The list wasn’t inspiring, and lacked a lot of skills he would have wanted, and in fact was slightly insulting, but it was a start. He could work with it.

[Language Understanding]

[Karma Reset]

[Demonic Cunning]

[Demon Fire]

[Demon Ice]

[Immortality]

[Unlock More For 40 Points? Y/N]

The only two he were looking for, language and inventory, and he only gets the former. He didn’t ask for all that edgy demon crap, or the curse of immortality, he wanted an inventory. That last option was even worse than the demonic skills, since there was no way he would be dumb enough to waste all his points just so he could see what he could unlock in the future.

“Let’s get the easy one out of the way, then,” Lucas grunted.

[Unlock Language Understanding for 10 Points? Y/N]

Ten was way too steep for something like this, but it was necessary for interacting with the world. Fine, yes, steal away those 10 points, you crappy system.

He didn’t feel any different after he unlocked the skill. There wasn’t some surge of information flooding his brain with pain as it stuck all those new languages in his head. At least this world wasn’t terrible enough to hurt him with its own rules.

“Now, time to read whatever this all is,” Lucas said, a hint of a smile beginning to form on his lips. No, no, no. He refused to have fun with this, stay calm. Some God kidnapped you from your nice apartment and stuck you here for their own amusement. This isn’t fun. This is torture.

As if to drive home the point of torture, Lucas still couldn’t read the books. Why? Was [Language Understanding] not universal? Did it need an upgrade or something?

[Upgrade Language Understanding I For 1 Point? Y/N]

Just take those points, you terrible, terrible system.

…

He still couldn’t read them.

[Upgrade Language Understanding II for 3 Points? Y/N]

Do it.

Oh, come on. You’ve got to be kidding. He still couldn't read the runes. What the hell kind of language skill was this? These books were supposed to answer his questions as to why he was here! That’s how the story goes! What kind of terrible God forces him to spend his own hard-earned points to read the world’s native language? Come on!

[Evolve Language Understanding to Language Expertise for 6 Points? Y/N]

He knew it was a bad idea to spend so many points on this, when outside the cabin there could very well be some ice demon that will punch a hole in him with an ice lance or something, but he wanted, no, needed to know what these books had in store for him now. Surely, if the system was forcing him to spend this many points, they’d be worth it. They had to be. Begrudgingly, he spent his points on the evolution.

[Language Expertise] did not disappoint him, as he could finally read the book he was holding. What did disappoint him, was the name of the book.

[How to Learn Arrow and its Evolutions in 10 Easy Steps!]

It was a manual for a skill he already had. Breathe, Lucas, breathe. In and out.

On the plus side, if there were books like this, he doubted the residents of this world had a system aiding him like he did. Lucas’ logic was that if they could spend points to learn skills like he could, they wouldn’t need a book like this. Right, yes, that made sense, yes, yes, ignore the obvious holes in your logic, such as why did he start with the [ Arrow] skill and why was the skill book here in the first place, yes. Ignore the critical thinking for now.

Two of the other books were just as disappointing as the first skill book.

[How to Learn Shield and its Evolutions in 10 Easy Steps!]

[How to Learn Manipulation and its Evolutions in 10 Easy Steps!]

Whichever God brought him here was screwing with him. They had to be.

[Demonic Rituals, Enchantments, and Incantations] was the other skill book. When he flipped through it, the system gave him some disturbing notifications.

[Learn Demon Summoning Ritual? Y/N]

[Learn Demon Enchantment? Y/N]

[Learn Demon Chanting? Y/N]

“I’m not a kid,” Lucas muttered, but the fact that they appeared to be free skills was enough to get him to consider it. Not for very long, though, since there was a very good chance that demons were, well, demonized, in this world. It’s an isekai, after all, and if there was even a sliver of a chance that someone could look at his skill list, he didn’t want them seeing that he had a bunch of demonic skills in there.

With all those books out of the way, the only one left was the smaller one, which he flipped through. It was apparently the journal of one “Xandrious Barolt, The First of His Name” and the “True Baron of Highwater.” Lucas couldn’t help but laugh at the stupid name, like seriously, what the heck is a Xandrious, anyway. He knew some people with dumb names back on Earth, but seriously? Xandrious? Ha.

The name was the only laughable thing about the journal, though. This Xandrious definitely had some messed up thoughts and ideas, and it was clear as day that something was wrong with him even from just the first entry.

They dare exile me? ME?

I’m the only son my Father ever sired! I am the rightful heir! Those sisters of mine can’t even hold a candle to my skill!

And those peasants are mine to do with as I please! I am their LORD.

I will never forget my rage.

It was all properly vague and whatnot, so at least this idiot seemed to not be entirely dumb enough to write down every crime he no doubt did. Well, every crime except the last one, apparently.

