by Simon Archer
Pfft, what was I thinking, a tiny pebble? Better yet, a big, hefty pebble, or in layman’s terms, a rock. I needed a rock.
The primal rat hadn’t seemed to notice me yet, its stat screen continuing to dart around aimlessly. I still had time. While it was distracted by living its monster rat life, I groped around for a decent-sized rock that I could swing around to murder it in cold blood. When I finally found one, I did what I could to orient myself before I gave it a good huck, aiming just below the screen to the best of my blind ass’s ability.
With a thud and a deep-voiced squeak of pain, the primal rat’s stat block stopped skittering about. A decent sign that I at least got in the right area and no rock bounce meant it didn’t hit the ground. A red symbol flashed for a moment or two in the space just below the stat block in the shape of a ‘-1,’ and the Health stat dropped from ‘2’ to ‘1’ accordingly.
Damn straight. Direct hit. Fuck you, visible light spectrum, with your reflected rays bouncing around into people’s eyeballs. Who even needed that weak sense? I was Daredevil in this fantasy tomb. Colorful light radiation was still radiation, just slower than its direct relative, gamma radiation. It was still flying around, stabbing every innocent pair of eyes and burning images into the minds of hardworking people. No one needed that kind of negativity in their lives. It was just me and the stat screens for now.
Also, I was kidding, visible light spectrum. I loved sight, and I missed seeing things terribly. My only wish at the moment, or my strongest wish in this situation, was for my vision to return so I could fight this rat like a man instead of a brainless crab.
Back on the topic of the possibly lethal fight that I was still engaged in, the real-time damage displays were convenient for on-the-fly corrections to battle strategies. I’d have been able to tell how well I was doing at hurting things with one attack or another in a very accurate and timely manner and adjust accordingly. Nothing quite like having tangible figures for that classic and savory measured brutality to brighten up my spirits.
Right after I hit it with that rock, a second symbol suddenly appeared, a flash of yellow in the almond shape of an eyeball caricature. The eye started closed, then opened up to reveal the iris and pupil. During that short time when it was still opening, it moved by itself, independent of the stat screen, in a sort of snappy rising motion. As soon as the eye was fully open, it faded back into nonexistence, and the stat block was aggressively hopping towards me, still mimicking the primal rat as angry, deep squeaking filled the silence.
Alright, another new thing learned. A yellow eyeball opening up above the monster, quite possibly above the head, meant that it noticed me. Cool. Convenient for stealth missions. I wasn’t exactly happy to see it do that right now, but I welcomed it all the same. The bad news was better than no news in this case. No news was what victims of stalking killers got right before dying a horrible death.
As I backed away on the ground, possibly into something even worse than the rat that was trying to kill me now, I felt around for another rock to avoid touching the current threat to my life and my health. So far, nothing but smooth stone, and the stat screen was bouncing faster than I was scooting to keep the distance.
By a miracle, my hand touched against something that wasn’t just more stone floor. Granted, it wasn’t quite the rock I was planning to use, but it moved at my touch, meaning it was probably liftable, so I wasn’t complaining about it. As I went to grab the sandpaper-like surface of the item, I felt the length and weight of it to be thin enough to grab and heavy enough to do some damage if I put some of my own weight into it.
In one smooth motion, I wrapped my hand around a skinny section as I grabbed it, swung it wildly in the general area I was guessing the giant rodent’s body to be. My hand felt a tug of my new weapon, and my ears heard another solid thunk, indicating some measure of success in that instant. A red ‘-5’ flared in the air, the stat block flew off to the side, and the ‘1’ at the Health stat shifted to a ‘0’ as the screen settled down to a stop.
By my estimation, I was officially the winner of my first ever monster fight in the fantasy world. Outgunned, outintelled, outmaneuvered, out-of-my-element, but not outmatched! Hopefully, not all of my fights would have been this desperate and nerve-wracking. Intense was more than fine, and stressful was sometimes fun after a tasty victory, but I hated feeling like I was helpless. Honest to god, I didn’t have any hope of winning that fight unless I was lucky, and I was really lucky. I was going to need some skills before that luck ran dry.
I barely had time to register the victory before the stat block blinked, changing into something completely new:
Primal Rat, beast Lv 1 (deceased)
Hunter Skill required: Lv 1
Brilliant. Even more new concepts I had to keep track of. New information was always good, but if I kept getting it minute after minute thrown at me left and right with zero context, I was sure to lose something important along the way. That risked me going for weeks on end believing something stupid because I didn’t remember one crucial detail, and no one corrected me because they thought I should have already known by now.
I thought this whole world was about mages, but now there’s a ‘Hunter Skill?’ Are there other skills outside of magic? Was hunting a type of magic here? That had so many implications to it. Though, taking a step back from that idea, it was more likely to be one of those skills that were mainly for use out of combat, to help with exploring the world and keeping things interesting between fights. While most times it was just grinding and excuses to go off the beaten path, a real fantasy world demanded that I actually use these skills to survive. Maybe I could have outsourced that sort of thing.
