I wake up to my usual overnight report.

Trait progress: Mountain Dweller +1% ; Wildland Dweller +1% ; Forest Dweller +1% ; Mana Sense +1%, +1 Mana ; Vindicator +1%

Experience gain notice : +4%

Your poor resting conditions have slightly reduced your natural health regeneration for the night.

I just have the time to realize I passed the mark to level before it starts. A deeply unpleasant moment. While my mind gets assaulted by a bunch of notifications, an unsettling, awful feeling runs through my body, as if my insides were suddenly crawling with ants.

It’s the mana, it’s moving everywhere inside us.

The weird feeling is just horrible. Thankfully, it’s gone before my sleepy mind has the time to really wake up and start panicking.

I do not want to feel that again.

Congratulations, you’ve leveled up!

The System is now more in tune with your mind and body.

Evaluating changes…

You are granted one point in each stat.

Your Trait-Bound attribute cap has been increased from a maximum of 175 to a maximum of 199.

You now have access to the System Skill Identify.

You now have access to the System Ability Panel Share.

Various System notices and information panels will now be more user friendly.

You now have limited control over what appears on your main status page.

Your trait “Makeshift Crafter” has been lost.

Titles have been unlocked.

Just short of two hundred Trait bound attributes… That sounds like a lot. Is it a lot?

I marvel a little at how much more seamless navigating the strange mental interface of the system is. Compared to before, it’s like the difference between night and day. For starters, the status windows now has a few tabs, making it much easier to take a mental glance at. While it used to take a real effort to bring things up and it would take a large part of my attention, everything is now just a thought away. I just instinctively know what I can do. For instance, I can take a look at the details of my traits without calling the status first and focusing on the trait in question.

Going through all my traits to check on them only takes a handful of second. I note in passing that yes, the text is indeed a bit friendlier. It’s not a machine anymore, it’s a part of me.

I’ve only got twelve points in Trait-Bound attributes. It doesn’t take much effort to add a tracker for them to my main status overview.

Yep, I can do that now. Don’t ask how, but it works.

How?

It works.

I just know I can do new things, just like I know how to activate my new system skill.

Identify (System skill, rank 1)

Identify allows you to recognize and catalog entities surrounding you. Using this skill on an entity may give you some extra insight [Affected by Unknown Context]. Mana efficiency and power of the information gathering are improved with skill rank.

Current Mana cost : 3

[Smoked meat : a dried piece of meat cooked in a smokehouse, it will stay edible for a long time.]

[Jug : a crude, open container of clay for about two liters of liquid.]

So, we can now spend mana to have captain obvious narrating our life? What a game changer.

Can you activate the skill?

[Dried lobmarac : a section of a fruit that has been left to dry. It’s star shaped.]

Oh my god. This is beyond useless.

More importantly, we don’t know what color our eyes are flashing!

Yeah. Let’s go find Pheyis and try identifying her to see what happens.

- - -

[Pheyis (level ??) : an experienced Gilfeith woman, capable of easily overpowering you in every way that matters, and most that don’t.]

I casually ignore the dismissal of everything I can do. Having Bob in my head has made me rather good at dealing with snarky comments.

I’m not sure what it says about me that everything in my head seems to be competing for the award of the most acerbic comment.

Eh, this system is a hundred years too early to have a chance against me.

As she activates the two way translation, Pheyis smiles at me in the same kind of way someone would smile at a little kid who’s very proud of having done something extremely mundane.

“Congratulations. Now do it again.”

There’s everything in my head and then there’s Pheyis, who has clearly made a hobby of being spiteful.

She’s the perfect role model.

Her tone is strange though, it carries just a touch of an unexpected emotion. Nostalgia perhaps? It’s hard to tell.

Maybe I’m not being very sensitive, and maybe she’d appreciate no comments about it. Either way, I’m not ignoring a chance of getting some advice from the most competent person in a hundred miles.

Bob not speaking up to dispute the point is proof enough.