I’ve done it!

The ritual circle is complete. Now, all I have to do is lay down in the circle, and chant the summoning. If all goes well, a demon will appear before me, and I’ll be able to make my deal.

Those sisters of mine will rue the day they conspired against me!

Ha, what an idiot. What kind of moron lies down inside of a demon summoning circle? That’s where the demon goes! Even Lucas knew that, and he wasn’t even from this stupid planet! How was that not common sense?

Wait.

Was Lucas supposed to be the demon this guy summoned? That can’t be right. He was human as human could be! His status even said so! The world agreed with him!

[Lucas (?) – Human (?)

Level 20 Mage

HP ?/?

MP ?/?

Strength - ?

Dexterity - ?

Vitality - ?

Perception - 0

Intelligence - ?

Wisdom - ?

Luck - ?]

[Available Stat Points – 40]

Okay, the (?) didn’t inspire any confidence, but he remembered his life on Earth. He wasn’t some guy with wings and a spiky tail tormenting lost and tormented souls, he was an honest to goodness ***dy’s manager that spent his free time playing video games and watching anime. No one ever cursed out his name in vain while they suffered eternal torment in the acid mines.

The wind cut itself off several times over, making a strange eeeEEeeeEEeeeEEe noise, and if Lucas didn’t know better, he’d swear it sounded like laughter.

“Okay, moving on,” Lucas said, detaching one of the canteens from the belt that was on the desk. It was probably just water in here, but-- wait. No, wait.

In the reflection the canteen, it wasn’t him. It was someone else. The hair was the same, but everything else… the eyes were the wrong color, different size, the nose was different, the lips… it was all different! No, certainly, God hadn’t just stuck him inside someone else’s body, right? They didn’t stick him inside Xandrious, no!

[Quest! Kill the Noble’s Family.

0/4

100 Days Remaining]

Why did the system only give him terrible notifications? This wasn’t even a proper first quest, it was just some angry kid’s hit list.

“No!” Lucas screamed and slammed his fists on the table in typical, dramatic isekai fashion. The action wasn't really out of anger, it was more out of frustrated necessity. Everyone knew that hitting inanimate objects helped soothe stress; it was just one of those quirks in life that no one understood but everyone accepted.

Moving on from his desk punching, he was not going to live out someone else’s revenge fantasy. He refused! He wasn’t a murderer. Sure, nobles in these isekais generally tended to either be goody-two-shoes or completely evil, with no inbetween, but even if the people he had to kill were evil, he still didn’t want to do it. Lucas had no problem with a bunch of strangers, and refused to be dragged into it by a brat named Xandrious of all things. Plus, from what he could tell, this brat was dead, probably had his soul crushed from a failed demon summoning or something, since Lucas was stuck in his body now. Finally, if that journal was anything to go by, Xandrious was the completely evil one here, even if he didn’t know exactly what he did, no good person writes something completely edgy like “I will never forget my rage.”

[Fail Quest?

WARNING:

Consequences May Be Dire.]

Yes, yes, fail the quest. He wasn’t about to become a murderer.

[Quest Failed.

All Stats Lost]

“What?” Lucas barely had time to question the system before his entire body felt numb, and he rag dolled to the floor, bumping his head on the table as he fell. No strength was left in his body, and it felt like he would die if he so much as bumped into something the wrong way.

[Lucas (?) – Human (?)

Level 20 Ice Mage

HP 3/5

MP 0/0

Strength - 0

Dexterity - 0

Vitality - 0

Perception - 0

Intelligence - 0

Wisdom - 0

Luck - 0]

[Available Stat Points – 40]

[Available Skill Points – 20]

Stupid system! Question marks were better than 0s, apparently. Were they Xandrious’ stats before Lucas took over this body? If that were the case, then why is there still a (?) after Lucas’ name? Just like all isekais there were too many vague questions that will no doubt have dumb, unsatisfying answers later on, when he was so overpowered that nothing could ever threaten him.

Also, this punishment is too cruel. Just because he didn’t want to murder some people, he lost all these stats, and his level wasn’t reset, either, so 20 levels worth of stats were just gone. Not that he even knew how many there were in the first place, but there was obviously something there before.

He supposed he could only grin and bear this punishment, since it wasn’t like he had a choice not to. Now was as good a time as any to use those stat points, and he already had an idea as how to spend them.

First, one point into strength, to try and gauge the average. He had never been fit on Earth, but he hadn’t been unfit, either. One point in strength, and he felt like he was about as strong as a kitten. Great. After putting 4 more points into it, he felt like he was as strong as a child, which was good enough for now. He only had 35 more points to work with, after all, and he wanted to min/max this stupid thing.

