“Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck."

~Dalai Lama

POV - Tad

I was completely distracted from my perilous situation by all the changes I knew had happened to my Character Sheet. This was not wise, I knew. Yet my WIS stat check obviously failed because I was still distracted.

I pulled up my Character Sheet:

NAME

Known As:

Totally Awesome Dude

Tad

Blank

>SPECIES:

>TIER:

Human

G

>XP:

>EXP:

27556

2729/2756

>LVL:

1** CAPPED**

>MINION:

>Nige [Expand]

>CON:

23.5/336.17HP

STR: STA: AGI:

[Hide]

4.83 52.2 8.05

[Variance]

0 0 0

>WIS:

36.96MP

MEM: IMA: INT:

[Hide]

4.44 5.55 8.88

[Variance]

0 0 0

>KAR:

332.11E

CHA: SPI: HON:

[Hide]

11.1* 29.92* 11.1*

[Variance]

0 0 0

>LUC:

0.6***

+0.05 on Loot/Drop rolls

Unassigned

Total:

6

142.67

0 0

>SKILLS:

(Unlocked) [Hide]

Delve

Mine

Prospect

Deception

>>Run<<

>>Dream<<

(Active) [Hide]

Rage

Dodge

Advanced Meditation

Observation

Inspect

Basic Cultivation

(Proficiency) [Hide All]

[Novice]

[Novice]

[Apprentice]

[Novice]

[Novice]

[Novice]

>PATHS:

Nasal Prospector Class

>PERKS:

Gallifreudian Slip

>TITLES:

Pertinacious

Black Swan Survivor (Pending acceptance)

Audacious Pioneer (Pending acceptance)

>AWARDS:

Atelophobia Award

Precocious Award

And the first thing I noticed was just how perilous a position I was in. My HP was only at 23.5. I immediately chugged another Health Potion to supplement the one in my iAPD. I didn’t want to recharge the iAPD right away though because I wouldn’t get full return and I had already used up three of my ten potions.

23.5HP was simultaneously both a lot higher than I instinctively expected and also less than half of what I logically expected.

I mean it was significantly higher than zero and I sort of thought that Totally Scary Brute had totally killed me. He had done over 200HP damage with just his finger of doom. And 200HP was well in excess of my HP of 120. How had I survived? This was most strange. Not that I was complaining. No, I was very grateful that my new and exciting existence hadn’t been digitally terminated. But how? By all rights I should be the same as my corpuscular clothing donator.

I paused as I considered the corpse reclining beside me. He was actually the opposite of corpuscular technically. There were no living cells there, minute or otherwise, that was for sure. I wonder if he met his end by being flicked into eternity.

And I had honestly thought that I had been flicked into eternity too.

Then I remembered that I had hurriedly assigned my [Precocious Award] to [Body] just before the encounter unfolded. That was lucky. Or wise. Or both. I should have gotten some acknowledgement of that I would have thought. I was slightly miffed. Anyway, the Award would have added an additional 50% to each of my [Body] Stats. I ran some quick calculations. I had been 3, 40, 3 in STR, STA and AGI respectively and my HP was 120. I could see the relationship of HP to [Body] Stats was 3 x 40 = 120. If we applied the 50% modifier it would be 4.5, 60, 4.5 and presumably my HP had jumped to 270. That was super impressive for a Level 1 but in the overall scheme of things still extremely weak and puny.

I pulled up my Combat logs. Oh, I could also see Dom’s logs. Benefits of being in a group I suppose. I pulled up the first Combat Notification.

TSB? Trust Savings Bank? Technical Services Bulletin? That was his name? That was even weirder than my name. Ahhh. I twigged. I had been thinking of him as Totally Scary Brute. The System had used my nomenclature in its reports. Nice. And that was Dom’s one punch defeat. The next one would be mine.

Pretty sad reading. The next notification was the one I had seen as it all faded out to black. I pulled it up again.

