A wheeze was as good as Alex got when he tried to breathe from where he lay curled on the ground. Snapping two tree branches on his way down had hurt more than the landing that stole the breath from him, but he was glad for them all the same. They had slowed him down a bit, even as they felt like lashes taken to his back—but it was the tall yellow shrub he’d flattened that had truly saved him.

The screen was still there on the edge of his vision, blinking faintly with the new quest he’d gotten, as if just a thought away from his reach. But he didn’t even want to think about that. He just wanted to stay where he was, enjoying the simple pleasure of not being in free fall. It seemed to have become a rarity for him as of late.

A heavy thump coming from above disabused him of that notion.

The Killer Sloth had landed on a spot just above Alex’s previous branch, and it seemed to hesitate for a moment when its prey wasn’t where it was supposed to be. It stood still, sniffing at the air.

Then it looked down, right at him, before it threw its head back and screeched again.

The noise felt like thousands of needles poking at his brain. Alex winced at the pain, even if it was more manageable now than the time before. Ignoring his clothes tangling on the nettles and sprigs of the shrub, he rolled off as swiftly as he could and crawled on both his elbows until he felt the grass of the clearing beneath him again.

To his side, by the foot of the tree he’d climbed up, Peppa the level one boar was struggling to stand in place, wobbling on its four hooves like a drunkard. It was close enough that he could smell the monster, a vomit-inducing stench of piss and feces and mud, all mixed together as if it had spent the last day rolling around in it. Bits of chipped tree bark were stuck to the fur of its head. Black blood oozed out of a large gash above one of its eyes. The boar must have rammed headfirst into the tree, he figured, just to get to him.

Alex didn’t know whether to mock it or praise it for being a champ.

As the boar was the least of his concerns for now, he didn’t waste any time before bringing forth his status page again. It was hard focusing past the constant pain, but he needed to see the damage he’d caused. He knew damn well he’d clicked something just before he fell, and even now as he skimmed through the screen with only his mind, he cursed himself and all the smartphone companies in his world for conditioning him into using his fingers.

And indeed, when he looked, instead of a N/A besides his class, the word Mage shone in its place.

Damn it! A defeated groan escaped his mouth. Maybe a sloth killing me wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world after all.

It was all the more frustrating that he’d just put his free points on strength, vitality, and dexterity. Were this an actual video game, he’d simply delete the character and start over after fixing the mishap. It was one thing to make a mistake several hours into a game, but there was no way he’d play the whole thing through with a broken build from the get go.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have such luxury as far as he was aware. Even if the option was there, he didn’t know of it, nor did he have the time to sit down for some tea and study the system through and through. The sloth would soon close down on him from the trees like Tarzan. As fast as it moved above him, Alex doubted outrunning it was a possibility, not deep in an unknown forest as he was. He needed to kill the damned thing.

As if to remind him, he noticed his HP slowly ticking away as the sloth’s shriek still rang in the air. It would stop soon enough to come down and cut him up, he knew, but it wanted to butter him up before it killed him.

Gritting his teeth, Alex mentally clicked on the Mage and looked through the skills. Surely, even a class he didn’t want would have something to help him.

[Skill Points]: 0

[————]

[————]

[————]

...

The list went on and on, with dozens and dozens of grayed out placeholders to what could only be his skills. Or actually, his future skills, as the immediate problem was at the top.

Zero skill points.

Alex couldn’t help the spike of irritation that swelled inside him. It made no sense. Why even allow him to choose a class if he couldn’t put skills on it? Especially considering he’d been dropped in this world with five points on all his attributes, and five more available as free points. Why differentiate the availability of attributes and skills at all?

Letting out a hissing breath, Alex simply shook his head. In the end, it didn’t matter why. There was no way to file a complaint and get the situation fixed for him; and like it or not, his status still read as level zero. He would have to fall back to working with what he had—two functioning hands, a bit more courage than any health specialist would recommend, and his often-insufficient wits.

It wasn’t much, he knew, but it was familiar. He had learnt to rely on himself for every aspect of his life beside the basics ever since he was ten. He’d just have to continue to do so for a while longer. He found a smile worming its way into his face at that, and for some reason he could think straight again without that annoying something gnawing at his brain.