5 points into dexterity gave him the coordination of a toddler, which wasn’t enough. Stumbling around like a kid who could barely walk in the middle of a new world did not sound like a smart idea. Another 5, and as far as he could tell, he had about the range of bodily function as he had on Earth. The swiftness and mobility of a slightly chubby manager at a fast food place; it was good enough for him on Earth, and it’ll have to do for now.

It was a shame that his HP didn’t go up with his strength or dex, but he supposed that was what vitality was for. It could be worse, there could be even more terrible stats, like endurance. Putting 1 point into vitality gave him 5 HP, but it was tricky to gauge exactly how much that actually was. A bad bump cost him 2 HP earlier, but like, how bad was that bump? Was it as painful as it felt, or did he actually hit his head wrong during that fall and caused himself more damage than he thought? The last thing he wanted was to wrongly estimate how much HP he needed, then regret it later when a wolf bites his arm and immediately kills him. He’ll put it at 10 for now, it seemed to be good for dexterity, so it should be similar to whatever level he was at before.

Which left him with only 15 points left. At this point, there weren’t enough points to really do a min/max thing, so he supposed he may as well put another 5 into strength. May as well make his body about as good as it was back on Earth.

Now, which stat governed MP? He was 99% sure it was intelligence, but why is it even called intelligence? He doesn’t feel any dumber with 0 intelligence than he did back on Earth. Is it just magician lingo for this world, that more intelligence = more mana? Eugh. That’s dumb. Guess he couldn’t rely on dumping all his stats into intelligence and becoming the world's smartest man, then.

What he could do, though, is put 9 points into intelligence and 1 into wisdom. He would want to put 10 into INT, make it a nice even number and get his MP as high as it could go, but if wisdom governed MP regen, he did not want that at 0.

In the end, his status looked miserable, especially for someone who was supposed to be level 20, but it meant he didn’t have to be a murderer, so that was good. He would’ve hated to murder the barony, because not only would he have to live with the fact that he was the scum of the Earth (well, scum of whatever planet this is) he’d also likely have an entire Kingdom after his head, and that was definitely more than he wanted to deal with.

[Lucas (?) – Human (?)

Level 20 Ice Mage

HP 53/55

MP 18/18

Strength - 10

Dexterity - 10

Vitality - 10

Perception - 0

Intelligence - 9

Wisdom - 1

Luck - 0]

[Available Stat Points – 0]

[Available Skill Points – 20]

Nice, his MP seemed to recover as he increased his intelligence. Finally, some good news. That would be helpful later on, in case he had a surplus of stat points, no mana, and no magic potions. Magic potions were a thing, right? They had to be. Then again, there was no inventory...

The 0 luck annoyed him to no end, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that right now. Hopefully 0 luck didn’t mean that some bear would come crashing through the cabin’s door. The 0 Perception also confused him – his eyes felt fine. Did it mean, like, finding things that are supposed to be hidden or something? If so, that’s dumb, like, super maximum omega dumb. The definition of a worthless stat.

And another thing. None of his muscles were sore anymore, his back felt great, and his headache was gone. Either the stat reset cured him of his hangover, or the points put into vitality made it negligent. He hoped it was the latter, and assumed it as well, since it looked like the vitality put his HP back up at 53. Even though his current plan was to dump all his stats into intelligence and wisdom, maybe he could spare a few for vitality and never have to worry about back pain ever again. That sounded nice. Not nice enough to forgive whoever kidnapped him and put him on this magical, forsaken planet, which was no doubt full of monsters that wanted to kill and eat him, but it was a neat little perk.

Now that his stats were all set in stone, he supposed it was time for skills. Again, he had a plan for this, but there was no way the system would just let him do it, not when it seemed so eager to screw him over.

“Upgrade [ Arrow] to tier III,” he said aloud. It felt kinda stupid, saying that out loud, even if there was no one to hear it. But this system seemed to enjoy embarrassing him, as when he tried just thinking about it, the system refused to let him upgrade. Why it was designed to be so finicky, he didn’t know.

Upgrading to tier III took 4 points, 1 for tier II and 3 for tier III, just like [Language Understanding].

“Evolve [Ice Arrow].”

[Two Choices Are Available. [Ice Arrows] and [Ice Spear].]

Presumably, arrows gave him multiple arrows in one cast, and spear was just flat out more powerful. Obviously, he went with power. He needed all the damage he could get, since his stats were tanked.

[Upgrade [Ice Arrow] to [Ice Spear] for 10 Points? Y/N]

“Yes, yes, do it,” Lucas said, and with that, all his skill points were gone. He had been afraid that the system would force him to distribute them equally, since this system seems to be out to get him, but that worry seemed dumb now that he thought about it. It hadn’t forced him to spend his stat points equally, and the idea of someone doing that was incredibly stupid. Why would anyone do that? That would just be a failure of a character, after all.