Yep. I remembered this all right. I had thought it was going to be the last thing I would ever see. I frowned at the message. Something was niggling at me. I picked up a discrepancy. 224HP was not 99.5% of 270HP, it was only 83%. That meant my calculations regarding my Constitution were incorrect. I ran the numbers again. Oh. the modifications did not stack. That was a shame. Instead of 60STA it was 50STA. This gave me 225HP and I was knocked out with just 1HP remaining. Now that was extremely lucky. And I could see that I had quite a few notifications that were coded to LUC waiting to be read. I would check them out later though. First I had one last Combat message.

Ahhh. That would account for the massive increase in my XP. It looks like a 10k bonus for each achievement and then minus the total damage accrued to the party. It would be interesting to see what a normal Combat Summary looked like.

And yet even though I was surprised that I had survived at all, I was also surprised that my HP was below 50. Obviously over 2 hours had passed and the Health potion my iAPD had administered should have fully activated. Why didn’t I have 51HP? I interrogated my logs some more. Oh. Look at this. I had about 20 minutes of recovery, which equated to 8HP healed by my potion, when I incurred 1HP [Head Trauma] damage. And another. And another. Ouch, ouch, ouch. Six times! What on earth had been happening. I was back down to 2 HP. This was not good. The potion ticked over again and I was at 3HP. I realised that my iAPD had saved my life. If the potion hadn’t administered itself while I was unconscious then that very first head bump would have finished me off. The logs continued. I now had a small concussion from repeated headbanging [-1HP/10 minutes for 4 hours.] Wonderful. That was minus an additional 24HP. Luckily the health Potion had added a total of 50HP over 2 hours and then it looked like my normal regeneration had added a further 3.5HP. I had hovered close to death for longer than I knew. I was suitably grateful I was still here.

I returned my focus to my Character Sheet, this time considering my Skills and the sorry state they were in.

I had been making great progress, having had what I thought was a reasonably smart idea on how I could grow my build and exploit the opportunity in between being offered the Award and accepting the Award. It was a good plan. Sadly though it hadn’t quite gone to plan and both my Unlocked Skills and Active Skills lists had some glaring holes in them. Namely no weapon or fighting Skills and, I sighed, no magic Skills.

That was bad. Even worse, I had no previous experience in my old life of either type of Skill either. Of course it would be nigh on impossible to have a legacy magic Skill seeing magic wasn’t a real thing back then, as far as I knew. But why couldn’t I have already known karate or archery or something useful like that? Why couldn’t my parents have been secretly assassins training me up in preparation for my likely isekai into another world? It was all so unhelpful. Mind you an [Archery] Skill without a bow would also be unhelpful. And frustrating. It was a small consolation but I’d take it. Especially since I still didn’t have a bow. Or arrows.

But no, sadly I still didn't have a clue how to fight. At all. Unless, I paused, no, knowing the combo moves and key combinations of software fighting would hardly count. Maybe as a dexterity check I mused. But DEX wasn’t even listed on my Character Sheet. It was probably a subcategory of AGI as that seemed to be the closest fit, dealing with physical movement. I made a note to check this out later.

Meanwhile I was far more likely to endanger myself with my new daggers than I was likely to use them to fend off an attacker. I sniggered as I imagined my bemused opponent watching me stab myself before they could. And the System snark. [Congratulations you have defeated yourself. Here are some experience points to quantify your expected learning outcomes.] Ah, I sighed, humour to ease the tension. Just what the doctor ordered.

Just then my [Observation] Skill flared. Movement. I went on high alert. I was ready for anything. Well actually, no I was completely unready for everything. I was a gnat. A bug. A speck. Hopefully I was too insignificant to even be worth looking at. Surely my threat rating was non-existent. I winced as I realised that often low levelled players in a high level zone often meant a larger threat bubble tempting the monsters to attack. I was so ready to flee. Where to was the bigger question I had yet to answer.

Thankfully I didn’t need to decide that right now. The movement was well away from me, just a ripple in the distant distance, and moving further away. It faded into stillness and my heart returned to my chest. Ahhh. I sighed. The adrenal rush. Better than a bungee.

I returned to my distraction. Where was I? Oh yes my lack of Skills. I had six active skills. Only one had advanced to apprentice. I had room for three more.

