Status

James Lander (M)

Age: 18

Class: -

Occupation: -

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Health: 49/58

Mana: 62/62

Stamina: 17/17

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Strength: 8 (/)

Agility: 10 (/)

Speed: 8 (/)

Dexterity: 9 (/)

Vitality: 10 (/)

Intelligence: 12 (/)

Wisdom: 16 (/)

Luck: 0 (*)

Unspent stat points: (0)

Equipped items: (+)

Skills:

• Basic fitness [1] (D)

• Magic resistance [2] (D)

Features:

• Jack of all trades (D)

• Ultimate chance (A)

Spells:

• Mana force (E)

• Divine contract (Lucifer)

Skimming their stat pages, everyone realised they were largely unchanged from when they last saw them in the character creation, with the exception being the health, mana and stamina, and the equipped items menu. Some of them had learnt spells of skills though.

Sharing some of their info, at the writing guy's request, everyone listed off their highest stat, any skills and spells besides the world gifts, and any features. There were largely no big revelations. May had learnt the spell mana wave and had the feature: arcanist.

Mana wave (spell):

A wave of mana flows in your vicinity, stirring up player mana and soothing monster mana.

Effects: player mana cost -5%, monster mana cost +5%

Cost: 75 mana

Arcanist (feature):

An obsession with magic has a greater payoff than one would expect.

Effect: magic spells are 25% easier to learn and level, but a magic specific class must be chosen.

May explained that she only had 79 mana, and had wasted 12 mana on moving the mana in the air around before she learnt mana wave. Activating it instantly, her mana was drained, and the effect: mana exhaustion was placed on her, which caused her to pass out. When pressed for the details of the effect, she admitted that she hadn't had time to mentally press it and read the information before she had blacked out.

Additionally, the writing guy had learnt the skill: scribe.

Scribe [1] (skill):

The writer's mentality has passed on to the new world. Writing proficiency is increased, and words gain power.

This didn't make much sense to any of them, so they resolved to look back on it again when it had levelled or even ranked up.

James described his feature: Jack of all trades, which was apparently a big thing according to the room.

Also the skill he had learnt when Mindy hit him with her magic fist. James read it himself first, then

Magic resistance [2] (skill):

Spells and mana infused attacks do 2% less damage.

Progress: (14.3%)

Despite his 25% slower progress, he had gained the second level in magic resistance. He could only assume it was due to the lower levels being easier to progress through.

James decided not to mention his other feature and the only other spell he had. These seemed ridiculously overpowered, despite James having nowhere near enough mana to use the spell.

Unsurprisingly, Callum had nothing extra. James was beginning to think less and less of him.

Dana though had a feature that complimented her quite well:

Rapid regeneration (feature):

A high metabolism promotes slightly faster healing at the sacrifice of growth.

Effect: all regen rates increased by 100%, the growth rate of skills and spells decreased by 10%.

The highest stat of each of them was as follows:

James: wisdom (16)

May: intelligence (19)

Callum: strength (14)

Dana: vitality (14)

Annie: agility (15)

Unnamed writing guy: intelligence (17)

As everyone said their own highest stat, James still didn't know the last guy's name and resolved to make an effort to learn it later.

Regarding the stats, James was not surprised to find that Callum had poured his stats into strength. For someone who claimed to have "played like all the MMORPG's, this didn't seem massively smart. Besides... James assumed everyone got the same seven unallocated stat points. If Callum actually did put them all into strength, then his base strength would have been more or less the same as James'. James didn't know whether to think less of the system or more of Callum, so he just decided to put a pin in it and focus on the matter at hand.

"Ok, that's all we need. Everyone has a strength over 7, so since we probably won't be able to use magic to get out of here, we're going to need weapons."

The unnamed guy, who seemed to have taken the role of the leader was explaining his plan.

"Wait"

James interrupted him.

"This is a classroom, what weapons are you expecting to find?"

"None, yet."

With this cryptic answer, James was rendered speechless.

"Callum", he continued, "you have the highest strength, so you're going to make us some weapons."