Goddamnit, I just wanted to see my own stat block for once. I was sick of moving about in the dark, in this case literally, with no real direction as to what the hell I was supposed to do except vague mission statements like “find the Order of the Golden Feather, find Galdrin who likes the color blue, save Neo Ceissein from Grune.”
Right, but HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO ANY OF THAT? Where did the Order live?! Who the fuck was Galdrin?! Why is his color preference important?! How was I supposed to even get to Grune to fight him, let alone kill him?! I didn’t even know if Neo Ceissein had a fucking north to orient myself once I fucking got to the surface of a new planet I was foreign to in every possible way!
So far, I had just the one magic skill, which was the non-combative, non-supportive, non-defensive stat displays that were only useful in teaching me new concepts of the world I was supposed to fight for, support, and defend from evil. Could I have bored them to death by reading off all of their stats one by one? Without a better frame of reference for all the information I was getting, even that was mostly useless to me in a fight. The best I could have hoped for was just to see how screwed I was and what my enemies would do to a low-level noob like me. Except I couldn’t have compared anything with any real value because I hadn’t seen my own level or stats.
Fine, not totally useless. Possibly learning weaknesses and having at least an idea of its probable strengths wasn’t a bad thing to have. It literally saved my life today, in at least five different ways, and I should have been glad to have it. According to Torlith, no one else except for Galdrin had this ability, so they weren’t prepared for me to know their exact capabilities before a fight. That was going to bag me more than a few victories when I finally got my magic powers working.
Maybe that was going to take a few more rats to work out if the leveling worked off of the classic practice of killing monsters to earn points. It was always about killing monsters in these systems. ‘Fight to get better at fighting’ was always the idea. If I simply wasn’t strong enough to access my magic powers and spells, I was just going to have to adapt to blind fighting and aiming with the stat blocks as spotters until I had leveled up enough for magic.
I had to get magic. There wasn’t really an ‘if I survive’ about this. I was going to survive this. I was going to grow stro
nger. I was going to beat Grune. Those other Earth heroes, who were pulled into this bullshit with no idea what it meant for them, deserved justice for the legendary lives that they were robbed of.
Did any of them think the previous morning, waking up from their normal lives, going to work, visiting friends, calling family members, paying bills, all the hum and drum of the daily grind, that it was going to be their last? I certainly had no premonition of it. How could anyone have known before? I was spending my last moments as an earthling lounging on a couch, eating pizza-adjacent convenience meal tabs, probably close to the furthest thing away from actual edible food, just behind the Hot Pocket.
What would I have done if I knew that day was my last? People often try to sound like they’re wiser and more free-spirited than everyone else when they say things like ‘live every day like it’s your last,’ but that shit didn’t click in, mentally speaking, until it was happening. We were all just living our lives one day, and now we weren’t. As far as my coworkers and family went, they all probably thought I was dead. Maybe I was, and this was some strange afterlife I somehow scored.
Whatever it was, it was also a second chance to not end up like a tired dunce again. I wasn’t getting a third after this, and I wasn’t wasting it. If nothing else, Grune and that Zuak squid thing were going to die, so long as I still had this second life. Torlith deserved to kick that tentacle monster in its tentacle monster nuts wherever those were. I was specifically going to find them and curb-stomp them with as magical a boot as I could get, just for that blonde bastard of a savior.
Well, it was time to go hunting. ‘Journey of a thousand miles’ or some other proverb that meant that every impossible endeavor has to be started in order to be finished. I brought myself to my knees, ready to find a way to navigate this darkness and start the impossible, no matter how long it took me.
And at that moment, a brilliant sight, like my eyes had never beheld before, came before me. This beautiful polygon was a light, transparent blue, with yellow writing, and had blessed me with words I couldn’t have ever predicted would make me feel this amazing:
You have increased your level to: Lv 1
+1 to all attributes, skills, spell augments, abilities, defenses, and strikes
Abilities gained: Omni Potential, Growth Beyond
I nearly cried tears of joy.
8
Now that I was thinking about it, it only now just hit me that I was fighting the primal rat, and I didn’t have any levels to help me out. Ouch. It made sense, what with my new arrival status, but still, I was probably the weakest thing in this world for a minute, there. Probably as strong as a regular rat myself. Well, that didn’t matter. Even with the magic seed inside of me and the strength of a normal rat, that stupid primal rat was still a chump compared to me.
And now I finally had some idea of the numbers tied to my being that had eluded me all this time. At the absolute, very least, I had a ‘1’ on every single attribute of my… profile? Character? Stat summary? It was weird actually being the character inside the system, instead of living outside looking in. Profile was probably the best word to use, barring connotations of ancient Facebook accounts and Grindr disappointments.
