Okay, lets take it easy. There are blood deer, the plants have unnatural colors and I’m an Elf… yea I have no idea what to do. I stand up and walk back to my tent as I try to find out what is going on. Is it a government experiment? Aliens? Plague? is it Magic? Probably magic, since none of this makes any sense. If it were a plague or a bacteria of some sort I doubt it would be this fast acting, why would the government even do this to begin with. And I don’t see how or why aliens would just, I don’t know, replace the entire ecosystem. Though that’s not correct either since I’m here, maybe we were mutated then?

“It’s magic then?”

Primary Oath “Magic” Accepted

I jump back and almost trip on a stone when a glass like screen appears in my vision. What? Oath? I look around and try to get rid of the screen, but it always seems to follow my line of sight. what is this!

User

Identity - Auden Leymoore/Elf?

layer - 1

Tier - 0

Level - 0/10

Oath

0 - “Magic”

Stats - 0

Perception - 0

Wisdom - 0

Intelligence - 0

Vigilance - 0

Creativity - 0

Skills

Mana control 0 - 0/10

Climbing 0 - 0/10

Mana sense 0 - 0/10

Ooookaaaay… so, what is going on? Is this like one of those things from the games Jake tried to get me to play? What was it called again, rpg, fantasy, game…system! It was called a system! Though why are all the stats so focused on perception and mental stuff, isn’t there supposed to be strength or agility at least. Or is it because my “Oath” is magic.

I continue looking through the status sheet for the minutes it takes my mind to process things, has the world become some sort of game?

“You know what, fuck it, I’m hungry”

Heat up some water and pour it into a bag of dehydrated macaroni and cheese. I then sit down on the siting stone and start going through everything that has happen(for like the third time). Okay now that I’m not hungry lets try to do something. I start trying to interact with the status sheet to see what it does.

In the end it doesn’t even take me half an hour to figure out all of its functions, or rather its lack of functions. first of all my stats seem to be divided into four parts when I first checked it, User, Oath, Stats, and Skills. But after prodding around it turns out there is a fifth called Achievements, but it is empty and doesn’t react to anything so that lead to nothing.

After that I tried going through the smaller labels to see what they meant, identity probably represents who/what I think I am. I got this from the question mark after the Elf, since I am uncertain if I am one or not it probably shows my race as a question.

Other than that I think my tier might go up if I increase my level to ten, and I don't know what effects it might have, plus it does not mention how I am supposed to level up… anyways that is all from the User tab. The next tab, the Oath tab, probably represents some promise I made since its an oath, but I don’t know how the word magic is an oath… but it also shows a zero in front of it, the same number that both my stats, my level and my tier have. Maybe I have to make another oath to increase them beyond zero? though that feels like a lot of oaths.

Then we have the stats, which honestly tell me nothing, but since they are at zero does that mean I’m weak? Is it like one games where it only shows the the increase in stats not the total?

And finally the most interesting of all, skills. I started with trying to mentally poke the climbing skill since it seemed the simplest, and as soon as I “touched” it my head was filled with vast amounts of knowledge, I fell to the floor and…okay not that much knowledge actually, I just got surprised by the sudden…insertion? I overacted a bit.

But now when I think about climbing I can clearly tell I know more than I did previously. Not anything significant, but more along the lines of going from knowing how to climb the easy course to being able to climb the easy course, it's still basic knowledge but it feels like I have at least 10 or so hours of basic experience.

Climbing has reached level ‘1’

Nice, so if I’m not misunderstanding this means I get the first level of a skill for free. I push another mental prod towards the Mana sense skill, and after what felt like a few seconds of knowledge getting infused(maybe I should call it a tutorial knowledge? nah) I understand what I’m supposed to do… Kinda.

Mana Sense has reached level ‘1’

The skill was a lot more complicated than climbing, I tried replicating the feelings and movements I gained but I could barely feel anything. All I felt was a feeling of ‘gaseous’ mana around my palm.

Mana Sense has reached level ‘2’

With the increase in level a similar but smaller amount of knowledge was inserted into my mind, except this time it was more related to sensing Mana with my hand. I see, so the way you use a skill determines how it grows in the future.

I tried sensing Mana with other body parts for a while, and managed to increase the skill a lot further.

Mana Sense has reached level ‘3’

Mana Sense has reached level ‘4’

Now when I tried to use the skill I can just barely feel the ‘solid’ Mana in my clothes along with the ‘gas’ Mana from earlier. This is so cool!

You have reached level ‘1’

Interesting, I probably leveled from all the training with the Mana sense. The notice drew me out of my practice, though I felt like it would have been easily ignored if I was a little more focused. I noticed it was getting dark and I checked my clock, only to see that I had spent almost two hours trying to sense Mana.

I started preparing for the night while I ate some more dehydrated food, and went through my status screen.

User

Identity - Auden Leymoore/Elf?

layer - 1

Tier - 0

Level - 1/10

Oath

0 - “Magic”

Stats - 1

Perception - 0 +

Wisdom - 0 +

Intelligence - 0 +

Vigilance - 0 +

Creativity - 0 +

Skills

Mana control 0 - 0/10

Climbing 0 - 1/10

Mana sense 0 - 4/10

Better than before at least. I looked at the stat tab and saw that I gained a stat point from my level up, taking a look at the options I decided to add it to perception. Maybe it could help me with my Mana sensing.

As I was laying in my sleeping roll I remembered that I forgot to get the knowledge for Mana manipulation. Same as with the other skills my mind was flooded with knowledge, but rather that look into it now I resolved to go through it in the morning when I wasn’t as sleepy.

Mana Manipulation has reached level '1'