He moved to one of the tables and flipped it over. The table was basic, with four square legs made of hollow steel.

"Callum, rip off the legs please"

He indicated how Callum should use his foot to isolate an area of the wood surface and rip it off so that the metal leg still had some wood to add weight to the tip.

Callum messed up his first few attempts, but there were plenty of tables around, so before long, everyone in the room had a leg in their hands.

James looked at him with more scrutiny. If he wanted to do any damage, he would have to swing it quite hard and catch his target with the edge to do much damage, but he guessed it was better than nothing.

Skill learnt: Analyze ©

James was a little shocked. Maybe he could learn new skills much easier than everyone else. His Jack of all Trades quality essentially made learning skills 2.5× easier, but still. This seemed to easy. Playing a hunch, James went back into his status and looked at the Equipped Items section. Focusing on the plus at the end, a list formed.

Equipped items: (-)

• School uniform (+)

1. Effects: skills and spells are 50% easier to learn.

2. Set bonus: skills and spells level up 25%faster.

• Underwear

1. Effects: cold resistance +2%

This explained why his skills were even easier to learn, and also why his magic resistance levelled up.

Strangely though, his makeshift weapon wasn't part of that list. Then he remembered his new skill, and closing his menu, looked back at the table leg... And drew a blank. He had no idea how to activate a skill.

Not wanting to live through the same embarrassment as Callum did when discovering the status, he tried to vocalise it in his mind first and was rewarded with the weapons stats.

Weapon: makeshift club (E)

Quality: Terrible

condition: Poor

Damage: +(3-8)

Type: crushing damage

Upon using his new skill, James was equally pleased and annoyed. He was pleased that this skill was actually useful immediately, but annoyed that it cost 10 stamina.

Skill learnt: Health regeneration (D)

This was also unexpected, but since he hadn't done anything, James doubted this was something he had learnt faster due to his feature.

Jumping back into his staus, James looked through his two new skills and also noticed that his club was now added to his equipped list.

Analyze (skill):

Reveal the details of what you see. Displays stats of weapons and people.

Increases in level show more information and decrease cost.

Cost: 10 stamina

Health regeneration (skill)

Your health automatically regenerates as your wounds heal according to vitality, but you can now also increase your health instantly at the cost of stamina.

Cost: 5 stamina per 1 health.

Though both skills were very expensive, the would likely level up quickly, and hopefully become more useful.

His health though had increased or rather regenerated by 4 points over the last 10 minutes since he had been hurt. He calculated his regen per minute as 0.4 and was surprised to see it instantly appear next to his health.

In the meantime, everyone else had been practising swings with their makeshift clubs and didn't seem to notice James' lack of motion. Checking his watch James saw that it was almost 3 o'clock. How had so little time passed?

It was early June at the time the world was shifted, and James had no idea if time was still the same, or if the seasons were the same.

"We should get going, really. It's three already, and I want to be somewhere safe before it gets dark."

"Chill, it's like four more hours until that happens", said Callum with an attitude that pissed James off.

"We don't know if the seasons still work the same, or even if time is still the same!"

James was getting frantic at this point. No one seemed to care that darkness could be so close.

May walked over to the window and pointed at the still visible sun.

"Look, the sun is exactly where you would expect for this time, and short of moving the goddamn sun, I doubt time has changed."

"Ok, geez. I don't know these things, I was just worried about when it gets dark."

May took a deep breath and calmed herself.

"That's fine, it was a genuine worry, and none of us is exactly in our comfort zones here. We all played RPG's before this changed, so we know how this world works, but this is still scary for us"

James looked up from the spot on the floor he had become fixated on while May was talking and looked into her eyes. They were black but seemed to sparkle even in the gloomy room.

Dana barged into him from the side, grabbed his free hand with hers and led him over to the door.

"We're going", she yelled over her shoulder as she marched to the door with James in tow. He barely had time to grab his bag and sling it over his shoulder before they reached the door and stepped through it.

Clearly seeing what had happened outside the class while they were inside was not as bad as it could have been, but everyone had a little trouble keeping down what had remained of their lunches.