“I'm a bit lost and could really use some help. Will you give me some pointers?”

She sighs before talking, but it’s not a no.

“Why don’t you start by showing me your stats and your traits?

Panel Share (System Ability)

This ability allows you to send and receive part or all of the information on your Status with another sentient who owns a compatible System.

Information shared this way is automatically fit for comprehension by the other party. It cannot be stored or shared again by the receiver’s System.

Current Mana cost (complete status shared) : 10

I do just that, but I withhold my two little boons. I don’t really want to explain the detailed circumstances around that.

Principally the situation with Bob regarding my mental health. My mental health is perfectly fine.

It will certainly go away if you keep ignoring it, that’s like, the oldest trick in every book.

Yep.

Works for anything except cats.

- - -

As we were walking toward the training grounds, Pheyis gave me a few pointers.

Well, to be more accurate, she told me several things while growing uncharacteristically agitated at the little oddities in my status.

So, among other things, I learned that,

Having major adaptability as a racial trait is absolutely disgusting: my dweller traits are ticking up at least twice as fast as normal, and it can speed up all kind of other, more meaningful traits. Just that is already nice. But then, traits are resonating together while in the forming stage? That's busted. The extra speed will show for sure.

I'm kinda glad I didn't show her I have another adaptable trait. Still, I'm grinning like an idiot as she tells me abusing this effect should allow me to catch up in spite of almost thirty years without a system.

She’d never seen the bodybuilder trait before but it looked very powerful for a first training trait. Just the fact that it gave three stats upon formation is a great start, it means it's at least tier two.

She glossed over what trait tiers really do but it's a good thing to have higher tiers of traits.

My progress on mana is pretty much miraculous considering how little time I had been working on it. Of course, the truth is that Bob is basically spending all day on mana sense and more recently, manipulation, so it's probably "just" fast.

Gilfeith average stats were overall superior to human averages, she saw my stats scaled to the gilfeith averages, turning my 199 bound stats limit into a 152, which was still rather exceptional for a level 2.

Star-longer really is weird, even at minor rank, traits always claim to do at least something meaningless. It might grow into some kind of regeneration or restoration effect, but it might just as well be a stepping stone for a particularly fancy trait fusion.

Trait fusions and prerequisites are a thing, but sometimes the system skip those altogether for unfathomable reasons.

Titles are uncommon but worth hunting. Still, I should wait for level three and the achievement unlock before doing anything in that direction.

“Alright, enough stretching. You need to train in a way that will trigger the formation of Athlete rather than feed Bodybuilder, so let’s try different things, shall we?”

In spite of how effective my warm-up routine has become, a shiver runs through my spine. I did think I felts some hints of something when she was speaking earlier. Surely it wasn’t jealousy and surely she isn’t petty enough to work me to the bone in revenge is she?

That she’d work you to the bone was already a given the moment you asked for help.

True.

She might go all the way to the marrow though, who knows~

--------

[???]

In a faraway place, there is a special kind of darkness.

In that darkness, a very unique shade of power exists, it is a slithering substance of splintered space and shrieking silences. A thing of broken rules that has been dominated but not tamed.

And there, in a room that isn’t a room, for a man who isn’t a man, an entity that is neither alive nor dead delivers a message.

Regular Report #1 on subject Mem.3-MR000072161557

Automatically flagged for validation.

Most relevant fields below

System integration is within normal parameters.

Subject is under modifier “Unknown Context”.

Subject mental distress is 35% above expectations.

Subject chance of surviving a full year estimated above insignificance threshold.

Subject does not believe he is in a simulation. Likeliness of convergence upon reset over 99.9%.

Subject is developing Trait “Vindicator”. Likeliness of relevance is below 0.01%. Likeliness of convergence upon reset estimated at 97%.

The Knowledgeable ponders over the report for a long moment.

A nanosecond later, their answering order is sent.

Flag future regular reports on subject for validation and proceed normally.