I tried to swipe the screen away, curious how I was going to control these in the future so they wouldn’t have gotten in my way. I was going to have to build up my own profile in my mind or on a piece of paper separately until I figured out how to either keep track of it easier, like a magic measuring device or something. That was always a thing in these kinds of worlds, so the people inside the fantasy world could use the same numbers and still sound like they were talking appropriately. That was the emergency hope I had since I couldn’t have known when I was going to be able to measure my stats with my profile displays, or if I was ever going to see my own goddamn profile screen--
Jeremiah Thorne, Human Novice Mage Lv 1
Health: 26/26 Magic: 142/142
Armor: 11 Aegis: 61
Abilities: Seed of Voloth, Omni Potential, Growth Beyond,
Final Act, Otherworldly, Harrowing Experience
Yeah! Hurray for passive-aggressive complaints to the mysterious new forces that controlled my life! Everything was coming my way! Did I finally level up my magic screen sight enough to qualify for it? Was this sudden gift just because I officially had a level now and could be considered a part of the system? No, that wasn’t right. The others from Earth were visible. Damn, I was the only one. I was about as foreign as foreign got. Was I also going to be the only human? That seemed like something I wouldn’t want to just flash around, especially with Grune probably sending his minions to look for me, if he had any. He was super evil. Minions were a given.
But that was a problem for another time. Right now, I had a stat screen to gawk over. It was the same color as the other one with my level and had everything I could have ever dreamed of displayed on it. I looked over my stats to see what was up.
I was much healthier than the rat, thankfully. It would have taken thirty-one rocks to bring this mage down to zero health unless that Armor stat did something about the damage. I’d learn that in time, though I hoped it wouldn’t be from first-hand experience. My Aegis was much higher than my Armor. That had to be because of something fancy and fun, and my Magic was a lot more powerful than the lot of them, even put together. My hunch said that was ‘magic seed’ related.
These ‘abilities’ at the bottom were the likely culprit for my wonky scores. I wondered if I could have accessed them the same way I did the others. If I couldn’t, that would have been frustrating on a great many levels. It was my stat display. I had a right to see my own abilities! Was there a court I could have appealed to if I had a complaint? The system couldn’t morally have robbed me of this. Now it was so close to me that I could have touched it.
As soon as I did, the screens snapped to another set of numbers and labels:
Mage Attributes
Strength: 11 Intellect: 21
Endurance: 11 Cunning: 11
Charm: 11 Sense: 21
Okay, this was what I wanted to see. Thank you, system.
Except, I couldn’t really tell how much this was in comparison. I could have guessed what each of these meant in general. Strength helped me lift things and use weapons, Endurance let me take more hits and survive things, Charm showed how likable or influential I was. Intellect probably had something to do with both my smartness and my magic, and maybe even the amount of things I could learn; for example, determining the number of spells I could keep on hand. Cunning got a bit tricky, but I assumed that was related to sneaky agility things. A classic staple of fantasy, the score that rated one’s limberness. How could any adventurer get by without being able to touch their toes? Practically a necessity, I assumed.
It didn’t take a genius to see that Sense was directly attached to my stat display ability since that was the only skill I was developing. That was nice to see. Not being surprised by a sneak attack or killed in my sleep was a fairly high priority of mine for life in general.
When I tried to go back to the last display with another touch, but that did not work out nearly as well as I was hoping for. Instead, I got yet another screen, with even more information that I didn’t exactly know what to do with:
Magic School: Omnimage
Spell Strength: +21 Magic Salvage: +41
Strike: +11 Resolve: +11
Specialization: None
Spell Level Maximum: Unlimited
Spell Augment Maximum: Unlimited
Alright, that was a lot to chew on at once. I got the easy stuff out of the way. Spell Strength made my spells stronger, Strike probably was how hard I hit things with just regular weapons, or maybe also spells. Resolve was probably Endurance-related and helped me survive just that much longer. Easy peasy.
My official school name being ‘Omnimage’ all but confirmed what I already knew, but it was nice for the system to acknowledge it, too. Omni=all, so I was an ‘all’ mage, meaning I coul
d do all of the magic schools. Pithy. I liked the name.
Specialization was something outside of my level, I wagered, since that was what Torlith was referring to when he was talking about mage growth. When I was strong enough, I could have specialized in something. But what did the guy who excelled at every kind of magic specialize in? Was there a chart for that so I could see where I wanted to focus my efforts?
Spell Level Maximum was more than likely the general classification of power for any given spell. Spell Augment Maximum had to be something fun. It may have had more to do with how spells were changed. Customized spells, especially improvised custom spells, trumped any kind of spell. I knew nothing about magic, and I was confident in saying that. Either way, it had something to do with how powerful my spells could have been. And it was something that I could have largely ignored since my maximum tier was literally limitless.
The prospect was exciting. A direct implication inherent to an early limit breaker was that I could chart magical territory way outside of my level’s usual boundaries and possibly learn spells outside of what I should have been able to try out, likely by finding them out in the world or learning from other mages. So I could learn all of them. Anything I came across was mine to use. If I was an opposing player in a game, I’d hate me so much.
I was starting to stack up like a play-to-win player. And the monsters of this world were really in trouble if I was one of the only ones who operated at this level of freedom. I may have been a hero, but that only applied to the citizens of the world. The job description didn’t mention a lick about me having to have mercy. Fresh out for any of the little shits who worked with Grune. ‘Bloodbath’ seemed too subtle of a term for what I wished to happen for my heroic jaunt through Grune’s forces. For Tobias, Serena, Ashura, and Torlith, I wasn’t going to leave a single breath to curse my name when I was through.