When the old lady left him alone in the damp, dark cellar, he inspected his borrowed shovel which was lit by the dim lantern light.

Rusty Iron Shovel

Damage 6

Durability 42/78

Strength required: 6

Strangely enough, the shovel did slightly more damage than the sword. He thought about it and realized that if you swung a shovel and hit someone, it would do just as much damage as a sword. The shovel however was unwieldy and not designed for combat, it would take longer to swing and while it had a long reach, it would be easy to dodge. He sat with his back to the wall as his eyes slowly adjusted in watch for hungry rats.

Hours seemed to pass for Jack as he tried to be as quiet as possible, unmoving. His butt was numb, his back stiff, and his attention had wandered after his long watch. The soft pattering of little feet along the dirt packed cellar floor brought him out of his daydreams. A single rat appeared along the edge of the room, hesitantly testing the waters. Careful not to move and alert the rat, Jack mentally inspected it to bring its information to bear.

Brown Rat

Level 2

Health 10/10

*Squeak* Jack was startled by the sudden noise and quickly closed the window. While his attention was on the interface, the rat had headed into the room and was followed by two others. The squeak must have been an all clear message to the others, he thought. Jack patiently waited until just the right moment as he slowly got his shovel ready over his head. He was careful to move extremely slowly so as to not scare off the rats. His heart beat fast against his chest and and nerves screamed as he anxiously awaited the fight. As soon as the timing was perfect and he could wait no more, he swung for all he was worth at the lead rat. *Whack* The shovel handle jared against his hands as he heard a loud crack and a notification window appeared.

Critical Hit! You have dealt 10 damage to Brown Rat.

Brown rat has died.

You receive 20 experience.

Awesome! he thought, I killed it in a single swing! Sharp pain flared suddenly in his left foot as he was reading through the message and another appeared in his vision.

You have been bitten for 4 damage

Cursing himself for getting distracted, he dismissed the window and focused on the other two rats. He kicked his left injured foot out in a desperate effort to get the rat away from him. The rat tumbled away, but took very little damage as he was only in socks. Another annoying notification appeared.

You have kicked a Brown Rat for 1 damage.

This has to stop! Jack quickly focused on mentally pushing the message away and not receiving any new notifications during combat. He hoped he would be less distracted without them. Now that combat had his full attention, he realised he no longer had room for a full swing of the shovel, the rats were too close. Jack jabbed forward with the heavy shovel like a spear, hitting them over and over. Each jab did little damage, but after the fifth poke hit the left rat, it died. Left with only a single rat, Jack was easily able to finish off the remaining rat with two more quick jabs.

He sat down on the hard ground in exhaustion. They may have been only rats and little threat to him, but fighting was tiring and he was out of breath.

Now that combat was over, a new window popped up before him. According to the log, he had received 10 experience each for the second and third rats he killed and he had gotten 20 for the first. The other rats must have only been level 1 instead of level 2 like the first one. He also noticed that his follow up pokes did significantly less damage than his first powerful swing. This made sense as it had his full strength and momentum behind it. It was good to know that even though this world worked like a video game, physics still played its part. The damage of the shovel was most likely based upon its weight, sharpness, and hardness. That is why the shovel dealt more damage than the sword! Jack suddenly realized.

He checked his status again and saw that he now had 40 experience, only 60 more until the next level. The status showed his health as 96 out of 100 total. I hope it doesn’t take days to heal like it does on Earth. Jack thought as he was inspecting his bloody foot. If this gets infected, I am screwed!

With the three dead rats at his feet, he now had a potential fifteen copper coins. Unfortunately, that was just barely enough to stay the night at an inn and eat a bowl of stew. There was no way he could afford what he needed at that rate. While Jack dragged the rat corpses off to the side and wiped the guts off his trusty shovel, he spied a half eaten carrot on the ground. Hey, there is an idea, he thought, Why not try for a discount? He was in a room filled full of food, and the idea of just taking what he wanted was very tempting. He could probably get away with stealing some of the food and eating it without the owner knowing. If she somehow found out what he did however, she would definitely not pay him for the rats, and she would possibly turn him over to the town guard.

With a new mission, Jack headed up the stairs toward the cellar door. After climbing the steps and heading to the storefront, he found the shop owner behind her counter.

“Hello Miss…” he hesitantly began, but realized he didn't know her name. “I am sorry, but I never caught your name.”

The shopowner’s eyebrows crinkled in confusion as she asked, “Why not just inspect me?”

Feeling like an idiot, for not thinking of this earlier, he mentally thought ‘inspect’.

Name: Islar Gardenreach

Race: Human

Level: 4

Health: 110/110

He did not receive nearly the amount of information as his own status showed, but that just made sense, the information was private. He wouldn’t want others to know what his intelligence was. I’d rather they find out how dumb I am after I open my mouth, he chucked to himself.

“Sorry about that Islar,” he began in apology, “I wasn’t thinking. However, I have a question for you. I noticed some half eaten carrots down below and I was wondering if I could eat those since you won’t be able to sell them.”

“Lets see what this fuss is about and what old Islar can do for you.” Islar said as she walked toward the cellar. Once she reached the bottom step and saw the dead rats, she turned to me with a smile. “Yes, you have been busy I see. Now what would you like to eat? We can’t have you taking perfectly good food and calling it junk, no we can’t!”