My immediate thought was to slot one or two of my Class Skills. Maybe even all three. They could be helpful out here and I needed all the help I could get. My last unlocked Skill; [Deception], seemed less applicable when out here in the wilds. In a way it was quite nice. Six Active Skills, three empty slots and three Class Skills. And I really wanted to see what my Class could do. Especially the Delve and Prospect facets. They felt useful.

I froze. I had more unlocked skills. I hadn’t received any notifications on these. I paused, had I? Maybe they were part of the tranch of [ding]s I received on entering this new zone?

I quickly scanned my messages for Skill unlock notifications. Nope. Nada. Zip. I was flummoxed. I had a glitch. Those skills definitely weren’t there prior to my confrontation in the Library and being dumped in the dump. There should be a notification. I was being robbed of XP. I was being cheated. This was bizarre.

I cast my mind back to my dream just prior to my involuntary body surf into the trash portal. It had been super vivid and unmistakably a dream. And it had involved running. Lots of running. And now I had unlocked Skills for [Run] and [Dream]. This surely was not a coincidence. I activated [Advanced Meditation]. This was a danger. I hoped [Observation] could break me out if something happened. But this was important. I just knew I was on the cusp of uncovering something important and I needed the underlying Skills of [Logic] and [Concentration] to be fully brought to bear. And yes, [Breathing] would also be a help. I was feeling a little panicky.

Some deep breaths to calm down would be just the ticket.

POV - Sledgrick

It was good. I had done finger five. I was back down to four fingers. Four fingers was good. Then I didn’t need to use my thumb. My thumbs was on the wrong side for counting and I then needed to reorder my fingers. That's when it is easy to do things wrong and forget fingers or get them mixed up.

I got back to the Library. The Lady was gone from there. Oh No! she was not supposed to go. Now I have broke finger one. Boss Chase would be so mad. I needed to find her fast. Librarylady was no help but flowererman pointed me in the right direction. Of course it was hard trying to tell him who I was looking for. I had to act it out. Long hair… Nice curves… This tall… It took a long while. I got a good Skill unlock too. [Acting]. I like [Acting]. I did a good job. I found Lady.

She still had bigger badguy. He was still weak. But he had woked up.

Lady was cross again.

“I just told you to dump him. Just outside the Library would have been fine. What took you so long and why did you have to traumatise that poor librarian and street vender?”

I had to say the question over a couple of times to myself. There were lots of words stacked up.

This is the problem. Lady is a new Boss. She didn’t know all the Boss rules. Boss rules were more than just fingers. They were bigger. More important. Maybe like arms. And there was lots of arms. They was like that tentacles monster blocking the sewer on third an twenty second. Cept the arms were invisibitable ones. That’s what old boss Albie said anyway.

And a very important arm was ‘Don’t dump bodies or evicidemce in your own alley.’ And little badguy was so nearly a body and definitely he was a vicidem. I knew when bosses said dump the evicidemce I needed to dump it at the dump. Or I was peeing in mine own soup. And that tasted bad. It was good learning though. I never forgets that now.

But Lady obviously haddened learnt that arm. I should tell her but that would be hard with finger two. Maybe I could [Act] it? Or I could show her? Somehow I hesitated. That was a hard lesson I learned and I didn’t like it. It was yuck.

While I was reasoning this out, Lady got crosserah.

“Sledgrick, you miserable muppet of a minion! Answer me immediately.”

Oh good. I liked finger two but sometimes it was hard.

“Yah. I jhumped him in da jhump. Dat is where I’s always has to jhump evicidemce. Hits bury him port ant. Pea soup is yuck!”

Lady was funny. She did a fish. I like fish. I like Lady. I am going to hench for her lots. I am going to be nice like her too. Please and thankyou was good words. And smiles and waves was nice too. Just like Lady.

The System gave me a [beep].

> >

Ohhhhhh. That is a good skill. I liked it lots. “Yesh policesh an dank jew .”

“Sledgrick! You moron. You imbecilic excuse for a henchman! You, you…"

"You are dumped!”

> >

”Huhck!?”