That’s when he noticed it. His HP had stopped falling; the pain was gone.

Already dreading what he would see, Alex chanced a look up. The Killer Sloth wasn’t screeching anymore, which was good; what it was doing, however, was bounding down on him from a few branches up like a hawk diving for a rabbit.

Thinking quickly, he did the first thing that came to mind. He dashed past Peppa, hefted up the branch the boar had bowled through a scant minute ago, and readied himself. One last glance up showed the Killer Sloth coming down on the last available perch above before it lunged at him through the air, with blood on its eyes and claws stretched out in front of it.

Alex grinned. The branch on his hands was a solid piece of wood, taller than he was and thick and heavy even as it tapered out in the end. He planted that side on the ground and turned the other up in the air—the side that was jagged and spiky like a giant canine from where it was torn from its tree.

It wasn’t the starting item he was hoping for, but even he had to admit that bringing a spear to a claw fight was the optimal choice.

The sloth noticed it too late, only a small widening of its bloodshot eyes before it crashed into the makeshift spear. It pierced right through its chest, blood and gore exploding out behind it in a black shower. Alex grunted as he felt the impact through his whole body, a vibrating force that threatened to dislocate his wrists and shoulders before he braced himself properly. The speed of its dive caused the sloth to sink halfway down the branch in one go before it snapped with the weight of the monster.

Alex would’ve fallen back at the sudden jolt had he not planted his feet as well as he did. The sloth fell to the ground with a dull thud and stayed there. After a long moment of staring at the broken end of his spear, Alex finally looked down at the Killer Sloth, fascinated as much as he was horrified at what had just happened.

The once scary monster looked almost pitiful now, curled on its side like an infant, blood matting the fur around the wood still lodged on its chest. To say nothing of the mess on its back.

Yet even as it died there on the ground, even as it let out a blood curdling wail of pain and rage, its claws still reached out in front of it, trying to cut him with its last breath… before its strength gave in and its arms fell to its sides.

The clearing fell silent again, only a gentle breeze stirring the leaves and Alex’s own adrenaline-fueled panting disturbing the tranquility of the forest. He felt… numb. Like the whole experience had not been his own and he’d watched it all through a screen, for surely it could not be real. Surely…

With his eyes still glued to the dead Killer Sloth, Alex swallowed down the lump that had formed in his throat.

No. He shook himself forcefully. I did it. I killed it.

As disturbing as it was to watch something die right in front of him, he had to keep in mind that he was dealing with true monsters here, with things that would give their lives for the slight chance to take his own. He couldn’t falter from now on, couldn’t pity them.

Suddenly, and producing no sound at all, the sloth’s corpse and all its blood turned glassy and broke down into a thousand pieces. This time Alex couldn’t help stumbling in surprise and falling down on his backside, the broken branch dropping from his grasp.

The pieces that were once the sloth looked like small panes of black glass when they rose gently into the air, and as they did so they kept breaking down again and again the higher they went, turning into some kind of dust that glittered against the light of the sun. Soon they became so fine and small that they vanished entirely.

He was still staring into space when he got the notification.

Ping!

Level up!

Level up!

The bell-like sound almost brought a startled laugh out of him. I just leveled up in real life... after killing a man-sized sloth... made out of disappearing glass. Shaking his head at the lunacy of it all, Alex opened up his status.

[Status]

Name: Alex Hart

Level: 2

Class: Mage

HP: 60/60

MP: 50/50

[Attributes]

Strength: 6

Dexterity: 8

Vitality: 6

Power: 5

Soul Affinity: 5

Free Points: 10

Skimming through the page, he noted the biggest changes. He’d gotten ten free points from two level ups, five for each, and the single point he’d put on vitality had increased his max HP by ten from the previous fifty. A very simple health system, all in all, and might be the same for MP if his suspicions of Soul Affinity being the equivalent, which became all the more integral now that he’d become a Mage.

But most importantly, his HP was full, and he could no longer feel the throbbing bruises on his back from when Peppa had flung him against a tree. It could only mean that whenever he leveled up, both his health and mana points would be restored to maximum. Or at least he hoped so. That would surely be useful in the days to come.

