POV - Nige!

Hey, hey, we were about to hit the good stuff! I couldn’t wait. While a rare skill may come about 1 in 20 or 5%, a rare perk was more like 0.005% or one in 20,000. And we weren’t looking at a rare perk, it was a legendary one. The rate they dropped was off the charts. I had never even heard of one dropping during the tutorial before. They were normally System rewards for defeating high level rift or dungeon bosses where the risks and dangers were substantial and extreme. And even then they were rare!

But I knew Tad’s orientation had been extreme too. Of course I did because I was there for every excruciating moment of it. And while he was in lala land, and incidentally scaling up his Stamina to absurd levels I was left kicking my heels, not that I had any, but you get the idea. Luckily there were plenty of things to do seeing the tutorial was seeded with a multitude of tasks and adventures to guide the new participants into learning the system. But without someone real to converse with I had been in effect in isolation for 90 odd years.

I certainly felt a vested interest in Tad’s rewards and I was totally glad I had decided, somewhat on the spur of the moment, to seek him out, even if it was rather malicious at the time. Once I had arrived and actually had a responsive conversation, I decided that I quite liked my long term house plant and meal ticket as he had been. Just getting intelligent responses and questions was immensely rewarding in itself and it was then I realised how much I had enjoyed mentoring these newbies into the System. And of course that avenue was closed to me now, but I could still mentor Tad. He was even still in my active contracts and it had just required some creative wordings and I could link my somewhat derailed future to his.

By this time we were nearly back to Tad’s dorm and I could see he was limping quite badly. Why hadn't he worn his starter footwear? Oh, he hadn’t checked under the bed. Yes, there they were; a pair of basic sandals. I will need to point them out to him before we leave again.

But first let’s get him up on the bed and pull up these notifications. Which one first I wondered?

Nah, of course I knew which one I wanted to see. There really wasn’t any question at all.

And …here it was:

> >

And Tad cracked up.

“Ha! That’s a quote from the Doctor!”

“Yes”

“Let’s see what else it says.” He activated the description.

“Ahhh… no he, well actually he probably was a doctor but he wasn’t the Doctor.”

“Doctor Who was a TimeLord.”

“???”

“Doctor Who is fictional.”

And so he did. Most excellent!

Moving on I pulled up the title he had been awarded;

> >

This already looked good. Of course, I had no idea who Babe Ruth was, but she sounded wise if not somewhat precocious.

I pulled up the description and effects together;

I announced.

This was great. We were whizzing through the rewards and they were all I hoped for. .

As Tad accepted the title I pulled up the award notification.

> >

Well not much of a hint there. But I knew progress was paramount in System speak so this was important. Let’s open up the description.

Oh! This was different. I wasn’t sure what to think on first reading it. Reticence was not something the System encouraged at all. And I knew from Tad’s actual orientation that he had totally failed in acclimatising to the System, having gained no System Skills let alone having any of his legacy Skills recognised and validated. This was not good. However, it did look like the System had taken account of his phenomenal STA growth. Hopefully this would balance out the title effects somewhat.

Ouch! No wonder Tad was asking about Skills earlier. I didn’t know what to say so I just said it.

“I know, right!” Tad jumped in.

“This is the one reward notification I had already opened and I didn’t know what to make of it in the slightest!”

“I can see that the two Stat effects are fantastic and may well be worth taking the hit on the Skills but I need to know more. What can you tell me about Skills?”

I paused as I gathered my thoughts. This information was usually gradually disseminated during the tutorial tasks in digestibles chunks and reinforced by the actual activities. However, we didn’t have that luxury now as we were operating under a time constraint with less than 48 hours to decide on whether to accept the award or not.

I would par down the info dump as much as possible. Hopefully I wouldn’t miss anything crucial.

I paused not wanting to get sidetracked but Tad waved me on.

“So are Skills, once they are activated, locked in or can they be swapped out as you like?”

I could see Tad was still brimming with questions, so I was somewhat surprised when he perked up.

“Righteo! Plan of attack!”