With all that out of the way, he could finally relax a little. You know, he could really go for some french fries right now, but he knew there weren’t any here, or maybe even in the entire world. As long as there were potatoes and some sort of vegetable oil, he could make some himself, but that was a problem for later.

He’d just have to settle for whatever liquid was in these canteens. Opening one of them, one was red, and the other was blue. Scratch that, guess he wasn’t drinking either of those, since they were probably potions. Ugh. It wasn’t like he was actually hungry or thirsty, but he wanted something to do. Drinking and eating felt good, and dammit he didn’t need to explain this to himself! Food and drink are good, it’s that simple.

“Maybe I missed something downstairs,” he complained to himself, knowing that wasn’t the case. He had searched all those drawers pretty thoroughly, and it wasn’t like he could find something that wasn’t there. Then again, these canteens and that bucket over there did seem to just appear out of nowhere, so maybe if he got really, really lucky with is luck stat of 0, he’d find a banquet in one of those drawers. Sure. Let’s go with that.

Back in the basement, nothing new appeared in the room itself, which didn’t surprise him in the slightest. But, you know, just in case, maybe he missed something in the dresser.

The first two drawers had nothing but the ritual materials again, but the next one was interesting. It had his work clothes in it again, but this time, his phone was on top of them. Now, he knew his phone wasn’t there last time, he spent so many minutes trying to find it, and it wasn’t there, but here it is now.

“Either someone is messing with me, or...”

He had a theory. That skill he had, [Observe 0]. Normally, isekais come with some sort of analyze skill, that lets the protagonist know everything about everyone, and it’s the most broken skill ever, because the hero is able to immediately understand what he needs to do to kill someone/ find a plant in a forest/ whatever. It was a deus ex machina. That’s what that’s called, right? Anyway, not the point. It was the end all, be all of skills, and he had really hoped he would find it in the skill list earlier, but it wasn’t.

Maybe, just maybe, the reason for that was because of his skill, [Observe 0]. Which seems like a terrible, no good, curse of a skill. Having 0 tiers in something sounded bad already, but this was in observation of all things, you know, the way one perceived the world and all that.

All that is to say, maybe [Observe 0] actively hindered him from finding useful things in the world, and would not let him analyze people for their HP and weaknesses and all the good stuff that was supposed to be freely handed to the isekai protagonist of the day- ipso facto, him.

He really hoped that wasn’t the case, but it wasn’t like he had any evidence pointing otherwise, and he knew the system hated his guts, so he felt like his theory was on point.

As if to prove him right, the next drawer he searched was full of moldy bread. There was no way he could have missed this blackish green mold that reeked of death when he searched the drawer earlier. Just what the hell did he do to deserve a trash skill like this? He closed the drawer and opened it again, and the bread was still there. He opened and closed it again. The bread was still there, and now there was also a jar of what looked to be some kind of jam. One last time, he opened and closed the door, and both the bread and jam were there.

So, once observed, the stuff stays there? That’s convenient, but it’s a solution to a problem that shouldn’t exist! What kind of sick freak designed this skill?

“May as well just get this over with, then,” Lucas said with a groan.

Spending half an hour opening and closing the dresser drawers was not a fruitless effort, but he hated the fact he had to do it. No doubt he’d one day have to enter some lost ruin or dungeon, and then have to play around with a treasure chest for an hour just so he could get a stamina recovery potion and three rusted daggers, but that was a problem for another time. Inside of the dresser, he found a few interesting items:

[Ring of Sealed Lesser Imp – Rare]

[Potion of Enlightenment – Legendary]

[Potion of Growth – Rare]

[Skill Crystal – Super Rare]

Of course, the ring would be forever lost in this cabin. Actually, scratch that, he was going to bury it outside as soon as he left. He didn’t want anyone stumbling their way into this cabin and finding this ring, then associating it with him. The chances of that happening were slim to none, but it was better to be safe than sorry when it came to demons. Probably.

“You know, for someone with 0 Luck, I sure am getting some decent--”

Lucas’ self-dialog was interrupted by several loud howls, all sounding like they were right outside the cabin door.

“stuff,” Lucas finished his sentence.

He carried the potions and the skill crystal upstairs with him and took a peak outside the front door. Sure enough, he could still barely see through the storm, but he was able to see enough. There were at least 3 bear-sized wolves outside, staring at the cabin. Somehow he was able to slam the door shut before one of them could invite themselves in.

“Great, now this is happening,” Lucas muttered as the wolves began to slam their bodies against the other side of the door.