Noticing his own rising health brought something else to mind. He hadn’t seen an HP bar on the sloth. It had died simply when it had died. The idea was obvious when he thought of it like that, but given this was supposed to mimic a game he had been expecting numbers and damage indicators based on his attributes pitted against the sloth’s own status.

It all seemed very… lacking. No damage or attack indicators, no mini map, no stamina bar, no endurance and charisma and luck attributes. Now that he thought of it, there were a disturbing amount of systems missing from what you can usually find in a ‘transported to a foreign world’ story.

Alex didn’t know whether he liked that or not. On the one hand that ‘lacking’ meant familiar ground he would be glad to keep calling reality. On the other, it meant the swift death of his reliance on expected tropes and loopholes that would let him power up to godhood in one week, and of the fading hope that he would simply respawn or even be put back into his world if his health bar ever hit the dreaded zero.

Putting that alarming thought to the back of his mind for a moment, Alex left his free points for later and quickly ventured into his skills. From the corner of his eyes, he spied Peppa slowly getting its bearings back only a few feet away, and he wanted to have something other than a wooden club to confront that one.

[Skill Points]: 2

Fire Proficiency

Water Proficiency

Lightning Proficiency

Air Proficiency

Earth Proficiency

Arcane Proficiency

[Locked]

[Locked]

[Locked]

…

Proficiencies. Not skills, proficiencies. That… wasn’t what he expected.

His eyes skimmed through the list again. No, it wasn’t what he expected, but it did make things more flexible. A skill like fireball was useful enough when you wanted to launch literal balls of fire, but being proficient with an element meant so much more than that. Anything from lighting a campfire to creating barriers of fire, fire whips, cauterizing wounds, or even something as simple as creating light.

And that was just one element.

Alex’s heart started pumping fast, excitement thrumming inside him. It might not have been what he wanted, but magic was still magic. All the available options had their advantages, but he had a pissed off boar turning his way, and you can never go wrong with good old fire.

With an easy effort of will, he selected Fire Proficiency and put one point in it. The moment he did, heat surged from his chest, a sudden torrent of energy that spread out across his whole body, suffusing his limbs until it felt like he would burst in flames. Liquid light ran through his veins, the hairs on the back of his neck stood as if electrified. It felt like a long forgotten gate had been opened inside of him, and a wave of… not power, but pure potential had spilled forth.

The feeling was gone as soon as it came, a fleeting moment of pure ecstasy that left him with a giant grin on his face, and the belief that he could take on the whole world and somehow come out on top.

Still smiling, Alex turned to face the boar. “Come on then, piggy,” he taunted, rising to his feet. Peppa gave him a mutinous shake of its head, bloodied face screwed up into a snarl. Its front hoof pounded the earth beneath it, once, twice, three times, before the boar kicked off and rushed him.

Anticipation had left Alex’s skin prickly, but he was ready for it. Taking a deep breath, he focused inward, searching for the source of the heat, for that well of potential he knew was there.

He didn’t have to look for long. The first surge of energy had left its mark. As clear as day when he concentrated, Alex could feel thousands of pathways coiled around every inch of his body like tightly-bound wire—no, a giant system of arteries, empty and waiting, all leading to the same source in his chest.

And all he needed to do was pull on it.

As if answering his call, warmth followed his will, from his chest then running along his arm before pooling at his right hand, all in the same moment. Then with a bellow to set an appropriate tone, he threw his arm out in front of him, palm facing forward, fingers splayed, and willed a storm of hellfire to burst forth against his level one enemy.

The air near his hand crackled, followed by a flicker of light, then a small, pitiful tongue of fire, no larger than a thumb and no brighter than a candle, shot out from his open palm toward the tusked, waist-tall beast barreling toward him.

Alex stared at his hand, unbelieving. “No way—ugh!”

Two things happened at that moment. First, the spittle of fire he’d farted into the world somehow managed to strike Peppa right on the snout, spooking it just enough to turn its frontal charge into a glancing blow to his hip.

Then, and most aggravating of all, said blow to the side, which bore a remarkable resemblance to the one he’d taken just a few minutes earlier, sent him flying back-first into a tree. The same back and the same tree that had become close acquaintances previously, but that now had no choice other than to escalate their relationship to something indecently, intensely intimate.