire thirty days.”
Possibility of overwhelming and repetitive deaths looming should game like storylines he knew of hold true, Scott retreated to his camp. It was well after dark before he arrived, but thankfully the brilliantly colored heavens illuminated the forest quite well.
The night passed without further incident, and the next day he returned to his training routine. Despite his constant efforts, however, most of his remaining time before the mid-term vacation he had planned went by without a single stat upgrade. It was only late in the afternoon of the final day, day fourteen, that he increased his strength again. Endurance was no doubt close behind, but without being able to use trait points it was slow going.
His overall skill levels had only increased a few times but given that most of them were combat or item oriented that was to be expected. There was just one thing to do now. Tomorrow morning, he would leave this world to take a brief vacation for a few days back in the apocalypse. That was his best chance to acquire world points since none were being gained here.
“Alright, let’s do this…” Scott checked his itemization skill and noted that despite using it somewhat frequently over the course of the last two weeks it had gained little experience. There were only a few things that could really push his skill growth in the area, and they were highly limited. That was also why he splurged so many skill points, twelve hundred in fact.
“If the math holds out, this should be all I need,” said Scott before he held up a sapphire he had dug out during his training. Mining was exhausting work, and after he ran low on trait points, he had supplemented his training with mining. It was quite good for working his muscles and endurance. The problem was that it took far too much of his energy despite the fact that it guaranteed that he would find something worthwhile if he worked the mine long enough.
The sapphire in his hand? He had mined out one of them before, and out of curiosity he had itemized it. The energy cost was steep, over sixty points even with the cost reduction. Yet, the number of item points that he had gained was over three hundred. He had tons of item points now given there was nothing to spend them on over the last two weeks. Most notably, however, was that itemizing that sapphire had given him nine experience points by itself, a veritable gold mine of itemization skill experience at his current level.
Scott itemized the thumb nail sized bit of precious stone then grinned. He had been right! His skill finally hit level three. “Let’s see if it works!”
He checked the skill information then poured all five of his new development points into reducing the energy cost for his skill. His eyes widened when the cost really did hit zero.
“That… Really?” Scott immediately itemized a few items and grinned broadly. They still took a while to disperse, as he had not reached the milestone level to speed that up, but now he could itemize infinite things just by touching them!
He dragged out a tourmaline, one of his other semi-precious stones, and itemized it. The last time he had done so it cost him over twenty energy points. This time it cost him nothing.
“This is what I’ve been waiting for alright. God damned game changer…” He was thrilled, of course, but then he noticed how much skill experience he’d gained in itemization. It was not even one percent.
“The last tourmaline I did gave me five percent…” What sort of bullshit was this? Was the difference between skill levels experience requirements that much different?
A suspicion began to form. “Does the energy cost being lower mean that I get less experience for my skills?”
It was a sobering thought, and it made a great deal of sense. He could itemize to his heart’s content, but it would take considerably longer to train the skill or cost him a great deal more skill experience points in order to speed the process along.
“Even if it’s true, I don’t give a damn.” Scott was happy with the way things were now. Increasing his skill’s level would just give him extra development points and the only things remaining to upgrade would drastically increase the energy cost. It was obvious to him that it was a skill that needed to be grown slowly to avoid problems in the future.
Scott spent the remainder of the afternoon and a good part of the night wandering around the area itemizing anything he could find. Sticks. Stones. Leaves. His own waste materials. He itemized it all. In the end, even without a bonus the sheer amount of skill usage had raised it above twenty percent to the next level.
He made certain that his soul gems were in his storage box then rinsed off at the pool down below before he found his tree house, rather the makeshift hammock he had made that served as his sleeping arrangements, and made a final quick save before he drifted off to sleep.
Day fifteen began as the last two weeks had begun, in the white room. Scott checked to see if anything new and exciting had happened, but his still had the same options as before.
Nothing else to do, he took a deep breath then returned to the apocalypse. Scott awoke slowly, a sense of strangeness about his environment. It had been fourteen minutes by the estimation of this world, as day fifteen had just started in Nowhere. Nothing had changed in all that time.
Scott looked over to Summer lying naked with the quilt covering only her halfway. He reached under that quilt and squeezed her backside in a casual way that made him smile. “I’ve really missed that ass…”
It took every bit of his will power not to slide under the covers and unleash the beast all over her unsuspecting feminine glory, but he had a few things that he needed to do first. Namely, he was ripe and needed a real bath.
Scott rose up from the bed then quietly snuck down to the bathroom. No one else was awake at this point, and he fully intended to make use of the time afforded to him.
He removed his costume and then grunted when he shrank several inches in all directions. “Damn. It’s like letting the air out of a balloon.”
The shower proved too inviting. He lingered there for several minutes, despite his best intentions. Hot running water. Actual soap. No overpowered murder fish staring at his dangling bait… This hellhole of roving rotten corpses certainly had some major positives going for it.
One good thing about his costume, it was self-cleaning. Whenever he reset it, there would be no trace of dirt or fish guts on it.
He thought about trying to get dressed in his normal clothes, but since he needed to explain his current situation anyway, he decided to make a quick save then left the bathroom in his barbarian garb.
Scott wandered into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. “Oh, fuck yes…”
There was left-over fried chicken from the evening meal… tears nearly sprang to his eyes. No berries. No fish. Just good old fried chicken!
Scott put his plate of chicken into the microwave then searched the cabinets. He scored a few packs of instant cocoa mix and began his beverage crafting. The day was already looking up.
Sometime later, his drink and food ready, a bleary eyed Momoko wandered into the kitchen. Drawn by the scent of fried chicken and chocolate it took her a moment to realize that something was off.
She blinked slowly then sort of wiggled her head back and forth in place. She did not have her glasses on, but it was clear that this was not something normal.
Scott help up his cup of hot chocolate and offered her a friendly nod. “Sup?”
“Well, if you wanted some hot chocolate you could have just said so. Damn,” said Scott.
Momoko pointed at him and rapidly waved her finger up and down while her ponytails rose up in defiance of gravity. “The! What? Huh?”
Her shouting brought others to the room, each of them stopping to stare in shock. The biggest damned foreigner they had ever seen was leaning against the kitchen sink and staring at them with an equally big shit eating grin.
“Who the hell are you? How did you get in here?” asked Tosh.
“Seriously? Do I look that different?” asked Scott.
“Wait… you know…” said Jade as she took a closer look.
Saiko was the one who mentioned it first, however. “Scott?”
He thrust his mug of chocolatey brew toward her and offered a smile. “Score one for the lovely lady.”
“Where did you get that outfit? Why are you wearing it? What are you even do—” ranted Momoko as she tried to make heads, or tails, of the situation.
“Nowhere,” said Scott lightly. His grin appearing once more.
“Right…” she said in a huffy tone. It was obvious that he was playing with them now.
Power Fantasy Page 23