Jack picked up some of the carrots off the ground, and searched around the room looking for other food that had been gnawed on or looked in bad shape. Once his scramble was done, he presented two hands full of vegetables to Islar, weighing over a pound. “Can I have these?”

“Two copper,” she stated.

“”What!” he exclaimed, “I can buy perfectly shaped and clean vegetables full price for four coppers, and you can’t even sell these. No one is going to buy half eaten or damaged food.”

Islary lightly cackles, “That is where you are wrong, yes you are! I can sell these at a lower price for animal feed, or even to the pub owner for his stew. After all, his customers won’t ever find out, no they won’t. But, since you asked instead of just stealing the food, I will let you have them for only a single copper. Deal?”

Jack thought about it for a second. He had hoped to eat for free today, but he decided he wasn’t going to get a better deal anywhere else, and it was too late to get away with stealing the food now. “Can I pay for it when I am done in the cellar? I don’t have any money at the moment.”

“Of course you can.

“Then deal.” Jack responded as he shook her hand.

As she walked back up the stairs, he started cleaning the dirt speckled vegetables off before eating them. They did not taste the best, they had a very earthy flavor. He was not sure if this came from the way the vegetables were farmed, or if he didn’t do a good job of cleaning them. Now that he was finally full and able to think straight once again, Jack considered his future plans. He no longer had to pay the 5 coppers for stew, and he refused to pay for water. He had already saved 4 coppers by thinking outside the box. Now he just needed to find a cheap way to sleep at night.

After he had priced out multiple inns earlier that day, he had found that the cheapest room for rent was half silver a night, or 10 coppers. That tidy sum of money would grant him a small shared room with two tiny bunk style beds on each side. Those so called beds were essentially planks of wood padded with animal furs and a folded animal pelt for a pillow. A meal was not included, and neither was HBO. To get a room by himself that contained a bed with an actual mattress and feather filled pillow, the innkeeper would charge him 4 silver a night. Screw that!

He would like to sleep somewhere for free, but he assumed the guard would arrest him if he slept on the street or in an alley. Even if he found a well hidden spot, he risked being robbed or even killed for the few coins he now had. Sleeping outside of the village also didn’t seem safe, there had to be a reason they had the wall built after all. The last thing he wanted was to wake up with his leg being gnawed off by some wild beast.

Wait a minute! Jack thought, Duh! He realized that Islar had never given him a time limit for killing rats, he could sleep in the cellar. Sure, the rats would probably bite him awake, but they only did a small amount of damage, and he could kill them for even more money.

Noticing that his toe felt much better already, he quickly checked his status to see how his health fared.

Name: Jack Herring

Race: Human

Level: 1

Experience: 40/100

Health: 98/100

Strength: 7

Agility: 9

Vitality: 10

Intelligence: 12

Skills:

Inspect level 1

Boons:

Polyglot

Contestant

He had gained two of his health back in just about an hour. If that simple math held true, that would mean he could go from barely alive to completely healed in just two days. That is amazing! Jack thought, Although, what will happen if my arm is cut off, or I have a massive open wound? Hopefully he never had to find out.

Now that he had some down time while he waited for more rats to appear, it was time to figure out exactly what his attributes did. He was familiar with the terms from games he had played in the past, but the specifics had always differed depending on the game he played. He focused on Strength first.

Strength determines what you are able to lift and how hard you are able to hit. Raising strength will allow you to wear heavier armor, use heavier weapons, and increases the damage of weapons.

So, it seemed that it not only limits what he could use, but would also increase the damage he could do above and beyond what his weapon stated. This was definitely something he wanted to increase when he had a chance.

Agility determines how quickly you can move and your ability to dodge. Raising agility will improve your coordination. Increasing the weight you carry or constricting your range of motion will lower your agility.

Agility didn’t seem to increase his toughness as it did in some games he had played, however it did make it easier to dodge. It also allowed him to swing more often, which was huge. If I double my agility, will I swing twice as often and do twice as much damage? he wondered. It also seemed that with higher coordination, he could more accurately and consistently hit weak spots of a creature. Any tight clothing or heavy armor he wore would unfortunately slow him down. With less speed, and a reduced range of motion, he would strike less often and with less accuracy. It seemed there were always trade offs. There would be no plate wearing tanks zipping around the battlefield on this world.

Vitality determines how much health you have. Raising vitality will increase your health by 10 points each.

This seemed rather straightforward, although he wondered if it changed his body to be tougher, or if some other mechanism allowed him to take more damage before succumbing to death.

Intelligence determines how much mana you have and the complexity of spells you are able to cast. Raising this increases your mana by 10 points.

Holy crap, there’s magic in this world! Jack had to find a way to learn magic. Why don’t I see any mana on my status page? Either way, he needed to ask around and find out how he could learn to cast spells. Intelligence was his highest attribute, he would be a fool not to play to his strengths.

The real question was, how could he raise his attributes? He could see maybe raising strength by lifting heavy weights and agility by sprints or aerobics, but how would he go about increasing vitality or intelligence? He doubted doing complex math in his head would increase his intelligence, and he was loath to test out injuring himself repeatedly in hope of a vitality increase.

Jack continued to contemplate the choices he had to make in this world while he waited for more rats. One thing was for sure, without money for equipment he would not survive long.